Nepotism in Bollywood? My thoughts... (Part 1)

        Bollywood has been in existence for over a century now. I think since its inception, real acting talent has always made a mark in Bollywood and yet there have been instances when actors and actresses who had good personality, good acting skills but for some or the other reason, couldn't find enough good quality work. I recently watched an old movie 'Humraaz (1967) and thereafter came across articles about the movie's lead actress - Vimi. See vimi-bollywood-actress-tragic-story or even the-untold-tragic-tale-of-humraaz-actress-vimi Similarly there are cases of Rahul Roy or Kumar Gaurav that I can remember off the top of my mind. Remember Divya Bharati from 1990s? 

        Nepotism has come to mean that 'outsiders' are not offered as many films / work in the glamour industry whereas people who have some 'Godfather' in the industry would easily find work. If that is the case, how did Dev Anand, Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh Bachchan, Jitendra, Hema Malini, Sridevi and so many others make it to the top list in those days? In recent times, look at Tapsee Pannu, Bhumi Pednekar, Deepika Padukone, Radhika Apte, Kriti Sanon, Anushka Sharma among the actresses. Then there are the likes of Ranveer Singh, Rajkumar Rao, Ayushman Khurana, Nawazuddin Siddique (watch this video where Nawaz talks about his early days of struggle).

        On the other hand, look at the lives of Abhishek Bachchan, Tusshar Kapoor, Esha Deol, Bobby Deol, Adhyayan Suman and may be countless others who had the 'alleged' necessary background and yet haven't had much success.

        I am not connected to Bollywood but so is the case with lakhs, if not crores, of people out there who are also putting in their comments about the topic. Looking at the above examples, I feel that merely having connections or 'Godfather' in the industry is not going to save you. Hone your acting skills, build a good personality, have patience and above all, continue to work hard and be prepared to take on even any small time roles. Today there is a plethora of opportunities for acting - there are 10s of OTT platforms producing hundreds of web series and movies. Then there are the traditional cinemas. Then there are 100s of channels producing 1000s of TV serials and one can try to find work there, some thing that was not available till quite recently. Additionally there's the Regional genre that can be tried. People wanting to go in this field while being an 'outsider' should be as ready to learn new skills as today's software engineers lest you get outdated!!! Prepare to learn new languages, try your hands in regional cinema, ads, tv shows, etc.

        Even after these, there might be people who are not getting an opportunity in mainstream cinema but if you don't lose your heart, if don't lose your hope and if you are willing to be a marathon man (the 'lambi race ka ghoda'), you will eventually reach your goals. "Kehte hain agar kisi cheez ko dil se chaho ... to puri kainaat usse tumse milane ki koshish mein lag jaati hai"

       So then one would argue, why should the 'Outsiders' work hard where the people with 'connections' get the opportunities served on a platter? My answer is... 

(To Be Continued...) 

My thoughts on some Nature conservation - Part 1

I am back after a long time with some thoughts that have been churning in my mind since some time. In my spare time, I like to ponder on various topics close to my heart. I like to think of ways to help conserve nature, to think about effects of deforestation, etc. I've not been able to participate in any activity related to this, something that I'd like to change about myself in upcoming years; but I've been passionate about topics like Nature Conservation, Tree Plantation, climate effects, maintaining ecological balance, etc. One of my previous posts too contained some of my thoughts (like water conservation) related to this topic. You can find it here if you are interested: https://orthoboxed-thoughts-sumsmystic.blogspot.com/2016/03/movies-and-real-life-future-part-1.html

First I'd like to start with some thoughts that I've had about water scarcity: We know that the South African city of Cape Town was on the verge of 0 water availability in the past few years. See the news article from 'The Guardian' here . Other cities are not far behind; another article here.

The seeds for these thoughts were sown when I got to know about the 'Rally for Rivers' project. I am not yet part of this project but I think this was such a novel program and information presented there literally touched my heart. But still we might not be able to implement the plans like new tree plantations along the river beds because of land being already now in use or any other myriad number of reasons.

Another point to consider is that although we get ample rainfall during the Monsoons but a lot of that water goes into the sea and turns saline and as of now, we don't have technology to purify that water for drinking purpose in a cost-effective way. We have constructed dams across the rivers to help provide drinking water to the masses in various cities and villages. But considering the rate of population growth, I don't really believe the current model of building dams across existing rivers will be sustainable. Then again, just imagine that due to the 'El-Nino' kind of effects or any other reason, just in case, there is just around 50-60% rainfall for 1 year or for theoretical purpose, if we try to imagine a case where there is no rainfall at all for just 1 year. Our dams almost dry up within 1 year and if there is no rainfall in the succeeding year, it'll be a huge calamity. We pray this situation never happens but are we taking enough steps to help our climate remain stable? Food for thought.

Considering above points and taking inspiration from the 'Rally for Rivers' project, I'd like to suggest that the Govt implement another new project on parallel lines: Creating new rivers!

1. India is blessed with mountain ranges across the length and breadth of the entire landmass.
2. We need to artificially create canal-like channels starting from all our mountain ranges.
1. E.g., we can have the stone quarry companies to dig out stones from mountains in a specific manner that'd create channels for rainwater to flow in a specific direction
2. Then dig out canal-like channels along certain planned paths where enough land is available for use and direct this 'new river water' towards the seas along the slopes of the Deccan plateau or even along the Gangetic plains.
3. Since this will be like laying the foundation for new rivers, we'll be able to plan in advance. 
4. It'll help provide employment to the unskilled / unorganized sector.
5. It'll help increase the green cover / vegetation in India providing better livelihood.
6. We can enact plans like having at least 500m of land all along the new 'artificially' created rivers to have tree cover. Beyond that, farmers will get preference to the land so that they have good water supply close by and also the farms would help support the river eco-system - just like suggested in 'Rally for Rivers'.
7. New rivers will provide opportunity to create new dams, enabling us the ability to make provisions to provide drinking for future generations too.

Some more thoughts related to electricity consumption and sustainable living in forthcoming parts. Stay tuned. If you have any thoughts / reviews / comments to share, please feel free.

Hyderabad Diary - Day 3

We had to check out of our hotel on Day 3 and normal checkout timings are around 12 noon. This is where Zoomcar again helped us a lot since we could keep our luggage in the car safely and yet enjoy the remainder of our trip.

After checkout, we first went to Salarjung museum; after reaching there by around 11:45, we decided to directly go to the lobby of the legendary cukkoo clock kept in the museum and witness the 12 'gongs' for the 12 'o clock time. Then we took a quick tour of the ground floor of the museum but I soon realized that a lot here was similar to the Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum of Pune so we decided to skip the upper floors. From here, we went back into the city to visit the Birla Temple.

We found the car parking at the Birla Science museum and walked to the temple only to find the temple doors closed till 2 PM. So we decided to go for a short window shopping in the narrow streets around the temple. The scenic panoramic view of the Hyderabad city, including the majestic Hussain Sagar lake, offered from the roofs of the temple was amazing and the marble floor was soothing cool for our bare feet in the searing afternoon heat.

From here, we decided to go to Sudha Cars Museum. We had the famous 'Hyderabadi Biryani' at a restaurant just around the museum and then entered inside the Cars museum. This is an attraction that holds a place in the Limca Book of Records too. There are working models of cars of such crazy shapes and sizes that are literally unimaginable - from camera and pencil shapes to cricket bat and ball. About 1 hr is pretty sufficient and it is time well worth spending I believe.

It was nearly 5 PM and from here, we decided to get to our Final Destination of Hyderabad - the Golconda Fort. We sat on the sprawling lawns of the Golconda fort premises and enjoyed the cool evening breeze while also having some snacks. At about 6:30, it was time for the Sound-n-light show of the Golconda, which is still dubbed in Mr. Bachchan's voice. Seems there are very few people who know about the light-n-sound show or are interested enough to stay back. At about 7 PM, we left the Golconda fort and within 1 hour, we had reached the Airport, including about 10 mins' time for submitting our Zoomcar back at the station. So for the 10 PM flight, we had reached the Airport by around 8 PM and so we made it in good time.

It was a great trip and I believe we had planned it really well to be able to visit nearly all the famous Hyderabad tourist attractions and yet not make the trip hectic - we did not wake up from our sleep before 8 AM even once during our trip!!! 

Hyderabad Diary - Day 2

We had planned for Day 2 to be for Ramoji Film City. We had actually planned to leave hotel by around 8 AM so as to reach the venue by 9 AM. However, we woke up late so we ended up reaching the venue by around 10:30 AM. But thank God I had booked the Ramoji tickets online in advance which helped to avoid the large queues of the weekend. Note that there are just too many attractions at Ramoji to be able to finish all of them in 1 day. And then we reached there late so we were bound to skip a few of them.

We started with the Dadajinn's section that has children's play area included, along with a 10-15 mins entertainment show at a small theater starring Dadajinn himself. Thereafter, we enjoyed the 'Spirit of Ramoji' entertainment show which included some Jugglery acts, a magic show and some song and dance sequences. Then, we boarded the Ramoji film city tour bus that took us to various places for a guided tour. This included visit to the Bahubali sets which was simply awesome. One can imagine how the sets were used alongside the special effects to make the film look that grand. We had our lunch here and then proceeded to visit the sets of a new version of Mahabharata tv series that was recently shot there. There was also the set that was used for shooting of Chennai Express.

Following that, we reached the Jaipur Palace replica. After that, the tourists are supposed to go to a bus stop to board the next bus that takes them to the Bird Park and Butterfly park. But the Wild West show, which is a live stunt show including actors zipling across the arena and firing bullets (not the real ones though, but the sound effects are nothing short of real) was also a must-watch so we walked all the way back to the main avenue, watched the Wild West show, then went to the Space Amusement park. Now this is something that we can always skip since we didn't find it entertaining enough. Even the movie making workshop wasn't worth the time so we skipped that.

Then we walked all the way back to the bus stop but by then, the last bus had left. So again, we asked for directions and started to walk towards the Bird Park (the Assistants there informed us that the parks were just about 1km away). But luckily, we were picked up by a bus coming from some other direction but going towards the Bird park. Bird Park is a MUST VISIT place if you go to Ramoji. There is a huge variety of birds, some of which are kept in cages (expectedly) but there is another section where the birds are flying around freely and you could almost touch them. Its a treat to watch so many birds of different species and colours. We were exhilarated to be in the Bird Park and felt that our efforts to walk all that distance paid off in the end.

Then there are the Rock Garden and the Bonsai Garden too but we were already out of time and we had to board the last bus of the evening to get back to the main avenue so had to skip these. Since we were lucky enough to go to Ramoji around the New Year's time, our day's quota of entertainment wasn't just over yet. We had another dance and light show at the center stage, followed by a Ramoji parade which has lots of lights and dance shows. After this, we walked a few paces to the Mysore Garden replica to enjoy the lighting before getting back to the Car Parking zone. We left Ramoji at around 9 PM and reached the hotel by around 10 PM. What a memorable day we had here!!

Some pictures:

Hyderabad Diary - Day 1

Finally I got around to writing my travellogue for my Hyderabad trip with my wife. We took trip from 5th to 7th Jan but wasn't able to find time to write until today. Since this was a 3 day trip and we visited a lot of places, I'll write this travellogue like a diary.

Before the trip started:
There are few preparations we made which proved to be an important part of this trip. I had been to Hyderabad in 2005 during my Engineering. So I knew which are the most popular tourist spots. So this time, I wanted to experiment something: rather than booking a cab for 3 days, I decided to give Zoomcar a try this time. The reviews of the service weren't very great. But I decided to try it out myself once. When I registered, I had to upload a soft copy of my driving license. As opposed to some reviews, my license was approved within ~5 mins of my uploading of the soft copy. So the local travel arrangement was done. Flights were booked in advance for the return journey. In order to afford maximum possible time, we booked Pune-Hyderabad flight for Friday 6 AM and Hyderabad to Pune flight for Sunday 10 PM. So we had almost 3 full days to cover different spots in Hyderabad. However, while planning, we found out that a lot of tourist attractions of Hyderabad are closed on Fridays so we had plan accordingly.

Day 1:
We boarded the 5 AM flight from Pune to Hyderabad and reached Hyderabad by about 7 AM. We were supposed to be picked up at the airport by a Zoomcar executive to take us to the nearest Zoomcar station which is just outside the Hyderabad airport boundary (by around 7:30). There, we filled the checklist, verified the car condition, captured a video to note if there are any existing scratches / dents. The car was in a good condition and was washed neat and clean but the inside was a bit littered so we asked the executive and he got the car cleaned there. We left by around 8. We planned to start our trip with Chilkur Balaji temple on the Western side of the Nehru Outer Ring Road. The temple decently maintained and is reminiscent of the olden days since it doesn't have any modern attractions / decorations on the temple. In fact, we actually struggled to find the actual temple until we had almost reached there since it looks almost like some old Factory. We visited the temple and had planned to possibly spot some Flamingoes at the Gandipet lake which is just beside the temple premises. However, the place wasn't very accessible and we couldn't spot any birds there. Then we had our breakfast - masala dosa with tea - in the temple premises itself. Next we proceeded to Harina Vanasthali park. But again we were disappointed since we were informed there that the park safari goes for the rounds only if there are min 20 ppl, else we can walk around but we didn't because we didn't want to tire ourselves out. So next we went to Taramati Baradari to reach there by around noon. This actual site which is of historical importance was not so well maintained, but the gardens surrounding it seemed good. However, we didn't find it much interesting so we left from there. Then we proceeded to our Hotel Imperial Classic which is situated at around 5 kms from the Hussain Sagar lake. You can read my review of the hotel on the TripAdvisor website. We had our lunch and then decided to take a little rest.

At around 5 PM, we reached Hussain Sagar lake boating point, which is close to Lumbini park. We enjoyed the evening stroll in the Lumbini Park. Then we took a boat ride to reach the Buddha statue at the center of the lake, spent some time there, taking selfies and then came back. From there, we went to the famous Charminar. Here, we navigated across the various shops selling variety of products including the famous Pearl jewellery. Then we got back to the hotel by around 9 PM, had our dinner at a nearby restaurant and then went to sleep.

Posting a few pictures here below.

Dosa at Chilkur Balaji

Taramati Baradari

Lumbini Park

The Buddha statue on an island on Hussain Sagar lake

Charminar

Charminar

Movies and Real Life Future - Part 2

After Earth (2013)

Although this movie didn't do very well at the Box Office, there was something about this one that had struck me as another movie trying to predict our future. In the movie, we are shown that Earth's atmosphere has now become inhospitable and so the 'Earthians' have moved away to some other planets and spaceships. However, when Will Smith and Jaden Smith arrive at Earth, in one of the conversations, Will tells Jaden that Earth's atmosphere changes so rapidly now that during the day, it will rain during some hours, then it will be extremely hot and during the nights, it will be excruciatingly cold and it might even snow during the nights. 

If you notice carefully, we've already started to see the initial signs of such a behaviour. We already see temperature variances of 20Deg in cities like Pune (min temperatures of 20 deg and max of 40 deg in summers, for instance). This phenomenon was surely not present about 20 yrs back when we were all kids. So this surely indicates we are heading towards an 'After Earth-like' scenario. The rate at which we are using up Earth's resources, the rate of ice melting in the polar regions, the global warming, etc, I think such a day is probably not more than 50 yrs from now, which means our next generation is in danger!!!

Wall-E (2008)

As of June 2016, this is the last of the movies that I tried to co-relate with the reality. For those unfortunate folks who haven't yet watched this beautiful cinema, here is a brief summary of the movie along with its correlations with reality:

In the movie, the Earthians have deserted our planet Earth (once again, LOL) and have been living aboard a spaceship for over 2000 yrs. Humans have left autonomous robots to clean up their mess left back on Earth and when the Earth is deemed hospitable again, the humans were to return. However, this never happens. This is because the robots that were left on Earth themselves couldn't survive the gradually worsening harsh conditions and eventually all (but one) of those broke down. So Earth was never revived. And now it only this tiny little 'Wall-E' series robot is still working to clean up Earth. The reason why this robot survived is because 'he' was able to find interesting objects that Earthians used, like the Rubix cube, the TV, video cassette player, etc. He has a whole plethora of such objects as his collection and he hopes to have a human-like life and that is how he manages to 'inspire' himself and work continuously.

The spaceship of the Earthians regularly dispatch a new genre of robots called 'Eva' to Earth in search of life (read plants). Eva ends up finding one such alive plant in Wall-E's collection. Humans aboard the spaceship are shown to be enjoying all things while being 'seated'. They order their food through 'an app' and the food arrives through a robot for them. They move from one place to another using some hoverboards. Humans have eventually become extremely fat and have even forgotten how they were supposed to use their feet!!!

Looking at the extremely rapid de-forestation of our planet Earth, especially over the last 20-30 years, the rapid urbanization, improvements in transportation and the transportation speed. With such rapid automation in all aspects of our lives, even the jobs or work that is prevalent today will cease to exist and new forms of jobs will start to appear*. Also the sudden explosion of the Android and iStore Apps facilitating 'home-drop' services of tasks like 'buying vegetables and fruits' to buying all sorts of gadgets and electronic material. These are things that we are getting so used-to that probably the next generation or may be the one after that will even forget what it was to go to a vegetable market. Not that I am asking you to re-invent the wheel for showing that even we can do the work that our earlier generation did, but I think this is high time we started thinking about striking the right balance between using the modern-day facilities as well as sometimes resorting to the old-fashioned way of work. While it is good to buy the groceries from an app and utilize the time saved there in some other creative way, it is also sometimes a fair experience to walk to the vegetable market and choose some veggies for yourself. While it is good to Facebook, it is sometimes also good call up your old friend.


* I just found these links that show how our future jobs and transportation might look like. Worth taking a look:
http://www.futuristspeaker.com/2014/03/162-future-jobs-preparing-for-jobs-that-dont-yet-exist/
http://www.futuristspeaker.com/2014/03/the-next-bold-step-in-transportation-personal-rapid-transit-systems/

Movies and Real Life Future - Part 1

Some movies may be warning us about the future but are we alert about them? While writing, I realized there are too many examples. So I thought of covering this topic in a multi-part series. A few examples that I have so far thought out:

Equilibrium (2002), Avatar (2009), Hunger Games series(2012), Elysium (2013), Divergent series(2014) and Maze Runner series (2014)

All of the above movies are based on a common premise: There will be another World War in the near future - the cause of the war is immaterial - and in the aftermath of the war, the World will get divided into factions / divisions / districts. The rich and powerful will try to exercise control and even this will work for some time. However, there will always be a revolution. My father always says, 'too much of anything is bad for the human race'. In most cases, it is oppression. BJP's thumping win in the 2014 General Elections in India was one such real-life example where, in the opinion of the masses, the earlier ruling party had exercised extreme corruption / malpractices and people wanted a revolution. Therefore, this is supposed to be a warning for people who rule the others or who are the oppressive bosses in their office. 

Resident Evil (2002), I am Legend (2007) and World War Z (2013)

This is the movie genre that shows that attempts made by scientists to solve medical problems of humanity and the subsequent experiments that have gone wrong in a not-so-distant future. On similar lines, I am sure a lot of people have experienced over the last 5-8 years that a person who catches cold and cough can't recover as fast as the similar person did, probably in the 1990s. Here are some links that depict this phenomenon:

http://www.popsci.com/article/science/whooping-cough-has-evolved-response-its-vaccine

http://www.fiercevaccines.com/story/whooping-cough-mutations-may-be-weakening-vaccine-effectiveness/2014-04-16

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-30551093

Then there are the newly emerging types of diseases like Swine Flu and Bird Flu. These are all, IMO, results of experiments that have been going on around the globe. Scientists, in their quest to solve the critical problems of curing incurable, widely spread diseases like Cancer, AIDS, Hepatitis, etc. have been performing experiments and I think this has led to increase in variety and effectiveness of the diseases. 

This is something that I have experienced first hand. There may be many such examples of which we do not know yet. All this just raises 1 question in my mind: How long before we end up being in a situation like World War Z? 

Quantum of Solace (2008)

James Bond is seen travelling to places like Bolivia where it is shown that there is acute scarcity of water. Imagine what would be the situation in African countries, where the rainfall is already scanty. In India too, we are already witnessing string of low-rainfall years for the past decade now. And we know that sea and oceans have salty water that cannot be consumed but we don't even, yet, have a technology to convert this saline water into pure, drinkable water. Just imagine what would happen if India didn't receive Monsoon rainfall for 3 consecutive years? 

We already see the Tanker Mafia (at least in Maharashtra state) who, may be artificially, create shortage of drinkable water and then force us to make use of tanker services. Quantum of Solace depicts exactly this same scenario. It may not be long before we realize that Water has become the single, most-expensive resource that this World ever imagined. We need the innovative solutions like 'water harvestors from air' which is fast gaining popularity:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fog_collection

http://inhabitat.com/mit-develops-advanced-fog-harvesting-material-that-pulls-5x-more-water-from-thin-air/

http://www.fogquest.org/

http://www.gizmag.com/fontus-airo-ryde-self-filling-water-bottle/41545/

Scary, isn't it?

But wait.. there's more to come.. Watch out for my Part 2 on this series!!!