September 15, 1999, Day 1.
These were the early days of the web . After spending about 4 year in the group RMIM, I realized that people were eager to share their photos and song collections. Also I was surprised to find that many people had not even heard of the Hindi Film Geet Kosh. I looked for a free website provider and I found netcolony.com. I created an elementary html based website and put pictures of some character actors and others. I also made it possible for people buy Hindi Film Geet Kosh. I put some more stuff on the website. Then about six months later I decided to announce it on RMIM. Here is the announcement :
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Hi RMIMers:
I have created my hobby home page. (Some day I will also have a
professional home page and a family home page and a .....)
If you have always wanted to buy Hindi Film Geet Kosh and other stuff
from Har Mandir Singh, but did not know how to get a draft in Indian
Rupees to pay him, my page suggests an easy way. Just send a personal
check to me and he will mail you the stuff from Kanpur.
I also have 70 photos of Hindi film people, some famous some not too
famous.
The address is
http://www.netcolony.com/entertainment/surjit/
This photo collection will expand to have hundreds if not thousands of
photos. I see lots of movies and have SNAPPY to capture video and COREL
PHOTOPAINT to cleanup the images. I just wish I had more time.
Of course, if you have good quality photos (in any format) of
little-known film people active to about 1959 (mostly), I would love to
have them.
This collection is, in part, a reaction to hundreds of collections
having endless photos of juhi chawla and madhuri dixit. Come on kids,
even I know how they look like by now. How many photos of these fine
ladies do we need? Now if you are talking about madhubaalaa, that's a
different story. Even 20,000 photos of her are not enough. Give me more.
Enjoy!
Surjit Singh, a diehard movie fan(atic), period.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
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Nita Awatramani was the only person who replied with encouraging words. She wrote:
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The photo Index is fabulous, Surjitji. The small tidbits of information
are a great touch. I got to know some things I didn't know. I hope you
will add more photos soon. It is indeed a refreshing change from those
Madhuri-Aishwarya Rai-et al photo sites.
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Everybody else totally ignored the post!
But my grandma had told me that you have to keep doing what you like doing and not care about anybody else, so I did not give up and continued putting stuff on the website. Eventually other people started giving stuff. Some of the earliest people are Dr Manohar Lal Kapur, Allahdad Khan via Dr Khawar Siddiqui, Narsingh Agnish, Hem Jain and Roberto Jungbahadoer.
I started to put more photos, more songs and I also started to write about my own life so that people would know more about me. Then suddenly one day netcolony deleted all their websites! I did not have a backup, not even a screencap. Learned a valuable lesson.
Then I paid for a domain and a website from yahoo.com in 2002 and that is where it has been.
In September 2014, I decided to use a content management system called Joomla and reorganize the site around that. Most people did not say anything, songs were still posted and people were downloading, more pictures were posted and people were downloading. However, there was one very violent reaction from a dear friend of mine. He wrote me a lengthy and a nasty email, criticizing my decision to change the website, even using many 4 letter words. I laughed so hard that I fell off my chair. We are still good friends :)
When I retired, I decided to start a section called Musings, the first one in August 2017.
I am celebrating 25th anniversary of my website. Thank you all my visitors, friends, and family for your support. I hope to continue doing this for a while.
Now You Know!
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