Aavaran: Hindi Templates for Blogger
Aavaran was a repository of ready-to-use Hindi Blogger templates — one of the first such resources on the web, created at a time when Google's Blogger platform had no native Indic language support.
Aavaran (आवरण, meaning cover or wrapping) was a repository of ready-to-use Hindi templates for Google’s Blogger platform, created in 2005 at a time when Blogger had no native internationalisation support and Hindi bloggers had to make do with English-language default themes.
The name was deliberately chosen — aavaran means the cover or outer wrapping of a book or magazine, making it a fitting metaphor for a collection of visual themes for blogs.
What Aavaran Offered
Each template in Aavaran was built on top of popular Blogger themes (such as the original China-Red theme for Blogger, adapted from a WordPress 1.5 design by Rahul Karnik), and adapted for Hindi use — adjusting typography, layout, and encoding for correct Indic text rendering. Templates were released under open licences and came with clear instructions for installation. The templates were made available as downloadable ZIP files hosted on MyJavaServer.com’s free Java hosting — the same server that hosted Chittha Vishwa, the first Hindi blog aggregator.
Context: Why This Mattered
In 2005, starting a Hindi blog meant wrestling with Unicode encoding, finding an Input Method Editor (IME) that worked, and then discovering that every Blogger theme rendered your Devanagari text in a tiny, unreadable default font. Aavaran solved the last of those problems — giving Hindi bloggers visually polished, community-built themes that worked out of the box.
Community Reception
When Aavaran launched, the response from the Hindi blogging community was warm and immediate. The comments on the original post capture the spirit of that early, tightly-knit blogosphere well:
What the Community Said
“Chha gaye Debu da! Maja aa gaya.” — Tarun
“Achha kaam kiye ho dada.” — Tarun
“Badhiya hai. Naye chitthon mein kaam laaunga. Kyun na varnan ko dwibhashiya banaya jaaye — Hindi mein bhi varnan dijiye na!” — Alok Kumar
“Ek aur sadprayas ke liye sadhuvad! Kuch ‘Hindi’ mein parivartit Blogger ke templates bhi hon — to aur uttam hoga.” — Ravishankar Shrivastava
“A very nice effort indeed. I have to start a new blog in Hindi and I am looking for new templates — will definitely be waiting for more uploads from your side.” — Kanishk
“Bahut achhe, aapka kaarya uttam hai, main bhi ise prayog karne ki soch raha hun.” — Kanhaiya Rastogi
Two recurring requests from the community shaped the roadmap for Aavaran’s future updates: a bilingual (Hindi + English) description for each template, and adapted versions of popular community templates like the one used by Chittha Charcha. On the latter, I noted that the licensing terms of the source template were unclear — a reminder that even in the early blogosphere, open-source etiquette mattered.
