The merry mutineers

BLOG.COM

There once was a group of brown nerds
Who spent all their time toying with words
They all loved to blog
(some from a city with fog)
B/c let's face it, a social life's for the birds.

"" http://www.sepiamutiny.com , July 2004

The Aamir Khan-starrer The Rising, about Mangal Pandey and the 1857 Mutiny, is going to be all the news in movie screens for the next few weeks "" but if you're online and want more than just three hours' worth of entertainment think Sepia, not Sepoy.

One of the most elegantly designed and consistently interesting blogs around is Sepia Mutiny, started by a group of South Asian bloggers around a year ago "as a civilised but irreverent rebellion against the reality that South Asian American media lacked incisive analysis of news and issues that many in our community are concerned about".

In July last year Abhishek Tripathi, Manish Vij, Anna John, Vinod Vallavollili, "Ennis" and Sajit Gandhi "" all bloggers, based in various parts of the US "" came together to address some of these issues.

"Our broad community," explain the blogmeisters, "lacked an un-spun, uncut yet substantive perspective that reported on the finer details, asked tough questions and sometimes motivated the community to act. We wanted to provide a venue for all this while concurrently entertaining our readers." Sepia Mutiny was the result.

Personally speaking, I usually find general-interest blogs more fun to read than specialised ones. On Sepia Mutiny the posts are classified by month and subject (caution: a decent Net connection is recommended when you trawl the archives, for a month's worth of posts on this site adds up to a lot of material "" both text and photos).

Categories range from the expected, like "Politics", "Arts and Entertainment", "Religion" and "Science and Technology", to the offbeat, like "Comics" and "Haiku".

The site is updated very frequently and if you visit even once every two days chances are you'll find something of interest "" from racist notices on tube stations and political developments that could affect the diaspora to links to silly music videos and "evangelical ghazals".

Humour is as relevant as anything else to the site's popularity. Given the number of issues facing young south Asians based abroad, one of the most remarkable things about Sepia Mutiny is its lightness of touch, even when addressing serious topics.

Right from the snappy answers in the FAQ section ("What does desi mean? It's slang for the cultures of South Asia and the diaspora. It's similar to homeboy or paesano") to the pithiness of the comments, the focus is on being cool, even punk.

Some of the webmasters do put up longer, more thoughtful posts and conversations on their own individual blogs "" the links to which you'll find on the Sepia Mutiny sidebar "" but the accent on this group blog is on short posts: multiple links to stories that are of interest to desis, accompanied by some commentary. Guest bloggers like Amardeep Singh, a US-based academic, and Turbanhead (another group blog) weigh in occasionally.

Still wondering about the name? Maintaining Sepia Mutiny, says founder-member Abhishek Tripathi, tongue only slightly in cheek, includes hard work, long hours, no pay and eternal glory. "Just like a true mutiny."

Jai Arjun Singh, aka Jabberwock, blogs at
http://jaiarjun. blogspot. com