It's been a crazy, busy month. First went on a short vacation home, followed by crazy work schedules and then a lot of activity on the personal front, leaving me totally exhausted at the end of the day (or the start of the morning, depending on my shift at work) with no energy left to fire up Blogger and post something.
Today, after a long while, I have a part of my Sunday to myself and while the clothes wash themselves in the washing machine, I thought of putting to rest the concerns of readers and friends who seem have the inkling that I've abandoned this blog.
The last post on this blog was a month back. And it was about Blip.tv deleting my videos, the update is that I've (thanks to Blip.tv) managed to download all the videos and now have to upload them elsehwere (this is going to take some time given the number of videos that I had posted).
Far from giving up on this blog, I have some grandoise (by my standards) plans on my mind and am slowly working towards it. That, again, will take some time.
For starters, let me introduce you to a new experimental (not that new since it is online since August) website/blog - DOBMW.com. Essentially an abbreviation for the Directory of Official Bollywood Movie Websites.
You can know more about it in the About Us and FAQs sections.
This is still in a development stage, with me doing all the work (with a little lot of help from Google search). While I intend to keep it simple, will add some elements to make the indexing and search better.
And even before a formal announcement people have started to take notice.
Coincidentally, both Cutting the Chai and DOBMW.com were featured on AOL's Asylum India Indian Blogs We Love - Debut Edition.
About DOBMW.com, they say:
Or DOBMW for short, is a blog dedicated to achieving just one goal - being the one-stop source to all the official movie websites for upcoming Bollywood releases. Though it seems the site only began archiving in August this year, we feel it's still not too late to start; considering having official websites for marketing purposes came into practice in India only recently. It's quite a useful website if you love looking up Bollywood releases, wallpapers, filmi downloads and are just too lazy to search for them on the web.
You want another reason to bookmark this blog? They don't like Himesh Reshammiya either. (They say so in their FAQs!)
And on Cutting the
Chai:
Run by Soumyadip, a New Delhi-based media professional, soumyadipc.blogspot.com is a blog centered around the world of Indian advertising - the good and the bad. From print ads to video commercials, special categories dedicated to condom ads (he calls it "Rubbers of India"), Soumyadip highlights the creative talent (and sometimes the lack of it that) that exist in Indian advertising. From time to time, he posts his thoughts on other media and even gives away Indian railway announcements as ringtones.
Do send in the feedback.
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Blip.tv has deleted my account because I apparently violated their terms of service. I assume that it has something to do about the ads that I upload, they might have interpreted it as promotion for the goods/services. The worst part is that I wasn't even informed.
Though my intention, as any regular reader of this blog would agree, was never to promote a particular product. It was to put at one place ads that people love and those from another age that I managed to dig out. It was for the students and the researchers and the ad lovers.
I hope Blip.tv restores my account or at least lets me download the content, so that I can put them up elsewhere (where they will be less likely to be taken off). Should have kept a backup of so many years of effort. I have some, but not all.
I used Blip.tv to host my videos because I found it much better than any other video sharing services out there. Though I didn't intend to use ads on the videos (it doesn't pay much anyway), I did because my conscience told so. So that the good guys at Blip.tv get some benefit from providing me with their (till now) excellent service.
To be fair to Blip.tv I even got paid for my share of the advertising revenue that the videos I uploaded generated and reinvested it back to my online interests.
Till the time I put things back in order, please bear with the videolessness (also some audio) on this blog. And this could take a while.
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...or at least some people at The Indian Express think so. I wouldn't have otherwise posted about this 'oversight', but for the fact that the news item in question appeared in the 'From the Northeast' page of the newspaper.
The news was about an altercation between two groups of students ('locals' versus 'outsiders') at the North Eastern Hill University (NEHU), my alma mater.
To add to further ignorance, the accompanying photo carries a caption that mentions the name of the university (NEHU) as Sikkim Manipal Institute of Technology. It is possible that this photo is possibly related to another unrelated incident.
The Express is one of the very few national newspapers that give regular coverage to the otherwise neglected North Eastern India and I assume that the people in charge of the page would at least be aware of the geography of the area.
I wouldn't blame the reporter Tilak Rai for the gaffe, Tilak has been reporting from the region for quite some and would know where Shillong is.
Though, on IndianExpress.com, they seem to have made amends to the headline but the body of the story still mentions 'Sikkim'.
All the years I have been away from home, there have been numerous instances when I felt like an unknown Indian. And occassionally we are made to feel by the authorities that we from the North East are different and therefore should adhere to an additional set of rules when in the capital of the country.
For those who didn't take their geography classes in school seriously, Shillong is the capital of the state of Meghalaya located south of Assam. Sikkim is a different state, north of West Bengal and the capital of Sikkim is Gangtok.
Also the largest university in Shillong is the North Eastern Hill University (also known as NEHU), a Central University.
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One of the highlights of the Mahabharat (you can watch the complete episodes of the original TV serial here) was Draupadi's cheer haran. And one of the wittiest Bollywood movies Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron also incorporated that in the climax.
Ekta Kapoor's tried to add a twist to the great epic with her Kahani Hamare Mahabharat Ki and instead of beginning from the beginning, she started the serial with Draupadi's cheer haran. The serial bombed.
If we conduct a poll on the most memorable scene from the Mahabharat, I doubt if anything else can pip the tale of the endless saree.
I found an (amusing) ad on the same theme. While logic says they should be selling sarees with the idea, it is for a brand of blouses - Citizen Sweety Blouse.
Playing the role of Draupadi is Preeti Jhangiani, the Chui Mui girl (I'll prefer to remember her for those videos only). They had also roped in the original Shakuni, Gufi Paintal. So powerful is the impact of the colourful blouses that the blind King Dhritrashtra's eyes pop out (aankhe phaad phaad dekha). Aap bhi dekho.
Download video [00:00:30 FLV 670 KB]
Download hi-res video [00:00:30 AVI 3.07 MB]
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Hindustan Times seems to have a thing for makeovers. I remember seeing atleast four different avatars of the newspaper. 
