Blog :: 'PariveshaNa'

I was at Mangalore for last two days, being part of an event organized to discuss the situation of water in the region. The prime focus of this edition of the program was to get audience familiarized with some aspects of technology that would help them log about the changes happening around them in the overall management of water, and record their opinions, their take on all of this.

It was a surprise this morning to see an article on Deccan Herald which seems to add so much to the strengthening notion that people writing in media still do not cross check their Internet findings.

Not that I'm a big fan of Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh, or that I have any interest in political stuff surrounding it. But take this: a website called sangh.com is linked by rss.org to what it calls the "media" section. Sangh.com, running on an apparently old version of PHPNuke (which says a lot that the website has long been neglected from its maintainers) has cartload of spam linking to adult sites.

People using Tata Indicom Broadband (and several other services here in India) seem to be affected by heavy packet loss in their Internet connections. When I called up the Tata Indicom Customer Care almost in what seemed to be the umpteenth time I was calling them in last two days, I was told about some "submarine cable damage", "main server issue" and few other such things. Earlier they had a reason to believe it was a local issue and they said they will get it rectified in "6 hours".

Each time I visit Nagesh Hegde's place, I get to carry home some rare fruits and at times some rare vegetables.

During one of the visits to his place, he gave me this fruit (of which I duly took a photograph as Mom cut it into slices back home) and told me that it is known as the "Passion Fruit". It grows on creepers.

I don't know how many of us would remember the 501, Nirma and similar soap bars that had become so much a part of life back in those days when Rin, Surf Excel or the fancy German detergents had still not entered the market. I remember people taking those detergent bars with them to nearby water source to wash their clothes. Much has changed now, but I still remember the fragrance of 501 or even Nirma. It has been years since I last saw one, though.

Today, I stopped by a grocery store in a village on the way home. An auto driver was unloading his stock of "N S" bar. It was like glancing back at this historical, outdated soap but the shop owner and the auto driver had a different story to tell. In my curiosity, I ended up taking a photo of this while the auto driver, who looked pretty curious at my curiosity, went observing in pride - "This, saar, is still the best soap you can ever get! It used to cost just naalkaaNi" (25 paise).

And to my surprise, people in this village seem to have sticked to their brand for all these years and the shopkeeper confirmed that by telling me how people keep coming for more of this.

It was a busy weekend, last one. On Saturday morning I had to dust curtains, vacuum the floor of the entire house as my sister had called up and said she would be moving in for couple of days to be with mother. She wouldn't like it if it isn't clean and things aren't organized! And then Murali was here to discuss about Tech Sampada, which is a new initiative on Sampada that we're coming up with (with an ambitious plan of getting people to write about technology, and developments surrounding technology in Kannada). Interviews we had recorded with Prof. U R Rao, Prof. C N R Rao (in Kannada) would be featured during the launch of the portal.

But of course, Saturday evening was the program where Professor Eben Moglen was to give a talk. I was listed as a guest on that program despite me insisting strongly that I would rather just join in like everyone else. Professor's talk was enlightening. The clarity with which he spoke was so good that people listening to him seemed overwhelmed and filled with admiration. Not many among that audience, I bet, would have known much about the Professor before. The event was arranged by Avadhi originally for Kannada bloggers, but I couldn't see many familiar faces in the audience. Many of those who participated were from the Free Software Users Group. And I felt that there wasn't much Kannada audience too. Hence, when my turn came for the talk (and since I was supposed to talk in Kannada), I just kept it to the basics and spoke for 10 minutes or so.

Professor O L Nagabushana Swamy had translated Rilke's "Letters To A Young Poet" to Kannada. This came as a book last week, titled "ಯುವಕವಿಗೆ ಬರೆದ ಪತ್ರಗಳು" at Gandhi Sahithya Sangha, Malleshwaram. I usually stay away from public events, but this one was an exception.

Rashtrakavi G S S was there, and so were several familiar faces. I also got a chance to meet several members from Sampada community. Savitha has logged the event on Sampada, and so has Avadhi, with pictures.