Back to our regularly scheduled programming

I think my attempt to get Priya to read the blog was a big success. Not only did it get her to read the blog a few times over the past weekend, last night she was in serious gales of laughter over the whole thing especially Palls' toilet comments. I caught some nice photos of her laughing but she insisted that I don't put them on the blog. (As a substitute here is my photo with my beloved composting pots). And there was a nice flurry of activity and readership around the blog. All to de good. However, I know that the effort will peter out if I try to keep it going long-term so with this I prematurely suspend my successful demonstration that my blog can be as interesting and fun a blog for her as any other. Mission accomplished !




Yesterday I came across one of those things that count as a true Web curiosity. It was a Google ad for blog.mahindrausa.com. Its the blog of a farmer in Kentucky who uses Mahindra tractors. I checked out the site briefly as also www.mahindrausa.com.
Several things struck me:
-Just the concept of seeing Indian tractors being sold in the US is so strange. I remember driving through Texas one night and seeing a billboard for Mahindra or some other tractor company and it was so strange.
-The name mahindrausa.com. Normally most sites are based in the US or elsewhere and you have India as an addendum to get the Indian site as in 'www.ibm.com/in'. Nice to see the reverse in this case.
-The farm blog itself is pretty neat. And a smart idea by Mahindra to use that as a marketing tool
-The homepage of the site says: "J.Deere AG President concedes: Mahindra could surpass Deere in global unit sales"
One of those silent success stories of Indian business.

Here's an article from Business Week that talks about the broader global phenomenon