During early 80’s and 90’s, everyone was accustomed with the habit of reading newspaper in the morning with a cup of coffee or tea. We were so much relying on newspapers to read the content.
Those who had interest in movies, FRIDAY was a special day. Newspapers used to carry an extra edition exclusive to movies. Friday newspapers used to sell as fast as by 8 am. The excitement of reading those pages cannot be expressed but you need to feel it. I am sure that, today’s generation will miss it. As technology advanced in late 90’s, early 2000’s, those with access to internet were looking to find information online about Kannada movies. Being a computer engineer, I was no exception to this. This was an era where lots of folks were trying to come up with their own website dedicated to Kannada movies.
After moving to USA in 2000, I was looking for a website that would exclusively carry out the news from KFI. Search engine took me to CHITRALOKA. The name was attractive and so was the content that was up to date. I always wanted to stay update about the news in Kannada Industry.
I met Mr. Veeresh during the making of Joke Falls in 2003. He had passion towards building something new for our Industry. Veeresh always thought of presenting new ideas. One of the biggest accomplishments, I can remember is the Kannada Film photo exhibition. Veeresh displayed stills of Kannada films from 1932 to 2006. This was first of its kind and entered Limca book of records.
Veeresh has the credit of doing the first Kannada Film International Photo Exhibition in 2018 at California, USA. Veeresh is a photographer, film producer, journalist and has held prominent positions in Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce. He is recipient of Karnataka state award and National award for producing Kannada films.
In December 2009, I read an article about the demise of Dr. Vishnuvardhan. I was searching on internet to get more information. I was calling everyone to get more information. Within a span of 12 hours, Veeresh had updated around dozen articles, photos, and videos. I called Veeresh to thank him for updating round the clock. Veeresh replied to me, it is his duty to update the content and no need to thank him for that.
The thought of website is fancier and more attractive but the costs to run and maintain the website is very challenging in the back-end. Anybody can publish articles but to maintain the repository of it is the biggest challenge. The content needs to be stored and preserved and must be online at any point of time. Server storage, migration and costs are very high. You need to have your own team of reporters, photographers and be able to maintain the servers and keep all the repository for 2 decades is not an easy task.
Chitraloka has sustained the dotcom crash, recessions and the more recent corona pandemic that has hit every industry in the world. Veeresh and his team have overcome all the hurdles for past 20 years successfully and worked hard to be the Number 1 portal for Kannada film news.
There were several websites in those days, today you can only find handful. Chitraloka is completing 20 years this June 26, 2020. I wish Mr. Veeresh to achieve the next milestone of 25. In our movie terms, we call it as Silver Jubilee Year.
Looking forward for the 25 in 2025. Congratulations to the entire team of
CHITRALOKA.
ATLANTA NAGENDRA
