An old man bids adieu tearfully to Geocities

I retired from Government service in India in January 2000. At that time , just to spend time, I started translating Sanskrit Prayers in to English. I also started giving astrological consultation for matching horoscopes as my hobby. It was at this time that I started getting familiar with modern day computers and the world wide web. I happened to visit USA at that time and started giving astrological consultation for matching horoscopes over the internet. I also created a free web site on the” history of Kerala iyers “ under Honmestead. My connection with www was static at that stage for two more years.
In 2002 my daughter in law helped me in putting few of my translation in a small free web site .I again visited USA in 2002. I learnt little more on web site building as I was translating Hindu prayers at a furious pace. I started uploading my translations in my new free web site under geocities banner. I built my web site www.geocities,com/ramya475 during this time. By 2004 I had uploaded translations of 41 Stotras (prayers) in this web site. From day one, my web site became popular. This egged me to more work and as on today I HAVE UPLOADED 385 PRAYERS WITH TRANSLITERATIONS AS WELL AS TRANSLATIONS in my web site.These include translations of prayers written in Sanskrit, Malaalam , Tamil and Hindi . My web site has become so popular that about 200 people visit my web site daily.
In 2002, homestead withdrew my web site on Kerala Iyers as they started charging for it. But by that time I did lot of research on history of Kerala Iyers and my new web site www.keralaiyers.com was launched in 2001.This was paid for and managed by a young friend of mine. Because of this I was always apprehensive of the closure of the geocities web site. Fortunately for me two web sites www.celextel.org as well as www.hindupedia.com put all my 385 translations in them. Many other web sites put my chosen translations in their web site. The most important was www.chennaionline.com and www.ibiblio.org/sripedia/ebooks/ramachander and www.shaivam.com . I also built another web site http://stotraratna.awardspace.com where all my work is preserved. So in spite of the impending closure of the geocities web sites , my translations are safe and would be handed over to the posterity.
I took recourse to a free web site due to two reasons:-
1.An old pensioner like me could not afford yearly payments.
2.One day I will kick the bucket and there would be no one to pay for those web sites, which would mean that my work meant for enlightening young Hindus about the great wealth of Hindu prayers would die along with me. I did not want this to happen.
Geocities helped me to achieve my aim partially. Due to their service, my work got lot of attention and my work is preserved in the celextel as well as Hindupedia web sites. I also have made a copy of my geocities web site using the Life boat of Jimdo. I would like to thank yahoo for their free web site offer and tearfully bid farewell to my geocities web site. God be with you, Geocities