The Epic Saga.. Retold !!

Every so often, we hear stories of good triumphing over evil, stories of men and women who inspire us or stories that are beyond the realm of mankind and earth-kind and yet inspire us. But there's one story that ecompasses all this and more - the epic tale of ramayana.

But what, pray tell, is left to be told of this epic tale that has been narrated time and again in the form of books, teleserials, cartoons and theatre? Nothing ? Thats what I thought till I chanced upon a gem titled "Prince of Ayodhya" by Ashok Banker (published by Penguin). It was first of the collection of 6 books kept in a desolate corner of my institute's library. Apart from the (highly) abridged version of the Ramayana that I'd studied as part of my school's Hindi curriculum, I never really had a detailed exposure to this monumental epic. The book looked inviting.. and well.. since it was only one of the 6 books that I'd have to read to get the entire story of Ramayana, I'm sure it must have been pretty inviting for me to actually pick it up and read in between the hectic MBA schedule.

I generally pride myself on my selection of books - I read very little but I've thoroughly relished and enjoyed every book that I've read. This one didn't let me down either.

From the very initial pages detailing the source and the history of various versions of Ramayana, Ashok Banker gives you a sense of the richness of the magnum opus that would unfold in the books to follow. The story that has been told and re-told again and again is told YET again.. but this time with the finesse of an artist who lends new colours, vibrancy and imagination to the same old portrait. This is Ramayana like never before - The dialogues, settings and events are realistic enough to teleport you to the Ayodhyan era, the sorcery and the witchcraft is binding enough to keep you glued to the pages and the emotions are touching enough to melt your heart.

My heart skipped a beat when Manthra shot a green flame of light from her forked tongue, it sank when Rama used the Brahma-astra to elimiate the asura forces and it almost stopped beating when Parasuram's axe touched Rama's neck only to dissipate concentric circles of sound evergy leaving Rama unscathed !

With every page I turned, there was just one thought that crossed my mind - If this book were to be adapted scene by scene in the form of a movie, won't it put the likes of 'The Matrix', 'Lord of The Rings', 'Spiderman', 'Superman' and 'Star Wars' to complete shame? My guess - Yes ! It would !

Till Next Time..

Cheers..

The Good, Bad and The Joker !

Call it incessant rhapsodizing, euphoria or viral marketing.. the fact remains that The Dark Knight's 'Joker', brought to life by Late Heath Ledger, will sweep you off your feet, curl you up in your seats and put you in deep thought ! As the comic book character, Joker, the maniac who loves to kill, Ledger delivers a performance which probably surpasses any prior rendition of the Joker, animated or otherwise. Watch the Joker bring a "smile" to his preys' faces as he goes on a rampage - killing, bombing and looting Gotham city. Every scene and every entry of the Joker on screen is purely a high-wattage affair. So much so that a fairly good performance by Christian Bale as Batman is pushed to the background.

The biggest achievement of Ledger and the directorial team, although, does not lie in creating yet another "high-wattage" drama. Hollywood's done that before.. with incandescent actors like Ledger, camera work par-excellence and graphics capabilities, its a given ! What separates the chaff from this movie is the fact that it is a breath-taking attempt at baring the mind of a psychopath. Why does the Joker kill ? For money ? No ! For revenge ? No ! The Joker kills because he LIKES to kill. He kills because he believes that there's that hidden streak of evil in everyone around him - the only difference is that we don't like to show it as blatantly as he does. His crime is an attempt to provoke others to bring out their veiled evil streak in the open..

The movie depicts an "idealist" view wherein citizens of Gotham city do not possess that evil streak at all (am not gonna give out any spoilers.. watch the movie yourself !). But idealism will lead us nowhere ! Which brings us to the question - Does the world really need a Batman or do we need a Joker first ??

Till next time..

Cheers..

Why 8.5 million+ users love Firefox 3 !!

It's as grand as it gets ! With over 8.5 million downloads on the first day of its launch, Firefox 3 is all set to create its mark as the "most downloaded software" in Guinness Book of World Records. Glancing back at Firefox 2, the figure of 1.6 million downloads, though not puny by any standards, is overshadowed.

The Firefox 3 Download Counter

Why do the net surfers of this world love Firefox 3 ? What instigates 8.5 million users to ignore the default Internet Explorer and Safari browsers that come bundled with their company's OSes and download Firefox ?

For starters, Firefox makes the web YOURS, literally ! It is probably the only browser that'll let you run plug-ins that enhance the feature set of sites like Orkut and GMail. My GMail has an all new themed look, thanx to the "Better GMail 2" plugin. It makes the browser a personal product, letting you add/remove/modify the features by way of plugins or by using the config option. Need an integrated dictionary option ? Wanna see screenshots next to your Google search results ? Want to write your blogs offline ? Want to view all images in a 3-D window ? Firefox has a plugin for all that and more !

GMail (Themed) with Better GMail 2

Numerous other benefits, especially faster product patches and fixes (many thanks to the Mozilla Community), easy installation (NO system restart), neat interface, faster loading of websites than any other browser and lighter consumption of system resources (with Firefox 3), make Firefox an indispensable software for any PC.

And for those of you who think Microsoft's might lies in marketing.. think again ! Visit www.spreadfirefox.com and see how Mozilla's marketing, based purely on the strengths of their product and users' faith in it, has succeeded in getting that staggering figure of 8.5 million downloads within 24 hours. Millions of users pledged to download Firefox 3 the day it is released. And the product hasn't let them down ! 12 million plus downloads have been done since it's release, which is a testimonial to its viral spread.

What does the Mozilla Community have to gain from this ? It's a FREE software, aint it ? It doesn't have ad-bars or pop-ads either !

The answer is simple - The internet belongs to the users, Firefox lets them reclaim it ! With a horde of proprietary coding techniques (read : IE), which result in non-standardized display of sites across different browsers, the net is in a mess ! Firefox and Mozilla stand for OPEN standards. As the Mozilla Developer Community tagline goes - "Don't hurt the web... Use open standards !"

Three cheers for Mozilla and Firefox 3 ! Click any of the buttons below to download Firefox 3..



Cheers...

Abhinav Kishore

Blogging In A Round World !

Firstly, thanks to all my blog visitors for being umm.. regular visitors ! With the last post my blog completed 1000 hits. Looks like people from far and beyond have been reading my blog too :D My statistics counter reveals that this blog is visited by people from India, US, UK, Germany, Singapore, UAE, Mauritius, Egypt, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Italy, Hong Kong, Cyprus, Japan, Senegal, Romania, Canada, Malaysia, Qatar, Netherlands and some others which the tracker couldn't track.

Speaking of hits, don't we all like more and more hits on our blogs everyday ? But then how many of us actually manage to get hits without pestering our friends to go and click on our blog links (GA and PDV - are you listening ? :P) ? But let that not bring a wrinkle on your forehead. Venture out into the Google territory and there are enormous number of sites and blogs which give you "tips" on increasing your blog traffic (yeah.. they tell you to go and pester your friends too :P). Now you might find this weird but blogs which tell you how to increase your blog's site traffic get some pretty good traffic themselves !! So here's what I'm gonna do.. like a true consultant, I shall give you wonderful topics to blog about. These topics are sure to get you increased traffic on your blog.

(The topics come with my extended never-return-to-my-blog-if-not-satisfied-guarantee !)

1. How to increase hits on your blog ! (Tried and tested... never fails)
   
   
2. I love Windows Vista ! (Write on this topic and I assure you threatening comments from the indignants)
   
   
3. MBA, placements, money (You get 2 lac CAT aspirants from India buzzing to your site)
   
   
4. How to lose X kgs in Y days (The number of hits is directly proportional to the X:Y ratio. The larger the X and smaller the Y, the more is your blog traffic)
   
   
5. Osama Bin Laden (ONE hit assured.. guess where from ? ;))
   
   
6. Shakira, Sakira, Sakhira, Sakir, Sharikha - just try ANY one of them. With people desperately googling for any info on her and making little typos in the process, you'll be better off tagging ALL those keywords.
   
   
7. Give out freebies on your blog - free software, wallpaper, iconset.. anything ! (Here's the analogy - FREE:Humans::Honey:Bees)
   
   
8. Aishwarya Rai (Who cares if you get traffic or not - just drop me a line with your blog link and consider one hit added)
   

Satisfaction guaranteed with the above topics. Do leave a comment if you blog on any of those topics. Unfortunately I can't reserve copyrights to the above topics, but I'd nevertheless expect a thank you phrase in your blog, a link-back and a courtesy mail should any of them work for you :P

Till next time..

Cheers..

SPJIMR DOCC Project @ SOS, Bhopal

The DOCC (Development of Corporate Citizenship) projects @ S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research, Mumbai (SPJIMR) is an attempt to bring future managers closer to the social sector. During the six week tenure of this project, SPJIMR participants work with NGOs across the length and breadth of the country. This year's participants have been to places like Ladakh, Andaman & Nicobar, Shimla, Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore. Since the theme was "rural and slum based projects", most of the participants are working in villages and communities adjoining these cities.

This series of projects, started in 2001, has had multi-pronged advantages : sensitizing MBA students to the needs of the social sector and providing inputs to the NGOs for funding, branding, program enhancement and assessment. This also offers an avenue for the participants to put their learnings to fruitful and practical use.

As far as I'm concerned, my project is titled "Family Strengthening Program" which is a run by the SOS Children's Villages of India, Bhopal. Currently, me and good friend, Diksha Mangla, are working on this project along with 2 SOS co-workers. I've put some of the pictures above from the field visits to the villages that we've made so far.

Will keep you posted more on this ;)

Cheers...