On the 20th November 2020, I got a mail from Ameen Sayani sir for Geetmala. A few days backs when I was listening to his episode on the Saregama YouTube channel recorded in 2009, I got his email and curiously mailed him and surprisingly got the reply too.

Who is Ameen Sayani?

Ameen Sayani is a popular former radio announcer from India. He achieved fame and popularity all across South Asia when he presented his Binaca Geetmala program (1952-1988 & 1989-1994) of hits over the airwaves of Radio Ceylon. He is one of the most imitated announcers even today.

His style of addressing the crowd with "Behno aur Bhaiyo " (meaning "sisters and brothers") as against the traditional "Bhaiyo aur Bahno" is still treated as an announcement with a melodious touch.

This radio program was started when my father wasn't born and ended before my birth. I couldn't listen to the original show, but the recorded show and those memories are really great. I just love that concept of playing those old songs, with those old interviews, new updates about those actors, singers, lyricists, composers.

Why I'm listening to Geetmala?

For some reason, I love to listen to slow music. Though I'm very bad to recognize the voice and unable to remember the names easily, but I use to listen to songs repeatedly.

After quitting my job, I'm working from one place only and that is from my bedroom and listening to songs while working. In 2018, I found the Saregama Carvaan Weekend Classic radio show with Ruchi, and then this year, I found the Geetmala series and started listening.

A few days back, when I was writing an article about a Bangladeshi actress for Wikipedia Asia Month, I heard his voice and curiously searched his name and found something interesting about him which I've mentioned above. And after one or two days, I found his email id and send him an e-mail.

Why I mailed him?

Since 2015, I'm trying to write something and I've written a few stories, some funny poems also. I couldn't write stories up to that mark for which people could remember me, but some people said some inspiring words when I had started the College Diary Series and later also. I felt those claps, a few words are a really great thing for me, and for that reason, I just mailed him.

But I was shocked when I saw his reply. His words are really inspiring. I don't know if he has replied or not, but I think it's real because, in some of his shows, he talked about some emails which he used to get from the listeners. Anyway this a great thing for me actually.

This year CIS-A2K has planned a mini edit-a-thon on 2nd and 3rd October in 2020 for the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. Here is my experience with this edit-a-thon.

I got a message about this edit-a-thon from a friend Nitesh Gill, who is now working with the CIS-A2K team. So, I signed up on 25th September.

Within these 2 days, I've created 5 articles related to Mahatma Gandhi. I had translated the articles of the family members of Mahatma Gandhi from English Wikipedia.

Before this, I don't have much idea about his family, who are his son, who are there with him in South Africa or India during the Independence movement, etc. But through this, I gain a little bit of knowledge about all these things.

This mini edit-a-thon on a specific topic actually helped to read more and create more number of articles about that place, thing, or person. And if I'm getting 30 days, I use to think, I've lots of days, but at the end, I could create 3 to 4 articles, but this time, I had just 2 days and the beginning of the month means to cover all the news, messages, reviews about the recent edition of Shubhapallaba Magazine, but still I was able to create 5 articles which is greater than the number of articles I've created in last Wikipedia Asian Month in 2019.

On Odia Wikipedia, Priti Ranjan Tripathy Bhai, R Ashwini Banjana Murmu Bhai and I had created a total of 7 article including my 5 articles. You could find the list of article here on this link below.

https://or.wikipedia.org/s/1ioa

Project Tiger, a collaboration of Wikipedia with Google to add and improve the Indic Wikipedia articles. After completing this edit-a-thon successfully in 2018, the CIS-A2K again started the 2nd round as GLOW which abbreviates as Growing Local Language Content on Wikipedia.

During the 1st time, I got the Chromebook, so this time I had applied for the Internet. Nitesh Gill and Suswetha Kolluru, the Project Tiger Co-ordinators from CIS-A2K had helped me a lot from the beginning.

Before starting this project, I had participated in Project Tiger Community Consultation at Chennai in March 2019, where we had planned for this edit-a-thon.

This edit-a-thon started from the 10th of October in 2019 and ended on 10th January 2020. This time, we got the chance to choose the articles for this edit-a-thons from which we had created just 155 articles.

Dr. Subas Chadran Rout had created 76 articles, Aliva Sahoo had created 48, Harihar Satpathy had created 24 articles, and I had created just 6. In those days I had an issue with the company where I was working, so couldn't create many articles, but overall we had improved from the previous edit-a-thon.

In 2018, I was in Bangalore and had participated in an offline edit-a-thon at CIS-A2K office, Bangalore, where I had created 4 or 5 articles in one day, but at this time, we couldn't conduct any offline edit-a-thon, which might help to create more articles.

The overall experience is good and for this edit-a-thon, some new and good* articles are created on Odia Wikipedia. I couldn't participate more in this edit-a-thon, but the internet support is still on, which is definitely helping me to create articles every day for the #100wikidays.

I must thank all the co-ordinators from Wikimedia Foundation, CIS-A2K, Local Jury members, all the participants, and the Google team for this project.

Once Odia producer Akshaya Parija had announced an Odia film Bakshi Jagabandhu featuring Anubhav Mohanty based on the Paika Rebellion in Odisha.

At that time, I had planned to create a page about this film on Odia Wikipedia. Later, someone else created, but still, the film is pending. Later I heard some gossips about this film.

Just 2 to 3 days back I came to know about a film trailer named "Paika Bidroha" on the Twitter timeline of Odia actor Samaresh Routray.

It's a short Odia film on the Paika Rebellion in Odisha featuring two famous villains of Odia film Industry Samaresh Rourtray and Manoj Mishra, both were students of National School of Drama.

The film is available on YouTube, you should watch it and have to know that part of the history of Odisha.

I love the way they presented the film to us. As a short film, they had picturized the whole thing within around 25 minutes, which is easy for this generation, because now all want a big novel as a short story.

I should thank the cast and the whole production team for making this film and releasing it on YouTube.