Its thala diwali today and I don't know what to answer people when they ask 'How did you celebrate your diwali,that too your thala diwali?'. Its just another day in the U.S,the only change being the good food that my wife cooked and the evening gettogether at the local ISKON like temple called Barsana Dham,where the entire Desi population of Austin seemed to have assembled.The prasad dinner at the temple was decent and then we had a good time chatting with our regular group of friends,occasionally meeting some of those long forgotten friends. The new dress factor attached with Diwali was also adhered to,thanks to the 3$ T-shirt from OLD NAVY which had the picture of lord Nataraja dancing.When I had decided to pick that T-shirt few weeks ago from the most visited section of the OLD NAVY,namely the 'CLEARANCE' section,I had a hunch that it would have been manufactured at India and I wasn't proved wrong. Then we watched the movie - 'The departed".It was an okay movie.I thought it would have a thicker plot and thrilling screenplay.It ended up being a simple plot.Jack Nicholson was at his usual best and all other actors too performed admirably. So,thats the end of thala Diwali - the one which never matched any of the diwalis I had ever spent in India.
A quick cheeky anecdote.. My sister exclaimed on the phone(thanks to Yahoo's benevolent gesture of free fone call to inda,I was able to talk for hours together with my family and friends)...
"Dei..This time Thala-diwali???" I said.. "hey..this time Thalawali-di!!!" -Raapi
From www.Indiadaily.org Two graduates of IIT Delhi have launched Guruji.com, India’s first local Internet search engine. Sequoia Capital India has provided the seed funding of $7 million to the search engine.
Sequoia, has recently invested in San Bruno-based YouTube Inc. too which was bought this week by Google Inc. for $1.65 billion.
Apart from Sequoia’s funding, Guruji has got some funds from Suvir Sujan, a founding partner of nexus India Capital and co-founder of Baazee.com that was acquired two years ago by eBay Inc. for about $50 million.
Anurag Dod is the Co-Founder and CEO and Gaurav Mishra is also Co-founder and chief Operating Officer of Guruji.com .
Anurag Dod said that
we worked very hard to focus on the Indian market and the Indian consumer and to build the best local search product in the market.
Earlier this month, the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) had revealed that the presence of 65 million people who use search engines in India. It creates $50 million from advertisements.
Gaurav Mishra told to media that
90 per cent of Indian Internet search queries are local in nature. Guruji.com will provide them better results.
Further Dod said that India has great potential to develop its Internet users, Currently, there are 38 million Internet users in India and in the next couple of years the number will go to 100 to 200 million. We are expecting 100,000 hit a day in the first two months.
They have a plan to launch search options in different Indian vernacular languages also in future.
Almost all his songs seem to be of the same type.Yet they are wonderful companions on any lonely day when one is bored and lost deep in thoughts. -Raapi
Some trivia Masqoom Mehmood Ali is his Birth name and he is the son of the Hindi comedian Mehmood.
Found this article on Tender coconuts! very interesting. Such shrewd initiatives help to maintain the true Indianness amidst all the westernisation of India! -Raapi
