BHARATEEYA BLOG MELA XXXVI

Things were crazily mixed up in Elvira. Everybody, Hindus, Muslims and Christians, owned a Bible; the Hindus and Muslims looking on it, if anything, with greater awe....In fact, when Elvira was done with religious festivals, there were few straight days left.

     That was what Lorkhoor, Foam's rival, went around preaching from his loudspeaker van that morning; the unity of races and religions. Between speeches he played records of Hindi songs and American songs.

V.S. Naipul, The Suffrage of Elvira, 1958.

I am so delighted to host this mela. I have enjoyed reading the previous contributions, the cacophony of Indian and desi voices, from the diaspora and the homeland; vibrant, resonant, ringing. Crazily mixed up like the voices of imagined Elvira, but to my mind, not comedy, not tragedy, not caution and inevitability, but evolution. A million voices speak, perhaps in Farsi, in Mandarin, in Hindi or in English. Good. Now, listen:

Sumer Sethi says: Why do Indian resident physicians have such a high rate of TB?

Primary Red of Secular-Right India asks: in regards to the pogrom in Gujurat, how should we think of citizenship?

Jitendra Sharma, from Nigeria, thinks: whatever Nigeria's wealth - public spending by authorities is too high (I'm sure this doesn't help).

Patrix points to something like a whisper.....

Abhi at Sepia Mutiny asks us to remember those who can no longer speak for themselves: the victims of Bhopal (warning: the image linked to may be disturbing for some).

Jitendra Choudhary, from Kuwait, has something to say in hindi (and if I could read hindi, I might tell you what that is....)

Chandoo has something to say about engineering, b-school and choices. Ah, choices. Free will, after all.

More nominations in hindi: here, here, here, and here.

Anup Shukla (in hindi) says.....

Yazad is cabbing it to Pune. I and II.

Dilip D'Souza says the essence of a queen is....(and I love the wistful tone of this one).

Underthefirestar talks about a haircut. This is too beautifully written to count as simply a personal post. And aren't those the best, anyway?

Vinod on Zakaria on Iran. Now, how about that?

Manish blogs an ode to Zara (spend some time on this site. Manish writes like a dream - lots of poetry and good things like that).

And finally, for a little humor: how about some dishoom?

Update: How could I forget about Veshland? Veshman is a physician practicing in Chicago. Here's his thoughts on thanksgiving. Update update: I somehow forgot one of the first nominations: Patrix on something something computational (just kidding, Patrix. Very interesting. Click on over, blog reading people!).

Next mela is hosted by Debashish.

(Apologies to mela participants - I am having a little trouble with my computer and some of you may have checked in before I had a chance to link to your post. Let me know in comments if I have got things right. Thanks.)

Comments

[Yazad]

LOL, my nominations and your putting up the mela coincide. ;-)

BTW, why so few posts? Search the Indian blog world and you'll find loads more.

And read this for a start -- http://www.yazadjal.com/mt/archives/000413.html

[MD]

Yazad, sorry. I was having trouble with my computer and a draft got posted, not the whole thing. I hope this is enough? If not, I can keep adding.

[MD]

Aaargh, yazad. This computer glitchiness is maddening but I've made sure there are at least 20 links. Will add more if you suggest ;)

[Yazad]

Good job. And nice touch with the intro. Cheers!

[Patrix]

U missed one of my Computational Genomics posts :( I was looking fwd to more feedback on that one.

[MD]

Sorry Patrix, corrected now!

[IndusNexus]

hi,

i dont know if I am spamming... but I would like to invite all indian bloggers and beg them to contribute on my community blog (slas like) - IndusNexus.com. Please feel free to mail on indusnexus dot gmail for your suggestions and feedback.

Regards,
Santy

[SV]

Thank you for the wonderful posts for 2004 and am looking forward to reading more in 2005. Happy New Year.