dispatches

History, mythology, photography, and Internet,... mix'em up!

During my research about India I kept running into wonderful articles about art and culture in a webzine called Kamat's Potpourri. It's not only beautifully produced but rich with in-depth articles that can't be found anywhere else on the web. From a new look at Indian erotic arts, to the dilemma of poverty and beggars, insightful articles on Buddhism, Hindu Mythology, even a timeline of history, and even Wonderbras of the past, it is truly a potpourri, held together by the fresh, intelligent perspective of the producers, the Kamat family, a highly (highly!) educated family from the region of Bangalore.

A real hi-tech wired family from Bangalore, I was thinking, until Jyotsna, via a phone message to her son Vikas (who now lives in the US), told me, "I warn you that we produce the website in the most technologically backward way possible! The articles are typed on a 1959 Remington, and the pictures produced with scarcely available photo chemicals. They are then sent via postal mail to our son, who retypes and uploads them."

Vikas lives in Birmingham, Alabama now, and uses a computer & a scanner to develop the site. He says that "ALL of the website is laboriously handcoded by the four of us (my parents & my wife). It is an amateur site (no advertisements or signup or anything), done for the love of labor. For the efforts of four, our website has seen tremendous success; if measured by the traffic [over 100K page views per month] or the fan mail we get. The technology (and especially the Internet) has made possible the publishing of much of the research of my parents."

His parents, Kalranga and Jyotsna Kamat, have been gracious enough to invite me for a visit. What to expect? I asked Vikas. "While Bangalore is high-tech by any standards, please bear in mind that India is a poor country with wide gaps between haves and have nots. Although by choice, my parents do not have a refrigerator or a television, leave alone the computer." His father's bio can be viewed at www.kamat.com/kalranga/intro.htm, and his mother's at www.kamat.com/jyotsna/about.htm.

Vikas worked in Bangalore "for a couple of years before coming to the USA for grad school." He also put me in touch with Mahesh of www.indiainfo.com, with whom he studied Computer Science near Bangalore. Mahesh was one of the first to start a site on India back in 1992 and now with the help of a VC firm, is building a comprehensive portal for India. I'll be visiting the indiainfo.com offices in India.

A juxtaposition of the lo-tech and the hi-tech: Kamat's Potpourri and indiainfo.com. I can't wait!

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