This is a sad day in the desi blogosphere and for blogs in general. DesiPundit is no more.

You’re searching…
For things that don’t exist; I mean beginnings.
Ends and beginnings – there are no such things.
There are only middles.

~ Robert Frost, Mountain Interval, “In the Home Stretch”
Thank you for reading.

With these words every desi’s favorite aggregator blog is gone. This is the email we received from Patrix, the creator of DesiPundit.

Hi,

We are shutting down DesiPundit effective midnight (CST) June 15th, Tuesday. It has been a fun five years and we have enjoyed every moment. We wish to thank all Community Members for sharing your content with our readers and I hope we managed to win you some readers.

Over at DesiPundit, people have moved on to other things and time & resources haven’t been as plentiful for those who have remained. The Indian blogosphere and presence on other social media networks has expanded greatly and in our experience, it is no longer possible for human-powered aggregators to keep up; at least on a part-time volunteer basis.

We all will be around on our respective blogs and Twitter accounts and will continue to reading your excellent blogs.

Thank you for reading and contributing.

regards,
name redacted (Patrix)
for DesiPundit

If you’ve read into some of Patrix’s tweets and blog posts over the past year or so, he has knowingly or unknowingly hinted that something along these lines was coming. We @ Über Desi were part of the DesiPundit community over the past year or so, and will continue flying that banner, partly out of pride and partly out of laziness. We will miss DesiPundit and wish all the good bloggers and readers of DesiPundit all the best in their future endeavors.

Looks like you are one of our regular visitors. Here is our RSS feed, just another way to keep up with the new posts.

Regulars have probably noticed a slowdown in the volume of posts on Über Desi. We attribute that to a variety of reasons: work, family, social life. However, we have been active on Twitter (twitter account and hashtag).

Tweeting leaves me with mixed feelings, while it makes getting the word out much easier, I feel like I’m neglecting this blog. While I love writing, I was never really into long winded posts. This stems from among other factors, suspected mild ADD affliction and an intense dislike for fluff. So while still doing regular blog posts (emphasized for effect), I will also be experimenting with using Twitter to compose some posts on this blog. Now these posts, may not quite resemble our regular form of posting. Also, Twitter presents its very own unique set of challenges. For instance, a tweet can only be 160 characters long and this has to include the link and hashtag, effectively reducing it to around 130 characters.

We built this blog with blood, sweat and Sanjaya. Über Desi was created to bring together thoughts, stories, anecdotes, gossip on everything Indian, American and Indian-American. Über Desi is our #1 priority and while we’re evolving and adapting, we’re also keeping the good stuff intact. So, we urge you, our readers to be patient and hit us with feedback on how we can improve this twitter-to-blog experience.

Bollywood actress from Canada, Lisa Ray, was recently diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and has decided to blog about her battle with the deadly ailment. [Lisa Ray's blog]

I was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma on June 23rd. Started my first cycle of treatment July 2nd. Not long ago.
First the facts.
Myeloma is incurable.
It’s a relatively rare cancer of the bone marrow that affects about 6000 Canadians. Every year, approximately 2100 more cases are diagnosed.

In a cut-throat profession where any sign of weakness can potentially debilitate a career, Ray decided to go public with her daily struggles with the disease, treatments and its toll on her physical appearance.

I guess many actors or people in my industry rarely go public. I understand why. There’s practical repercussions as in, its become more expensive to insure you on a project. Some producers don’t want to- or can’t- take on that extra cost. So even when I’ve crossed over and joined the ‘Full Remission’ Club, there may be tough career and financial decisions.
It’s hard for me to live any other way than with full disclosure.

Props to Lisa Ray on going public, and not only increasing awareness of the disease but also being a role model by chronicling her brave struggles with this deadly disease. Afreen Afreen, Ms. Ray. Here’s wishing her a speedy recovery.

Previous mention of Lisa Ray on Über Desi.

Over the last couple of weeks, regular readers probably noticed a slowdown in the number of posts on Über Desi, particularly from yours truly. The reasons are numerous – family commitments, work load, writers block, you name it. But of late we’re dealing with another issue. By the very nature of this blog, we blog about news related to desis and give our opinions on those topics. Unfortunately, our opinions do not endear us to everyone.

One facet of the desi culture we love so much and blog about, is the importance a large section of the society places on religious leaders and the huge egos and power trips that this kind of following spawns. Unfortunately, some of these so-called religious leaders lack the gumption to hear anything but praise about themselves and will sink to unfathomable depths to keep it that way.

Largely due to apathy and frustration stemming from this issue, I’ve been sulking and avoiding blogging. But enough is enough, I’m back chodoos.

We’re dealing with this issue and will attempt to provide more details on this situation, sooner rather than later. For those in the know, thanks for your support.

Regulars of this blog will probably notice some house cleaning around here. We’ve made a bunch of changes, some obvious, some not-so-obvious.

Regulars will probably notice that the look and feel of the blog has been upgraded. We made long pending upgrades to our Wordpress software and changed the blog theme. We went with the Newsweek theme because we felt it was clean, simple and fitted in well with our already existing content and features. And above all, it was 100% free – desi ishtyle. Vaat to do? We are like that vonly, no?

Gone are the broken links and missing pages but the top menu stays pretty much the same. We decide to up our Twitter presence by getting an official Twitter account. Any tweets made by this account will show up on the homepage. Just our own little way of keeping our readers updated on the latest. The best way to reach us on Twiiter is still by using the #uberdesi hashtag.

The “Total Desi News” section stays. For those unfamiliar with this section, this Google powered newsfeed resides on the homepage and updates every 5 minutes with the latest desi news. The popular “Polls” section also stays.

One the biggest changes we’ve made is moving towards integration with Facebook. You see, by our very nature Über Desi is all about community. In this case, the community that fits a certain demographic. At this point in time, we feel that Facebook is by far the most commonly used social networking site used by our readers. Besides, it’s easier to build Facebook apps to integrate with Wordpress. So, Facebook it is. If you already have a Facebook account, you can now click on the large blue “Connect with Facebook” button on our home page and other pages to login to comment on UberDesi.com. Also, join the UD Facebook group, which we have big plans for in the near future.

Oh, and Orkutians and Tweeple, we love you too.

Not that some of our readers really care about this stuff, but we changed hosting servers. After the episode with Sarah Palin crashing Über Desi, our traffic has come back to normal proportions, making a dedicated server redundant. So we’re back to hosting on GoDaddy.com, cheap and reliable – desi ishtyle.

The poll section has already been active and most readers have been either upbeat about our new look or feel that there is room for improvements. I’ve also received some tweets and emails mostly positive. To those who responded about the blog having potential for improvements, I’m interested in knowing what some of those might possibly be. Feel free to use the comments section below or the Tipster page.

Welcome to Über Desi 2.0! Enjoy!