MARRIAGE

Wedding!

An Indian wedding is one of the most joyous events in a couple's life, but it can prove to be a major challenge. In today's society, where cross-cultural or cross-traditional marriages are common, the big hurdle is making the rituals appropriate for all concerned. The website,www.weddingsutra.com [http://www.weddingsutra.com/us_index.asp], dedicated exclusively to Indian weddings, is an excellent guide with clear descriptions of rituals for most Indian cultures, designer wedding fashions, tips ranging from etiquette and hair styles to wedding feasts, marriage hall decorations and much more.

DEVOTION

Murugan's Supersite

For the murugan devotee, this is a dream come true! Murugan Bhakti, the Skanda-Kumaran Super Site (www.murugan.org [http://murugan.org/]), is the home of nine websites and 1,300 pages with information devoted to the "Beautiful One." Originally scattered over many sites, this package has been compliled into a masterpiece containing virtually everything you could ever hope to find on the Web about Murugan, Skanda, Kumar, Karttikeya, Palani, or any of the other 108 names of the God of religious striving. There are picture galleries, research articles, legends, maps and guides to His many temples. It is an uplifting site that truly illustrates the famous quote from the Tirumurai, "In the gloom of fear, His six-fold face gleams. In perils unbounded, His Vel betokens, "Fear not."

CULTURE

All About Bhutan

Due to popular demand, the museum exhibition "Bhutan, Mountain Fortress of the Gods" was converted into a virtual exhibition (www.ifs.univie.ac.at/~bhutan/ [http://timphu.bhutan.at/~bhutan/test002/index.php3]) by the Austrian Government. The original exhibition toured Austria, Spain, Switzerland and Holland from 1997 to 2000. From the site one can sense the friendliness of the people of Bhutan, the beauty of the countryside, and how both the Buddhist and Hindu religion permeate the culture of this small country. There are so many side trips on this site that it is beneficial to take The Guided Tour or view the sitemap to help plan your journey.

RESOURCE

Indian Linguistics

With the digital explosion of information out of mother India comes a need to computerize Her languages. Fortunately, the Website for Multilingual Systems,http://acharya.iitm.ac.in/ [http://acharya.iitm.ac.in/]is working hard to make this easy and practical. It's a bold effort to create a uniformity in the scripts of the many Indian languages, so they can be used on a computer in the everyday world. The monumental task is still in the beginning stages. An extensive site, the project offers Sanskrit lessons and numerous scripts, including Sanskrit, Tamil, Bengali and thirteen others, in a way that can be used on the Web or in a word processor. There is also a text-to-sound converter designed to help the blind.