About the Author
Welcome to my corner of the digital world. I’m Debashish Chakrabarty, a Technical Program Manager nestled in Pune, and if you dig deep enough into the internet’s memory lanes, you might just stumble upon my footprints.
My journey traces back to the humble “geocities” era (with even a BigB fansite), but it was in October 2002 that I embarked on my blogging voyage with fervor. Null Pointer, my English sanctuary, has seen the sun rise and set on various platforms—from the cozy confines of Rediff blogs to the bustling streets of JRoller, before finding a permanent abode in my own hosted WordPress domain. And then there’s NuktaChini, my Hindi haven, where words dance in familiar rhythms, though most of my blogging has now been replaced by micro-blogging at Twitter.
I have been a DMOZ editor (that used to be quite prestigious at the time), created the first Hindi blog-aggregator Chittha Vishwa that also tracked advances in Indic Blogging, launched the first desi blog-awards called The Indibloggies and keep a sharp eye on Indic-blogging.
I have been an avid evangelizer of the usage of Hindi and Indian languages on the Internet and was instrumental in creation of Sarvagya, a wiki aimed at providing primers and advanced tips for people interested in using Hindi (and other Unicode supported Indic languages) on the internet.
I also used to moderate “Chitthakar”, a popular mailing list of Hindi bloggers with over 800 subscribers and have been involved in initiatives like Buno Kahani (a group blog where various authors, literally, weaved a story) and Anugunj (a web event hosted in turn by Hindi bloggers – where various bloggers wrote on a given topic). I occasionally contribute to the Hindi Wikipedia (its now taken over by fanatics).
I published Nirantar, hyped to be the world’s first Hindi blogzine and another Hindi webzine Samayiki, both seldom updated now. I also founded the Hindi Lingua Project of Global Voices Online, a non-profit global citizens’ media project founded at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society (still frequently contribute there).
During those good days I had been contributing towards localization of tools & software. Some of the projects I contributed to, include WordPress, Gregarious, Pebble, IndicJoomla, IJoomla, Scuttle, Snap Shots, Blog Bar and Splitweet.
Yet, as the sands of time shift, the rhythms of life dictate new cadences. Podbharati, my Hindi podcast, once a dream deferred, found new wings in 2021 with “Sopaan“—a stairway to new beginnings. I also started two newsletters Podcast Parikrama, covering the world of audio and podcasts and The Agile Chronicles that covers Agile, Scrum, Lean, Product Development and Leadership. Do read & subscribe.
Wish to connect? You can schedule a tête-à-tête here.
My websites:
The Indibloggies was an annual blog-award clique for Indian Blogs. Indibloggies hosted 5 editions between 2003-2008 and became quite popular and is still regarded as prestigious by the winners. [Get the Hum Blogistani essay series on Kindle or Print] |
Surkhiyan aggregates latest headlines from various online Hindi news feeds such as BBC Hindi, Dainik Bhaskar, Navabharat Times, MSN Hindi, Dainik Jagaran, Deutsche Welle etc. |
A Hindi Podcast Magazine that got nominated for the TATA NEN Hottest startup awards in 2008. StartupDunia also interviewed me. We published 9 episodes covering ~25 reports over a year. The podcast was revived in 2021 with a career podcast Sopaan. |
Chittha Vishwa was the first ever Hindi blog aggregator with resources such as Blog stats, Blogger Profiles, Trivia and Bookmarks (defunct as MyJavaServer shut down its free Java hosting services). |
Nirantar : World’s first Hindi blogzine, covered socio-economic issues, literature and technology. It published 11 editions between March 2005 to July 2008. Now archived. |
Samayiki: Hindi Web magazine that was published in a blog format after Nirantar. Seldom updated. |
Bangla Blog Primer : One of the first tutorials on the web that helped people start blogging in their mother tongue using Unicode in a jiffy. |
Buno Kahani (Hindi for “weave a story”) was a unique attempt of collaborative story writing by a group of Hindi bloggers where they, literally, weave a story. About 6 stories were written this way, each by different authors who take the story forward. |
I created Aavaran in 2005 on Google’s Blogspot to enable Hindi bloggers get ready-to-use Hindi Blogger templates (yes, Blogger didn’t support i18n in those days). The idea was also to adapt popular themes of other blogwares like WordPress to Blogger platform. |
Press mentions:
- Has an Indian blog touched you lately? : Indibloggies finds a mention in this Economic times article. [12 Dec 2005]
- I BLOG, so I am! : Indibloggies gets another mention in Deccan Herald. [15 Jan 2006]
- Shabdanjali: Hindi zine : Interviewed by Anup Shukla, the Hindi blogging doyen, at Shabdanjali magazine (in Hindi).
- Blog Bytes : Quoted in an Asian Age article [12 Mar 2006]
- Battle of the blog : “The Indibloggies Awards…is an idea that clicked for sure” says Anuradha Mane in this Pune city supplement of Indian Express. [10 Feb 2007]
- Blogging Glory : A Brand Reporter Story on the Indibloggies [1 Mar 2007]
- Is there money in them? : A Brand Reporter Story on possibilities of Blog monetization [16 Apr 2007]
- Speaking out : A Dataquest article about blogging in Indian languages. [Web URL] [10 May 2007]
- The Write way to earn : Quoted in a Money Today article [17 May 2007]
- Vernacular bloggers carve a niche on Net : Quoted in an article on Mail Today [9 Feb 2008]
- Ideas that change lives eye Tata Awards A report on Podbharti.com being nominated for the TATA NEN Startup Awards in 2008 : DNA Pune [01 Nov 2008]
- “Hindi crosswords, Tamil stock market analysis, bloggers doing it all”: a TOI story by Shreya Roy Chowdhury on Indic blogging that appeared in press almost after a year. [26 Mar 2010]
- Blogging takes a backseat in tweeting times: Quoted in a DNA Story by Divya Mangwani. [04 Mar 2011]
