Queerly queer research

Due to some obscure reason, I’ve been getting a lot more blog-traffic than previously. The traffic on my blog has leapfrogged from a nonexistent 0.17 readers per week to a giant 15.32 readers per week in the last month. And for mostly inexplicable reasons I have been getting tagged and receiving awards from the weirdest of sources. Sometimes I feel this is all not true and during one such instance, in the past week, I did a google search on ‘Engayging Life’.

In the results, I found a few links to a few fellow bloggers who have blogrolled me and a couple of the blogging sites that gave me awards and stuff. But the most staggering result of them all was this entry. Right at the middle of this screenshot titled ‘Queer Blogging in Indian Digital Diasporas’. If you notice further, that this link leads to a scientific research publication by a couple of researchers - Queer Blogging in Indian Digital Diasporas: A Dialogic Encounter by Mitra and Gajjala Journal of Communication Inquiry.2008; 0: 0196859908321003v1. Crazy stuff!


Since curiosity has imposed itself on me several times causing upswings in my feline mortality, and because I couldn’t access the publication as it was not available for free download, I decided to write to these authors asking if I could get a copy of it. I was surprised to see a prompt reply by one of them expressing their happiness to provide me with the publication.

It was a internet research paper about how the internet has influenced the Indian gay community. I went through it and found this rather ‘cute’ entry about my blog right up at the first part of the publication. Apparently the Talking Closets blog mentioned my blog in this entry back in 2005. This is what is said in that entry.

This one is actually going to be about gay blogging, and not just me spewing out crap about my erratic and erotic escapades (though some would say, that's what I do best.). Indian gay blogging, to be precise. I've always wanted to find out some guys in India who blog about their homosexuality, whether openly or from within a closet, and I found a couple of them, the other day.

My favourite is Kris', to which I've added a link on the right hand side. Kris is a gay doctor somewhere in Bombay, who saves lives by day and dreams of men by night. Wow - a hot Baywatch hunk gone gay? hehehe.. I wish! (which doesn't mean that he's not, of course.....!) The reason I like Kris' posts? They're amazingly easy: they're about a life, and the fact that he's gay is not the be-all and end-all. There's no sermonizing about gay people - and that's great. In the last few days, I've come across a couple of gay blogs which are full of activism - and it simply leaves me cold.

Isn’t this crazy? And you don’t even know where your rants can reach – even to universities in the US who apparently study our blogs! It turns out that the person who writes this blog is Mr. Rahul Mitra, a co-writer of this article. He also maintains this other blog Living High.

I did a little search on his blogs about me and my blog. All I could find was this surprising invitation to one mumbai gay blogger party back in 2005. He invited me and Vikster for this party. I don't remember receiving any invites back then. And hence, I didn't respond. I guess that pissed him off as you can't find my blog on the 'right hand side' in his blogs!

Since reading this, I have exchanged a few e-mails with Dr. Gajjala and Mr. Mitra. They are very interested in knowing more about me and other gay bloggers. They have indicated that they would wish to start communicating with all who are interested. For those interested, send me an e-mail (you can find it on the blog somewhere).

(PS: If you thought that this post was very self-indulgent and narcissistic, I am sure it is. But it was fun!)