Blogging about India: bio-fuels, mangoes, bananas, chick-lit and Bollywood · Global Voices
Kamla Bhatt

We have a real mish-mash of writings about India this week. The medley of topics include: bio-fuels, chick lit, mangoes, bananas, Madras and Bollywood.
Is there another oil crisis around the bend, and do we need to look at alternate fuel sources to keep our cars, SUVs, and other petrol/guzzling machines going? Given the rising price of oil, bio-fuels appear to have caught the imagination of some investors, and notable among them is Vinod Khosla. You can read about bio-fuels in Reuben's post.
If you missed the whole debate about Kaavya Viswanathan's debut book you can catch up on it by reading Komal Mehta's post about the book. Read here about What Komal Mehta Thinks of Opal Mehta.  Kaavya, a Harvard under-grad, got paid a huge sum of money for her debut chick-lit novel.  The book was recently pulled out from circulation because of the alleged plagarism by this young author.
Since Kaavya is originally from Chennai (Madras) I went looking for bloggers who were writing about Chennai/Madras, and this is what I discovered. Madras, or Chennai as it is known, is the capital of the southern state of Tamil Nadu has finally made it to Google Map says Ashwin Kumar.  Check out Google Map images of Chennai in his blog here. Pandian has a wonderful entry and photo about Madras Museum Theatre.
Mangoes are on everybody's mind.  Mangoes originated in the Indian sub-continent and are fondly referred to as the “king of fruits.” ‘Tis the season for mangoes and everyone is talking about it in India and outside of India too. This mango mania seems to have been unleased by New York Time's article about this wonderful and delicious fruit. Many bloggers have used that article as a launching pad and quickly penned in their own memories about the  fruit. So, Vidya writes about how her father got his stash of mangoes. Vidya's favorite mango is the  “Rumaani”  from Vellore. There are over hundreds of different varities of mangoes in India. Dyanmic Ram writes that his grandmother compared buying mangoes to matrimony. Read and discover for yourself  how and why his grandmother came up with the analogy. Luv2cook shares two delicious and mouth watering recpies using what else, but mangoes.
Speaking of fruits it appears that wild bananas are disappearing in India. Rebecca has a post about the vanishing bananas and here is a link to banana museum from her posting. Bollywood, as Hindi cinema is often described, appears to have captured the imagination of non-Indians. SmartMama writes that she never aspired to make it big in Hollywood, but she aspires to make it big in Bollywood. We wish her luck with her blond hair and green eyes.