Blog Mela. Jhoomo, gaao aur mauj manao!
Published by Yazad Jal October 29th, 2004 in Web World
Wow! 22 nominations for the blog mela. Makes me feel better already. Yup, health is back on line and the world looks good!
The one new flavour I got was in the number of Hindi blogs nominated. There were a few earlier (where is नुक्ता चीनी Nukta Chini now?), but this mela is in some ways the “coming out party” of the hindi blogsphere. Phalo aur phoolo, and let a thousand blogs in Indian languages proliferate!
I have used very little “editorial priviledge” — largely only those entries which did not fit the date criterion were omitted. Even those can be read by browsing through the comments section of the mela announcement. All nominations were made there.
On to the mela now!
As promised here’s the desi biradari in full force.
Atul Arora continues his litmus test for the perfect NRI. Atulji, aapke vyang ne toh hume maar hi daala! And no, I’m a newbie so you’ll have to bear with the Hindi in Roman not Devnagri script.
Jitendra Chaudhary reminisces about Dussehra and Ram Lila and shows us how festivals are closely interwoven in Indian culture.
Inder Awasthi battles with cars and insurance wallahs.
Anup Shukla writes about blogging (and more). Oh well, I confess. I didn’t read the entire post.
Let’s move from desi straight to firangi.
Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution is in India and has a few impressions and observations. A suggestion: if you want to see “attractive streets,” junk Delhi and come to Bombay. I’d even volunteer to take you around the heritage mile in South Bombay.
Adam Crouch at the Raw Prawn talks about oustsourcing’s future in India. He’s largely right, but the good thing about low end call center jobs moving out is that Indian IT companies will be moving up in the food chain.
Now for the interregnum.
Madhu “MadMan” Menon agonises over being a cultural misfit in India. Mahesh Shantaram insists that he’s not 18 any more and gives us a veiled critique of Madhu’s post. This is one debate I intend entering once the mela is up.
Generally reading about the same topic in multiple blogs is boring. But not when the issue is about an Indian firm working to elongate the efficacy of life saving vaccines. Reena Ganga in the Raw Prawn, Suhit Anantula’s World is Green and Nitin Pai’s Acorn all report on this.
And both Suhit Anantula and Ashish Hanwadikar comment on how good intentioned NGOs sometimes paradoxically hurt the very people they want to help.
Nitin Pai runs what I think is probably the best Indian current affairs blog. Read his post on the resident dictator of our shadowy neighbour who happens to be visiting India.
One of the discoveries for me during this mela has been Sepia Mutiny, a blog written by Indian-Americans. There’s a lot of good stuff to browse there. Have a look at Sajit’s post on caste in the diaspora.
Nilesh reports an interesting parallel on the sanctity of passwords. Suffice to say that “khul ja sim-sim” has various connotations!
Dina Mehta blogs some first thoughts on Pop!Tech from Camden Town. We’d love to hear more about this Dina. As usual, you’re adept at pushing the envelope in creative communications.
Dilip D’Souza pens a poignant story about the watchman in his building. Life is tough, but somehow I feel more hope than despair in the story.
Tilotamma suggests an alternative to Agra and the Taj — the beautiful temples of Hampi (and there’s a love story to boot!). Go South O tourist!
Ashish Hanwadikar queries whether taxation is legal theft. I disagree but shall do battle with him outside the mela.
Atanu Dey spends time in Kolkata during puja and head butts West Bengal’s IT mandarins.
I will follow the development of WB with great interest as it is a test case for how development should not be done. There are very interesting lessons to be learnt from pathological cases as well.
Karan Misra explains why he thinks waiters should be fat. For those wishing to sharpen their logical skills, please point out the very prominent logical fallacy that Karan inadvertently espouses.
Nilakantan urges Musharraf to start a blog to store his sensational but impractical and mostly stupid ideas. Nilu, leading by example, I must say!
Smaller tidbits that caught my eye: Amol Hatwar discovers a small music player via a FireFox extension, JK writes on infantry day, Niraj Agarwal talks about the travails of monga in Bangladesh, and Ravikiran heaps shame on Mallus.
That’s all for this week folks (apologies to the masochists and insomniacs who want more). Next week’s mela will be hosted at Ashish’s Niti.
25 Responses to “Blog Mela. Jhoomo, gaao aur mauj manao!”
- 1 Trackback on Oct 31st, 2004 at 12:16 pm
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धन्यवाद Yazad जी,
आपके ब्लाग मेला की बदौलत हिंदी ब्लाग जगत की उपस्थिती भारतीय ब्लाग मंडल में धमाकेदार तरीके से दर्ज हो गई|
Thanks for hosting the blog mela. One of the posts compelled me to write this
Yazad जी,
मेरे ब्लाग को ब्लाग मेला मे शामिल करने का धन्यवाद,
विचारो को व्यक्त करने के लिये,किसी भारतीया के लिये हिन्दी से अच्छी कोई भाषा नही हो सकती. जब हम सोचते हिन्दी मे है तो उन्हे व्यक्त अंग्रेजी मे क्यो करें?
आपका ब्लाग मेला एक अच्छा माध्यम है, मुझे और मेरे हिन्दी ब्लाग वाले साथियों को आपके अगले ब्लाग मेला का इन्तजार रहेगा.
विचारो को व्यक्त करने के लिये,किसी भारतीया के लिये हिन्दी से अच्छी कोई भाषा नही हो सकती.
How can you say that Jitendraji?
“किसी” भारतीया - that is a bit much
isn’t it?
“जब हम सोचते हिन्दी मे है तो उन्हे व्यक्त अंग्रेजी मे क्यो करें?”
Isn’t there like 15 other Indian languages for a भारतीया to think in even if your point is Indians think in their vernac ( which is debatable to begin with.)
Yazad जी,
शुक्रिया हम लोगों के ब्लाग को अपने मेला में शामिल करने के लिये.
आपके स्वास्थ्य के लिये शुभकामनायें
Atul, Jitendra, Anup,
Pehle mujhe “ji ji” kehkar sharminda mat kijiye.
And next, can you teach me how to type in Devnagri? Is there some site ?
> किसी भारतीया के लिये हिन्दी से अच्छी कोई भाषा नही
> हो सकती. जब हम सोचते हिन्दी मे है…
Jitendra mera bhai,
Yeh aap kaise keh sakten hain ki “kisi bhartiya ke liye hindi se accha koi bhasha nahin ho sakti”? Jabki meri matru-bhasha Tamil hai, jabki main angrezi mein bolta hoon aur haan, sochta bhi hoon, jabki mere jaise is desh mein sainkdon log hain — aapka yeh kehna bada aphsos ki baat hai.
Yeh badi khushi ki baat hai ki Hindi mein likhe hue blogs — jaise aapka “Mera Panna” — ki sankhya badh rahi hai. Lekin jab aap aise bhi kehte hain to main sochne lagta hoon ki aap is desh ko samajhte hi nahin — chaahe aap Hindi mein likhen ya Sindhi mein. Aur yeh bhi aphsos ki baat hai.
Ant mein, main bhi Yazad ke saath poochna chahunga — main devnagri mein kaise likh aur post kar sakta hoon?
Aapka,
dilip d’souza.
Dear Friends,
I did not mean to heart anybody.
This was my feelings…..
Language can never be imposed on anybody, this is your own choice.
Let’s not dispute on this issue any further.After all our ultimate aim is to express ourselves,irrespective of the language.
I would soon be publishing a detailed Post/Blog on how to write in Hindi. This is as simple as writing in english. Keep watching my page.
All the best,to All.
Sorry for the typographic mistake in first line of previous comment.
Please read as :
I did not mean to hurt anybody
Dilip,
Mein bhi wahi prashn se jhoojh raha hoon. Shayad hamare hindi blog-dost hamare madad kar sake?
पहले तो यजद/याजाद को बिना जी की पूंछ लगाये बधाई.ताकि उनकी
शर्मिन्दगी दूर हो सके.
जितेन्द्रबता ही चुके हैं कि उनका किसी को चोट पहुंचाने का इरादा नहीं था सो Tilo और दिलीप के एतराज निपट जाने चाहिये.वैसे भी किसी कवि ने कहा है:–
भाषा तो पुल है
मन के दूरस्थ किनारों पर
पुल को दीवार समझ लेना बेमानी है.
तो अब तो सब लोग बङे बन जायें.
वैसे दफ्तरी अंदाज में कुछ गङबङियां बाबू लोग जानबूझ कर छोङ देते हैं जिनको साहब पकङ लें और दोनों लोग माने की वो काफी जागरूक हैं.
हिन्दी में लिखने के बारे में जितेन्द्र बतायेंगे विस्तार से .संक्षेप में मामला यह है कि हिन्दी में लिखने के लिये आनलाइन की बोर्ड में टाइप करके
कापी करके अपने ब्लाग में पोस्ट कर दें .क्यों ऐसा ही है न जितेन्द्र भाई!
जो छूट गया था नामांकन में वो था रविरतलामी का हिन्दी ब्लाग .चिट्ठा विश्व और अक्षरग्रामका नामांकन तो स्थायी रूप स्वीकार कर लेना चाहिये.
धन्यवाद अनूपजी,
हिन्दी मे लिखने के बारे मे संक्षेप मे तो अनूप ने बता ही दिया है, थोड़ा सा विस्तार से जानने के लिये यहा क्लिक करे http://merapanna.blogspot.com/2004/10/blog-post_30.html
अपने हिन्दी ब्लाग का पता देना मत भूलियेगा.
Was not hurt, just surprised - I did not want to start my seventh standard debate again - should Hindi be India’s national language etc.
I lost that time - my dad wrote all my ’speeches’ back then.I was going to see if my own arguments would be more persuasive!
Anyways, I would like to write in the devnagari too. Walls, bridges, bloops, convictions - I can see them all :-). I would just call each of them by their real name.
Check out my recent blog on Dussera :
http://tilotamma.blogspot.com/2004/10/dussera_109910165847147383.html#comments
Yazad,
Wonderful work on the BBM! And thanks for the kind words.
On typing in Indian languages, check out Microsoft’s http://www.bhashaindia.com; it allows you to install language support for several Indian languages. I find the keyboard transliteration quite intuitive and amazing.
Nitin
Wow good to see Hindi blogs getting some attention. I hope language blogging gets a thrust too. Yazad, thanks for noticing, “Nukta Chini” will be back. I also invite everyone to have a look at the “Anugunj”, a fortnughtly online event hosted by the group blog for Hindi bloggers “Akshargram” (http://hindi.pnarula.com/akshargram). Concept is similar to the “Mela” except that bloggers express opinion on a single topic simulatnaeously.
I must be missing some font. All that nice Devanagari is showing up like piano keys on my screen.
Love the Indian blogs. I came here via InstaPundit. The election is not very exciting in California. This is a 60-40 Democrat state.
- APR
Amit ,Please change the Page Encoding Settings to Unicode in your Internet Explorer (through View/Encoding/UTF-8), Page would reload, then probably u would be able to read the page in Hindi.
u can contact me for any further help.
so when are you posting the reults of this mela ;-))?
Can U Tell Me what’s a Litums Test…?
Are U Frm Infy?. LOL
I loved Ur Blog.
I wanna know how to blog in Hindi
Blog is super!
Wonderful work on the BBM! And thanks for the kind words.
On typing in Indian languages, check out Microsoft’s http://www.bhashaindia.com; it allows you to install language support for several Indian languages. I find the keyboard transliteration quite intuitive and amazing.
Hindustani ho kar ke sarmaate hai hindi se
Hindustani ho kar ke sarmaate hai hindi se
Neta dete English bhasan madam sarmati bindi se
Madam sharmati bindi se bachcho ko amrica padhwati
Hindi ka to shavd bhool gayee chitthee naukar se bachwati
Jitane neta afsar hai angreji me batiyaate hai
Koi ghabraate hindi se koi ghabraate shindhi se
Hindustani ho kar ke sarmaate hai hindi se
Neta dete English bhasan madam sarmati bindi se
Mantri ji bhasan jab dete angreji ke hawale
Angreji ko tauheen samajahte upaji bare gharane
Har daftar me angreji ki chalti dhar-dhar bhasha
Jo angreji bole na jaane chaprashi ki nahi hai aashaa
Inko to ab dolar chaahiye ghabraate hai khinni se
Hindustani ho kar ke sarmaate hai hindi se
Neta dete English bhasan madam sarmati bindi se
Hindi diwas pe neta kahate hindi ka utthan karo
Ham bharat ke rahane wale sari janata saath chalo
Bharat ki yahi bidambana dhoop chaaw jo sahati hai
Ham us desh ke washi hai jis desh ke ganga bahati hai
Jahar samajh parsaad na lete ghabraate hai sinnee se
Hindustani ho kar ke sarmaate hai hindi se
Neta dete English bhasan madam sarmati bindi se
shambhu nath