Ever wondered how your best friend broke up few weeks back with her Prince Charming and stated the cause being ignorance on his part? Ever noticed how paranoid you tend to feel when you trying reaching that one person and you cannot get through their line? Ever thought how your assignments end up being incomplete because you are busy gossiping with your buddy about how cool your crush looks? Ever pondered how updating your Facebook status and tweeting becomes an urgent need while you are on the move? Ahh! The parents usually blame our generation for our compulsive ways but, in reality, it’s the technological advancement and how easily accessible these means have become to us is what is contributing to such circumstances.

I mean why don’t we look back a few decades? There was no internet facility available at the households. Cellular phones were alien objects. Social networking was something unimaginable for everybody. That was the era of letters. And, guys! If you feel, there was no romance then, you are absolutely mistaken. The hearts were connected and defintiely the bonds were stronger than they are today. The reason the couples panic today is mostly because he or she didn’t reply to my SMS. He or she didn’t pick up my call. There’s a lack of understanding and this is all thanks to the technological progress. WITH EVERY SMS going unanswered, with every call going unattended, the sense of betrayal deepens. People have stopped connecting via hearts. It’s all so technical. So, scientific development ought to be blamed for the rapid rise in the number of break ups.

Now, let us take the case of over protectiveness. Didn’t trains run late a few decades back? Was there never any sort of water logging during the monsoons? Was there never any urgent work coming up in the offices which demanded for more number of hours from the employees? People would never go crazy because of these reasons then. But, today, the scenario is completely different. Almost every teenager has a cell phone as they reach home. This is because the parents cannot imagine that the batteries can ever get exhausted and they tend to think all the negative consequences for the child reaching home late. Was there never a day during the eighties and the nineties when the child reached home late? The parents would never shoot questions like bullets at them regarding their whereabouts but, today this does happen and again technology is to be blamed for this.

The last and the most important consequence is the Space. Today, every individual feels the need for space and space for them means an escape to the virtual world. A child returns from school and instead of talking to his parents, he would rather sit in front of the PC chatting with strangers, who indeed appear to be friendly, but who knows the ultimate motive? A working woman comes home after a hard day at office and instead of spending some quiet hours with her better half, wishes to gets her own space and to think of a new Facebook status.

If technology creates space for all of us this way, then that day is not too far when there will be nothing at all but space amidst the individuals staying under the same roof. More than connecting people, today technology is distancing them with the real world and in a way, giving rise to insecurities where the level of understanding is evaporating and soon might even vanish without leaving a trace.

– Arundhati Chatterjee –

Wynn Telecom has signed Saif Ali Khan to promote its latest range of mobile handsets ‘Wynncom’. The official announcement was made on April 10, 2010.

Naved Chaudhary, Head of Marketing, Wynn Telecom confirmed the news, “Wynncom needs a fresh look, which is popular among the youth. Since the target customer for this handset is youngsters, we promptly thought of getting Saif aboard, whose cool image and looks will match the trendiness of the product. Wynncom’s aim is to make a place among the top three Indian handset brands eventually; and signing on Khan is a step in that direction.”

Rakesh Malhotra, co-founder and chairman, Wynn Telecom also added, “We believe that the association is a perfect match between Saif’s personality and what we stand for as a brand. He is well admired amongst our TG, is aggressive and extremely popular with the youth.”

Speaking about the association, Saif Ali Khan said, “I am excited to represent brand Wynncom that stands for cutting-edge innovation and style. I admire the brand’s attitude and style and relate to it closely as it is refreshingly trendy and fast.”

Kohler India Corporation Pvt Ltd, a leading company in kitchen and bath design products has appointed Leo Burnett, Delhi as its creative agency. The decision was taken after a multi-agency pitch.

Vikas Gupta President Kohler India confirmed the news, “We are happy to appoint Leo Burnett as our creative agency. Leo Burnett is known for its ability to aptly partner with brands and provide unique creative solutions that help brands in creating a space in the minds of the customers. We hope to achieve the same with Leo Burnett.”

Samir Gangahar, Executive Director, Leo Burnett added, “We are very proud of winning the Kohler business. Kohler is truly a global brand with a heritage of being an innovator in the category. Their wide range of stylish, superior performance products provides us the perfect platform for making it as admired a brand in India as it is globally.”

Kohler India is a subsidiary of the multinational Kohler Corp, a global brand.

Back in the year 2004, from the warehouse of the online biggie Google, came the pioneer website for Social Networking, Orkut. www.orkut.com was recorded as the most popular website for staying in touch with people across the world. Orkut definitely didn’t expand with the help of any promotion or publicity. The loud and swift word of mouth was enough to get millions of people hooked onto this website.

I still recall those lazy days in the year 2007, when my friends and I were nothing less than Orkut addicts. We were in the final year of our school and we had this funny concept that we ourselves had invented – ‘Scrap Badhao Abhiyan!’. In school, we would talk about creating polls, communities for our batch, making interesting forums. Oh! Being a Moderator was a real matter of honor. We would return from school and there our fingers almost raced on the keyboards as we discussed the exams that were approaching, the journals to be completed on Orkut. We would plan our parties, send invitations online via Orkut. That was the beginning of Social Networking and it elevated obsession to a complete new level. Parents blamed Orkut big time when their teenagers refused to attend the marriage ceremonies or the Pujas held in the complex. Orkut was such a craze that it even came up with a verb form of itself as in Orkutting.

E.g.:
My friend puts forth this statement. “Hey! I had called you up but you didn’t receive my call. What were you busy with?”
I answer it glowingly, “Oh! My cell phone was on silent mode. I was busy Orkutting.”

Orkut was nothing less than an elixir for people from almost every strata of the society around the globe.

Just like every civilization falls and a new one rises from the ashes, same thing happened with Orkut. Facebook can be called the successor of Orkut. Though it launched itself just after a month Orkut was launched; it gained popularity in the recent past.

Taking my own example, I honestly found Facebook highly complex in comparison to Orkut. Hence, even after receiving way too many requests, I didn’t bother to join Facebook as an active member. While the other fact is, I was too obsessed with Orkut to think of even being a part of the Facebook community.

As the law of Diminishing Marginal Utility states that everything after a certain point of time, reaches the level of saturation, I feel this is what is the actual cause as to why Facebook suddenly turned out to be a massive hit among the people who earlier vouched for Orkut. Facebook groups, quiz and updating status became the passion and Orkut lost the appeal it had earlier.

Today, you meet someone new and before asking for their phone numbers, you tend to ask whether they have a Facebook account or not. This clearly states that Facebook is the latest and the most happening thing in the online social networking circuit.

Never to forget, these social networking sites do have their cons. The controversies associated with these websites are definitely unforgettable ones. But, who cares about them as long as you find your buddies to chat from any nook and cranny of the world??

Cheers to the success of Facebook and I hope twitter does not defeat Facebook the way Facebook defeated Orkut.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed to see what’s the future of social networking! Till then, happy Orkutting, face booking and tweeting!

– Arundhati Chatterjee –

After decades of sure shot formulas that led movies in Bollywood, the industry is now witnessing a wave of experimental cinema. Actors are ready to take the risk; directors have their thoughts (and script) in place and a production house backing them as well. And the end result, a refreshingly different movie that unveils reality in an entertaining way.

So what is Experimental Cinema?

Experimental the word in itself is which indicates exploring of newer existence. People experiment i.e. they conjure up a formula that helps create something non-existent before but brought into much of its existence now. To experiment is basically to try something new in order to develop an altogether difference.

Cinema or the 70mm screen perceived motion film has also undergone experimentation regarding various aspects. For example the evolution of silent movie era to the digital Dolby days, cinema has evolved from strength to strength only in the path of developing improvisation. Similarly the term “experimental cinema” or “new-age cinema” is the one of the latest successful cases of improvisations in the film-making process. Who would have thought of using cell-phone cameras, CCTV’s, hidden cameras like bullet camera, pen camera, etc. To shoot footage for a movie??? And then this footage derived from various sources being put together to make a blockbuster film out of it. Yes, I am talking about the recently released movie from the “ekta kapoor” lobby, directed by debutante director “dibaker banerjee” by the name “Love, Sex Aur Dhoka”. Despite of not being a star-studded affair the movie saw stupendous success. And by saying this I do not uphold the title of the movie for providing titillation for a part of the total amount of tickets being sold. It was a simple storyline executed in a unique format not popularized with the Hindi movie audience, which acted as a major crowd puller.

This new concept was already experimented with a few years old release “Aamir” which had also gained critical acclaim. The audience today is not like the old time’s audience who would watch a movie for the nth number of time just for the sake of entertainment or the casted star’s popularity and come again repeatedly till a new movie does not show up. In those times the means of relaxation or rejuvenation were also limited and thus almost all the times the mindless cinema saw a steady upscale growth.

But today’s audience is an intelligent species. On the other hand we also have various means of entertainment being provided at our beck n call, thus the cinema maker has also awakened to our needs. Mindless genre has given way to a new-age cinema where the cinema goer who thinks is given what he asks for. Another recent release “Well Done Abba”, Directed by Shyam Benegal, had a simple rural backdrop where a common man with his genuine intentions, fights for a general cause like provision for water and the position of the government officials is also starkly represented. The characters portrayed by the leading actors like Boman Irani (in a double role), Minissha Lamba, Ila Arun, etc. The story has been smartly wound around the main cause thereby leading the audience to drive home the point.

Thus, experimental cinema is heading to nowhere but to creating a new improved way of perceiving the motion picture, thereby creating a more satisfied and a much more knowledgeable audience!!

– Gargi Waghdhare –

You chained my heart and kept hurting me…
I loved you to distraction, yet I begged you to set me free.
The strange feeling kept eluding me…
If you really marred me so badly, why do I still pine for thee?

Your silence scars my heart…
Your words tear me apart.
Yet when I don’t find you near,
It’s tough to hold back my tear.

The world of love, we were once in,
Has somewhere lost, in between.
What a waste it is, in attempting to get it back…
Where did it go wrong?
I’ve lost the track.

The bright mornings that bloomed because of you,
Are now the gloomy dawns that I fear to get through!
‘Love can make you or mar you!’, they had said.
But the bruises you gave me, nobody can ever guess.

Still now as the first rays of sun enters through the window pane,
I pray the day brings you only gain.
I don’t know whether or not, the past will come back again…
All I ask of you is free me of this ever-growing pain!

– Arundhati Chatterjee –

Just Dial, a free information search engine for your phone operating in India has expansion plans on mind. The company provides information regarding telephone numbers of restaurants, plumbing services, shopping malls, colleges and others.

Venkatachalam Sthanu Subra Mani, Owner, Just Dial said, “We soon plan to hire up to 1,000 people in the US, mostly in under-employed, rural areas.” He further added, “The American service also has a facility that allows establishments to bid and compete with each other to offer the user the best deal. This is our way of ensuring that the customer is king.”

“The market in the US is more evolved and mature. In India, you may need a large sales force on the ground to get local businesses and services providers to sign up and get listed. In developed economies it is easier to accomplish this because there are middle-level players who act as aggregators,” said Mani.

The company plans to employ about 4000 people in US alone. It also has plans to extend its services to Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Hong Kong on the coming years.

Just Dial, a fourteen year old venture currently caters to over 2 million users across 240 cities in the India.

After giving my HSC exams I was really confused as for what career option should I opt for and what would be best for me. A lot of thinking, research plus a lot of advice from friends, cousins, family and neighbours helped me zero down on my decision. Though the advice mainly revolved around the heavy weights like CA, Hotel Management and others:-), the decision was made. I decided to kick start my career by going for Bachelor of Mass Media (BMM).

As I’ve progressed towards the second year, I feel I had selected BMM, as I wanted to be different and unique, but still a part of this world’s crowd. There are 86 students in my class and every individual has his/her own reasons for choosing BMM. Probably part of the crowd, but surely not followers of the crowd.

Now let’s do a flashback and give you a piece of all the thinking and all the reasons I think that make the course worth pursuing.

1. First of all… Think for yourself… Who are we??? Just a slave to the MEDIA. From the moment we wake – up in the morning and pick up the newspaper, to the hoardings on a way to individual’s going to his office, to the afternoon radio, the primetime evening TV and bedtime book…. Take a look around yourself… Everything is trying to tell you something.
This, my dear friend is not a science fiction but modern reality.

Take some time and start thinking what interests you, what bores you and may be everything will look much easier.

2. Today Media stands as an attractive career prospect to the youth of today. BMM teaches you the technical aspects of media but to understand the professional proficiency of it in a practical way, you have to be more creative and think worthy for it. Everyone knows that today Media has reached every nook and corner of the world and has the power to affect people’s lives.

So, if you’re the inquisitive type, can’t get enough of the world, BMM could just be the beginning.

3. Modern media has exploded, how! … Let’s have a brief look… More than 20 news channels have surfaced in 2 yrs, more than 75 radio channels have been launched all across the country, the daily publications, the up coming filmmakers, the daily soaps, the reality shows are all the rage. The definition of media is changing by the second; It now defines itself as a mean of entertainment, education, information, knowledge and much more…

4. Now with media explosion getting bigger and spreading its successful wings all over the world, newer callings such as journalism, advertising, film making, editing, script writing, etc are on demand. YES!!! Even media analysis, is a serious career option for the youth. This course has been properly planned to offer students a concrete ground in communication skills. It has the syllabus which attracts the individual to undertake BMM.

E.g. Subjects like Communication skills, creative writing, English literature, photography, broadcast journalism, internet issues, global media, niche and magazine journalism help you broaden your knowledge as well as your future horizons.

5. You will be guided by talented and experienced teachers, faculty and industry professionals. Nothing better than hearing out real life experiences of the who’s who of the advertising world.

6. When I selected BMM as my career option, from the very first day till I kept a goal in my mind to become a successful and able journalist. And YES!!! I am working on it seriously. Journalism is the most interesting career option for me and I’m doing my best to be good at it. The attractive job profile offers you challenging assignments and can lead you in to the most happening places in the course of the job.

7. If you select journalism as your career option in BMM, you need far more than that. Creativity being the key factor. Being an extrovert will take you a long way always. The ability to interact with people is a critical requirement. A keen sense of observation, intuition to perceive what is not directly revealed and sound general awareness is essential. Students who really want a career in media will make it happen.

8. It also looks forward to develop skill for critical thoughts and originality and to provide the students a break to merge the theoretical program with the practical applications through comprehensive research, logical writing, etc. It’s not only a theoretical study but also full of creativeness and innovative ideas you can come up with. AS deeply you study it, you get to know more surprises about yourself and your inner talent also.

9. Wide options to choose from. You could decide if you want to be in broadcasting section as an announcer, newsreader, presenter/anchor, correspondent, video or radio jockey, producer. There’s a match for everyone 🙂

10. Without the expertise of media and journalists, the world might collapse with no one taking the initiative to spread the news from one place to another and keeping the world connected through the thread of humanity. So while doing your job you get to be a savior as well…so heroic 🙂

– Mrinalini Singh –