Making India Read

How much does childhood impacts the person you become?

How much impact the books you read while going to school make once you step out in the world?

How much influence such books have on your thoughts, beliefs and actions?

I am sure almost all of you shall agree that the books we read during our school days have a long lasting impact on how we grow up as an individual.  Books are the medium through which we see the world around us.  Irrespective of whether it is a novel, comic strip, biography, short story or mythology; all this plays a significant part in our upbringing.

Now imagine a scene where you as a child do not have any book to read.  There is no one with whom you can discuss about the stories you read last night before going to sleep.  This is where Pratham Books, a not-for-profit initiative by Pratham, started in 2004 with an objective of book in every child's hand, decided to make a difference.

Rohini Nilekani, who is the founding member of Pratham Books and the chairperson, spoke last year in TEDxGateaway held at Mumbai about the efforts taken by Pratham Books to achieve its objective.  Franklin Templeton Investments partnered the TEDxGateway Mumbai in December 2012.

There are children which goes to school but do not have anyone in their family who can help them in reading.  To ensure that their school education is not wasted, it is necessary that they have resources to practice how to read.  Pratham Books decided to provide this resource to such children.

Books published by Pratham are available at very low cost at various places / schools / library in remote areas.  Pratham Books partnered with willing authors, readers, teachers to expand their presence and offerings.  Over the last 9 years, Pratham Books have published 1573 books in 11 languages and distributed 10.3 million books all over India.

Last year, they also carried out a special initiative on International Literacy Day, wherein across 28 states of India 419 school teachers read their books to approx 20,000 children.

This is a great initiative undertaken by Pratham Books having a long term positive impact on the future generation.

PS:  I recollect receiving tweets from Pratham Books last year about their initiative on International Literacy Day and inviting me to contribute by reading for children in my locality.  I was not aware about the work Pratham does in this field and use to ignore those tweets.  Now since I know the noble cause for which they are contributing, I shall surely try to contribute to the extent possible and I feel we all should do that.

Disclaimer: This post is part of Indiblogger's The Idea Caravan contest wherein Indibloggers were invited to view the videos of TEDxGateway Mumbai held last year and blog about the various ideas presented in those videos which are destructive and path breaking and can lead to positive future impact on the society.  There are some gifts to be given to all bloggers whose post gets selected and prizes to be won in a contest.  To that extent, this post may be considered as a paid post.

Indiblogger - Reliance Digital Experience @ R Mall Mulund

Indiblogger invited its members to visit the Reliance Digital Store across Mumbai and share the experience on the blog.

There is a newly opened Reliance Digital Store at R Mall, Mulund West, quite near to where I stay and I seize the opportunity to visit the store and feel the experience.  While I am a regular visitor to the R Mall, I never got an opportunity to visit any Reliance Digital Store before this.

The store is located in quite a busy area and in one of the oldest malls in Central suburbs.  The store as such is not big, but has a good variety of products under one roof.

I visited the store on Sunday morning.  I was promptly taken to the store manager who took my indiblogger invite printout and told me to have a 'Reliance Digital Experience'.

The crowd had not yet started and I had the pleasure of roaming around the store leisurely taking pictures.  The store seems adequately staffed, always eager to help you out in choosing the products.

Shoppers having a look at product displays

Wide variety of Windows 8 laptops on display

LED Screens inviting attention

There were wide range of LED / Plasma screens to choose from.  There was also a large Sony 3D television in display which was quite popular amongst shoppers for 3D experience.  There was a separate home theater experience section, but was closed at that point of time.

One product which made me curious to fiddle around was the Sony Internet and video player.

Awesome player - I wanna have one!

There were no keys and buttons, just a touch screen on the right bottom with couple of options.  The instrument was glossy and very attractive.

The latest models of Samsung Galaxy Mega phones - 5.8" and 6.3" were also on display.

The latest smart phone

Other mobile phone options such a new touchscreen Blackberry Z10 and iPhone 5 were also an interesting experience.

Overall experience of the store was good.  Nice layout and arrangement of various products, helpful staff and prime locality.  I did not purchased any thing on that day and hence can not comment on the ease of billing and payment.  However, I did noticed that the payment counters are at the other side of the store far away from exit, which seemed strange to me.

Disclaimer:  This entry is part of Indiblogger Store Experience, wherein Indibloggers were invited to visit the store and share the experience on their blog.  There are some goodies / gifts to be given to all who blog about the experience and prizes to be won in a contest.  To that extent, this post may be considered as a paid post.

Rain Fury in Uttarakhand

Life is strange.  While I was enjoying my first monsoon outing of this year last weekend, the same monsoon was creating havoc in northern states of India.

As per the last available reports, 140 deaths have been confirmed.  But the sad part is nearly 14,000 people are still missing and additional 60,000 people are stranded even after five days.

The scenario in Uttarakhand is extremely grimed.  Uttarakhand is famous for its pilgrimage places and hill stations.  Kedarnath, which is a Hindu pilgrimage place and one of the places of Char Dham (four holly places of pilgrimage) has been destroyed in entirety by the floods of river Mandakini.

Well as usual, the Government was not prepared for natural disasters of such proportion.  However the rescue work which was initial affected due to bad weather is now in full stream and Indian Army is going an excellent job of rescuing people stranded.

Army carrying out rescue operations (Source: NDTV)

Google also has started a person finder search to help families and their relatives stranded in Uttarakhand.  The link is http://google.org/personfinder/2013-uttrakhand-floods.

God has his own ways of treating Mother Earth.  What else can we say about the way the Almighty has treated the beautiful, scenic, snow-clad Himalayan mountains of Uttarakhand.

This year's first monsoon outing

This year's first monsoon outing was to Lonavala with friends yesterday.  Monsoon has arrived in full force in Mumbai and yesterday was no different.

It was raining cats and dogs for the entire day and made our monsoon outing wonderful.  The entire stretch of the expressway was scenic with waterfalls from the mountain.

Waiting to go beneath these falls

The monsoon clouds where everywhere and as we drove up, they were all around us.  Not able to view the car coming from the opposite side even with headlamps and hazard lights turn on.

Monsoon clouds covering the mountains

Heavenly!!

It was crowded with families and youngsters eager to get wet, but we were fortunate enough to enjoy the waterfalls peacefully thanks to we departing early during the day.

The later part of the day was spent in traffic coming out of Lonavala and reaching Mumbai which was moving at a snail pace.

Notwithstanding the time we lost in traffic, it was a memorable outing and a perfect way to welcome monsoon.

Dreams and Reality

Few days back, I was reading one of my friend's blog post on 'What motivates you?'.

A simple question difficult to answer.  What motivates us to live a life we are living now?  What motivates us daily to wake up  and give our best in work? The post started a train of thoughts in my mind about one's existence and purpose.

Same day evening, I saw 'Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani' a movie about a guy's dream to do what he is passionate about.  A movie where for him the priority is to achieve his dreams - for him this is way more important then staying with his family, childhood friends, etc.  His girl friend, on the other hand, gives more important to relationship and family and is willing to sacrifice her dreams and even her love.  The movie hovers on this issue.

Both of them are correct in their approach to life.  The thing which matters the most is what one loves to do and to achieve that.   There are lucky few who can eat the cake and have it too.  But many of us needs to choose from many alternatives.

Whichever way, if we enjoy what ever we opt for, life is a joy ride.

IPL and after

There has always been a buzz associated with IPL.  It has all the three S's (Speed, Spice and Sex) in it.

Right from the Season 1, BCCI, team owners and the media has ensure that the buzz is maintained.  High decibel promotion campaigns,  live DJs during the match, sensual cheerleaders, good looking hosts and bollywood.  All this has ensure that you can't stay away from IPL.

Due credit to Lalit Modi to start this and successful completion of 6 'successful' seasons is testimony to that.  (Successful for BCCI, cricketers and cheer girls, I don't know whether anyone else has benefited from IPL).

Team owners are yet to break even, television copy rights were given at astronomical prices and we as spectators are always made fools of it.

Sometimes it feels to me that IPL is more like WWE, the famous wrestling arena, where everything seems stage managed.  The only objective is to provide entertainment.

Did you noticed the final presentation ceremony of IPL 6?  Ravi Shastri while congratulating the winners of purple cap, orange cap, (blue cap and yellow cap!) ensured to end the sentence with thank you very much for the entertainment.  IPL was and shall always be less about sports and more about entertainment.  It competes with the 3 hour movie in the cineplex.

But the recent scandal surrounding spot fixing, match fixing and god knows what all has clearly moved the floor beneath dignitaries.  As I write this post, senior team of BCCI has already resigned and the buzz is Mr. Srinivasan shall quit by tomorrow.

Whether this shall be good or bad for IPL I don't know, but one thing is sure, IPL is not dead and it shall bounce back even stronger next time.

How does it impact me as a IPL viewer?

I never viewed IPL as a sports about two team competing with each other and my loyalty with one team.  There was no loyalty involved here other than I liking Mumbai Indians, since I am based from Mumbai and things like that.  It was and always has been an entertainment for me.  And it is always better than the 'saas bahu' type serials with which it compete its air space.

So as a viewer I am least bother about what happens to IPL, what I am bother about is what happens to cricket, our cricketing talent and to young aspiring cricketers.  Everything else is rubbish!

Off the Cuff Ideas

It always feel good to start a new blog.  And a blog in which you can share about everything under the sun makes things more interesting.

You can learn more about what this blog shall contain by browsing through the 'about' page.  But you shall learn much more and better by going through few of the posts in this blog.

I shall try my best to make the blog interesting and exciting.