“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.

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

I have been off the blogging scene for the past few weeks for various personal reasons but this was one opportunity that I would not have missed for anything in this world – a chance to listen and interact with one of my musical idols, A. R. Rahman. Thanks to SAJA, I had a chance not only to listen to him talk, but to actually ask him questions and then participate in a discussion later.
After mulling over different things in my head, I asked him about his experimenting with different …

Our indomitable blogger, Anantha, represented Über Desi on a veritable who’s who panel on a webcast organized by SAJA (South Asian Journalists Association) about the powder keg of a situation in Mumbai. [SAJA webcast]
Anantha had some interesting thoughts on the Indian media’s coverage of this situation and also on how online social media is helping maintain contact between those affected and the rest of the world. Feel free to listen to the thought provoking discussion on the SAJA webcast].

About a month ago, I was on the SAJA panel discussing The South Asian Blogosphere and How it is Changing the Media. Embedded below is the episode of the podcast, feel free to leave your comments below.
When you do get a chance visit the SAJA blog, they do a great job of keeping us in the loop about Desi events happening here in the US. They also analyze and discuss events from a Desi angle.

Today SAJA is having a webcast on the state of the South Asian blogosphere.
Sabahat Ashraf of iFaqeer.com, Anil Dash of AnilDash.com, Maria Giovanna of Filmiholic.com, Arun Venugopal of SAJAforum.org and yours truly representing UD will be on the panel.
Make sure you tune in.

No this is not Über Desi taking a hard right turn and embarking on a Sarah Palin lovefest. Our regular readers are probably aware of this – Über Desi was down for almost 120 hours over the Labor Day weekend !!!! The reason, GOP Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin.
This former mayor of a small town in Alaska takes Über Desi a hearbeat away from oblivion
We @ Über Desi seem to have developed this knack of talking about news makers before they make news, big-time news. Case in point, this post …

In case you noticed (or even failed to) uberdesi.com was down for the last 4-5 days or so. The important thing is we’re back online. More on the whys and hows later.

A promise is a promise is a promise. We promised in an earlier post:
Rathore and another shooter Abhinav Bindra will also be part of a blogging initiative by Lenovo and will be frequently blogging during the games.
Of course, if and when we locate these blogs, we @ Über Desi will keep you updated.
It’s time. [The link]
Don’t forget to congratulate him.

Over the past months, I’ve observed with great interest the increase in number of searches with the keyword “virgin” that lead to our humble blog. [thanks Google Analytics]
It all starts with some poor unsuspecting soul typing in the keyword “desi virgin” on google and hitting the search button. For some weird reason, UberDesi.com shows up on the first page of search results for the above search term along with some websites with language so colorful, I cannot reproduce it even on Über Desi. At this point it’s unclear what he/she …

The distribution in US, UK and other major western markets for Aamir Khan’s “Taare Zameen Par” will be handled by Walt Disney World. [Yahoo!]
This is for the first time that any Hollywood distribution company has bought the Home Video rights of an Indian movie to be released in the mainstream market overseas. Disney will release the DVD with English sub-titles.
The bad news, as Aamir blogs about it, is that it will take a few months for Disney to come forward with this release.

Last year was fun. So three weeks ago, when one saw Sree’s email wondering if someone would represent this Über blog at SAJA’s annual conference this year, disappointment arose. With work being the dampener during the week and cricket occupying much of the weekend these days, it was natural that the timing of the invite left one confused. But with some deft juggling, time was set aside on Saturday for a trip down to the intersection of 115th and Broadway. However nothing similar could be managed for Friday (or Sunday …

In case you missed it, Laloo Prasad Yadav, my candidate for President of The United States, has started blogging. [Lalu's blog] [via TOI]
It appears from the comments section, his blog has turned into the Indian railways complaint desk.

An uprising of sorts is going on in the Malayalam blogosphere with various bloggers coloring their blogs black to protest the actions of Malayalam portal, Kerals.com [1,2]. I think this is a great approach for two reasons:
1. Most online portals depend on user traffic for generating revenue and plain survival in the cut-throat and over-saturated realm of India-based portals. If the word gets out and user traffic decreases, it will be far from an ideal situation for any portal.
2. The biggest factor that encourages bullies (real life or cyber) is …

Cyberbullying and cyberstalking of the worst form, by an Indian online portal. [link] (tip Spee via email)
When blogger Inji Pennu catches Kerals.com red-handed plagiarizing some of her blog content, she gets a nasty reply from the portal’s support staff and further responses that are blatantly criminal acts of cyberbullying and cryberstalking. I’m just shocked at the kind of nastiness that the Kerals.com staff and their affiliates sink to.
The entire sequence of emails are listed here.
Update: This incident is also being reported on DesiPundit.

In a Freakonomics blog interview with Tom Vanderbilt, author of the book Traffic, he explains how street signs are almost useless in curbing speeding, how auto rickshaws are safer than on foot and how more unconventional methods like a cow on a street are more effective in controlling traffic. [Freakonomics blog interview]
Q: When I was in Delhi, I felt weirdly safer in an auto-rickshaw weaving past cars, motorcycles, and the occasional cow. Is there some logic to that or am I just insane?
A: Statistically, you’re much better off in an …

Browsekid Sidhu sent us a tip to this post on the TechRepublic Blogs, that talks about the lawsuit filed by some anti H1B activists in a NJ court. [UD post]
The article written by Toni Bowers, Head Blogs Editor of TechRepublic Blogs had a technicality out of place, unnoticeable to most but significant enough to affect the opinion of laymen. The post read
This latest rule is trying to circumvent the 65,000 annual cap of people allowed to get the H-1B
As Sidhu points out, this is technically incorrect because the 17 months …