Indian blog goodies
Published by Yazad Jal April 14th, 2005 in Blog Mela
Welcome to the weekly Bharateeya Blog Mela. It’s going to be a nice long leisurely read, so bookmark this page and drop by as often as you like over the next week.
Let’s start with some sport. Dilip D’Souza sees cricket through a friend’s eyes. While we’re on cricket, Avinash Tadimalla thinks Ganguly will make a good coach for the Indian team. Chandrahas Choudhury draws up a realistic list of future coaches (I know this is not a blog post, but hey, Chandrahas just started blogging at Amit Varma’s Middle Stage, so I’ll give some leeway). His post today connects a poem from the Greek poet Cavafy to Gulzar’s song ek akela is shaher main. For me, Cavafy is the poet of Ithaca where the road is long, full of adventure, full of knowledge.
I notice I’ve digressed from cricket. Let’s get back — Gaurav Sabnis is afraid the recent six-month ban may be the end of Ganguly’s career. MadMan thinks up a conspiracy theory. Amit Varma observes some shadow cricket. Ok no more cricket. On to serious stuff like education.
Abinandanan opines that children in developing countries need
good public (or inexpensive private) schools, teachers, blackboard, and …. hold your nose … toilets
more than they need laptops. And on higher education, he makes a persuasive case for India’s elite research institutions offering undergraduate degrees.
Varnam has a couple of posts on confused commies. Their Chinese mentors are turning capitalist faster than you can say Mao and close friends, the Palestinians, disagree with them publicly. What to do? Drink some coke comrades; the stuff is produced in plants approved by your former government after all!
Ashish Handwadikar has some thoughts about an India-US strategic partnership. In an older post he derides anarcho-capitalism as being unsustainable largely due to the free rider problem. (Wikipedia has a more balanced view)
My occasional guest blogger Arun “Quizman” Simha responds to Amit Varma’s thought experiment on cannibalism. Good debate in the comments section.
Chandrachoodan has this amazing ability to stumble upon great truths and concepts. Here’s a succinct explanation of diminishing marginal utility and this post might tell you why Gloria Gaynor might be better than all the environmental activists in the world.
J. Alfred Prufrock likes freebies. Not what you get as freebies, but the fact that it’s for free. (Nice writing, maybe he can get himself some web design for free as well)
Shivam Vij trashes the myth that blogging is a harmless activity. There’s a conspiracy to get us all to stop blogging! On a more serious note, go over and check the Stop Ragging Blog. I rarely recommend whole blogs, but if I’ve done it once, I can do it twice. Go have a peek at R Balaji’s photoblog.
A friend of Neo Alchemist has some thoughts on religion (a bit of confused concepts here)
Rajesh Jain has a set of posts on failure and the lessons to be learnt from them. It’s a continuing meme, so check back on Emergic for the remaining posts.
Suhail Kazi writes a long letter to Tarun Tejpal of Tehelka. Good in parts, but needed a ruthless editor. Dear Suhail, a small suggestion. Learn to do this.
Abhishek Toraskar lists stuff that literally drives him crazy. I sympathise. And I also remember MadMan’s suggestion that might give Abhishek some solace.
Saket Vaidya indulges in some Smriti Irani bashing. Nope it’s not about kyunki, but about Smriti’s talk show where she blathers about information security without having a clue. Here’s one of the many gems
Aapne ye aise kaise kiya? Badi daad deni padegi hame ke hamari Police internet ke andar gunehgaaron ko pakad rahi hai. Jabki hum sab jaante hain ki internet to woh hai jo kisi ko dikhta nahi hai. Haala ki I’m not much of an online person mai zyada samay ke liye Net par nahi rahi hoon, isiliye iske baare me bahut zyada nahi jaanti
Sorry, no time to translate. If you know Hindi it’s ROTFL material.
Neha Vish has some views on dance bars. Rashmi Bansal doesn’t like the new Liril ad. Dina Mehta is thrilled at meeting a Korean blogger in Bangkok. Jabberwock rants against a pernicious new trick of radio jockeys. Sepia Mutiny would like us to know that a musical on Lennon will feature a song written by him on India.
And so it ends. More next week at MadMan’s web.
For those of you who wonder where your nomination went, please note I decided to follow my own advice
The mela host need not be a "taker" of all nominations. Just because a post is nominated does not mean it has to be in the mela. A little editing is needed. Purely personal posts and descriptions of bodily functions of course need to be weeded out. But apart from that, I feel the mela should be a celebration, not a reportage of mediocrity. Use the scissors sparingly dear host, but do not let them rust!
Those who want to see what was excised (and I’m not giving any explanations why) pop over to the nomination post.
21 Responses to “Indian blog goodies”
- 1 Trackback on Apr 15th, 2005 at 5:10 am
- 2 Trackback on Apr 17th, 2005 at 1:24 am
- 3 Pingback on Jun 30th, 2006 at 7:10 pm
Very nicely done.
Any more such melas? I guess I was a little late… (April 14 4PM EST). Will try next time.
-Communism Watch
Very enjoyable
Thanks for the link Yazad. I am learning to cut down on the flab. One more good friend and blogger also had the same feedback.
[Some prob with website? I think I posted a comment earlier]
Quizman, Akshay, Suhail,
Thanks.
Hammer_sickle, the mela is a weekly affair, and next week’s host is MadMan. Go over to his blog and drop a nomination.
Neat range of blogs, posts and issues Yazad! Hope we see more such melas.
Thanks for the brain-chow and the link
:)
Yo Yazad! You’re a champ. Is it possible to nominate you as host-for-life of the BBMela? (Of course, this has NOTHING to do with the fact that I made your cut…)
Though your blog is very enjoyable, most Indian blogs, like most blogs, are CRAP. It’s really sad to see your mela include some really immature writings of people who may be good at a hundred other things but can’t WRITE well! A blog posting should have something NEW to say, dear friends. I don’t want to waste my precious time reading cliched views on religion or the traffic problems on Indian roads. But on both subjects your mela also links to worthwhile posts: Shivam’s post on Mall Road about a communal website and Madman’s live journal entry about having a Middle Finger beacon are worthwhile. But please, please, censor out more crap than mela writers usually do.
Abhishek
The link to MadMan’s web mela announcement is screwed so badly it takes me to the Microsoft website even while using firefox!
shivam, thanks for pointing out the error. the link is fixed.
Anybody knows Aniruddha Bahal, the author of Bunker13? Well, i read A Crack in the Mirror, one of his earlier and lesser known novels. But i was a library book and i found that the epilogue section was missing. If someone has read the novel, would you please mail me a brief summary. You wont be wasting your time.
Anybody knows Aniruddha Bahal, the author of Bunker13? Well, i read A Crack in the Mirror, one of his earlier and lesser known novels. But i was a library book and i found that the epilogue section was missing. If someone has read the novel, would you please mail me a brief summary. You wont be wasting your time.
Ashish Handwadikar has some thoughts about an India-US strategic partnership. In an older post he derides anarcho-capitalism as being unsustainable largely due to the free rider problem. (Wikipedia has a more balanced view)
Not a good partnership unless equal partners. See what this fellow has written. http://advogato.org/person/jayakumar/diary.html?start=20
Manmohan Singh would do well to remember this when he embarks on his trip to the US to chase India’s UN dream. Groveling won’t help, growling might.
hello folks,
there are so many blogs and sometimes the page views are good too. i was wondering whether i should make a blog for my library?
can anyone help me with marketing my library in jaipur india? some ideas would be welcome. maybe you could suggest a mentor for a novice like me. i have no degrees in library science , so running a library
is getting to be tough.
thanks and responses will be welcome.
soumana
Don’t go by non de plume, am actually a very humble guy seeking some eyeballs for the stuff that’s going on inside my head most times. Found blogging a good outlet for all the nervous activity inside my head. Dunno whether all Indian blogs, as someone says above, are CRAP. Won’t know whether mine would qualify for that enviable classification. Crap is Cool, actually.
Cheers
MD
very interesting
nice blog :D