Music Post - Maro Charitra

The audio of the new movie is not released yet. But I think the music is poised to be a chartbuster.

This is Produced by Dil Raju as the remake to the yesteryears classic film Maro Charithra starring Kamal Hassan starring Varun Sandesh of happy days and Kotha Bangaru lokam fame. The music is scored by Mickey J Meyer who incidentally scored music for the above films of Varun Sandesh and gave roaring hits.

The reason for me feeling so hyped is this trailer of Maro Charitra with superb music. Listen to it.

The story of my Grammar and Handwriting

I was in my second standard when a teacher looking grim-faced walked into our classroom and started teaching us. She was called 'Madam' or just M'am and looked terrifying with chicken pox scars all over her face. She was very strict and disciplined and when she shouted on top of her voice, there used to be pin-drop silence in the class. Didn't bring the book - Kneel down, Didn't answer a question- Kneel down - kneel down, kneel down, kneel down those were the words that rang in the first few English classes.

I will recollect two incidents which were incidental in learning Grammar and improving my handwriting skills. Thanks to you M'am for without you I would never have learnt those.

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Mam: Why did you not do the homework?

Student: Yesterday, we went to temple means I didnt do my homework

Mam: What - You going to temple means you didn't do the homework??

This was the way we students who translated from our native tongue, Telugu, to English talked. All our conjunctions were 'means'. I just don't understand how we talked like that but that was how we talked until our Mam made us learn that a sentence consisted of a subject, and a predicate part. Next few classes were spent teaching nouns, verbs, prepositions and conjunctions but those classes were some of the most productive classes I ever attended.

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It was fourth standard and we were huddled outside the staff room of our school where our teacher was returning our copyrighting books where we had to write something in the whole page, which were said to improve our handwriting skills.

Before I got my book, lot of my friends got their books and had a 'Rewrite' written on the page. After each person who saw it started getting it, it looked like everyone got 'Rewrite' but luckily few people didn't get it and I was one among them.

The happiness that my handwriting was passable didn't stay long. She complete one lesson and gave question and answers for that lesson. I wrote them and gave them for correction. Though my writing was bad, I expected to be passed on as usual. When she came the next day to give the books, everybody got books except me. I was worried. Finally my chance came, she called me and told me that mine was the worst book she has seen. I got a big 'Rewrite' in my notebook when others got it in their copywriting books :( So I learnt the lesson to write neatly the hard way. So many rewrites followed before we were consistently given books without any remarks. And by that time, all students in our class could write reasonably well.

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Thank you Maureen ma'm, if I got selected in campus interview, if I am able to take onsite calls without any fear, give presentations without stuttering, and if I am able to write this blog without mistakes it is because of you. I'm eternally grateful to you mam.  

Things which I miss in Chrome

I being behind a corporate firewall, am not allowed to use only IE6, the buggy browser from Microsoft. I had made a passionate plea to my company's IT team to allow us the luxury of using any other browser like Firefox or Chrome. But they never relented. Even with many companies pleading against using IE6 through IE6NoMore as it takes lot of time of porting their applications on IE6, it still remains the most used browser on the internet. I being a junkie for all things google, tried the google's browser chrome the day it was released and fell in love with it instantly. It matured quite fast from the bugs which stopped many websites from being loaded on Chrome to adding themes first and extensions next.

But I still Mozilla firefox, the browser which really let us know that there is an alternative to the boring and bug ridden IE6 for two things

One being the very well written firebug plugin. Chrome has something called developer tools which provides some of the functionalities provided by Firebug that it is not complete. There is a firebug plugin available for chrome here but the user comments under it suggest that it is extremely buggy. So whenever I have to work on a css issue, i will fire up my firefox and work on it.

Another thing which I miss in chrome is the CHM reader. I have many ebooks in chm format but they are not opening these days in IE due to some security update by Microsoft but that file can be easily opened in firefox in the CHM Reader addon. I hope these plugins are soon available in Chrome and I stop using other browsers completely.

Do you use chrome. If so what else do you think it misses?

Ofcourse, still some bank sites dont open well in chrome and still have to be viewed in IE6. Shame on them.!!!!

I think IE6NoMore website is directly targeted towards them

Book Review - Don't Loose your mind - Loose your Weight

Health is wealth. That is one aspect of our life we want to risk with. We really want to be healthy. We really want to eat healthy food. But with such conflicting advice in the market it is really difficult to know what is good to eat and what is not. If there is one book which will let us know what is good and what is bad, and if you want to eat and stay healthy, this is the book.

Don't Loose your mind, Loose your weight is a book written by Rujuta Diwekar- The dietician of the stars. She has worked as the dietician of Anil Ambani, Amrita Arora and the famed zero figure of Kareena Kapoor.

Rujuta talks of two important things in the book. One is not to loose your mind in thinking that there are magic potions or magical foods or magical diets that can cure your problems of overweight. So she systemically writes about all the nutrients required by our body as well as giving interesting anecdotes of people who have followed various 'magic diets' and their problems.

She writes the book in conversational style and is very easy to read.

She writes - "We put all sort of things into our stomach and expect it to work very well. But we take better care of our car."

"Why do we pay so little attention to our stomachs? Is it because it never attacks us?"

You can expect the book to contain such witty lines to get attention to her point.

The next part of the book contains the four important rules of eating well which she calls is the core of the book.

This book is not just another diet book or eat this and all your problems go book. She says every food is good and promotes moderation in diet.

She promotes that you can even eat fried foods and high cal foods but advocates a very sensible view of how and when to eat them.

It is a must read book for all of them who want to be fit, eat and stay healthy.

As she asks us not to loose your mind, she continuously makes us understand the basics of eating right and by the end of the book we can really appreciate what eating right is.

Finally a must read book. I will write a summary of important points of the book in my book reviews blog.

Creativity of Telangana 'Branding' Team

What is the job of a branding team?

It is basically to always create ways and means to make the brand be in people's mind. In that way, the Telangana movement has achieved a grand success. May be KCR is afraid that it will fizzle away like the previous times and hence making sure it is never out of people's consciousness.

Apart from the usual ways like speeches, songs and drama, they are using novel means which you might or not approve and appear outright foolish. Some of the creative things they have done are

1. It first started with stopping the screening of Arya-2 and Saleem, movies of stars who were against Telangana

2. Next it went to interrupting the shootings and torching down sets for the movies of Mahesh Babu, Allu Arjun, Manoj Kumar etc.

3. Next here is where the creativity oozes - They made 'Rana' the hero of Leader to say 'Jai Telangana' to allow him to shoot his movie.

4. Now could you ever imagine this ?? - They torched the cds of Leader movie because they contained the lyrics - 'Maa Telugu Talliki Mallepu danda' and they wanted ' Maa Telangana Talli ki Mallepu danda'

5. They removed the number plates of AP and started using TG on them.

Whosover is incharge of 'branding' operations of Telangana movement is very smart and has a great future.

As for us people, it is nothing short of attacking all the industries in AP. If it continues this way God knows how much time it is before the companies shift base from Hyderabad and all our creativity is left jobless.!!!

Charity in our Society

I and my wife were taking a long walk on the beautiful road from Gachibowli to Lingampally near the HCU campus. The road along the length of HCU campus is very beautiful with flower trees on both sides of the road. After passing that, she saw some slum dwellers and began telling me that people who make more money like movie stars to should do something to help the slum dwellers.

I tried to explain my philosophy to her which is as below.

It is a good thought that we have to give money to the poor, the story doesn't end there. Because by giving money without expecting anything in return, i.e by giving doles, we don't make it any better. Though it is government's responsibility to improve the standard of living of those people, it should be their own responsibility to come out of poverty.

And in India everyone says what does the government do when he himself could have done something. This it is someone's responsibility to do something. I feel a committed person with no or less funds can do better than a person with no committment but lot of money.

I think we would do well here to remember the famous quote of Gandhi - 'Be the Change You Want to see in the world.'

A case in point is Nirmaan an NGO whose history states that it started in usual discussions we youth have regarding development of India

Nirmaan, which was initially known as My INDIA is a thought emerged from the usual discussions on national issues that used to take place in the bhawans of BITS, Pilani. During one such usual discussion, few participants put up a thought that the idea of every citizen working towards a common goal of making India a developed Nation can alone solve the problems that the nation is facing. That powerful thought gave the birth for our organisation which is now called Nirmaan.

In fact every NGO would have started from this vision, it is not the funds that matter but committment to the idea that matters.