Video Gaga

Like Abheek Sinha,a student of Jai Hind College ,Mumbai,who turns into a nonchalant Rohn Moosh for Stickam. He strips to the waist before the camera,makes his bed,does push-ups —and these moments of intense narcissism are soon edited and uploaded. In a video “Fail”,he rants about the failures in his life; in another,he just sneezes. He is part of the growing community of vloggers who create video content and upload on their blogs. Or go one step better — broadcast live. “On the Net,you can express your weirdest thoughts,” says Sinha,19,who hails from Agartala. Since March 2008,he has been going live twice a week on Stickam,a portal that enables people to broadcast live,through chatrooms. So,on humid Mumbai mornings,he brushes his teeth in front the webcam and is streamed on Stickam. “My mind is blank when I’m going live. I just talk what comes to my mind,” says Sinha,who loves Rohn Moosh more than sober Sinha.

Similarly,27-year-old preschool teacher Prachiti Mhatre turns into a female Cyrus Broacha and parodies news in What’s Up India. It has garnered 50,000 views and can be viewed on YouTube,Wordpress,Indicastv and Blogadda. She has uploaded 16 episodes where she presents the day’s news,criticising Vodafone for “making a pug chase a bus” and talking about India ’s Obama. “It’s a Dog’s Life” shows Mhatre gushing,almost theatrically,about the Animal Welfare Board issuing a warning to Vodafone India for making a pug chase a school van for a long time and possibly tiring it out. This is a one-liner fest but it looks the part and raises a smile. “My husband Aditya is co-founder of the portal indicastv and has a podcast there,so I decided to do something along those lines,” says Mhatre. “Since I was bored with the daily news shows,I wanted to host a show in a newsy,engaging format.” Every evening after school,she prepares a script,chooses a plain background and sits in front of her computer. “While I write the content,my husband manages the technical aspects of inserting clips,editing and uploading,” says Mhatre,who now intends to go live on indicastv.

Meanwhile in Delhi,gospel singer Rohan Solomon has been vlogging from March to October,documenting the making of his album Lead the Way. In this how-to vlog,he gives a lowdown on recording,mixing and producing,discusses the perfect riff for his song Hallelujah and gushes about Yash Raj Studio. “This is an intense room,what a place,it is amazing,” Solomon,25,whispers into the camera.

While vlogging is a phenomenon abroad,India is still very much in the blogging phase. Nirav Sanghavi,CEO of the two-year-old Blogadda,says ,“One of the reasons why vlogging hasn’t picked up in India is slow bandwidth. Second,unlike podcasting (uploading audio files),vlogging requires technical expertise such as editing.”

Sapna Shahani is doing something about it in Goa. The 31-year-old has rolled out a nine-month programme called Women Aloud: Video blogging for Empowerment where 35 girls from across India are taught how to edit and upload videos and write scripts. “Having been a manager of a community media centre in Berkeley,US,for six years,I thought social media can become a tool for development in India. It is a cost-effective method of raising awareness,’’ she says. The first batch of videos is pouring in. In one,Chennai’s Kalki Subramaniam introduces herself as transgender. “I want to use video blogging to assert my identity and also focus on marginalised communities,” says Subramanian. It’s just the beginning.