dippu.com

I'm up early this morning and realizing that there could be a new beginning for this web site. Many may have noticed that I haven't written on this for a while and neither have my colleagues. As a matter of fact, the last person to write on this site was zimblymallu, someone who I had to plead, beg, and threaten to get him to write a year ago. I'm typing on my laptop this morning sort of resigned to the idea that everyone has moved on. Blogging seems like such a chore to me sometimes. We started this site as a way for young people in Portland to correspond online. Everyone had their own blog those days in 2005. One by one, each blog dropped off the face of the earth.

Ashish still writes consistently at his website  ashishjoy.com, I still write on my blog at daycruz.wordpress.com. Bobby got engaged, and I think he still writes although I haven't read his blog in ages. Zimbly, also known as Pramod has been working on getting into a few business schools and also continues to write. Why am I saying all this? Everyone has moved on from dippu.com including myself. i still have a dream for this site though and hope that it will be achieved at some point. I'd like to start writing again just under the condition for myself that this will not be burdened with high expectations. This will be, at least for now, what dippu was meant to be: a project for desis. We never actually figured out what the point of the project was. I actually liked that fact though. It was nice to not have any pressure and just post whatever the heck we felt like. Our site became tough and boring for us to even post on when we had Malayalee uncles and aunties visiting every day. We became too darn Pentecostal for our own good. Now that I think about it, I feel awful for poor Brethren Bobby.

Am I saying that we're not Pentecostal or Malayalee? Well, I know Bobby's not Pentecostal. I'm not even sure if I'm not. The point though is that we are willing to talk about anything and everything. And as a personal aside, we're willing to talk about anything as long as it glorifies God. I head out tomorrow morning on a road trip with my parents to start up school again at Azusa Pacific University. I probably won't have time to write here as much as I'd like but I want anyone that is reading this to know that I still care about this site and that it has not left my mind. Dippu.com will continue but we will hold off on any aspirations and for the time-being just be a website dedicated to a group of goofy guys having fun and glorifying God at the same time.

It's a lie. All of it. We have spent the last year or so, living a lie. All at the behest of a mandan whose hearing disorder has resulted in a combination of syllables that may be the perfect malayalee name, but is actually the result of faulty hearing.

dippu.com. Does it sound like a real name for a website?

and yet it is us.

dippu.com.

I finally heard the truth from Decruz. He broke down completely and wept. "It's all a lie. How could they do this to me? Is everything I've ever believed a lie?" In the midst of this soul searching, I had the temerity to ask him what the problem was and found out the whole sad story. A story which puts the very existence of dippu.com at risk. Yet, in the best interests of journalistic integrity, I leave this story with you.

He was sitting at his ancestral home in Kerala when his world crumbled around him. Feeling very proud of himself, he mentioned that he had a website which provided a unique perspective on the south asian christian movement. And he added a kicker. "I named it after that dog we used to have here. Dippu."

He got blank stares.

"You know, Dippu, that little black and brown mongrel that used to bark incessantly whenever people came from foreign."

A lone voice piped up,"We didn't have any dogs named Dippu."

Indignantly," What? Of course we did, and we called him Dippu, Dippu."

Comprehension seemd to dawn on a few faces. There were "Ohhh"s and some of them started laughing. "That wasn't Dippu. That was Tippu. You thought your grandmother called it Dippu, so you always called it that. Now we know why." Decruz wasn't ready to let it go, so he had his grandmother come out and asked her what the dog's name was. Sure enough, she said "Tdippu" with the T silent.

This is a moment of loss for all of us. We are mourning the loss of a dog's name, a name that defined who we were. A name that inspired my slogan in better days.

We dippu in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

What can we do with Tippu? On a related note, why are there so many dogs in Kerala named after kings and generals. Tippu, Raja, Kaiser, Captain, Rex, Sultan, Rani, the list goes on.

We must find new meaning in dippu. No matter the cost, we continue to dippu. I Dippu. We all Dippu. Mad love, and much respect to the memory of our lost dippu. Pour some out for the name. We keep the faith.

Can I just say something about the whole commenting scheme we got going on here...We allow for people to write anonymously on this site. This means you can take up any else's name and write under it as your own. We advise against this and Dippu is not into having some idiot take someone else's name and post crap as if their own. It truly is reviling and preposterous to say the least. If you the reader would like to have the power of commenting, where you can say you are so and so, please comment with civility and dignity. If however you would like us to control the commenting structure, and only have people comment who are registered members of dippu we can do that as well. I'm tired of watching this immature charade of so called intelligent people acting like buffoons on a blog that many people read. You the reader deserve more than that. Please help us keep dippu sane and professional.

Thanks,
ashish, and the entire dippuTeam

Wow. One year already... Dippu.com turns one today.. congratulations to us!

Hello everyone, sorry for the long delay in writing something on here but we have a good excuse! We have a really good one! Dippu.com is moving. We haven't made all the decisions yet, but here's what the plan looks like- In about a month or so, we will come back with an entirely new host and a new look. We started this website as a simple blog this last April, and it has become a bit more than that for all of us. I don't want to reveal too much about what we're going to do, but I just wanted to say that Dippu.com will become a part of the Desi Christian community. I thank those of you who still come around and check it every day despite the lack of recent updates. You people are the reason we love this thing to death. Ashish, Zimbly, and I will be sticking around next year, Bobby is still a maybe. But we know that everyone will be working hard to update more, research more, and to produce more original stories here at Dippu.com. We encourage you folks to seek the Lord this new year more than ever before. Trust in Him.

God Bless You! Happy New Year!

Note: I will be leaving this site up for a while and then bring it down momentarily in a couple of months when we make the move. Please drop us an email if you have any suggestions. 

The phrase "chewing the cud" or anything sounding similar is hereby banned from dippu.com. Any more mention of it will result in immediate violence from my part. All with Christian love, of course. You have been warned.

The number of hits each day has dropped down after the close of the events in August and September, but we have kept a core group of readers. I personally enjoy receiving comments from a distinct group of readers and hear what they have to say on anything I put up. One problem that we face is the amount of articles produced sometimes pushes the other ones down. So I've provided a sort of map to go about and showcase the past few posts. First of I talk about my views and love and marriage and meeting an amazingly beautiful girl. Many people have asked me what exactly made this girl so beautiful. I really can't put my finger on it, sorry guys. Right after that, I wrote about the earthquake in Pakistan shocked just about everyone as we see the horrible heartache that people have to go through. The death toll has just moved up to 30,000 and counting. Let's keep those people in our prayers. All this talk of natural disasters and calamities have brought to the forefront the talk of prophets again. It was continued by a letter from one of our readers, Robert Burns, who asked for our ideas about revelations before a disaster. And finally, I got the taste of a nice kick in the teeth over at Sepia Mutiny for a few comments I made about my faith. I had quite a few reasonable people defending me actually until about the end. Check that out here.

So we continue to blog, and we ask our readers to continue to read. Dippu.com is still here, and we will continue to provide you with thought provoking articles, stir some debate, and last but not least, provide it all through a Desi Christian perspective.

All right, here's the deal. Dippu.com was started as a secular site by Ashish and I. I was quite adamant that it be secular. Then over time, I've decided to base this as a site for non-Christians and Christians alike. We mix both in. It has come to my attention that several people have seen the Desi of the Week post and have complained about the picture that I have up on there. This is understandable, as the picture is not the most appropriate. I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to anyone who may have gotten tripped up in their Christian walk because of that picture. If anyone feels hurt because I put up that picture, I apologize to you as well. But the picture stays. I have made a decision not to take off the picture for the same reason I refused to take off the Saddam Hussein picture. Once something gets put on this website by me (this is personally about me) I will not remove it. I sincerely apologize once again to all of you who were hurt and felt hurt. I hope people link here, I really do, part of being on the blogosphere means you link to other places. But if this incident has caused you to unlink me, then that's also allright. As I have sort of implied above, your space is your space. You decide what you want to do with it. It's your right. I will keep all the links we have already put up. I enjoy them, that's why they are up. For those of you visiting this site, I hope you continue to do so. We will do our best to continue to provide you with above-par content in the coming days. If you feel angry still, please understand, you choose where you go online. You can choose not to come here. It's very simple. Thank you for your readership, and may God bless you.

I know none of you will click on the About Us link to your left on the NavBar, but you should! We have completely changed our vision and our goals for dippu.com. We have added another correspondant to our group bringing our total to four. Keep sending in those tips and helping this blog grow!

It's official, the blogosphere is growing faster than ever. A new weblog is created every second. As some of you might see, we here at Dippu.com have also expanded our West Coast Bloggers list as we come across new blogs from you all West Coast Bloggers. As it stands right now, our list has expanded to 11 bloggers, with Jensen and Simi as the newest bloggers added. If any of you our readers have a blog or know of another Indian blogger, please don't hesitate to tell us about it.

I was threatened a few hours ago ...

Is this fair? If I'm a guest blogger? Can I be threatened in this manner? Somebody nip this attitude in the bud!

EDITOR'S NOTE: Well he really hasn't produced anything now, has he?

We've just been around that's all. Both Ashish and I have been busy with all sorts of things lately. We have officially become members of squarespace by ending our trial period. Thus, the real fun is about to begin. I look forward to this site growing and such. By the way, we have member spots for fifty people. If you are interested, email us with what you would like your username and password to be. We are thinking about adding some more interactive features for your enjoyment. I apologize for the long absence. But don't fear! DIPPU will be back and stronger than ever before. And we will be back very soon...

Our first entry to the Indian Blog Mela ever! If you guys don't know what that it is, it's just simply a roundup of Indian posts from around the world. And Ashish and I nominated ourselves for it. This is a great place to check out other Indian bloggers- most of them far better writers than I. I thirst for the day when we can write as well as them. Go check it out and enjoy the ever-expanding blogosphere.

Due to my new found fame, many people have been clamoring to see a glimpse of me. They want to know who the real DayCruz is. But you know, the funny thing is- someone asked me what the best way to get hits on your website is. They assumed that I would know since dippu.com is so dang popular now. Apparently, the answer to that question is one word: Aishwarya. Since my two Aishwarya posts this past weeks our hits have been consistently high. A look at the refferals shows us that many people came to this site through searching for "Aishwarya + Oprah" on Google. So the key? Put up more pictures of Aishwarya Rai. And try to write Aishwarya's name as much as possible.


...



Aishwarya Rai.


Perhaps we'll turn into an all Aishwarya Rai website. What do you think?

Bobby and I in the beginning- pretty calm and collected. Interested in each other's opinions.... And this is how the debate ended- pretty sad actually....


So kids, what did DeCruz learn today? Bobby doesn't like it when people make fun of his kundi!

Just wanted to let you readers know that we've updated our admin blog with some neat stuff. On the admin blog, you'll find some neat site link pics that you can use on your website or weblog to link back to dippu.com. The source code to do so is also included; all you have to do is follow the directions. We've also included a neat desktop background that you can download and use on your desktop. Take a look and give us feedback on these new offerrings at dippu.com. Commenting is the key to our improval

We're changing how you think,

dippuTeam

Here's myself and Daycruz...don't ask what daycruz is doing though, cause his finger has somehow started searching for...

I hereby dedicate dippu.com to DIPENDRA SHAKYA who apparently owned this domain a long time ago. Go check out his website for a good read, I hope Dipendra checks out dippu.com to see how wonderful this site is. Thank you, Dipendra, for leaving such a legacy- I vow right here that I shall follow your message and "DO IT, DO IT RIGHT, DO IT RIGHT NOW." If you don't know what I'm talking about-- check out the dude's website below-

Dipendra

Just wondering if anyone would be willing to post some pictures of themselves or anything in general. If you do, please email the admin and send the picture. We could just cut and paste pictures from people's blog, but that's not really anything new, it's just regurgitation of yesterday's news. If anyone of you has something funny and would like to share please do email us the picture. And btw...please email a caption as well for the picture so that can be posted as well.