Pranathi publications has organized a Kannada bloggers meet in Bangalore on Sunday 16th of March. As for as i know this is supposed to be the first in it’s kind for the online Kannada writers or bloggers. With the increasing use of Internet & English, there is a greater need for the use of Kannada & other Indian languages in the online world to reach a wider number of geographically dispersed young population & to keep the stream of literature flowing. These kinds of events are sure to help the bloggers to meet & share their thoughts with other like minded people. This in turn can help the bloggers to take their blogs to the next level. I will also be attending this meet with same intention. Though, i don’t have a Kannada blog, some of my posts are related to Kannada & Karnataka.

Venue : Indian Institute Of World Culture, Basavangudi, Bangalore

Date: 16th March 2008

Time: 4 PM

BTW, i came to know about this meet from OnebyTwo Mahesh Malnad. Thanks for the info Malnad.

The bloggers meet witnessed a pretty good turnout from the Kannada bloggers community in Bangalore. More than 100 bloggers took part in the meet. The event lasted for about 3 hours. There were talks by Pavanaja, Hariprasad Nadig, Abdul Rashid & Shamsunder about the use of Kannada in the Internet and some technical pros & cons associated with it. In particular, Pavanaja’s talk on how he started using the Kannada on the net way back in 1996 was very enlightening to the audience. For all don’t knows over here, Dr. Pavanaja is the person behind Vishwakannada.com which is supposed to be the first Kannada portal on the World Wide Web. The organizers from Pranathi gave an estimation that currently there are around 350 active Kannada Blog’s on the net. As I mentioned earlier,the most important part of the meet was networking, which helped the like minded bloggers to get to know each other. Pranathi deserves applauds for organizing this meet which was first of its kind for the Bangalore Kannada Bloggers.

After hearing/reading lot of positive & negative feedbacks about Gaalipata in the media, i finally decided to check out the movie with my friend Harish ( the director in making) on one fine Saturday. Our main challenge was to get the tickets. We started our hunt for the tickets from around 9.30 in the morning. Our intention was to watch the movie in one of the good theatre without paying heavy black bucks. As a result we dropped some of the major theatres like Aparna & Pramodh. PVR & INOX was also out of our list as it was already filled. Then we started enquiring in other major theatres like Vaibhav, Kaveri & Fun but, that was also of no use. To our luck, finally we managed to get 2 tickets in the newly opened Lido multiplex through some third party by around 2.30 for the 3′o clock show.

I think Gaalipata is the first movie of director Yograj Bhat released with lot of hype & hope. Even though, his earlier movie created a new record at the box office, there was no hype or expectation when it was released. Hardly few people knew about Yograj Bhat who had earlier directed movies like Mani & Ranga SSLC before venturing into Mungaru Male. I didn’t go to Gaalipata to see another film like Mungaru Male. My only expectation was to see a neat & fresh film. My one line opinion about the movie is ‘it exceeded my expectations’. Yograj Bhat has again proved that he is one of the best in the industry.

Neat narration, awesome visuals & catchy dialogues makes this film a special & unique one. Yograj Bhat has excelled again both as director & as a writer. He succeeds in smartly presenting the film even with a little story in it. I don’t understand why people expect heavy story with lot of unexpected twists & turns in every film. If you go to this film with such an expectation it is sure to disappoint you. The director has made an honest effort to infuse freshness in every scene of the film. Ganesh has given an outstanding performance. His screen presence & the way he delivers his one liners is simply superb. Digant & Rajesh Krishnan rightly match their roles & have given their best. Daisy Bopanna has given a silent but still effective performance. New comer Bahavana Rao appears lively through out film, but she appears to be very young in front of her pair Rajesh Krishnan. Neethu has given a neat performance & her ‘Thoo’ dialogues are sure to entertain the audience. All other actors including Ananth Nag have done justice to their roles.

Technically, Gaalipata is one of the best made films in the Kannada Film Industry. Credit must go to South India’s top cinematographer Rathnavelu for his excellent work behind Camera. He has made the hills & mountains of Kodachaadri and Kodagu to look even more beautiful through his camera. The choreography is also top class, especially the song ‘na dim dim tana’ deserves a special mention for its awesome choreography. Music director Harikrishna also excels with some nice tunes.

I won’t say Gaalipata is a flawless film but, the freshness it offers in almost every aspect of the film makes us to forget such flaws. On the whole, Gaalipata is a well crafted film & the entire team deserves applauds for its making.

I don’t know what made the leading Kannada daily VK to write such a bad article about Gaalipata on the next day of its release in its main page. There is nothing wrong in giving a complete positive or negative opinion about the movie. BTW, Opinions are like ass, everybody has one. But, an individual’s opinion should not be portrayed as a public opinion. There was no need for VK to write a 100% negative review about the film in its main page as if it is a big national disaster. If they think Gaalipata is poor film, its fine. But, why can’t they remember lot of other poorly made blood shed films or ‘dubba’ remake films like ‘Cheluvina Chittara’ which conveys wrong messages for the society. Why cant they write about them in the main page on the next day of its release?

Few days back i was chatting with one of my blog mate sman about blogging & it’s reach in India. He had a opinion that ‘still blogging is very new to India & there are only few bloggers in the country’. I was not much to his side. Because i don’t think blogging is very new to India. I just went through profiles of bloggers based on their country in Blogger.com. Till today we can see as many as 2,57,000 bloggers in India who are hosting their blogs on Blogspot. I think there are greater number of people hosting their blogs in other popular blog platforms like wordpress & typepad. So if we take the cumulative count into consideration, it doesn’t seem to be a small number. Still i agree that there are lot of people, i mean the internet user’s who doesn’t know much about blogging & its advantages.

I feel in a democratic country like India blogger’s have a very important role to play. It gives an opportunity & a platform for everybody to express their thoughts on various topics. Blogging has been treated as one of the most innovative revolutions of this decade. Not to forget, Indian govt. also took part in this revolution by banning few blogspot blog’s in the later part of 2006. This indirectly helped the bloggers to get a wide media publicity & paved way for the entry of more number of bloggers to the blogosphere. Not just internet literacy but, Blog literacy may also gain more & more significance in the days to come. I hope this revolution continues as more & more people join the elite blog literates club.

Let’s celebrate & spread the spirit of blogging in the new year.

Wish you a healthy & wealthy new year to all the readers.