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Best of AnthoBLOGy • Unripe
Revolution |
Computing, Libraries, Tennis, India & other interests of Vikas Kamat
| What's new |  | ||
| What's New For May 2002 These are the new contents I am working on for this month:
Thanks to everyone who has responded to my call for ideas.
Here's a listing of some of the ones I liked:
Patrons Contribute Content! In the last month I have recieved a lot of content submitted by our readers. While I have enjoyed viewing/reading them, I simply do not have the editorial and other resources to publish them. I encourage people with ideas to take up self-publication like a website or a blog. Samples of the content submitted by my readers:
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If you have signed up to the | Disturbing News Links | | ||
| Disturbing News Links BBC: UN Abandons Refugee Camp Probe.
Picture of the Day  A Gypsy Woman at Work
What to notice in the picture:
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| Context Explanataion | | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Context for many of my April Blogs Blogs Here is the context for for some of my April blogs.
April Blogs
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| Remembering Shri Kamat | | ||
| I had no chance to meet and talk to Shri Krishnanand Kamat but I had been watching him from a distance. Laxman Kamat's house [as Kamat household is known -ed.] was at a stone's throw from my residence in the town of Honnavar. First time I saw Mr. Kamat was about 35 years ago. He had just returned from higher studies in USA. He was invited to his old school to address the students. While the head master in his introductory speech was heaping praises after praise on him, Kamat was affectionately smiling at we children. I still cannot forget that smile. That day he spoke about life in USA. He made it interesting by comparing things by Honnavar standards. "Buildings as tall as five coconut trees, trains and planes reaching Kumta within minutes" etc. He had brought with him a tin box containing coins from various European countries. We had gheraoed him after the function and he took pleasure in showing and explaining the coins to us. We liked it all but were too small to comprehend the simplicity and humility of Mr. Kamat. Those days a poem of his had appeared in a Kannada magazine. It was about a winter abroad. There was a description of young couples playing with snow balls. The poet feels sad and lonely for being away from his country. Then suddenly a snow ball hits the poet. He wonders who is the person throwing the snow ball at him. There is nobody around. He realizes that the accumulated snow on the nearby tree had fallen upon him. The last line of the poem was- " Olidavarillada naadinalli marave nanna nalleyayitu" (In a country without loved ones only a tree became my sweetheart) Somehow this poem was etched into my memory. I used to remember the last line whenever I saw Mr. Kamat's articles in magazines. Sharad Soukoor
See Also:
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| Misc Links | | ||
| Links • TIME: "India will have its civil war". • BBC: India's Child Labor Problem
Sports fever is running high in the city of Birmingham. The Greystone Country Club is hosting Bruno's Memorial Classic, and there are beer signs everywhere. The Brook-Highland Racquet Club is hosting the Eddleman USTA Challenger Tennis Tournament. Both events are very close to our house and it is hard not to miss the excitement. Last evening I walked to the Tennis Club and watched Michael Chang practice.
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| Classifying Blogs | | ||
| Classifying Blogs Last night I tried to classify my blogs using our CCE (Content Classification Engine), but without much success. The reason is that not all my blogs have keywords associated with them and our CCE depends heavily on the human defined keywords (called CrowWords). So I'd have to write a new one. I also want to abandon my favorite idea of using the Library of Congress
Subject Classification A Prototype Implementation Linking to BLOGSearch:
Related Links
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| Naughty Veggies | | ||
 Vegetables as Art I have added some new pictures to this old section depicting common vegetables as objects of art. See Also:
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| What's Recycled | | |||||
| Some New, Some Recycled A lot of new pictures added to Kamat's Potpourri. See What's New Here are some of the pages that did not get the viewership they deserve, IMO:
Mother's Day E-Cards Ad-free click and create e-cards:
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| What is Non-vegetarian Software | | ||
| Vegetarian and Non-vegetarian Software Of course, there is no such thing as vegetarian and non-vegetarian software. Atleast not yet. But if you follow recent trends in India, it is coming. Vegetarian software would be the one that did not result in any animal being slaughtered during its creation. This would mean that the programmers were on strict vegetarian diet while writing code. And everything that is not vegetarian software would be branded as Non-vegetarian software. Oh I forgot. We'd have to add a new category called Egg-Vegetarian Software. This would be software that caused consumption of unfertilized eggs, like cake etc., Coming in a future blog: Degrees of Indian Vegetarianism
The concept of Vegetarian Software reminds me of:
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| War Imminent on the Sub-continent ? | | ||
| War Imminent on the Sub-continent This morning the Islamic terrorists (with apology to my father, who taught me to never use the word. "Terrorism has no religion" - he'd say) caused fresh trouble in Kashmir. In January, I'd written: Waiting for Robin Moor, and how a small trigger is all that is needed for a war. Just look at the conditions on the sub-continent:
I am not saying I want war. I am saying that there will be war. See Also: Kashmir FAQ
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| Degrees of Vegetarianism | | ||
| Degrees of Vegetarianism in India This blog has the potential to go on and on, so let me be brief:
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| Indian Joint-Family System | | ||
| Remembering the Joint-Family System
I have opened a new section on the Joint-Family system prevalent in India. I will let the pictures do all the talking for now till I add notes and other commentary. If you have lived in one (or curious to know some of the experiences), please share it on the Friends_of_Kamat mailing list.
Top Ten Pages at Kamat's Potpourri for April
It is good to see the number of Indian bloggers increasing. There are many new entries in the List of Indian Blogs. that I maintain.
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| Picture of the Day | | ||
Picture of the Day How many torn shirts does it take to make one torn shirt? See Also: A Picture is a Thousand Words
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| To Fight is the Rooster's Dharma | | ||
 Adapted and translated from Kannada Original by Prakash Nayak, published in ThatsKannada.com. Used with permission. Translation by Vikas Kamat. Photographs by K. L. Kamat.
Commentary Cock fighting used to be a common street sport in India and although disappearing, is still practiced underground. It is a bloody sport that is pursued till one bird kills another. The excitement is increased by ganging of the teams, consumption of liquor, and betting. The poem illustrates typical logic applied by the Indian society for diluting of its morals. It shows the interwoven fabics of rampant corruption, natural amusements, philosophy and thinking of common citizens in India. Related Links
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| May 2002 Update at Kamat.com | | ||
Updates to Kamat's Potpourri
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| For everything else, there are weblogs | | ||
| For everything else, there are weblogs Remember the time (1995-96) when people started creating home pages to defame companies when they could not resolve disputes of a business transaction? They were mostly consumers, and the world-wide audience for their complaints was a potent weapon against the big companies. Then there was a company called RealNames that tried to monopolize popular names and keywords and influence what people will find when they searched the World-wide-web. It had a lucrative contract from Microsoft, and together they milked the MSN and IE users. Case in focus is Keith "Crybaby" Teare. This dude used to run the company RealNames, which has recently been shutdown because Microsoft did not renew their contract. As far as I am concerned, his company added no value to the web, and only diluted my web experience while profiting from it. In the dot-com bust we've lost so many gems that I have no tears left for RealNames and I am happy to see them go. What is interesting is that Teare resorted
to a blog I find the ugly fight of two monopolistic, former business partners, very amusing.
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| Cockfight | | ||
| Of Fight, Conflict, and Dharma A few days ago I read a philosophical poem (link to Kannada language content)
about Cockfights.
BBC: India Prepares for War: To Fight is the Man's Dharma?
Misc. Related Links
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| Remembering Bappa | | ||
| Three months without the Webmaster-in-Chief It is three months since my father (Bappa) passed away. The void is indescribable. I no longer call Bangalore to hear the affectionate "Suprabhatam" (that's how father answered my phone calls), or to discuss the new stories to be added to Kamat's Potpourri. The weekly yellow manila envelopes have stopped arriving, and the hundreds of thousands of photographs are exposed to heat, humidity, and insects in our locked flat -- unpublished, unappreciated, and abandoned. Bappa's Scientific Photo Lab, where he served the scientific community of Bangalore since 1970 is also closed. The chemicals are expiring, and the cameras are rusting. It is unbearable for me to sit in Bappa's shop where I spent so many evenings enjoying ice-cream or admiring the customers (Bappa's customers were highly qualified scientists and intellectuals), or in Bappa's dark-room where I would develop film or flip the photo prints. I have said in public before, that the greatness of my father is not in his books, photographs, or in the gigantic website, but in his austere and almost holy living. While I miss Kamat the artist, Kamat the writer, Kamat the cook, Kamat the philosopher, and Kamat the Guru, it is Bappa the father that I miss most.
I must say that a late condolence message is a great condolence message. This is because one receives so many of them within the days of the loss that they don't quite sink in. But a couple of messages we've received in the last week have touched my heart. One is from Sharad Soukoor who was in the audience in a school meeting thirty five years ago where Bappa spoke! He mentions a poem -- I didn't know Bappa ever wrote poems! (This was before I was born...). The other is from Dr. Seshasastry, a close friend (or disciple as he has called himself) of Bappa. Excerpts: "..The life of Kamat is like Bhagawad-Gita to me." -- Prof. R. Seshasastry "..We were too small to comprehend the simplicity and humility of Mr. Kamat" -- Sharad Soukoor Another message from family friend Suresh Kulkarni said it so well -"Kamat is one of the great souls who found peace in this life itself; so asking for peace in his afterlife seems absurd!"
How We Are Coping up My mother is fighting the survivor's guilt. A day doesn't go by without her lamenting Bappa's sudden death. She also has to fight the age-old stigmas attached to widowhood in India. I have asked her to visit America for change and healing, and have talked her into starting a blog. Some friends and admirers of Bappa have gotten together to bring out
a memorial volume in his honor. Very limited copies will be published.
If you are able to contribute, please write to me at
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| Kamat Content Explorer | | ||
| Use the following experimental tool to locate content at Kamat's Potpourri. If you do not select any criteria, most recent contents will be listed. Once you find an interesting topic or picture, use the [More Like This] link to find related content.
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| Bhagat Singh | | ||
| On Bhagat Singh We've been getting a lot of web traffic looking for a three year old article on Bhagat Singh -- it's a top match on the Google search result. Apparently the Bollywood is making a movie on him. "Finally the Bollywood can make a movie without a rape scene, and vulgar dancing" my friend exclaimed. "Are you kidding me? To depict that Bhagat Singh did not engage in them, the Bollywood people would have to show them!" was my answer. Of course, I could be wrong, given my prejudice against Indian movies. We'll see shortly, won't we? Anyway, Bhagat Singh (along with Chandrashekhar Azad) has been my childhood hero. I was born on March 23rd, the death anniversary of Bhagat Singh, and was named after him (Vikas Singh).
Links:
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| Links | | ||
Links to Ponder
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| World Cup 2002 Starts | | ||
| World Cup 2002 begins with a Shocker • Qualifiers Senegal beats defending champions France in the opener! • Official World Cup Website I found this very amusing: My friends and family are very excited about the World cup. Not because of India (didn't qualify) or because they are soccer fans (they're Cricket fans), but beacuse my wife is from Korea, the co-hosts of the World Cup! They said, ever since our marriage they have been pulling for Korea in Olympics, in politics, and in business deals. Wow. The beauty of international marriages..
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