Bharteeya Blog Mela: The Tsunami Memorial

(Welcome, Instapundit readers.
Get yourself a cup of coffee, and set aside some time for reading all these
posts.)

It’s Blog Mela time again, as we present the best posts from Indians and
about India/Indians. This is also the first Blog Mela of the new year, which is
of course a meaningless statistic.

As you would expect, this week’s reading is heavy on Japanese 101, as the
word "tsunami" is introduced to thousands of people who had never
heard it before.

This past week, bloggers have supplemented the regular and mostly repetitive
news coverage with their own account of the disaster, and some of these have
been more revealing than what the newspapers dished out.

Sameer has an overview of what
a tsunami is
.

While we don’t typically accept whole blogs as nominations, Amit Varma’s India
Uncut
has tons of reading, written while visiting the tsunami-affected
areas.

(Update: Amit is churning out reports faster than I can read them. Some outstanding writing there.)

Amit’s travelling companion, Dilip D’Souza, too has plenty
to report
. I recommend you set aside a big chunk of time to read everything
they’ve written.

Kiruba, who normally sticks to very "bloggy"
stuff on his site, changes gear to write long accounts of the relief efforts. He
also takes photos, which is helpful.

Suman Kumar, who has suffered a bandwidth
tsunami on his site due to being mentioned in the New York Times (with a little
help from yours truly), is trying to do his bit with the relief. He has a tsunami
site of his own
.

Alpha is upset over the
loss of life
, but is more upset at the lack of news coverage in the USA.

Patrix
disagrees
with Alpha. He thinks the media is being particularly insensitive
in its relentless display of dead bodies and suffering people.

Sandeep blames
the government’s apathy for the deaths in India. As did I earlier.

Gaurav
disagrees
.

Rhyncus has a
strange rationalisation
of why God is needed because two tectonic plates
causing the earthquake is not satisfying enough as an explanation. In part
2 of his article
, he says he’s got a rock which he calls God, and it’s an
extension of his parents.

Yazad has some thoughts on depression
caused by the tsunami
.

Ramanand thinks the media
is being unfair
in its criticism of cricketers for supposedly not doing
enough towards the relief effort because they make an easy target.

And now, on to the non-tsunami stuff…

After the silly MMS "scandal" where Avneesh Bajaj was arrested by
police
for no fault of his, Sandeep
lashes out
.

Anand
Vivek draws some parallels
between Don Quixote and the Nasruddin Hodja
legends in the middle-east.

Manu
Sharma says
"A human edited product news feature is never going
to happen at Google" because he thinks Google is primarily a technology
company.

A lady known only as "Medium Latte" says that she prefers
not to accept help
given just because she is a woman, although it’s
tempting.

That’s it for this week, folks. I know some Hindi blog entries were
nominated, but I’ve left them out of this mela, not because I’m a snobbish
bastard, but because:

1) I studied Hindi for 10 years at school, and speak the language fluently, but haven’t read any big chunks of
Hindi since 1990. So my reading speed has reduced to a crawl.

2) The thin strokes of the text coupled with the low resolution of a PC
monitor made it even harder to read the entries.

3) Some of the spelling mistakes (mostly misplaced matras) didn’t help
either.

My apologies to you all. Perhaps we should start a Hindi version of the Mela
soon. Shanti, what do you think?

I’d like to remind you that my web links blog, in addition to being on this
page, also has a separate page of its
own
. Even if I don’t write longer entries, the links blog is still updated
almost daily. Check back often.

The next Mela will be on Nilesh.org

22 thoughts to “Bharteeya Blog Mela: The Tsunami Memorial”

  1. Tsunami Memorial Blog Mela

    The first blog mela for the year is up at MadMan’s Web. The main focus simply chose itself. This is the first time that entire blogs have been nominated. Go on and read thru to get a feel of what’s…

  2. Blog Mela

    The tsunami/New Year’s version of Blog Mela is now up at MadMan’s blog. Check it out – good entries galore as usual and a lot more introspection and anger than ever before. It is an emotional Mela, this one. As for a Hindi version of the Me…

  3. Thanks for nominating me Madhu. Just feeling a bit lonely out there with all those tsunami posts around.
    I struggled inside for a few days about whether to write a post on the tragedy or not. I even started writing a draft [yes, I write drafts before making a post!]. Like everyone else I was moved by the news as well.
    I don’t mind writing an off-topic post on the blog occasionally but the main reason I didn’t write was because there’s so much already being written about it everywhere, I didn’t think I had anything new to say.
    I think a big positive outcome of the tragedy is how it brought everyone together. How people/companies/nations came forward in large numbers to offer relief to the victims. I heard they raised close to $2 bill in about a week’s time. That cannot bring anyone back but it stands testament to fundamental human goodness… in an increasingly cynical world.
    PS: nice blog, Madhu. Also like the one at your restaurant.

  4. I agree that hindi blogs should have a different blog mela. It is better to keep regional languages at a different forum. Unlike english blogs it is trouble to download fonts and read a language you have forgot before ages. And if hindi posts are allowed in english blog meal then why not tamil,teulugu,marathi and so on…

  5. 120

    The 120th edition of the Carnival of the Vanities is hosted by Vessel of Honour this week. Also new today, Carnival scion Bharteeya Blog Mela, with a Tsunami Memorial. The latest Carnival offspring is the Carnival of the Families, dedicated…

  6. Visiting from USA via Instapundit.
    May I ask an innocent question, hoping for an illuminating answer. I have surfed the websites of what I imagine are large mainstream Indian news outlets (Pioneer, Statesmen, Telegraph, Times of India, Tribune, Hindustan Times, etc).
    I’m surprised at how little coverage some of these outlets are giving to the effects of the tsunami. Are these the key newspapers in India. Do you recommend any other sources
    Regards

  7. Satyaveer: I don’t think any of the Blogmela hosts would object to or would restrain from hosting other indic language posts IF they were nominated. Remember that few events ago even Hindi blogs were not included, I am glad the hosts in the past were visionary enough to include the Hindi posts nominated. BTW interesting to note that Hindi is a “regional language”.
    I can certainly foresee other Indian language posts being nominated in forthcoming Melas, if the blog mela wishes to be “Bharteeya” in the real sense of the word.
    Be informed that most of the Indic blogs (I know of Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Malayalam, Bangla and Hindi blogs) are Unicode encoded which means that if you even have a single Unicode compliant font on your machine you can read any such blog, if you are on XP you are lucky otherwise just download the Code2000 zip from here and you would never need to download any other Indian Unicode font ever. This is much much easier than downloading site-specific fonts on every-site, the thought that scared you at the first place perhaps 🙂

  8. John, these are the main national Newspapers though most are circulated mainly in North or western India. I can speak of Hindustan Times [one of the two biggies] – it has been covering the tragedy very comprehensively for the last ten days.
    There was nothing else on the front page except these stories. It’s only in the past couple of days that other stories have started appearing. For most of the first week they even moved the city section from page 3 to page 5 to cover tsunami stories. I believe the coverage has been very comprehensive.
    I’d imagine The Hindu, which is based at Southern India where the tragedy ocurred, to still be devoting large space to tsunami stories.
    You could also try the News channels like NDTV or the web portal rediff. Most websites have dedicated sections on the tragedy that feature complete coverage.

  9. If Bharteeya blog mela has to look Bharteeya, why it has to be done in Hindi”
    English is an international language, it does not belong to England anymore. Thousands of NRIs (inlcuding Hindi speaking people) have got jobs offshore because they speak good english. Thousands of them are working in non hindi states because their beloved Hindi heartland (BIMARU states) have nothing to offer in terms of good jobs.
    So what is the problem in expressing your thoughts in english when you earn bread and butter from this language. If a bunch of people want to read and write in their regional language they should keep it confined to their web sites.
    By sneaking into greater disopera like BBM or english blog writers, by leaving nice comments at our sites with their URLs pointing to their hindi sites, they want to lure us to read the material written in hindi plagiarized from english blogs.
    And dear indiablogger, what a pity, looks like you are pushing some sort of Hindi agenda from your blogger awards too.You have managed to make two jury members who have hindi blogs, you have managed to get 3 sponsors including Microsoft for hindi blogs (except Sidharth Sivasailam ). I doubt there are any other nominations from any regional language except hindi. Are there no Marathi,tamil,teulugu blog writers. Why 9 other juries only speak and think in english?

  10. “Thousands of them are working in non hindi states because their beloved Hindi heartland (BIMARU states) have nothing to offer in terms of good jobs.”
    Atosh, If someone was born to parents who did not have much to offer becuase of limited means, should he or she desert them when he or she moves to greener pastures.
    “hindi plagiarized from english blogs.” – Do you have any proof for this? Or are you just saying this pro0ving yourself more cathloic tahn pope.
    My friend, my mother tongue is Hindi and I still can think, speak and express myself better in Hindi.
    And FYI, Hindi is also international languages and is spoken in Pakistan (they call it Urdu), Fiji, Mauritius, Guyana and there are many parts of the world where English is not understood.
    I support Indiblogger’s Bharateeya agenda.
    And I will also provide link to my post. (and this is because posting comment requires this) You are free not to read them.

  11. I second shanti’s opinion to keep hindi blog mela seperate. This would help in following way.
    1. Keep trouble of font download away.
    2.We won’t have to read translated news twice.
    3.We don’t have to read whining of people who like the dollars but don’t like dollar land and sound like a dog.
    4.We don’t have to read why some people on hell bent on translating well written systems like wordpress etc
    5. More whining

  12. Interesting to know that HINDI is regional language!
    how about changing the name of this place
    “INDIAN BLOG WORLD”
    Why are u using word “BHARTIYA” OR “MELA”?
    I would not comment on the people, who spoke something foul about hindi but would definately say one thing.
    “जिस पेड़ के तने पर बैठे हो उसको आरी से काटने की कोशिश मत करो.”
    regarding translation of Wordprss… this is called localization…whole world is doing. if u do not want to use,stay away, stick to english. But Why are u abusing others?

  13. OK, please stop this bickering on my site or I’ll delete all your comments.
    I have given my reasons for not including Hindi posts in this mela and they don’t have to do with the content of the posts. It’s merely difficulty reading the stuff.
    If somebody nominated a Telugu post, I would have the same problem, but on a different scale.
    For the record, Hindi is one of the 18 languages officially recognised by the Constitution of India. It is neither higher nor lower in the heirarchy. One-third of this country still doesn’t speak the language.
    If you want to fight about the indiblog awards, go do it on that site.

  14. Madman,
    It is like having the cake and eat it too.
    You said:
    “One-third of this country still doesn’t speak the language.”
    You shuld also ask yourself :
    What is the %age of the people that even understand english in India “FOR THE RECORD”?
    Again, I am not trying to put down English as language.
    And Atosh babu, it is freedom of expression that so-called dollar land great. We can whine/ praise whatever you/ we like (like you are whining about Hindi blogs). It could be dollar-land or it could be the paisa-land.

  15. Madman,
    It is like having the cake and eat it too.
    You said:
    “One-third of this country still doesn’t speak the language.”
    You shuld also ask yourself :
    What is the %age of the people that even understand english in India “FOR THE RECORD”?
    Again, I am not trying to put down English as language.
    And Atosh babu, it is freedom of expression that makes so-called dollar land great. We can whine/ praise whatever you/ we like (like you are whining about Hindi blogs). It could be about dollar-land or the paisa-land.

  16. 120

    The 120th edition of the Carnival of the Vanities is hosted by Vessel of Honour this week. Also new today, Carnival scion Bharteeya Blog Mela, with a Tsunami Memorial. The latest Carnival offspring is the Carnival of the Families, dedicated…

  17. Bharateeya Blog Mela: Calling for Entries

    Sorry for the interruption. Calling for nominations of the Bharateeya Blog Mela! The rules are here again – Posts must either be made by Indians or must focus on India or Indians. Send in permalinks to the individual blog entries only, not just the UR…

  18. Blog Mela 2005 Issue #2

    The year saw a great start for the Bharateeya Blog Mela. The Tsunami special moved slightly away from the tradition with nominating complete blogs instead of just posts. Now that’s a good ‘value addition’. Unfortunately, the response for the second mel…

Comments are closed.