Using Paypal to pay for things has been quite easy for folk who have credit cards in India, but until now accepting payment using Paypal was impossible for Indian sellers without a US/UK bank account. With Paypal’s new “Request a Cheque” feature, this is set to change.

Now Indians can get rupee cheques mailed to them from Paypal on request (minimum $150 equivalent with a $5 service charge). This ought to be a big boost for e-commerce in India because it’s now a lot easier for most Indians to sell on eBay or over the web than it was previously.

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Hello and welcome to the 3rd mela of the year! Without much ado –

The Philadelphia radio jockeys who dialed and harassed an Indian call centre worker got a lot of ink from many Indian bloggers this week. Shanti wondered why many Indians cried foul about racism when the jockeys should really have been excoriated for extremely poor judgement and taste. Psybaba posits that the complainers are too touchy by half and that Indians are not blameless when it comes to racial stereotyping.

On the other hand, even as radio jockeys are bad-mouthing call centre workers, JK notes that globalization affects more than IT and auto-parts — IT enabled services now include teaching.

Amit Varma’s posts on the tsunami were predictably nominated, but instead of pointing to the individual posts I’ll direct you to indiauncut-tsunami.blogspot.com where he’s helpfully compiled all his despatches from the tsunami affected areas of Tamil Nadu. Read it all.

Ravikiran, meanwhile, has been wondering why the government of India is intent on destroying the traditional livelihood of the thousands of fishermen who dot India’s long coastline with its new Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) measure. Yazadjal notes that the CRZ is a classic top-down bureaucratic response and offers an alternative.

Yazad also has a set of interesting posts (part 1, part 2) that touch upon the nature of capitalism as demonstrated by the rise in prices of staple goods has been a second disaster for the already-suffering tsunami victims. Pradeep has had similar thoughts and concludes that no-holds-barred capitalism cannot be the answer.

The tsunami could not break Madras/Chennai’s stride though — it was business as usual in the city. Vinod G notes the ATP Chennai Open finished a few days ago to good crowds, even if the highlight of the match for certain sections of the audience seemed to be a certain shirt-changing player.

India signed an agreement this week to build a oil and gas pipeline into the country from Burma through Bangladesh as well as, interestingly, Iran. Given that any Iranian pipeline has to travel through Pakistan (especially troublesome Balochistan), JK notes that this is an excellent opportunity for India to boost its image and build relations in a traditionally volatile part of the world.

The other issue that got a lot of ink was a little too meta, but considering it went right under the radar of most Indian English blogs, I felt it was worth covering. Madhu’s decision to exclude Hindi blogs in the last blog mela (based, as he notes, on very pragmatic reasons) sparked off a lively (and not always very friendly) discussion in the Hindi blog world, one of the first results of which was Chittha-charcha (blog review), a weblog devoted to a monthly roundup of Hindi blogdom, with other Indic languages to follow. I hope they do well, but as I’ve noted before, it’d be great if Indian bloggers used the distributed intelligence inherent in the blogosphere to minimize linguistic differences instead of exacerbating them.

On the other hand, in a post that surely is (fair) fuel for the language wars, Patrix asks why Indians pre-judge other Indians based on their command over English. Even though English receives equal standing with approximately 23 other languages, it is somehow more equal than others.

The petition currently before India’s Supreme Court to remove ‘Sindh’ from the national anthem was received with disbelief and derision from many bloggers. I just hope no one tells the plaintiff about the German anthem, which has Deutschland über alles stretching all the way from Holland to the Baltic.

Praveen submitted a well-written post about the bearded thief, which stood out by not really fitting in anywhere. But I’m guessing every Indian town and village has its characters, and thaadi kallan here could really be from anywhere in the country.

Food-blogging (or should that be food-and-beverages blogging?): Madhu Menon in his avatar as chef-incardinate at Shiok Food leads us to steamed rice nirvana, and even presents a lovely dish to go along with it — orange-lemon chicken, mmm… and Ravishankar Shrivastava has a paean to tea, the lubricant that keeps most Indians moving throughout the day. Then again, Inkspillz writes about life at college with a beverage of another kind.

Finally, food for the soul: Jitendra Chaudhary is out to create an easily accessible Ramayana in Devanagri on the web. So far, he’s got Part I — “baalkaand” — online. Blogger’s group-blogging capabilities could come in useful here, so go volunteer if stuff like this interests you.

That’s all for this week, folks. Thanks to all who nominated entries, and apologies to those whose entries I could not include. The next mela will be held on January 21 at selectiveamnesia.org. You can view the schedule (and volunteer) here.

Update 15 Jan 9:45pm: Updated post in response to this.

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2005’s 2nd Blog Mela might have fizzled, but the Hindi Blog Mela equivalent, चिट्ठाचर्चा (BlogReview), has got off the ground with a link-rich collection of Hindi and English links. Good going!

On the other hand, I am not sure who’re behind this site, but I do wish that they’d consider a simultaneously translating their posts to English (like Merde in France). There are many Indians who cannot read Hindi (and even for those who can there are several challenges, but that’s the subject of another post). Also, if चिट्ठाचर्चा’s plans for other language blog reviews get off the ground, these other-language blogs would find a much wider pan-Indian audience if translations were available (and on blogs, poster/commenters’ distributed intelligence ensures that the cost of translations is low).

India is unique in being divided by language like no other nation in the world. It would be a shame if the Indian blogosphere added to this division instead of minimizing it.

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While we wait for the year’s 2nd mela to be put up at Nilesh’s place, all ye bloggers who wish their screeds included in the 3rd भारतीय blog मेला this year — direct your entries this way or comment below. Entries submitted ought to have an India angle in there somewhere (either that, or be scoop-memepool weird). Entries in Hindi are welcome because I can read the language. I’m not going to constrain submitters on ‘personal’ posts, but they have to be well-written to be included in the mela.

Entries for this mela should have been posted between Jan 8 through 14.

Update 12 Jan: The Mela will be up after 9pm GMT 14th Jan.

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Karthik blogged about my leaving Chennai even before I managed to land at Gatwick.

Yes, I have now left Chennai for good and settled (temporarily) in Hertfordshire, not far from the beautiful Chiltern Hills. Photographs ought to follow shortly if I can get my camera to meet the winter sun that manages to peek out of the clouds for two hours around noon each day.

The last 4½ years have been a blast, and for that I am very grateful to many CSS India-ers and folk who sweated blood to make Synaptris a reality. This post is meant for each one I couldn’t say goodbye to in person. Of course, I expect we’ll continue to see each other from time to time! Until then, you know how to contact me.

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