SUSPENSION OF OPERATIONS

Dear friends,

Long before you and I had heard of the Internet, I had the habit of maintaining newspaper clippings pertaining to the Northeast. It was an arduous task — buying newspapers, stashing them all over the house, clip the relevant news items, paste them as diligently as possible on sparling white sheets, filing them away. At one point I used to buy no fewer than eight dailies and a host of magazines. Soon enough it became too much to handle. The Internet had just made it to India, and I had this notion — why not have it all on the Net? It would take care of all the raddi in the house, and would be available for one and all.

So it — Northeast Vigil — started. Merely as a voluminous email newsletter at first. And then, as encouraging mails poured in, as a website. Sooner than anticipated it again grew in size, and consequently grew out of control too. Many a times I have tried to rein things in, but each time that I did, things before I knew spun out of control again. The Northeast Vigil site (www.northeast vigil.in) as things stand, is hopelessly out-of-date and it is beyond me to keep updating it. Especially, when I think of the backlog that has to be cleared. In plain and simple words, it is a failure, it is a monumental disaster as far as I am personally concerned.

If anything still kept it going were the words of encouragement, though few and far between, that kept trickling in. But such words cannot keep a site running. It surely did not as far as Northeast Vigil is concerned. What was once a handicap has now become a farce. A site that cannot be updated needs to be shut down. I did not make it a commercial site, because the purpose would have been self-defeating. But running a site so huge in size and maintaining it too, needs a lot of money. And I can’t really keep subsidising it from my savings for ever.

The Northeast Vigil site lived on hope. That hope seems quite misplaced today. I am, therefore, suspending the site with immediate effect. The Northeast-Forum discussion list which was part of Northeast Vigil has to be closed down too. I am terribly sorry if I have let down those who found the site to be of some use. But believe me, it hurts me more than it does anyone else.

Bye.

Subir Ghosh
October 7, 2006

Subir Ghosh
Northeast Vigil
northeastvigil@gmail.com