Year 2006 podcast of ReadGujarat.Com founder late Mrugesh Shah’s interview


Ahmedabad, 18 June, 2014

DeshGujarat was started as an audio podcast website way back in year 2006, and one of the initial podcasts we recorded contained an interview of Vadodara based young man Mrugesh Shah who had founded a Gujarati literature sharing website ReadGujarati.Com. Mrugesh was 28 at that time, and his website was about one year old.

DeshGujarat was tiny web initiative compared to ReadGujarati. Mrugesh gave interview and dropped me to bus-stand. Before giving interview he clarified that he would not give link to DeshGujarat on his site in any circumstances because DeshGujarat is English website, and he would like to give link to only Gujarati websites and blogs. I said it was fine, I was not expecting anything. I found that Mrugesh was very focused and clear about the kind of content he would allow on his website. He said he selects and publish content that may give relief and satisfaction to reader at the end of spending minutes. I remember I had talked to Mrugesh twice or thrice then-after on telephone. As a reader, I was occasionally visiting his website. That’s it.

On 5 June, I got a message over twitter about Mrugesh’s death in hospital. He was undergoing treatment following Brain hemorrhage. As our audio partner Podbazaar has shut down, Mrugesh’s audio interview was not available on our site. After days of search through old hard disks, we recovered an old podcast episode containing his interview, and it is presented here.

– Japan K Pathak

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Given below is a note on Mrugeshbhai’s demise. The note is contributed by our reader Vitesh Desai. The photograph presented here is by @ask2vinay:

Creator & Editor of ReadGujarati.com, Mr Mrugesh Shah passed away due to brain hemorrhage on 5 June, 2014 at 12:15 PM. He was 35. He was admitted in Metro hospital in Vadodara on 19 May following brain hemmarage. He is survived by his father.

Late Mrugeshbhai created ReadGujarati.com, finest website with largest data dedicated to Gujarat literary world. ReadGujarati.com also won award from Microsoft India’s BhashaIndia.com for best blog site in Gujarati language.

Mrugeshbhai was maintaining this website single handedly. He used to put two new articles everyday.

Years back, in an interview with Times of India, he had said,

“After I completed the BCA programme, I didn’t want to just secure a good job. I wanted to do something creative”.

In another interview with speakbindas.com, he said, “ReadGujarati is not my profession, it is my passion.”

“ReadGujarati is like a flyover of Gujarati Sahitya (literature),” he had said.

Following was his message to each and every reader of ReadGujarati:

“If you want to remain relax in this competitive word, want to avoid the stress, want to remove the depression, want to give cultural values to your child – then, reading is the only solution. But kindly understand the term ‘reading’ before you start reading….”

He will be remembered as torchbearer of gujarati blog world. Condolences to his family on his demise.

-Vitesh Desai