Blogathon Day 3: Entertainment - Need to get Regional cinema beyond Bollywood

India is home to one of the largest film industries in the world. Every year thousands of movies are produced in India.

India is a large country where many languages are spoken. Many of the larger languages support their own film industry. Some of the popular regional film industries in India are Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, and Punjabi. The Hindi/Urdu film industry, based in Mumbai, formerly Bombay, is called Bollywood.

“The major challenge that the regional cinema needs to address is of how to widen the audience base”.

Many workers from regional industries, once established, generally move to Bollywood for greater spotlight or opportunity. An interesting example of this phenomenon is the famous music director A.R. Rahman. He started his career in Tamil film industry and later moved to the Bollywood.

Bollywood movies were screened with subtitles in not only the domestic but also in the international market, the same could be done to encourage regional cinema.

Screening of regional cinema at subsidised tickets.

The government should taken measures to promote regional movies like rentals in the film city studios on discount, entertainment tax should be waved off.

It is unfair to compare Bollywood industry with regional cinema since the budgets were different. While a regional film’s budget could be between Rs 40 lakh and Rs 75 lakh, a Hindi movie’s budget could run into crores.There is a serious need for the publicity of regional cinema.

The regional film industry needs to plan for corporatisation, financing of movies, distribution and marketing of films in not only India but internationally as well.

Regional cinema industry should consider new mediums like Internet, international film festivals to reach out to newer audiences.

I believe Regional cinema are more prolific, fertile in ideas and acknowledged by world audiences, but is struggling to survive mainly because marketing is its weakest link.

Blogathon Day 1: Infrastructure - How can we improve the traffic condition in our city?

Let’s take a complete U-turn to make a difference

So called Oxford of East “Pune” for all the good reasons fail to impress common man when ever the talk is about traffic.

Pune’s traffic has gone to the dogs. Total chaos. ………

No one follows the rules as everyone makes their own.

And

“Who is to be blamed?”

Pop this question to anyone and the answer could be anything from the traffic cops, to suicidal rickshaw drivers, to the youth who zip around showing off to their girlfriends.

"I realized that to come out of this vicious circle of the 'blame game', not someone, but infact all of us as citizens need to take the initiative."

But the question is who will start and how will the image of pune’s traffic change in the coming time

The Answer is - let’s try out the 10 magical tips to improve our city’s traffic

1. Public Transport: Use public transport and avoid using private vehicle. Travel together if the destination and time is the same.
2. Improve the public transport: To attract common man towards public transport have an effective transportation plan. Get good buses, make separate lanes for buses and make it easy for people to buy bus tickets, build peripheral walkways.
3. Bus Stops to be moved away: We have bus stops after every 1 Km. as a result the bus stops at every stop and adds on to traffic
4. Alternate way of punish for Traffic Violators: Instead of taking fine from them punish them in a different manner. Like asking them to manage the traffic for 20 min or educating people about the traffic rules
5. Subways / Skyways : Bring up more no of Subways or Skyways on the roads which face heavy traffic every time
6. Driver must follow strict traffic rules: Major reasons for traffic are when few people do not follow rules for some reasons and others have to face the consequences. Lets us all keep in mind when ever we are breaking rules, that this is going to be at the cost of someone’s life.
7. Sign Boards: To be added and improved at all places in the city.
8. Alternate Roads / route: Provide sign boards to tell alternate way to reach different destinations and divert traffic during rush hours. Lay roads especially on alternate routes to distribute the traffic.
9. Attitude: Build in a right attitude while driving - avoid driving fast, competing and attending calls.
10. Accidence: Instead of surrounding around the accident place and jamming up the traffic try to help other to move ahead and free up the place.

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I post this in response to a topic provided by Blogathon India. Its an event where Bloggers discuss their ideas and raise their issues and concerns over certain aspects by posting articles on certain topics provided by organizers of the event।

Unique celebration of Holi and April Fool day @ my office

Holi: The celebration plan by our Business HR was a big surprise to our department. It was a pleasant evening at KPIT terrace as it was drizzling at Hinjewadi. We all gathered at cafeteria were the holi’s natural colors, sandwiches and cold drinks were waiting for us. Every one was busy applied colors on each other. It was a bad luck for our team as we all were in blue ( every Friday our team decides upon the color for the day ) never mind any thing for the cost of enjoyment.

Got back to work, in that colorful Awatar।

Shiva there, with his great Photoshop work in the pitcher.

My Operations Manager comes up to me with a box of chocolate ( KitKat & Dairy milk )

Wished me “Happy Holi” offered me and asked me to distribute it to every one.

I was feeling good initially but didn’t know it was going to be so risky. As I approached every one started picking up two and shamelessly instead of wishing every one Happy Holi I was asking people to take only one. Some were wishing me Happy birthday ….some were not ready for dairy milk as they wanted Kit Kat.

In all I found this unique – never had i heard chocolate been distributed in an organization and that also for Hoil.

I doubt KPIT having a tie up with Cadbury

April Fool: As usual our business HR coming into our department with pink, blue and yellow chart paper. Offering every one and asking up to pin it up on our back. It was all for a game. Where in any one can leave back a comment on that chart – off course taking good about the person.

The person whose chart has the highest no of comments wins the prize.

Every one was excited started running behind each other to add in there comments.

I went to every ones desk with my black pen left back a comment.

This was a nice game as it helps you in knowing what did you like about this person as a result you share the same work location and feel proud to be called as a college.

I don’t know who will win but yes if there would have been a prize for the person who wrote the maximum comments – there is no one to compete me for this।

I was camping @ Pune Barcamp4 on 16th Feb

It’s always been a great experience to be at Barcamp.

PuneBarCamp4 was at ThoughtWorks.

I landed up at 11.15am & got my self registered.

The sessions were in full swing. I attended Ajax session which was presented by Atul and Sumit. When they were taking questions from the audiences I went ahead asking them if they could tell some drawbacks or limitations of AJAX. Some of my misconceptions were cleared when Tarun , Atul and Sumit tried answering my question.

Followed by which I attended a session on Why Ruby presented by Sidu.

He got us introduced to Ruby as:

• A very simple & easy programming language
• Strongly & dynamically typed language
• In Ruby every thing is an Object – Classes too
• JRuby for Java Developers & IRuby for Dot Net Developers are more stable compared to Ruby.
• InBuild classes can be reopened.

No doubt Ruby makes life of the programmers easy but at the end let’s not forget that will have to compromise on the Garbage collection & Platform dependence.

After having a wonderful lunch I walked in for a Demo on Webaroo2 by Kiran Thakkar.

Will soon come up with a post on Webaroo2

When Tarun was shooting he asked me about my experience of being at barcamp I said

“I really enjoy being here as we get to meet & interact with like minded people about whats new & hot in the IT World. It is far better then a class room teaching as it has no code of conduct or rules to be followed. Less of theory & more practical overview about tools & technologies.”

For those who couldn’t make it up for puneBarcamp4 –

barcamppune

Photos on – http://flickr.com/photos/barcamppune/

& Videos are uploaded at - http://youtube.com/barcamppune

Great Kick Start ……………Day 1 @ NGO

Can you think of working in an organization which has satisfaction, fun, enjoyment, entertainment in its job profile? Yes those organizations are NGO’s which are driven by its visions & mission to server the society with out accepting any thing in return.

Great Foundation is one such organization

http://greatfoundation.org/

One of the activities undertaken by great foundation & of which I am a part is where we visit Municipal school & help the kids to speak & be fluent in English as their education background is all in Marathi & when they step out of school they find English very complex to deal with.

My team members are :

Arthur Ignatius - SIMS

Nina Gir- Career Forum

Sunil Goel- Career Forum

Dilraj Rehal- IT Recruitments

Jaslene Bawa- Value Notes

We decided to kick start on 9^th Feb from Mahadji Shinde School

We all members meet at the school sharp at 7.45am.Landed up at principle’s office where she gave an overview of the kind of students she has in 8^th Std.

As soon as we entered into the class all the kids stood up wished us “Good Morning Teacher”। Hey I used to do this in school …….but never thought that a day will come when some one will wish me so:)

I was accompanied by Arthur & Nina.We were addressing 60 students having equal no of boys & girls.

We introduced our self & asked each one to introduce them self.Some were very loud but majority of them were shy.Our target was to create a comfort zone so that they can open up & be more confident.

We told them that we will be with them every sat & will be playing some games, giving some assignments which will polish there communication skills in English.When Nina asked them, do they find this interesting & useful?

One of the girl said yes……."Because today English is a powerful language & if we want to progress & make our parents & country proud we must master it”

We started playing dumb charades having two teams – Boys vs Girls.

We gave them words like (School, Teacher, Books, Success) which they have to inact & the team members should guess the word in English.Girls were very smart compared to boys & at the end of the game girls were leading & good to see every one was involved.

After which we started of with associated words where if I say blue they have to give an English word which they can relate with it

eg Blue – sky, water, color, shirt.

Looking at the response of the class we were surprised. They are so creative & think out of the box.Asked them some GK question & played Tanaji says which they enjoyed the most.

The class was full of laughter & bright faces having a close-up smile on every ones face.

We concluded by

1. Declaring the winning group – Boys won
2. Assignment – Every body has to come with a paragraph from English newspaper which they will be reading it aloud in front of the class.

While saying GoodBy I could read their faces -

Their eyes said - “ All ways be with us, we want to be some thing in life”

Their smile said - “ We enjoyed it”

But if some one could read my eyes at that movement it said -

“My life has become more meaningful. Thanks Kids for adoring, respecting & loving me“

NGO – Great Foundation…..I am a part of it

This Post is divided in to 3 Categories:

Sad part:

I used to spend my weekend either shopping or meeting up with my friends at CCD.

While doing this I used to wonder "what am I doing". Some where back of my mind I had a thought running in the background as to - can't I be more productive or do some thing which will help the society.

Thought Process:

By something I mean what I used to do in my college when I was a part NSS.

We used to visit old age home and spend time with the aged people whose kids

have left them at the time when they are looking out for emotional & financial support from them.

At times we also visited Preet Mandir where we interacted with the kids who don't even know who their parents are.

We visit places like malls, Theaters, pubs & restaurants.

But have we ever visited these places which are into darkness & sadness & tried to get a ray of hope or smiles on their faces.

Mission:

Today I am feeling very fortunate to be a part of NGO – Great Foundation.

Thanks to Jaslene – one of my good friends who met me after 2 year.

She offered me an opportunity to be a part of NGO.

Last Saturday we all committed members meet up with Dr. (Ms) Viney Kirpal the founder of this NGO where she briefed us as to what we will be doing as a member.

We had a round of introduction & a short presentation from every one on there area of interest.

My next post will brief you'll about the goal, mission & activities that will be undertaken by the Great Foundation team.

The meeting was winded up by taking an oath………committing to the code of conduct which will be followed by all of us.

My weekends will be really fruitful – giving me a feeling that I am doing some thing good & giving back some thing to this society.

Trust me it makes you proud of your self when you see your services rendered; help others to make their life more meaningful.