Patti, Patni aur Woh (foreign body):

Patti, Patni aur Woh (foreign body):
Two days before my anniversary, my right eye which usually nags a lot, started watering profusely. I thought it was the usual one-eyed computer vision syndrome which my doctor had named the symptom as, after running out of his clinical logic. But this time around the deluge of tears wouldn't stop even after shedding about a litre of tears.

I was forced to retire hurt from my workplace that day where my colleagues avoided my stares thinking it was contagious conjuctivitis. The usual doubts were raised by my peers - "who did you wink at in France? Maybe she is remembering you". I began to wonder, I had stared at so many pretty damsels as i walked through the beautiful country, who would recall me so painfully?

The next day i was on the opthalmologist's table, served for breakfast. "Its the same old right eye, doc" I remarked. "But not the same ailment this time" said the doc who was operating on my right eye for the third time. The first time, it was a sty, second was some particle and now.... "A foreign body appears to have scratched your cornea and fallen off. Did you scratch too hard?" said doc.

I was itching to ask.. "Was the foreign body french?". But before i could even think of that. My eye was medicated and bandaged, and i was left with "Patti (bandage), Patni (my wife counting down our anniversary) and Woh (the foreign body whoever she was)

Monsieur Nagoiseur's Tour de france

June 4 - 14 2008.. Would spell a nice ten days at france, my first ever trip to the west. Not the first foreign trip though. My first one was Nepal, and then Thailand.

I will be attending a conference hosted at a place south of the historical city of Normandy. The place where i will be staying is built upon a heritage structure where once a castle stood. The venue is a distant place, 160 Kms from Paris, a smooth blend of heritage legacy equipped with technology - high speed wireless broadband, i am told.

Radio Idli version 2.0 launched

This post concerns one of my dearest projects, an achievement of my life so far - www.radioidli.net. This is a website and a project dedicated to my talented community

"We need to have our own site and total control on our content" urged Sankalp in a chat few months back.

Unyielding and stubborn as i am, i defended my choice to stick to blogger and the other free platforms that the Internet God - Google and the other angels like esnips provide.

Radio Idli had achieved early fame through a couple of press coverage by DNA and Indian Express, and a television interview by CNN IBN. Its popularity within the Saraswat community it served, grew with some good contributions. It won the support of professional performers, community institutions and the listeners at large.

My debate with Sankalp that evening ended with an indefinite tag... "Lets see".

Few months later, Sankalp decided to book our own custom domain name - RadioIdli.net (as against the older radioidli.blogspot.com). A couple of more months later, he came back saying that he had got an irresistable deal for hosting which was customized for a multimedia web 2.0 initiative like ours.

Thats where the making of Radio Idli 2.0 began. Sankalp and I both then started a journey towards selflearning of freely available open source applications that could help create a very strong medium. The journey which continues till date has been very exciting and enriching.

The first result of the same has been launched - Radio Idli Version 2.0.

Watch a community come alive on the internet - http://www.radioidli.net