I’ve been tagged by a certain Bombay boy.  

(The times anyone’s  tagged me previously, it usually happens when  things are so hectic that by the time I get around to doing whatever the  task is, the moment’s passed.)  

This fella –  who seems to spend such amazing amounts of time partying and romancing various women, and then blogging about all the partying and romancing and blogging, that I’m convinced he must be independently wealthy, because otherwise how and where would he find time for an actual job – has tipped  me to ponder  this question:  

Which movie characters should have had blogs and in what ways would their blogs have changed the movie plots?  

To answer his question, I’m going to veer off the Hindi movie path for a moment, because the first film that came to mind when I read his post and the question was La Lectrice  (The Reader).

This charming, sexy, intelligent 1988 film by Michel Deville starred the radiant Miou-Miou who  is drole and playful as Constance, the woman who places an ad in the paper to offer her services as a reader.   An assortment of people hire her, leading to an assortment of adventures, and a sensual hour and a half of plays on words and the sounds of Miou-Miou’s sweet voice reading passages by Marx, the Marquis de Sade, Guy de Maupassant and Jacques Prévert.

If Constance had blogged in the film, I can imagine her blog would be filled with excerpts of her favorite readings, and maybe podcasts of her reading out loud, so that future clients could hear what she sounded like.   This would have affected the storyline in the movie by bringing her more business, and more complications.   I also think that, given Constance’s love of language, she would have also tried her hand at writing some fiction or poetry or observations herself.

As a marketing piece to accompany the movie, were it released today, a blog by Constance, or by one or more of her clients, would have been a perfect accessory.

The second movie that comes to mind is a much more recent release, and India’s entry for the Oscars this year: Rang De Basanti.

An alternative to the violence that seeps into so much of the second half and prompts people in their teens and twenties to get involved in what their govenment’s doing, could have been for one, or even better, all, of the main characters to start blogging to express their outrage at what happened to Maddie.  

Then they’d  get pointed to by a widely read blog like this one or this one, and when the FabIndia  Revolution gets underway the blogs would point to this one, so the public at large would know what was happening and have an idea what to do next.

And now it’s my turn to spread the love.  

Five people whose responses I’d love to hear to  the  question I just answered  are: Abhi, Amit, Sakshi, Shoefi, and The Buddha Smiled.