Author: Anshuman Rawat

Author. Entrepreneur. Filmmaker. Journalist.

Categories
Writing

Reporting from Abhi-Aish Wedding (Kitli Times)

It was a bolt from blue for this Kitli Times (KT) reporter. Lying on the table was an invitation for nothing less than the wedding of the century!

“We, on behalf of my younger brother, Shri Amar Singhji, invite you to the wedding of Shri Amar Singhji’s nephew with Shri Amar Singhji’s friend’s company’s brand ambasaddor. We request you to kindly come in time and show this invitation to Shri Amar Singhji’s black cat commandos. RSVP Shri Amar Singhji’s elder brother”

What turned the heaven into the 9th one was the fact that this KT reporter was the ONLY reporter from the whole of India to have been invited to the wedding.

Anyway, in my best shervani and carrying the card in my hand – in such a way that every loser and his uncle could read the content – I reached the venue much before time.

Suddenly a couple of commandos jumped down from within the trees at the gate and pounced on me. One of them twisted my hand behind my back kicked my handsome behind with full might. Other punched in the stomach, slapped me and kicked me away from the gate.

“Pata nahin hai, Shri Amarsinghji ko media waaley pasand nahin hain?”

“Arey, lekin unhone his bulaya hai”, I tried to explain, amidst feeling the pain in my posterior.

Before they could pulp me further for opening my mouth, the gate opened. And out came Amar Singh, with his patent smile.

“Arey kya hua? In logon ne tumhare saath bhi koi majjaak kiya kya?”

“Majaak?!”

“Arey yaar, aisa thoda-bahut toh ho jaata hai majjaak-majjaak mein. Isi baat pe ek sher sunata hoon:

Atal ne kaha beheji se, aa sakhi haath milayen
Humne kaha aap to bas apni-apni ghadi milayen

There are a few things that you HAVE to do if you want to be a reporter. Listening to Amar Singh’s shayari is one of them.

Anyway, we soon went in. Amar Singh’s elder brother, bhabhi and nephew were doing some puja at the lawns of Jalsaghar – within an air-conditioned pandal of course. There were 101 pandits saying mantras; each in a language of his own. It was then that I understood the meaning of ‘wedding of the century’.

Anyway, across and behind the pandal was the house. THE HOUSE! How many millions have died wanting to have one look of the house, and HIM in it. But I, a humble KT Reporter was invited to the place. Hail Kitli, hail Cha and …”hailo to all”. The last one was my greeting from across the pandal to anyone who cared to see me in my torn sherwani!
As with everything related to the marriage, the news of my presence spread like a wild fire …amongst news persons, all of whom wanted to be inside at any cost.

Never to shy away from creating drama, a crowd of about 5000 media people gherao-ed the main gate, all shouting “gaddar ko baahar nikalo” and “KT Reporter tum peechhe hato, hum tumhare saath hain”.

And what followed next became the Breaking News of all channels:

“Jab hum sabhi hai-hai ke naare laga rahe thhe, tabhi WOH, jee haan, HE himself, woh bahar aaye aur hamari taraf muskura kar wave kiya. Really, what makes him stand apart is his humility, even at this stage of his life. Is par pesh hai hamara ‘Vishesh Karyakram’ – “AB: Ab Tak Humble”.

The pooja seemed to be getting over when, suddenly, all hell broke loose – this time inside the Jalsaghar. HIS neighbour’s son was caught using his mobile for filming …the pandits! Suddenly, from nowhere, again, Amar Singh’s commandos got down to their business. The boy was first serviced in his backside and then a little warmth was pasted on his stomach, cheeks and nose.

The moment it got over, HE personally came to the boy and apologised. “Woh hamare guards nahin, Amar Singhji ke commandos thhe, jinpar hamara control nahin hai”.

All this while, I was getting curious about not having cited the bride and groom even once!

“Amar Singhji, yeh dulha-dulhan kahan hain?”

He started smiling. He looked around and whispered: “Woh to India mein hai hi nahin.”

“What! But today is their wedding!”

He looked around again, smiling all the while, and dropped the bombshell: “Haan, toh shaadi to shaam ko hai na. They will be back from the honeymoon by that time.”

“What!”

“So, does anyone, I mean ANY one know about this?”

He gave this wicked smile:”Not even bade bhaiya.”

It was too much to handle for me. The last I remember was the news about Abhi arriving on the ghodi in the evening. People told me that he looked ecstatic. And ready for more.

Bade log, bade log.

Categories
Journalism

GLOVADIs, Let’s Not Hide Ourselves from Life

Though Life In Metro was a film based on life in India’s premier city, Mumbai, most of us would agree that it illustrated the decay of human perspective on life in general. The answer to it lies in learning to celebrate life and its various seasons

Goans, who have never needed too much of an excuse to celebrate life, recently had a gala time celebrating the  annual Monsoon festival, which marks ‘San Joao’, the feast of John, the Baptist.

The festival, that traces its lineage to the Portugese rule over the state, sees the Goans celebrate by jumping into rivers, ponds and wells amidst very heavy and persistent rains. Before jumping, though, the men make sure that they wear ‘copel’ or crowns of flowers and grass, sing traditional songs and dance – all amidst heavy rains!

Heavily decorated boats row up the Chapora River from several areas in Goa, as hundreds of people cheer and make merry in rains.

The day is also about all things traditional – be it the food, clothes, music or dance. As with most things in India, the more one goes towards the villages, the Goan monsoon festival takes more traditional forms.

Now which of the aforementioned is an activity that can’t take place in Ahmedabad? We have lakes, we have a river (which has water at least in the monsoon ;-)) and we have wells too. Getting hold of boats for a festive race or rowing in the Sabarmati should not be a problem. In a city where the festival of Holi is basically about dancing under water sprinklers to the tunes of a local DJ, dancing in the rain can barely be a handicap, right? 

And yet, getting stuck with the nitty-gritty would be akin missing the tree for the woods. The issue here is not the activities that constitute a monsoon festival. The issue is that of the spirit to live life to the fullest – even in a season in which many modern-day machines (read ‘workaholic’) like you and me feel ‘grounded by bad weather’.

Bad weather? The human race seems to be completely losing the perspective in life. When was life ever meant to chain ourselves in the rat race. In a world where a lot of human lives are dependent upon the non-working of a small medical syringe of a terrorist (refer to recent bombings in the UK), how far would our daily rat race be taking us anyway!

Let’s not fall into the trap GLOVADIs, let’s not get sucked into the never-ending pursuit of ‘nothing in particular’.
Whatever the late-night shows on news channels (!) might say about reincarnation, let’s get this straight – we have got only one life. And it would be wastefully stupid of us to not make the most of it. If the giants of Indian politics ended up merely as crow-droppings-laden statues on cross-roads across India; if a true-blue superstar of Hindi films like Bharat Bhushan had died amidst poverty; if hundreds of sports-persons who represented India died because they could not afford medicines, then what are we going to achieve by having an extra sales pitch, an extra zero on stock market or an extra award against our name?

Everything that we are doing is being done by millions of others across the globe. And thousands of them are doing better than us, without having to sacrifice the real meaning of life. A lot of such smart ones are living in Goa.
Come, let’s discover life in our everyday life! Come let’s discover the romance in rains. Come, let’s hold hands of our beloveds and walk in rain. Come, let’s see how beautiful we all look in rains. Come, let’s see how beautiful life looks in rain. Come, let’s have Ahmedabad Monsoon Festival.

Categories
Writing

Wet in the Dry City!

We boys start noticing girls around Class 9 – only to find them “oh so weird and not fun at all”. But only till we reach Class 12. Because after that,  girls become the only reason why we want to succeed or why we failed! Such a drastic turn in a matter of two years; as if life was not full of issues already for 17 year-olds.

But what I have recently realised (after getting into a city-based science college) is that I too have a heart. (Eureka!) A heart that keeps on writing poetry for anyone who would ever care to read them. Fortunately, when you get a forum like League, you are sure that thousands of people would be reading your poetry (or whatever they were meant to be). I mean no offence to people who have got published in this magazine thus far. It’s just that I am naturally offensive. Particularly to girls. Oh God dad, why do I look like you!

Anyway, as I was saying, I recently realised that I have a heart that loves writing poetry. Before I move ahead on the topic, here are a few lines:

I am what you want me to be,
You are what you want to be,
What kinda nonsense is this,
Everything’s what YOU want to be?

Anyway, the thing is, while my heart loves writing poetry, other people’s hearts don’t love reading them! My dad used to say that this is not a fair world. Oh God dad, why do you always want to be right?

Fortunately, unlike as in school, when you are in college, you can be at other colleges during your own college hours! And with such tight traveling schedules across the various colleges of the city, you do learn a thing or two about life.
Generally the first learning for people like is that of the extreme insignificance or our selves in comparison to the big university campus dudes and dudettes.

And the 2nd important learning is that almost everyone thinks the same. YES! Except for a few cousins of Salman and Kareena, most of the college people seem to be wanting to be someone else. Of course, even if we all go through the exchange program, I doubt if anyone would ever want to be me. But then, that’s partly to do with the fact that SHE (the idea of a feminine God is infinitely more appealing) doesn’t make them like me anymore. Ahem!

Anyway, moving around from one college (canteen) to another has taught me that women are the same everywhere. And that they look the best in two seasons – monsoon and Navratri. While Navratri is a bit far at the moment, here’s one from me for girls in monsoon:

Either you hurt us or we get hurt
The sum total is always our hurt
But this ain’t about sums & totals
It’s about monsoon & your t-shirt

Reminded you of John Keats, eh? Well, monsoon does inspire me to write some heart-crushing poetry.

And why not, monsoon is such a lovely season. We can wear the same clothes for three months and God would keep on washing them for you! The more philosophically-inclined say that you can cry in the public and the world wouldn’t know. I have feel something similar; with my nose replacing their eyes. The flow is kept the same!

When I was young, I used to laugh at men who would sit outside ATIRA and other such places with their girlfriends during rains. I could not understand how girls can ever score over playing football in muddy grounds, amidst heavy rains. But now, when I’m a lot wiser, I still believe that girls can never score over playing football in rains! It’s just that you can’t always be playing football, right? And you can’t always be playing for your own self.

After school, playing sports requires inspiration. And my inspiration this month is to be able to go out in rain with a girl; make her sit at the edge of the ground and play football. Sigh!

Categories
Cinema Journalism

Compact Disc (CD) turns 25

Cover Picture of the World’s First-Ever Compact Disc

Hey GLOVADIs, the best friend that carries your specially selected music to her, the good ol’ CD, has just turned 25!

In what now looks an incident of another era, the CD had marked its arrival with Abba’s The Visitors, which was the first album to be released in CD format in 1982. That marked the beginning of the end of vynil era and transformed the landscape of musical formats.

“At that time, even experienced engineers told us ‘this will never work’. And we learned one should never say never. We knew that we were working on a completely new, exciting technology. However, we did not know at that time that the CD would grow to that magnitude,” said Hartmut Loewer of Bayer AG recently.

Offering unprecedented sound quality and optimum data capacity, CD not only changed forever the way people listened to music but also marked the beginning of the digital age.

Now, every year, the world produces roughly 90,000 originals on CD, billions of copies of which are sold globally. And today CDs have carved a very important space for themselves in our lives.

Molded plastic disc containing digital data that is scanned by a laser beam for the reproduction of recorded sound or other information. Since its commercial introduction in 1982, the audio CD has become the dominant format for high-fidelity recorded music. Digital audio data can be converted to analog form to reproduce the original audio signal.
Co-invented by Philips Electronics and Sony Corp. in 1980, the compact disc has expanded beyond audio recordings into other storage-and-distribution uses, notably for computers (CD-ROM) and entertainment systems (videodisc and DVD). An audio CD can store just over an hour of music. A CD-ROM can contain up to 680 megabytes of computer data. A DVD, the same size as traditional CDs, is able to store up to 17 gigabytes of data, such as high-definition digital video files.

Categories
Journalism

To Call or Not to Call the Nearest Call Center – for a Career!

Call centers have become such an integral part of modern Indian cities that most of us youngsters seem to know someone – either directly or indirectly – associated with some call center or the other.

They have also become so ‘mainstream’ that there are novels, movies and jokes galore about the call centers. However, most of the stories are either about humour, harassment or sexual escapades during night shifts.

Of course, like most stories in this world, that is just one part of the story. The big picture sees millions of youngsters, like you, wanting to take up a job with any of the top-notch call centers or BPOs (which also include tasks where you don’t have to speak up on phone with clients). And thousands from amongst us are already doing very well at call centers.

Unfortunately, because of the herd mentality of all industries, the IT boom had seen a boom of call-centers with poor training methods, even poorer talent and totally inadequate infrastructure. All of that led to widespread opinion of it being a ‘Dead-end job’, a ‘McJob’, ‘SlaveJob’ and many other adjectives of the poor kind.

But can that be true? For all those who cannot become an Amitabh or Kapil Dev; who cannot get PhDs, MCAs, MBAs; who are not engineers or doctors, why can’t the job at call center be good? Just because some people don’t find it very intellectual or glamorous? Are they the ones who are going to burn the ‘chulha’ at your home?

While at any given point of time, a job is a job is a job, presently, a job at a good call center / BPO can actually just be the foundation that you require to kick-start greater things in your later life!

It offers good training, good money and most of all, great confidence. It prepares you well to deal with various kind of people, in various kind of situations and teaches you the art of dealing all of that in a composed manner. It just prepares you to take life head-on.

And then, who is asking you to make a job at the call center your final destination. Serve your Company well, earn well for yourself, learn about many things and move on. Everyone does that, in every field.

The key here is to identify the good call centers from the fly-by-the-night operators. And one of the best way to separate the good from the average (or worse) is to find out the parent Company or the list of clients that it caters too. So, a Hutch call center is good one for anyone but so is a (for example) Ram Bharose Hindu Call Center that caters to Nike, IBM, Nirma etc. Go ahead, get started with a career. Get started with earning.

Categories
Writing

Body Cannot be Lesser than Soul. Period.

Sharir to nashwar hai, iska kya moh. Sharir ke sukh ki chinta na karke hamein aatma ki puja karni chahiye.

Every morning we get to hear some version of the above. It would not be too off the mark to say that the human body has always been the favourite ‘whipping boy’ of most of the real and wannabe spiritual or religious gurus.

But does our body, which stands for everything that we are and which allows us to stand (metaphorically speaking) in this world, deserve this kind of tongue-lashing?

To know the truth, ask those gurus if they can willingly, at that moment, leave their body and talk to you through their souls!

Jokes apart, the human soul needs a home to survive in this world. That home is human body. If there were no ‘body’, the soul would have simply spread across the whole universe, quite like air. But isn’t it the virtue of only God to be present everywhere?
Clearly, however much the spiritual and religious gurus downplay the role of body in the big picture, the truth of the matter is that just as body without soul is a dead body, soul without body is actually a dead soul.

Funnily, hedonism with body as its epicenter is increasing just as fast in India (the average age of losing virginity is decreasing the passage of every year) as the pursuit of the ‘higher’, spiritual existence sans the role of body! It seems to be becoming increasingly fashionable to talk of soul as an entity that needs the most attention. And so is the belief that its all about the soul. “Mind over matter”, is what goes around. But never comes around, if you allow me to add so.

So where did all this contempt for body come in a country that had given the world the whole idea of Kamasutra?

Though there are of course many references in old Hindu scriptures (and also in holy books of other religions) about the ‘ultimate task’ of leaving the body and being one with the supreme (attaining Moksha or Nirvana), those references can hardly be ‘blamed’ for the modern day fetish for running down the body. Simply because very few amongst us have read those scriptures anyway!

I always like to talk of more recent times. Times that are documented by neutral agencies’ and which can be related to our present times. Going by that, I think, one can partly blame  India’s struggle to retain its character in the face of ‘alien’ onslaught for the entry of tirade against body in our daily subconscious.

It is a common knowledge that socio-politico-religious leaders (including Mahatma Gandhiji) used to frequently exhort their followers to give up ‘bodily happiness’ in order to not only put up a spirited fight against the ‘pollution / dilution of the original culture’ but also to attain a higher form of life for all.

How wrong can an approach – if it were as above – be? Because, while on one hand you are depriving your body of the pampering that requires, on the other your body sees its opposite number putting itself under no such compulsion.

The greater the contrast became, the harder the stances got. And now, it has almost become the Body Vs. Soul scenario.

But think about it, a body without soul is called a dead body and a soul without a body is called the soul of a dead person. So, is there a lesser one?