Wooohoooo!!!!

Finally I've got what I have been waiting for quite some time. Thank you BlogAdda for choosing me as their 'Notable Newbie'!! It is quite an honour.

Achieved..

It is nothing less than a Filmfare Award for me. Now I reckon I should aim for the Oscars (if there is one)!!

I would like to take this opportunity to thank my Mom and Dad who have pestered me to start and keep writing in order to improve myself. I also want to thank my 'Bada Mamu' (Uncle) Umashankar Mishra, who is quite simply the biggest fan of my blog. He has read all my posts, commented on each of them and also like my parents pestered me to keep writing. Lastly I would like to thank my friends and readers who take the pains to read my posts (read ramblings).

Thank You all.

Keep reading !! :)

Cheerio !!

An Art Lost in Time…

Bollywood has come a long way. From the black & white films of Guru Dutt to the nationalistic films of Manoj Kumar to the angry young men in Manmohan Desai’s films to today’s films for the NRIs, Bollywood has kept pace with the changing times. I consider myself lucky to have witnessed such changes over the last two decades. But there is one change which I wish should have never taken place.

Be it the angry young man Amitabh Bachchan screaming through the poster of Kaala Patthar or Nargis carrying the weight of the world in the poster of Mother India, film posters have been an integral part of Bollywood history. If you were to walk past cinemas in the 80s & the early 90s you could have never missed the huge colourful film posters. These posters would have been stuck half-hazardly everywhere on street lamps, walls, electric boxes or on the back of the city buses.

Every poster in those times told a story or portrayed an emotion. You could sense the love between Rajesh Khanna and Sharmila Tagore in the poster of Aradhana or the cheekiness of Mehmood in the poster of Garam Masala. I remember when I was a child I had seen the poster of Dream Girl somewhere and I couldn’t believe how beautiful Hema Malini was. Recently in the film Om Shanti Om, the scene where Shahrukh Khan talks to the film poster as if he is actually talking to Deepika sums up exactly what I’m trying to say.

But in recent times film posters I feel have lost their charm. They are just photoshoped images of actors and actresses looking glamorous or seductive. While some are heavy on special effects others are heavy on airbrushes! There are no emotions or charm in there. For example recently the poster of Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara had three guys on the roads showing off their abs. What does that say about the film??

I think the reason for this can be due to the fact that earlier the posters were hand painted by people on minimum wages who were genuinely film-going fans. They would worship these posters and would feel responsible for the actors and actresses to look good on their posters. Their passion for what they did was unparalleled. They would also use the money they earned to go watch the film. Today these people have been replaced by marketing gurus who have top quality designers under them proficient in the use of Photoshop. They may or may not actually go to watch the film. They do what they have been told to and they do it very well. But there is no passion in it. Some may argue saying that this is what the audience today wants. Maybe it is or maybe not, I still feel sad that such art has been lost in time.

Is there any way of getting those days back? I wish I could go back to the time when we could say, ‘Phata poster nikla Hero’!

Click a Pic...

Photos or pictures as they say speak a thousand words. If they did speak, they would tell us about all the things that happened on that particular day. Be it birthdays, functions, hanging out with friends, family times or any other occasion, there would always be a story to tell. The ways in which we get our photos clicked have undergone a lot of changes in the last century or so and I’m sure if the photographs could speak they would say the same story.

In the age of the Black & White Cameras, to get your photo clicked was nothing less than an occasion. Girls and boys alike used to spend hours dressing up so that they looked good in the photo. The trip to the local studio would have been nothing less than a parade. Look at me I’m going to the photo studio to get my photo clicked. Have you seen such photos? Not a strand of hair will be out of place.

 The timeline...

Then came the time of colour handheld cameras. It was also the time when cameras started becoming a household thing. I still remember our black Olympus camera. It was heavy by today’s standards but it still was a thing of beauty. If I remember correctly it was also me who destroyed it. Every occasion was saved as a memory in big photo albums making such occasions even more special. I sometimes still look through old photo albums for nostalgic reasons. But because of the high cost of camera rolls and their development, photos had to be clicked carefully. My dad was the expert of this period. He never liked it if I wasted even a single film on the roll and taught me how to handle a camera.

All this changed when digital cameras entered the market. It revolutionised the way we clicked photographs. Not having to think about the high costs of camera rolls and photo development anymore, clicking photos entered into a kind of frenzy. People started using cameras as if they are using a gun. I guess at this time the word ‘shooting’ was used in its literal sense. People began clicking photos of anything and everything. Where they used to spend hours looking for the right way to click a photo; now they spent that time clicking 100 photos in the hope that at least one would come right. The best though was how parents couldn’t get used to this new phenomenon initially. I remember my parents telling me not to click stupid pictures and waste the space. It took them quite a while to get used to the fact that I could just delete any picture I didn’t like.

Now again there has come a change in the way we click our photos. Though the hardware has remained much the same, the change is more of a syndrome. It is something I like to call the Facebook-Profile-Pic syndrome. It has affected the young generation or what we are also known as the Social Media generation. These days when we click our own photo we have to click one which is suitable for our display pic on Facebook. We rate it according to how many ‘likes’ or ‘comments’ we think we will get. It has to be either very funny or very suave. People might argue saying that they do not care about such things, but even they will admit they feel a bit disappointed if no one comments or likes their picture. It is but human!

So you might be thinking why I wrote about things you may already be aware of. Well I was recently going through my pictures and noticed just how much they have all changed! From the young and cute where I was unaware of the fact that my picture was being clicked, to a bit older when I had to look smart to now when I have to have a crazy photo of myself.

With technological innovations happening all the time, what do you think will be the next change?

Phone - A Friend....

When I left home & came to the UK for my higher studies there were a lot of things I had to leave behind. Family, friends, home, my country were only a few of them. But instead of feeling sad, I slowly settled into a daily routine of studies and exploring this new place, and began to enjoy and look forward to each new day. 

However, there were moments when I felt lonely and homesick. I missed my friends, my family and I admit there were times when I wanted to pack my bags and go back home. But in times like these I found a friend at one of the most unexpected places.

It has always been said that books are a man’s best friend. You can spend hours reading them, treat them ruthlessly & still they will never complain. But in my case books weren’t sufficient. In fact every time I sat down to read a book, my mind wandered to my family, home & friends. Hence, in a dire situation that I was, a certain something came to my rescue; it was my HTC Smartphone. Yes, you heard me right and before you roll your eyes, just listen to what I’ve got to say. 

We both love to travel and hence it always carries an app called ‘Google Maps’. Many a times we lost our way while exploring Sheffield. All we had to do was use the maps to get back on track. It is not jealous of my other friends and in fact likes it when I chat with them. So it has the ‘WhatsApp’ messenger with which my friends in India are only a buzz away. I’m a person who loves music & like a true friend it stores all my favourite songs in its ‘Music Player’. Our best moments together have been captured in its brilliant ‘5MP Camera’ & so very often we check them out in the gallery and relive those memories. It’s also very multi-dimensional in nature. With a range of apps to download from the Android Market, it adapts quickly to my changing needs. Nevertheless, our friendship is not only because of all its qualities, my HTC has brought some changes in me as well. For a person who was content with checking his emails and Facebook only a couple of times a day on his laptop, now feels the need to check them every half hour. 

From the time I have bought the HTC, it has become a very close friend of mine. Like the books it loves to spend hours with me and immediately forgives me if I happen to drop it by accident. But that’s not all. We have got so much more in common. 

My HTC is indeed a reflection of what I am. Like a true friend is has also seen to it that its personality has rubbed off on me. I’ll never forget the contribution it had in my life when I needed a friend. It does everything for me except help with the dishes, but if I needed someone to help me with those, I would have hired a butler! Long last our friendship my dear HTC.

P.S – I would like to thank my Uncle who pestered me into choosing an HTC. If not for him, I would have ended up with a BlackBerry or something.

P.P.S – This blog is written in response to the contest 'CHANGE IS EASY' hosted by Dell Inspiron Laptop on Indibloggers. Dell has rid us of the monotony of single colours on laptops by introducing changeable covers. So go be a part of the Change!

                                                For people on IndiBlogger...Do vote for me!! :)