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Thanks to the Adobe Youth Voices program, young people in different parts of the world are having the opportunity to experiment with audiovisual equipment and tell their stories from their perspective. Such is the case in India, where youth from many different schools and slums have been making videos to show the world that surrounds them and their concerns. First, a video showing the difference in treatment between girls and boys in India, another one portraying the difficulties a girl has when she has to do household chores and doesn´t have time to do homework for school, and the story of a boy whose parents punish him for failing a course and then starts smoking due to peer pressure.

This first video, Freedom, is described by Meera Sinha in her blog A Year in India:

An interesting side note: Freedom was spearheaded by 17-year-old Mubeen, whom I’ve previously written about here (and who is the film’s leading lady). Toward the end of the video, you’ll notice an older woman being interviewed about why she loves her son more than her daughter. Keep in mind that the interviewer in that interaction is Mubeen; the interviewee, her mother.

If the previous video gave us a glimpse into the life of a girl who has doubled up duties of work and school, this next video by the Vedic Kanya School in Delhi shows the academic perspective of such a life where girls have doubled responsibilities, and how lack of time to turn in homework could affect their performance:

And this last video from the Noida Public School in Delhi brings us a male perspective of growing up in India, focusing on how teen smoking could be brought on by problems at home and peer pressure.

You can see many other videos made by youngsters at Adobe Youth Voices, where you can search by location and learn not only about life in India, but also about youth in Senegal and South Africa, as well as the US, Canada and England.

Dreaming of Diamonds by Swamibu

On the following videos we can see and hear about the situation the Gujarat diamond polishers in India are facing. As the world recession and economic crisis affects their industry, thousands are laid off. Unable to feed their families, pay bills or send their children to school, they have to adjust to living hand to mouth, many are turning to suicide as their last resort. The following video, in English and Hindi was uploaded by students of the IIM Ahmedabad as part of their Socio Cultural Environment of Business course explains the role the diamond polishers of Surat in Gujarat had in the industry, and how they've now been cut off the process, leaving formerly bustling factories empty of diamond polishers and replaced with embroidery industry, of which they know nothing about. Highly skilled specialized workers find themselves having to find jobs in different industries, earning much less than before. Their children, who used to attend private schools are now finding themselves barred from presenting exams due to lack of payment:

The situation in Surat is quite serious, as approximately 50% of the diamond cutters and polishers have been laid off. The government is trying to get scholarships to the children of the workers so they can continue their studies. In an Hindustani Times blog, an editorial reads:

The impending crisis has another dimension in Surat — while laid-off workers around the world can usually depend on their families to help tide them over, most of the workers here have entire families in diamond polishing, and all risk losing their jobs or having pay cut drastically at the same time.

On Pragoti.org the number of suicides due to the diamond industry crisis is said to be 71:

Even as Modi’s trumpeteers are jumping in joy over the investment figures, at least 71 diamond polishers have committed suicide in Gujarat over the last few months following their laying off due to the global meltdown severely hitting the industry. Modi, who loves to present himself as a ‘common man’, refused to bail out the diamond workers who remained at the mercy of the shrewd traders…

… Apart from the 71 suicides across Gujarat, the situation among the diamond workers has become so grim that there was near stampede outside the Surat Diamond Association where forms for school fees exemption were being distributed.

Diamond polishing is an exact art, on which the rough stone is transformed intro the brilliant gems that grace jewelry all over the world. In the following video, part of the interactive online documentary “The Diamond Road” [caution, it seems the site has a trojan, reason why I'm not including a link], we see a young diamond polishing apprentice polishing his very first diamond after a three month unpaid apprenticeship:

If you would like to know more about the industry, Jobanputra, on the next videos, gives us a tour of the Sanghavi Diamond processing factory where we see and he explains the whole process from rough stone to gem. On the comprehensive four part video tour of the factory he explains how they follow best practices, don't hire children and ensure their diamonds come from reputable sources and are not “blood diamonds“:

Click to view part 2, part 3 and part 4 of the Diamond Manufacturing Process.

On any ordinary afternoon, in most cosmopolitan spaces, it is OK for men and women to go out for a drink and ‘chill out’. Most of us do not live life with the concept of  ‘morale policing’ breathing down our back. However, in India, as liberal and free a woman is, there’s never a guarantee that she will be safe.Recently, some 3 weeks ago on India’ Republic Day, January 26, in Mangalore, South of Mumbai, a bunch of Hindu fundamentalists of the Ram Sena party attacked a group of young college girls who were just chilling out having some drinks at a local pub. The girls were harassed and completely scared off, without any warning… luckily, no one was killed, but I’m sure the emotional trauma level was high.

As a reaction to this event, on February 5th, the Pink Chaddi campaign was kicked off by a few people who posted up a Facebook group online called “Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women”. They decided on a sassy, bold move to send pink colored women’s panties to the Ram Sena party as a ‘Valentine's gift’. More than the actual physical action of couriering underwear to a political party office, it is the concept alone which is buzzing on the minds of everyone in India.

Check out this video of a pile of underwear’s and the ‘love letters’ to the Ram Sena party. This is just a sample of what the campaign is planning, so we will have to wait for Valentines day to find out what really happens in terms of action. They are planning to meet at Pubs on Valentine's day and have a toast (any liquid will do) on behalf of all Indian Women, and these meetings will be recorded and later a video will be made including all of this.

Videos and photographs of the Pink Chaddis are also being collected to be sent to the Ram Sena, as can be seen both on the Facebook group picture page.

On the Pink Chaddi Campaign official blog, it is said that:

We have heard that Mr. Muthalik has decided to send pink saris “with love” in response. We greatly appreciate this and hope he continues to choose similar, non-violent methods to get his point across, just as we have chosen to be non-violent and loving in response to the brutality of the attacks on lovers and women in Mangalore and other parts of Karnataka.

Nevertheless, women from all over India, especially in Bangalore, where the campaign began, are preparing to send their personalized ‘chaddis’, which are underpants, to the Ram Sena party leader, Mr. Muthalik, who has been the man in charge.

The irony is that in a ‘land of Kamasutra’, women all over India have to fight for their rights, for their security, for their freedom and sexuality. One woman, Ree Diwan, posts in the Facebook group an image of pink underpants with “India, the Land of the KamaSutra” overlaid on it, and Patricia Chandrashekar, comments:

can't believe this is happening in the land of KamaSutra. Send these guys on a trip to Khajuraho. Let them see for themselves. The erotic statues are not even wearing chuddies!

We'll have to wait and see how the avalanche of Valentine's Day panties is received by the Ram Sena.

This initiative of female empowerment is not the only one taking place in India right now. Following, on a less dramatic but also effective campaign, women who come from a completely different socio-economic background and region of India give testimony of women’s empowerment. Navsarjan NGO community media group, Apna Malak Maa, present this video proudly profiling a local Women's Village Council in a village in Gujarat, which has taken care of unprecedented development work and solved many of the issues of their village, some issues which had not been solved for more than 20 years, such as sewage draining into their pond and the problem with sand collecting in the river, which meant that water supply lines and wells ran dry.

Thumbnail image used is “The Heart that Sings” by caribbeanfreephoto

Back in October we wrote about the work of Channel 19 in promoting citizen journalism and empowering communities through video training and movie projections:

Video Volunteers is a non-profit organization of media producers from the villages and slums in India, creating content that is relevant to themselves and screening it inside the communities, reaching thousands of people a month with news and events that affect them and call them into action. Channel 19 is the online video channel where this media, created by and for the communities is showcased for the rest of the population.

Ruchika writes:

I am truly surprised at the film that is on everyone’s mind right now and the fact that it happened to be shot just 30 minutes away from my home in Mumbai, India. Slumdog Millionaire is an energetic film with an interesting storyline and was shot entirely in two locations that are close to where I live - the world’s largest slum, Dharavi, and in slum areas of Juhu. These locations are also near the homes of many of Channel 19 community producers, and for some of them like Venkatesh, these locations are their home!

Ruchika also points out an interesting perspective on how her country is being portrayed on film:

…finally here’s a film which does not profile the villages of remote India exotifying ‘the east’ nor does it show-off the glitz and glam which only a small percentile of the upper-crust in India can relate to but everyone dreams of. Instead, this film shows the reality of modern India by portraying life in the slums and speaking with and working with slumdwellers rather than hiring actors and researchers.

Channel 19 has produced a video calling slumdwellers into action:

Here’s an example of that in this video about slum conditions in Ahmedabad, another major city of India. The producers at Samvad CVU have used this video to educate slumdwellers on how to ask the government for their basic amenities such as toilets!

However, it seems not everyone is satisfied with the portrayal of poverty in Slumdog Millionaire. In Patna, India, actor Anil Kapoor and music director A R Rahman have been sued by the General Secretary of Slum Dwellers' Joint Action Committee, Tapeshwar Vishwakarma. Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan on his blog had a response towards naysayers of the movie:

On blog, comments for the film ‘SlumDog Millionaire’ and the anger by some on its contents, prompt me to say the above. If SM projects India as Third World dirty under belly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky under belly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations. Its just that the SM idea authored by an Indian and conceived and cinematically put together by a Westerner, gets creative Globe recognition. The other would perhaps not.

This comment however, snowballed out of context into headlines stating that Bachchan was against the movie, and he has been trying to get the media to retract, clearing the misunderstanding on his blog with a letter to a major newspaper where he states:

I was hoping to elicit the views of my readers, hoping to hear their debate, hoping to better inform myself in consequence. The articles published by the Guardian bear absolutely no relation to this endeavour.

Slum life holds a certain fascination with foreigners, who even pay to go tour Dharavi, Asia's largest slum, as we mentioned in India: Poorism, Tourism and the Western Tourist back in 2006. The following video by thegulab shows Dharavi during the Ganesha festival:

This video interview by lpperkins63 helps others understand why a family would choose to live in a slum, as they explain how in their village there was no paper money, and it was the search for a paying job and a better opportunity for their children that has led this family to Mumbai:

Nothing articulates your heart like a poem. Sometimes the complex composition of a poem simplifies complex issues of life, sometimes it helps you come in terms with your surroundings. Poets from India are saddened by the recent terror attacks in Mumbai. You will find them asking questions in their poetry and sometime they are even answering them for us. Here are a few snippets of their expressions.

Glory: Image by Flickr user 50mm, used under a Creative Commons License

A 12-year-old girl from Bangalore sets her thoughts on fire. Soon after the tragic news of the hostages at Nariman House being killed was aired, Lavanya shut herself in her room for about 15 minutes and later handed her dad Anand Krishna with a poem titled ‘The city that never slept, slept’.

[…]More lives are lost,
More battles fought.
The war was raging on,
The guns just fire everywhere,
Victory goes to no one.

The terrorists may be killed,
But the void of the lost loved one is never filled.
The roads are empty, there is no sound.
Mumbai, the city that never slept,
Slept long, deep and sound.[.]

Vivek Sharma at Desicritics used metaphors from epic Indian Tales to describe the Mumbai terror in his poem, “Mumbai burns”:

[.]Did you see the sobbing reporter describe how the Taj of Mumbai burns?
How many will Asuras (devils) cause to die before O Vishnu as avataar returns?

The fanatic bullet hunts gazelles everywhere that nostalgia mourns.
Where is the machine crafted that chokes our unfinished yearns? […]

Teal titles her poem ‘Battle without a cause’ at ~ Spero ergo sum ~. She ultimately longs for peace. But her never ending questions are opaque:

[…]Has the power at center gone completely callous

focused on nothing, but creating chaos, raucous?

How many more to die, how many more to lose

Until they get the backbone to act, and set loose

The act of retribution, against these evil minions

Who, despite education and well bringing, act heinous

How dare you take away something that god has given?

How can you walk on, like nothing ever happened?[…]

Sandhya Ramachandran cannot smile in peace anymore. She finds no place to go and hide from terror in her poem, “Why can’t I smile in peace?”

[…]I seem to have no streets
to run and play and fall!
There is no place to cycle
no place to hide and crawl

I am a little kid of seven
with her book and toys and doll
Why can't I smile in peace
It is my world too, after all![.]

Ashq, a 28 year old engineer from Rajasthan wants to know when all this will end.  He titles his Hindi poem, “Aakhir kab tak?” (Untill when?).

-ये सपने नहीं जानते ,
किसी हिन्दू को न मुस्लमान को ,
न ये जानतें है हिंदुस्तान को , न पाकिस्तान को ,
फिर क्यों उन्हें ही चुकाना पड़ता है हर बार इस क़र्ज़ को ,
क्यों भूल जाते है वो ‘कायर’ मानवता के अपने फ़र्ज़ को ,
क्यों आतंक को हमेशा जेहाद कहा जाता है ,
क्यों धरम को इस तरह नंगा नचाया जाता है I

Shreya Tiwari from Mumbai is calling every Indian to come together and join hands against terror in his Untitled Hindi poem.

- आगे आओ मिलकर हाथ मिलायेंगे ,
भारत को फिर से आजाद कराएँगे ।
समझो बस इस धरती को अपनी माता ,
समझो सबको अपना ही भाई - भ्राता ।
नही ज़रूरत मुझको तख्तो ताजों की ,
नही ज़रूरत स्वागत की और बाजों की ।
मुझे ज़रूरत सबकी देश सुरक्षा में ,
मै मांगू बलिदान देश की रक्षा में ।
बोलो क्या मै ऐसे ही चिल्लाऊंगा ,
दो ज़बाब क्या ऐसे ही मै गाऊंगा ।
इंतज़ार है मुझको देश के पुत्तर का ,
इंतज़ार है मुझको सबके उत्तर का ।

If you would like to share a poem, please add it in the comment section.

The North Indians who got beaten up had come to appear for examinations for jobs in Indian Railway. Earlier it was only Raj's MNS that was singing the song of regionalism, which most people know has been nothing but dirty politics to capitalize on the local votes. Now it seems that the other political parties have also tuned into the show, writes Nitish. He adds that all of a sudden just about all the local political parties in Maharashtra are now saying that this is the people's fight and they being representative of the people have instigated it. In other words they also want a share of the vote pie that will generate because of this agenda. And after that beating up of north Indian candidates for railway jobs, the political parties & their leaders in north India called for action to be taken against Raj Thackeray. Some like the Railway minister Mr. Lalu Prasad Yadav went so far as to label Raj Thackeray as a nut case!!

Nitish writes in another post [hi] that the Jamshedpur High Court has issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Raj which has been duly received by the Mumbai police. The police started arresting MNS workers who were disrupting law & order and by last count they had arrested 1100 of them. And finally the Maharashtra government displayed courage & arrested Raj, updates Nitish [hi]. The Vilasrao Deshmukh government in Maharashtra has been under a lot of pressure to put an end to this madness that has been brewing in the state for past sometime & growing violent day by day. But it is not clear yet whether this arrest will end that, since just after Raj's arrest the MNS workers got violent, burnt cars, smashed cabs and auto-rickshaws. And Nitish questions what can possibly be the reason that the state administration has been condoning only Raj Thackeray for such a long time?!

Links courtesy: Narad

In the latest video from Video Volunteers, there talk about the strike in Dharavi, the world's largest slum in Mumbai, India. The reason for this strike is that the government had promised an allotment of 400 square feet per family to build, but they went back on that and during the last meeting, they had discussed that it would only be 300 square feet per family. The following video, Black Day in Dharavi, has the complete story, shot and produced by the video volunteers:

Other videos by the VideoVolunteers of Channel 19 are insightful and inspiring: on Women Can Play Too!, the community journalists ask around their slum about what kids do to play. It turns out boys play, while girls have to do chores. So they ask a female cricket player about the importance of playing, as an inspiration for other girls to do the same. In Never too late to teach, a woman rag picker decides to change her future and decides to study to become a teacher and get certified.

Current TV's Collective Journalism program has started a series of video reports on how the rest of the world views the US. In The View from Over There, people from many different countries state their views on foreign policy, the war in Iraq, the situation with Iran and mention who they would want as the future president of the USA. The video interviews are sometimes in different languages, but all of it is subtitled in English.

This video also uses footage from other shows on the US Elections 2008, but this time concentrating on the foreign perspective. This is something Global Voices and Reuters have been doing for a while now at Voices Without Votes: gathering opinions from all over the planet on the US elections. If you have any posts you would like to submit to the site, you can do it here.

Current TV's next Collective Journalism assignment will be a worldwide view on the US immigration policies.

Some campers showed up right on the time at 09:30AM and readily volunteered to man the registrations desk giving name badges and DBNMS sponsored stationary to the campers. Since Microsoft had provided their spacious training lab as one of the rooms, it was decided that the sessions will be done in that only and should it happen that more sessions were listed than time allowed then a conference room would be used to run parallel sessions.

Ajay Jain giving an intro of IBNMS at BlogCamp Delhi

It started a bit late around 10AM, with Ajay Jain, President of IBNMS, giving an introduction of the society to the present bloggers and blog enthusiasts and explaining to them the commandments on which society has been formed and what it intends to do for the bloggers and blogging community. After this brief intro, BlogCamp Delhi officially kicked off with me taking the first session on Blogging Beyond English. In the presentation I explained how blogging exists beyond the borders of English language by taking up examples of Hindi blogging. And I further showed and explained in brief details how one can easily write in Hindi for the web and how readers wouldn't have any font related problems which have haunted writers and readers alike in past when it came to websites in languages other than English, all thanks to unicode.

The second session was a presentation by Ajay Jain explaining the “4Ps of Marketing Your Blog” where he, a professional blogger and freelance writer, gave quick practical and easy to follow tips along with explanations on how one can market and advertise their blog effectively and reap profits from it as well. It was not about Search Engine Optimization but about simple ways of good old marketing, making one's blog visible to others. It was quite a good session with people listening attentively and asking questions after the presentation to which they found satisfactory replies.

Abhishek Kant during his session on Corporate Blogging

After that session on practical information about marketing a blog came the next session from Abhishek Kant on Corporate Blogging Strategy. Kant, a communications manager with Microsoft India, presented thoughts on how corporate blogging can be effective and beneficial, both for the corporates and the clients. Citing their own experience from Microsoft's blogs, he shared the lessons they have learned and from which others can learn as well without having to go through the cycle. If knowledge is power then people from an array of various companies certainly gained quite a lot of power for their respective companies.

The clock ticked on and lunch was announced as Kant's presentation ended. The discussions amongst the campers continued even during lunch. People put time to good use and inter-mingled, taking up or participating in different discussions going on in small groups around the lounge or playing Xbox games as Microsoft had also set up an Xbox kiosk on which anyone could play. I also tried it out and my first time on an Xbox was quite good!! :D While people were involved in micro-discussions ranging on different topics, some mainstream media journalists, both from some reputed national dailies and national TV news channels, caught up with Abhishek Kant, Ajay Jain and Ashish Chopra, Director(Communications & PR) of IBNMS. It was nice to see that mainstream media in India is definitely taking notice and interest in blogs and acknowledging the power of blogs! :)

After lunch I gave another session but this time on Photo Blogging, explaining to campers how it can be beneficial if one is looking to gain something out of it and how it can easily be done. No sooner had I finished, I was kinda bombarded with various questions. The benefits of an unconference are that its very unlike a formal conference, everyone is a participant and they feel more at ease than in a formal conference. So it was very heartening to see that several campers came forward to answer those questions and pure knowledge was harvested in those discussions and this is what its all about - sharing with and learning from each other. :)

Mohit Maheshwari during his session on Monetizing a blog effectively

Next session was “Monetizing a blog effectively” on which Mohit Maheshwari, MD of new Indian online ad network TonicTag, gave a presentation giving facts and figures about how online advertising industry works and how bloggers can effectively monetize their blogs and how those who are already monetizing can enhance their earnings. One of the main points of his presentation was that when it comes to generating traffic to one's blog, which eventually decides on the kind of money that blog can make, its not a level playing field so not everyone gets the same kind of attention and hence not the same kind of love from advertisers.

Then there were other sessions after that like on Open Access - What it is and why it is required for scholarly community? by Sukhdev Singh, Micro-blogging: Life, and everything else… in 140 characters by Abhishek Baxi, Basic SEO Tips for Bloggers by Mayank.

One notable thing was that it was very much unlike other such camps that I've attended. All campers were participating in sessions peacefully and attentively, asking questions at the right times and all this without any hubbub or noise! Some campers who came in late peeked inside the lab doors and then almost returned as they thought some sort of official training session is going on, they couldn't believe that its a BlogCamp going on since the usual din was absent from it!! ;) Another noticeable thing was that hardly any campers left the room to skip any of the sessions as usually happens in BarCamps and BlogCamps etc. where campers get bored or something and go outside to skip some sessions; attendance was just about 100% for all the sessions! :)

What did the campers say afterwards? From what I heard, there were lots of nice things said and quite a good amount of positive feedback, campers enjoyed it and didn't feel their day went waste! Indeed, hindi blogger Jagdish Bhatia reckoned that the BlogCamp Delhi was enlightening. He came in late and hence missed first two sessions, but attended almost all of the others. In his own words:

मोहित महेश्वरी की ब्लॉग्स से कमाई पर प्रस्तुति How to monetize a blog effectively? How to enhance earnings from a Blog? से भारतीय संदर्भों में ब्लॉग्स से कमाई पर कुछ जानने की उम्मीद थी। मोहित ने आंकड़ों के साथ बताया की जिस गति से ऑनलाईन विज्ञापनों के लिये विज्ञापन दाता अपना बजट बढ़ा रहे हैं उस गति से इंटरनेट पर कांटेंट नहीं बढ़ रहा है। इसका अधिक से अधिक फायदा ब्लॉगर्स को मिलेगा।

Translated into English it means:

I was expecting to gain some knowledge from Mohit Maheshwari's presentation “How to monetize a blog effectively? How to enhance earnings from a Blog?” in context of Indian blogs. Mohit presented facts and figures and told us that the content on internet is not increasing at the same rate as the online advertising budgets of advertisers, so bloggers stand to gain from this.

With his experience of BlogCamp Delhi, he also has posted some photos which he clicked at the camp and ends his blog post with a remark that it was quite an interesting and enlightening experience for him. :)

 
Hindi Blog links courtesy: Narad

Zen Water by darkpatator

First, the issue of providing clean water: we have the Amman Imman: Water is Life program which strives to bring permanent sources of water to one of the most impoverished regions in the world. Their work is focused on the Azawak Valley in West Africa, where water is unavailable 9 months out of the year, and with people dying of thirst, unable to find enough water to drink. In the next video in English, Amman Imman founder Ariane Kirtley talks about her experience in the Azawak region of Niger, of why she founded the program and how she has gotten students to join her cause.

Then, from Witnesses´The HUB special segment on World Water Day: VideoVolunteers in Mumbai show a segment on a water privatization project in the slums and which after being screened to the community had an important impact on the viewers, who then flocked to the government´s meetings of water to demand transparency in the process of privatization and costs, and which resulted in an improvement of the water distribution. The following video is in Hindi with English subtitles.

Last, from Mexico, many users from Jalisco have taken to posting videos denouncing the contamination of the Lerma Santiago river in El Salto and Juanacatlan in Jalisco, Mexico. The audio which accompanies the Buitron2611 video [es] of foamy waters and dead greenery is of people speaking out publicly about the government selling plots of land right beside the polluted river which has been connected to cancer cases, even though the government denies the health hazards. Imdecagua´s video [es] has interviews with cancer patients and family members of those diseased, and they all blame the polluted river for the cancer cases and other systemic diseases. It is known that factories and the city of Guadalajara dump their unprocessed wastes on this river, yet nothing has been done to regulate this. The foam that is churned at the waterfall that is right in the middle of the city is impressive, flying up in clumps that cover cars and illustrate how just living near the river can be hazardous to health. Even high school students [es] have ventured to produce their own example, where they show how people are using this foul smelling and oily water to irrigate crops and for consumption in spite of it´s polluted state. Following, the short video uploaded by aletapatio[es] where you can see the thick layer of foam that covers the river.

If you want to read more about water issues and see more videos on possible solutions to this issue, at 1h2o.org you can see the aquaduct, a human powered vehicle which doubles as a water container and purifier and the lifestraw, a product which filters water as it is sucked, solutions that reminded me of the inventiveness that I had previously seen on the Playpump, a children´s toy which pumps up water to a reservoir as children play.

Pankaj mentions how the complacent Aussie skipper Ricky ‘Punter' Ponting had said before the first final match that the third final won't be played, clearly giving the message in hidden words that his team will wrap off the series in first two matches. Little did Ponting know that his words will come true word for word but not in a way he wanted or that he'd end up on the badly beaten side, a side on which many believe would've ended up in the test match series earlier had it not been for poor (many say ‘biased') umpiring against the Indian team!

Pankaj mentions that this one day match series was very successful as far as the Indian team is concerned as it found many young talented players, a captain with a ‘never say die' attitude who wouldn't give in. According to him, if the young gun fast bowler Ishant Sharma was the find of the series, it was also the series which showed that there's no alternative to the master blaster Sachin Tendulkar who gunned India's thrust towards victory with his unparalleled stroke play.

Dipanshu at Musafir narrates his foodie exploration experiences of old Delhi, the Chandni Chowk area where he goes on to eat the mouth-watering and yummy paranthas at Paranthe wali Gali which used to be full of shops selling only paranthas many years back but now has only a few shops which sell freshly made paranthas of different types and tastes (I'm already feelin hungry, eh!).

Then he moves on to tell about the famous chaat shop thats on the other end of the Paranthe wali Gali which sells absolutely yummy “aloo tikki” and “dahi bhalle”. And just a bit ahead from there is, he says, the famous sweet shop of Ghantewala which got its name from a big bell (called “ghanta” in hindi) which used to hang outside the shop in the Mughal times.

He further notes that he came across another great “chaat” shop near Fatehpuri Mosque further up and if one is fond of non-vegetarian food then they should try out the famous Karim's, near Jama Masjid, for Mughlai delicacies at this almost a century old restaurant which is said to be opened in 1913 by a descendant of a royal cook of last Mughal King Bahadur Shah Zafar.

Abhishek at Shabdarth remembers the old days when the first ever television serial(made by Ramanand Sagar) on the hindu epic Ramayana used to air on Doordarshan, a remake of the epic serial (made by Ramanand Sagar's son Prem Sagar) currently airs on NDTV Imagine which has caught Abhishek's fancy as did the earlier version years back as he recalls his old memories when a huge crowd used to assemble in the outer room of his house in his village during the showtime as only they had a TV in the whole village.

Links courtesy: Narad

BCCI (Board of Cricket Control in India) sometime back brought out its plans for its domestic Twenty20 tournament Indian Premier League(IPL) and recently auctioned different teams which were bought by multi-billionaires like Mukesh Ambani, beer king Vijay Mallya and movie stars like Shahrukh Khan, Juhi Chawla and Preity Zinta and other business houses. Now a couple of days back both Indian & international cricketers were auctioned and were bought by different teams in the run up to the first IPL (Indian Premier League) season kickstarting in mid April this year.

TodayKhabar reports that the Hyderabad team seems to come off as the strongest as its captain & star player VVS Laxman denied the status of icon player thus making it possible for his team to get star players like Andrew Symonds & Adam Gilchrist from Australia, Shahid Afridi from Pakistan and Herschelle Gibbs from South Africa as all teams were allowed to spend only 5 million USD at most in the auction to keep the buying field even for all. All these four players are explosive batsmen who can rip apart any bowling attack in the world and are thus very good choices for the shortest version of the game. Similarly Chennai team also have managed to come off good; even though it got the Indian One Day team's captain M.S.Dhoni for 1.5 million dollars, they managed to get all rounder Jacob Oram and ex-skipper Stephen Fleming both from New Zealand, star batsman Matthew Hayden from Australia and master off-spinner Muttiah Muralitharan from Sri Lanka. Sharukh Khan and Juhi Chawla's team Kolkata doesn't seem to be that good with only ex-Indian skipper Sourav Ganguly and aussie skipper Ricky Ponting, New Zealander Brendon McCullum, West Indies star batsmen Chris Gayle and one of world's fastest bowlers Shoaib Akhtar from Pakistan. Similarly Mr.Mukesh Ambani's team didn't manage to lay its hands on many good players and have to be content with master blaster indian batsman Sachin Tendulkar, explosive Sri Lankan opener Sanath Jayasuriya and ex-South African skipper and opening bowler Shaun Pollock. Preity Zinta's team Mohali managed to have only one biggie in the aussie ripping fast bowler Brett Lee besides the sixer king Yuvraj Singh and Kumar Sangakkara & Mahela Jayawardene both from Sri Lanka. Other teams were left sort of deprived and only the outcome of the tournament will show how their less famous lineups fare against the heavyweights.

Dilip Mandal at RejectMaal is reporting that some US$2.9 billion will be spent over the period of next five years in India by the Indian government as well as other international organisations towards AIDS prevention program to ensure people don't get the disease. Highlighting the names of organisations contributing big amounts, he reports that about US$356 million will be contributed by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation while about US$447 million will be coming from The Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and approximately US$281 million will be put forth by World Bank, among others. All projected accounts etc. are available here at the website of National Advisory Council of India. Dilip further writes that US$2.9 billion in five years means more than half a billion dollars per year will be spent on a disease because of which less than 2000 people die in a year, a count which is in no ways increasing. However only US$10 million(approx.) were spent on the National Cancer Control Program in 2006-2007 and this amount has been increased to about US$35.5 million. The problem is that about 440,000 people die every year because of cancer. On the other hand, Tuberculosis accounts for about 370,000 deaths per year while approximately US$56.5 million were spent to fight this spreading disease!! So he wonders if really the aim is to spend this huge AIDS bounty to curb the disease and are the hearts in right places; somehow he seems to doubt that himself.

Gyandutt Pandey narrates an evening's incident as he returns from his office and his chauffeur tunes into a phone-in film music show on radio and on that evening a girl phoned in and is over the moon having had her call connected to the show. The hostess of the show asks about her studies and plans for the future but in her high the girl blurts that she's worried about her marriage! The hostess gets a bit uncomfortable unsure how to handle this and she gives an idealistic advice that the girl should focus on her studies and then her career and she'll get married when the time comes. Now the girl realized that by speaking her mind truthfully she'd unknowingly dissolved some tension in a film music programme. The chauffeur also feels a bit uncomfortable at this and turns off the radio while Gyandutt gets thinking that dowry issues are still very much present in the society, newly wed women are still being murdered by being burned alive just because their parents failed to give the demanded dowry. But when asked people say that they want a good daughter-in-law and not dowry. And he wonders then why the girl concerned was about her marriage??!!

Ravi Ratlami is telling everyone how commands in Hindi can also be given now to the computer. He says that till now this feature was available only in Unix and Linux but now its also available in Microsoft Windows using a tool called PowerShell from Microsoft. He says that commands are still in English and if one wants to use the Hindi commands then aliases will have to be created for the corresponding English commands and he illustrates this with an example of how to create an alias for opening Notepad and then opening it by issuing the Hindi command. Similarly other unicode languages can be used with PowerShell.

And as it seems, things are not going well in Stock Markets around the world and same is the case with the two major Indian stock exchanges; BSE(Bombay Stock Exchange) and NSE(National Stock Exchange). As Sauda Bazaar reports, Anil Ambani headed Reliance Power's share was listed on Monday but it sent shockwaves through the market as BSE's main index recorded its 3rd biggest and NSE's major index recorded its 4th biggest loss. Buyers, both who were left out in the IPO and those who wanted to buy more, were disappointed as Reliance Power's share opened at Rs.530 (it went for Rs.450 in IPO) and then came down after that throughout the day. Its sister company Reliance Energy also fell big as its share began the day on Rs.1965 and after going Rs.20 up it continued its downfall and at the end of the day it closed at Rs.1582.30. Overall except IT companies everyone saw a further drop in their stock's value and its expected that this slide in the market will continue this week.

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The only Hindi websites generating any decent or good revenue are either big news websites of media houses or bigger and popular portals almost all of whom get advertisers from direct sources than an ad program like AdSense. But things will improve for the better, reckons Jitendra Chaudhary in his interview with Bol Halla. Popularly known as Jitu in the Hindi blogosphere, the current administrator and co-founder of popular Hindi blog aggregator Narad, he reckons that Hindi bloggers should write on specialized topics and carve a niche out for themselves.

He thinks that a boom will soon come in Hindi websites and that the coming big websites will require good content and Hindi bloggers can fulfill the demand. It's also a point to be taken into consideration that off late Hindi language ads have started appearing in general public use ad programs like Google AdSense and that soon direct advertisers will also start approaching popular blogs.

And if you believe some, then popular yoga guru Baba Ramdev has got competition from none other than the gorgeous Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty (yes, the one who won Big Brother show in UK) who recently released her own DVD on yoga!! ;) And thats not all; some gossip says that the Bollywood actress Mallika Sherawat demanded a fee of INR 10 million from a producer for doing a song in his movie and the producer got out of there so fast that he could've put The Flash to shame!! ;)

As Harshawardhan tells us, the Allahabad University is celebrating 121 years of its establishment and is hosting a big alumni meet on 16th, 17th & 18th February 2008, an international affair with some gala events and symposiums.

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All this showering of affection and awards, however, didn't go down well with many. A number of people questioned the state governments' actions of showering cash when on other hand they plead lack of funds when it comes to other sports and improvement of basic facilities provided to players in domestic circuits. Many of the people questioning all this happen to be bloggers as well, so while Neeraj questioned the state of negligence towards national game hockey whose players have never been awarded even a quarter of what the cricket team got, some media persons, like Rajesh, got their chance to attack Gujarat chief minister Mr.Narendra Modi since his government didn't announce any award for the Pathan brothers who are from his state. Irfan Pathan played a key role in the World Cup final claiming 3 important wickets. Perhaps fearing political and media backlash for not making offerings to the gods of the moment, Modi government announced the cash awards for the Pathan brothers. However now that that issue has been taken care off, Rajesh pounced back on government for giving godly treatment to cricketers while hockey and its players are neglected!! Talk about turn arounds, this is the fastest I've seen in a while!! ;)

But this is not all, some Indian Hockey Team players seem to be considering going on a hunger strike in protest against lack of awards for them after their recent win in Asia Cup while the cricket team got a truckload of goodies from state governments! Meanwhile, since a lot had already been written on Cricket vs. Hockey on the awards and rewards issue, Jitu wrote about his childhood days & his experiments with cricket, cricket is in the air afterall!!

And India celebrated this 28th as 100 years earlier on this day a boy was born in a sikh family in Lyallpur(now known as Faisalabad which is in Pakistan). This boy was named Bhagat Singh who went on to become the most celebrated martyr in the Indian struggle for independence. Bhagat Singh, at the young age of 23, laid down his life for the nation & for his desire of independence from the British; he was hanged on 23rd March 1931 along with two of his less celebrated revolutionary friends Sukhdev and Rajguru. While a number of bloggers wrote on the occasion keying in their thoughts on the great martyr, I didn't find a single mention of Sukhdev or Rajguru who also got the hanging besides Bhagat Singh for just about same reasons, nor did I come across any tribute for Sukhdev on 15th May, the date on which this great revolutionary was born in 1907, just 4 months and 13 days before Bhagat Singh was born!! Feeling not-so-good thoughts/emotions at work inside, I didn't bother reading up on more Bhagat Singh tribute blog posts. Nothing against the great martyr but I feel that his two loyal friends who lived & died by his side sharing the same ideals have been robbed of their share of limelight which they very rightfully deserve!

Links courtesy: Narad