Click to play videoMumbai: It is a busy morning in the middle of the week and yet seats quickly fill up at a meeting in Matunga’s famous Idli House.
Along with breakfast, a whole host of ideas are chewed on for this man's brainchild- an Internet audioblog-cum-community radio.
With approximately 1-lakh members all belonging to the Saraswat community, the membership has only doubled and strengthened
“The community was started because a lot of our community is abroad. The further away you are, the more you want to belong to your roots,” says founder, Radioidli.blogspot.com, Nagesh Pai.
Radioidli aims at uniting the community that is divided into numerous sub sects, mostly by dialect.
Contributors showcase the best of their community so interviews, bhajan requests, and songs are all part of the fare.
Contributors including Lokabhiram, an anonymous regular and pithy commentary on social norms in the Mangalorean dialect, or Aparna who sings Konkani bhajans often attain instant fame within the community.
“It has helped me showcase my talent. Today a number of people are aware of my singing talent,” says Aparna.
When the site was launched in January this year, it had just 15 hits from within the group itself.
Today the site reaches out to more than 4000 Konkani speaking Saraswats, some as far away as the United Kingdom and America.
However, Pai has bigger ambitions. He wants to create a model for other communities to follow.
So technology is slowly creating a homogenised world, but Pai and his friends are using the same technology to keep their cultural identity alive and well.
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