Go Incremental and Iterative with Agile

As a software developer, I have had the chance of working in both Agile and non-Agile environment. Though, the Agile exposure, so far, was not quite close to a certified Scrum like environment, It was quite flexible yet adhering to Agile manifesto. I have been learning more about agile lately and it has been quite exciting to understand the intricacies of this methodology and I am now looking to just get more Agile :)

image credits: http://c2reflexions.com

During this learning process, one of the thing that intrigued me was the relationship of Agile with Iterative Vs Incremental development. Iterative and Incremental development, both in itself can coexist or rather are often used during the development of most products. Their relationship with each other and the connection with the Agile philosophy is indeed a sort of grey area that got me into doing some research which was fairly rewarding.

Now, lets look at both Iterative, Incremental and how they can co-exist for a theatre production. I am specifically choosing to pick a non-technical project scenario here. Some of the great directors I have worked with, would inherently use both iterative and incremental methodologies while building up the play.

A theater production process is Iterative because, the play is rehearsed consistently and is constantly going through improvement in terms of the performance of actors and other technicians. Good directors start with just readings of the play to ensure deeper understanding by all the members of the team before the actors even get onto doing any movement

Shashi, Mayuresh in Samaantar (2009)

It is also incremental because during the rehearsal process or the shows thereafter, a whole bunch of things get associated with the play. A particular kind of lighting, background score, costumes or accessories. All of this, eventually increase the overall cognitive experience.

When it comes to technology related projects/products, I feel that Incremental methodology is not only about features going into various releases but does also apply to the user stories going into one particular release. Just like a theater production, the design, functionality, user experience need to evolve through both iterative and incremental ways.

Agile is both Iterative and Incremental, in my view. In fact, its much more than that. Though, the Agile practices talk about both iterative and incremental with varied weight-age and many times interchangeably, I think both iterative and incremental are deeply rooted in the Agile mindset.

If I have to put a mathematical relationship between Iterative, Incremental and Agile, it would be ‘Ek Aur Ek Gyaarah’. :)

Trends re-shaping B2B Marketing

Industry connect sessions offered by Institute of Product Leadership is a great opportunity to meet, connect and learn from industry experts from various backgrounds. and Its also exciting because Its free. We had Anshul Kaushesh, Brand Systems and Communications leader from IBM, sharing her experiences on the transforming space of B2B marketing that left the audience walk away with a very enriching experience.

My idea of attending this session was mainly to understand how B2B marketing differs from that of B2C marketing which I have been studying lately. With every passing slide and the points from Anshul's presentation, this idea started turning into more of a misconception or a myth. B2B marketing is getting more & more closer to B2C, in fact, it would not be wrong to say that there is nothing like B2B or B2C marketing, its just Marketing. This eventually became the biggest take away for me from this session and we will see multiple reasons as to why, in the rest of this blog.

1:1 relationships : B2B deals are no longer struck on the golf course because it is no longer just the CEOs or CFOs signing the deals, but CMOs, CRO, rather all CxOs and other senior management professionals now have the authority to make buying decisions. Most of these CxOs are milleniars and hence deeply rooted to the technology. They understand the social ecosystem really well and use these skills while making their buying decisions. In fact, a large amount of  such decisions are made even before the lead is initiated. The buying entity makes a much more informed decision based on the information and data already publicly available. This brings us to a very key point of significance of relationships, but these relationships are to be built and maintained by marketers and not just Sales. Marketing is now looking at how do they personalize their campaigns to build 1:1 relationships with the decision makers and influencer/stakeholders. The ad campaigns are more about the buyers/consumers and no longer about just the brand. An ad campaign boasting about the brand is now old school, but they are likely to connect to the buyers relating to their cognitive and emotional senses.

Being Found - The second most important point to understand from marketing perspective is that it is no longer about conducting events, then identifying the leads from those events and passing it on to Sales. In fact, it is not about finding the customer at all, it is now about "being found" by the buyer who has his own places to look for information. The tech savvy buyer is likely to go to google, facebook, twitter and various other social platforms to find out more about the products or services he is considering. He is going to research or look for curated information that is now widely available. Also, If this buyer is looking at google today, tomorrow he might be looking at other places and this is exactly why the marketers need to be extremely agile ensuring that they are available where the buyer is looking at.

Marketing Efficiency - Traditionally, ROI from marketing campaigns or events has always been subjective to Sales effectiveness and hence would be difficult to measure. With the ongoing changes to the marketing function, there data driven activities would now directly reflect on the ROI and hence it is now possible to get much closer to the reality in terms of identifying its effectiveness.

Impact to Sales - As marketers are now being expected to identify, track and develop 1:1 relationship with the buyers, they are beginning to overlap with the typical function of Sales. Sales would eventually shift their focus onto more specialized activities but the need for typical Sales function is anticipated to go down further in the long term.

Skills required for being successful marketer - As the marketing role is getting transformed into this new avatar, the skills required to be a successful marketer are also changing, rather acquiring new skills is becoming more critical. As the function is becoming more data driven, being smart and savvy is just not enough any more, it is equally important to have an understanding of how the data is generated and how that is interpreted to increase the effectiveness.

With this session, it was evident for me that the learning experience becomes delightful when it happens unexpectedly and I am certainly looking for attending more of these events in the near future. The views here are my own interpretations from Anshul's presentation and the discussions afterwards.
You can find more details about the Industry Connect events and the Speaker here.

A 'pitch-dark' Diorama

Honking train moves under the railway overbridge in Bangalore. Camera spans over to the open area next to the Railway overbridge where a very old black car is waiting. Next shot. 2 guys sitting in the car, thats me and my co-actor. I am just about to take my line and the director shouts, "Cut! Get some touch up done for Mayuresh.".

Sitting in an old Black car, no air conditioning, windows rolled up, burning temperature. I was sweating, and really uncomfortable with that whole setup. To add to it, the crew had these huge outdoor sun reflectors that were pointing right at me ensuring I get constant Sun bath in that heated chamber. Even worse, I needed to look in the direction of the Sun reflectors while taking my lines, so need to keep my eyes relaxed. I was getting worked up, and the crew members walks up to me. She clearly saw what I was going through and said, "Mr. Amitabh Bachchan also goes through this Mayuresh". That stayed with me, and I didnt complain for the rest of the day on that shoot. :-)

The first cut of this film, A 'pitch-dark' Diorama, is just out. The most interesting thing about this project is that this has been shot on the film camera and not the DSLRs. The movie has a gem of a plot and the writer/director, Santhosh M P, is a fantastic film-maker who is betting everything on his life for this movie.

We shot this a few months ago and just finished my dubbing last week. For the last leg of post-production work, the project is crowd-funding at the moment and if you want to be a part of this movie, please do contribute.
http://apddmovie.tumblr.com/

There are many things to remember from this project. A fantastic DoP and technical crew was great fun. Made many new friends and have been a great opportunity to work some fellow theatre actors in Bangalore.

Do check out the first cut below,
https://vimeo.com/119673912

Reviving the blog with new wave in India

I have been meaning to revive this blog for a long time now and in fact quite excited about the fact that its actually coming together. Since the political scene in the country at the moment is looking forward to the new wave, thought it might be interesting to post what I wrote around the Assembly Elections back in April 2014. I believe that would help me bring the backlog down by a few months for this blog. :)

<snip>
My Vote is against Vote-Bank politics.
I voted with a hope that AAP grows bigger than Arvind Kejriwal and my vote would add some confidence to their candidates. The vote is really for clean politics and for the candidates that they have brought e.g. V Bala, Babu Mathew and many others. I encourage them to stay focused on what they have set out for.

NaMo is likely to become the PM and that's not a bad thing for now. But NaMo voters, I think, are like those short term traders that look at such election as an opportunity to earn quick money i.e. Immediate or short-term gain. In this case, Security. Because, We don't want to deal with another crisis at the country level.

BJP or NaMo (& ofcourse Congress) still represent and practice vote-bank politics, communal/secular, caste, religion - whatever. Sure, NaMo will bring some stability, economic and otherwise, to our country, but that is no longer sufficient for India. We need reforms and radical ones. Also, let's not forget, NaMo has made an investment of thousands of crores for his 370 rallies and he is sure to bring 1000% return on that investment when BJP comes to power, rather compromised power. In return, he will give us swanky international airports, multilevel flyovers and many other things on the name of development, some of which even UPA gave us, but the gap between India and Bharat (or religions, castes) will further widen. They want the votes to still stay very cheap.
This gap is growing every passing national election and we need to make investments to turn the tide and in 66 years, we haven't even begun.

In my view, the game changer is many of the AAP candidates who have not joined politics to make money and also carry right intentions for change. They surely lack the experience in Governance but they have enough exposure and experience to utilize the bureaucrats and highly experienced policy makers. They also need a party framework so that they can focus on the right things. Today, AAP could become that party and tomorrow, it could also fill in such candidates and any new such candidates with its framework and support. It needs to grow organically.

AAP has been learning their lessons, and It is already the third biggest national party and I believe, they are ready to jump in the water either with power or as the principal opposition.
</snip>

Today, on Feb 8th, The Delhi elections have concluded, AAP is likely to be at the top on the counting day, Feb 10th.

Thank You!

Voter registration for Bangalore MLC elections 2012

What is this election all about ?
Bangalore Graduate MLC is a constituency reserved for graduates. 7 of the 75 MLC constituencies in the Karnataka Legislative Council are reserved for the graduate voters; voters who are registered in a special voter-list for this election.
Less than 2% of voters cast their vote in the last election!

You can contribute in 3 simple steps:
1. Register to Vote
When ? - Now.
How? - Fill Form 18, take your original degree certificate, take a copy, take a copy of address proof and submit it at your local ARO/Ward office. Details below.
More info on website.
bit.ly/mlcgrad (to generate form 18 and FAQs)
bit.ly/mlc-voter (citizen matters comprehensive site about this election)

Give a missed call for any help during registration : 080 4931 1234

2. Register your family and friends

3. Vote in June.

Voter registration process:

Eligibility :
1. Graduates Degree holders as of November 1st2008
2. Resident of Bangalore

Documents needed :
1.Form 18
2.Copy of Degree Certificate
3.Residence Proof

In 2006, less than 20,000 people voted out of 15 Lakh graduates!! Register and make your vote count!
How to register
1. In person - Go to the designated office for your area (or one of the central locations listed below) with documents and originals. Get acknowledgement.
2. By Post - Get copy of degree certificate attested by a gazetted officer. Post documents to any of the central locations listed below.

For HAL 3rd Stage, (my local ward office)

BBMP Assistant Revenue Office,
HAL 2nd Stage,
16th B Main,
Indiranagar,
Near Little Flower Public School,
Phone - 080-22975835

CORPORATION

Asst. Electoral Reg. Officer
BBMP Head Office
N.R. Square
Bangalore
Phone 080-22239044


SHANTI NAGAR

Electoral Regn. Officer
Office of Regional Commissioner
2ndFloor BMTC Bus Stand, Shanti Nagar, K.H.Road
(Double Road)
Bangalore 560027
Phone 080-22109665

MAJESTIC AREA

Asst. Electoral Regn. Officer
Deputy Commissioner
Bangalore Urban District
Next to Cauvery Bhavan
K G Road Bangalore
Phone 080-22211292

Need strong LokPal - Letter to MP

On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 6:26 PM, office of Ananth Kumar wrote:

Dear Sir

BJP is for Strong Lok Pal.

pl visit www.ananth.org

regards

Team Ananth Kumar


On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 2:25 PM, Mayuresh Nirhali
<mayureshnirhali@gmail.com> wrote:
> Esteemed Shri Ananth Kumar Honorable MP of Bangalore South (Karnataka ) ,
> We are deeply hurt and disappointed with the goverment proposed Lokpal Bill.
> We want Lokpal to be a Strong Government Independent Anti Corruption body ,
> which can investigate on its own.
>
> "Jan Lokpal Bill" has been proposed to support people of India like myself.
> So , please support Jan Lokpal Bill which is effective than the Government
> proposed Lokpal bill in eradicating corruption. We are open to changes to
> this bill, but the bill currently proposed in parliament has to be opposed.
> Since, we elected you, we hope you will not disappoint us.
>
> Mayuresh
>

In-flight entertainment system Gotcha

Recently, on a flight from Toronto to Ottawa, I got a chance to see how the in-flight entertainment systems bootup. I admit here that It was shear luck. I did not have to get into the cockpit or any other section where they normally wont allow passengers. It was all happening on the private screens and for everyone.

There was some hick-up with the entertainment system and it was hung. After someone reported, Captain announced that it will be fixed in another 10 minutes. In about 5 minutes, everyone saw following on the screens.





I literally jumped when I found 'WinCE', 'waiting for download on COM1 port' on the screen. I had this funny feeling of seeing something that they are supposed to hide and really enjoyed that amusing moment.

So, I think this is the way it works. On reboot, the client boots up and initializes its network ports and COM1 ports. It downloads the necessary data from server and finally starts the application where you see what we are used to see on flights. Well, Thats basic networking and no rocket science!

But, all this happening in the air, is kinda kewl!

I post an iPost

This is a special post. I am writing my first post from my new toy, iPhone.
Its time for my flight to Frankfurt from Toronto.

Take care

Being an Ottawa Senator

I am visiting Ottawa, Canada for a conference since monday. The conference got over yesterday and today many of us decided to do some sightseeing around the beautiful city of Ottawa.

We are staying at the University of Ottawa (aka uOttawa) residence and most of the key sites are at walkable distance of 1.5 miles maximum. The 2 main attractions we covered today are, the Parliament hill and the War museum.

The weather was very nice and We had a fantastic time at both these places. I am sure you will enjoy the pics here.

Being in Beijing

I am going back home from my short trip to Beijing and writing this log at the new bangkok airport with few hours to board the flight to bangalore.

This was my second trip to Beijing. I stayed for about 9 days the first time and this time it was only 4 days. I had enough time to cover the main attractions to beijing in the previous visit itself, so the excitement was much much lower this time. I stayed in the same hotel, Wenjin Hotel, Wudaokou. But, The agenda of the trip was different and ofcourse the experiences were a lot different.

Apart from my work the last trip was more like a tour of beijing. I covered Great Wall of China (badaling), The Palace Museum, Summer palace, Tianmen Square, Temple of heaven, etc. so I thought It would be good to spend more time doing things that only locals do in this trip like for example, I used the subway more regularly than the last time.

One thing you cannot miss or some of you might be surprised to see the number of McDonalds and KFCs everywhere in the city. to me, it seemed like the paan shops on every nook and corner of the cities in india. More surprising is the amount of people you will find inside. They are always crowded. Even though the younger population is more to be seen there, the middle-aged crowd is not far behind. Also, you will find McDonalds and KFC very closely situated to each other. Initially, I thought this is more to do with the grudges between Coke and Pepsi than Mcdonalds Vs KFC, but I guess its both. Not-so-surprisingly, this is the safest bet for foreigners/visitors. On all 4 days, I had one meal in the day at one of the two fast-food joints. No more fast food for atleast 6 months now.

But, everytime I would set out to enter an chinese restaurent, there was a push back within me. There are certain ingredients in their food whch I dont like. One of that is some kind of sauce (soya sauce, may be), the smell of which just turns me off, really. You will smell it near many road-side food joints. The other reason is that, everything on the menu is in chinese. Many restaurents have menu cards with pictures, but then you cannot guarentee. Also you can not guess how a particular dish is going to be like, thats a major problem and above all is the communication.

I still remember the struggle while asking one the waiters to get the bill. I, initially, thought it would be easier just by doing the signing by hand gesture, But I struggled for more than 5 minutes to get that through to him. The following day, I learnt a new chinese word from my colleagues, "maitan => bill".

Having said all that, I had great meals at such chinese restaurents this time, but on all those occasions, I was with my chinese colleagues. Fish being one of my favourite, it was very easy for them to choose the restaurents. I am told that I have had 2 of the best fish dishes in chinese food. I was offered to eat frog once though, but I politely declined.

Coming back to the language, I think this is the biggest barrier in this country for visitors. The local people are nice and helpful, but you cannot interact with them due to this. What more, it is extremely difficult to pick up this language as well. Chinese language has very unique pronounciations and yet most of them are so close to each other that a slight mistake you make can mean something totally different. So, on-the-fly learn-and-use strategy would not work. Well, you can use some simple words like 'Xie Xie', 'buyao' etc. But they can only get you started.

but then, you meet with people are simply beyond this barrier and they never give up. I took an taxi from Wudaokou to Silk Market one evening. It was peak hour and there was bumper-to-bumper traffic near wudaokou itself. I was getting agitated as I wanted to get there earlier and get back to the hotel early. This man, the driver, had probably never tried english and it was impossible to communicate anything with him. But, he symphatized with me for my agitation and was telling me in chinese that seemed something like, "Traffic is bad!", "have patience", "One right turn and then left, and we are there!". I could sense what he wanted to talk, but could not even catch one word of what he was saying. The best thing happened when he was switching FM channels and at one channel, he literally jumped with excitement and gestured, "listen to this! Listen to this!". On the radio, there was a voice (only one) doing some kind of one act play or something. I was looking at him, stunned, to his gesture. He had no clue about it and totally enjoying the drama which I had no clue about.

I feel lucky to have visited China when it is getting ready for the Olympics this year. The bird's nest, the stadium that will host the olympics games is absolute world-class work. I was told that most of the work is complete but they are not letting anybody go inside to see. I had a chance to see that many times but only from the highways, pretty far. You will see many authorised shops at famous visitor spots selling Beijing Olympics souveniors, they are pretty nice.

In this trip, something that I will remember is the kind of elctronics shopping I did in the haidan district. This place has number of huge malls only selling computer hardware and other electronic items. You cannot bargain as much as what you would at other famous visitor spots, but it is possible to some extent. I would recommend everyone to visit this place.

This 5 day beijing trip was pretty refreshing for me and a good change from the busy routine. The highlights include the huge fish head I ate and the electronics shopping and ofcourse the cold that I caught which I am carrying back home with me.

Rangdakshini 2007 Results : Its YUVA again!

History repeats! :)

Its yet another biig success to YUVA. Complete Wash-out or a "Yuva Wah-shout" as Raju always puts it.

YUVA's 'Pravas' won best play (among 19 entries), Best actor among many other first prizes in this competition. The success is not a surprise with Yuva displaying high degree of team work and professionalism.

Some more highlights of the event are,

* 19 teams performed over 4 days, 2 teams of children presented 2 Baal Naatyas.
* Contesting teams came from Sangli, Solapur, Latur, Goa, Waai and Bangalore.
* Vikram Gokhale, chief guest for the prize distribution ceremony.
* After a captivating "Gappa" session with Vikram Gokhle, he distributed prizes for the top 3 performers in each of the following categories:

1. Ekankika
2. Director
3. Actor
4. Actress
5. Sets
6. Music
7. Lights

* Bangalore teams outshone the visiting teams in most of the categories.
* Yuva, a Bangalore team, successfully defended the 'Winner' title it won last year.
* IISc, another Bangalore team, also gave an impressive performance on its debut
* Judges urged the visiting teams to come up with 'better' presentations as expatriate Maharashtrians in Bangalore expect something more from the resident Maharashtrians.

Awishkar's 20th Annual Theatre Festival

Awishkar's 20th annual theatre festival, the Arvind Deshpande Memorial Festival, concluded yesterday, celebrating 75th birthday of the man behind this group, Mr. Arun Kakade. Awishkar is doing theatre for more than 3 decades now and has always supported core marathi theatre and the passionate people behind them.

This event featured a lot of premier performances along with plays from established organizations and reknowned playwrights such as Satyadev Dubey. Here is the list of performances,
------------------------------------
Sunday 7th January, 10.30 am
Awishkar- Chandrashala Presents
PANCHATANTRA (Marathi Play) (Silver jubilee Show)
A Ballet for kids

Written by : Madhav Sakahardande
Guide : Guru Parvati Kumar
Directed by : Ramesh purav
Co-Directed by : medha parab
Music : Shank-Neel
Production Incharge: Kshama Sakhardande
Produced By: Arun Kakde

Monday 8th January, 7.30 pm
Mumbai Marthi Sahitya Sangha - Amrut Natya Bharati Present
KUNDALI ANI KUNDALINI (Marathi Play) Premier Show
Original English Script : Mrunalini Kamat
Marathi Transalation and Direction : Rekha Sabnis

Tuesday 9th January, 7.30 pm
Academy Of Theatre Arts, Mumbai University Presents
OEDIPUS (Hindi Play) Premier Show
Orignal Play : Sophocles
Adaptation : Machindra More
Music Director : Aamod Bhatt
Director : Prof. Waman Kendre

Wednesday 10th January, 4.00 pm and 7.45 pm
Awishkar and Theatre Unit Present
FLIRT IN YOUR DREAMS (English play) Premier Show
Written and Directed by : Satyadev Dubey

Thursday 11th January, 7.30 pm
Awishkar Presents
DOGHI (Marathi play) Premier Show
Written by :Dr. Shirish Athawale
Directed by : Vijay Kenkre

Friday 12th January, 7.30 pm
Awishkar Presents
YAARI HAI IMAAN MERA (Hindi Play) Premier Show
Marathi Version : Chetan Datar
Hindi Adaptation : Charudatta Bhagwat & Aslam Parvez
Directed by : Kapil Bhopatkar

Saturday 13th January, 7.30 pm
Maharashtra Cultural Centre Pune, Presents
SOHAM KOHAM CHAY GOSHTI (Marathi play) Premier Show
Written by : Prof. Datta Dandge
Directed by : Anant Kanho

Sunday 14th January, 10.30 am
Awishkar - Chandrashala Present
DURGA ZALI GAURI (Marathi Play)
A Ballet for kids

Written by : Madhav Sakahardande
Guide : Guru Parvati Kumar
Directed by : Ramesh purav
Co-Directed by : medha parab
Music : Shank-Neel
Production Incharge : Kshama Sakhardande
Produced By : Late Arwind Deshpane, Arun Kakde

Wednesday 17th January, 7.30 pm
Awishkar and Hunnar Present
CHAAR MOJAYCHA NAHI (Marathi Play) Premier Show
Written by : Vivek Sathe
Direced By : Pradeep Mulye

Thursday 18th January, 7.30 pm
Awishkar Presents
JATA NAHI JAAT (Marathi Play) Premier Show
Written by : Siddharth Tambe
Directed by : Girish Patke

Friday 19th January, 7.30 pm
Awishkar Presents
PAASWALA (Marathi Play) Premier Show
Written by : Jayant Pawar
Directed by : Chetan Datar
--------------------------------------

RangadakshiNi 2007 - Schedule

The schedule for RangadakshiNi 2007 is out.

The competition is spanned over 4 days around the long weekend of Republic Day and in total 21 ekankikas (one act plays) will be staged. There are 5 local groups and 2 of which (Chaitanya and IISc) are participating for the first time. The rest 17 ekankikas come from various locations including Sangli (total 9 entires, :O), Solapur (1), Latur (2, runner up last year), Wai (new entry) and Goa (3 entries). The group from Kolhapur who performed really well in last couple of years seems to be absent.

All in all, the stage is set for a great theatre festival !!

Thanks to preeti for putting together this list,

Rangadakshini 2007 - Marathi drama competition in Bangalore

Maharashtra MandaL bengalooru has announced Rangadakshini 2007 and it is scheduled on the long weekend of Republic Day, from 25th to 28th of January. This competition features marathi one act plays from various theatre groups and it has been a great entertainment to its audience for past many many years. Even though the competition has been taking place for many years, in the recent past it is generating tremendous amount of traction in the community of marathi theatre enthusiasts.

In its initial form, marathi theatre groups in south india (outside maharashtra) were invited. The response in those days was okay and occasionally bad as not many outside entries used to come. In those days, local entries dominated this competition. Maharashtra MandaL trust then reworked the concept and opened the competition to more location. They chose few organizations which have good reputation from the south maharashtra and invited them for the first time, 2 years ago. Since then, the response has been tremendous. Year over year, the number of groups interested in this competition is increasing and the existing groups are putting up more number of plays compared to their previous year.

Last year, total 16 groups performed at rangadakshiNi and this year the number of entries has increased to 26. MandaL eventually decided to reject some of them and finally this year will feature 20 ekaankikas (one act plays) at the competition. This is huge. Number of entries from places like latur, sangali, kolhapur has increased in number. The energy these teams bring in to the competition is really fascinating. The competition has given these teams a great opportunity to display their talent outside their town and it has created a great platform to bring theatre enthusiasts together with the best of innovative ideas. I think this is an immense drive for people to put up something against a good competition.

I belong to a local group in bengalooru, called YUVA, who is defending the title this year. Unfortunately, I am going to miss this action and really feeling bad about it. :(

I wish 'All the Best' to all the participant groups and the organizers and I am sure that the event will take place in the best of spirits.

Finally, I think, no matter who wins the competition, the rangadakshini concept is already a big winner!

Why don't indians watch theatre?

I participated in a discussion on the same topic at Orkut's 'Indian theatre' community. The concern is also valid to a certain degree to countries other than india who does have interest in theatre.

The discussion brings up some good points which I would like to mention here, in addition to my own thoughts.

In general, I think, everyone would agree that many people dont watch theatre. The obvious main reason is lack of awareness. There is a tiny set of people in this country who has developed an interest in theatre, the rest just dont know about it.

Like films, Everybody and anybody would not go for theatre; only the people who are directly or indirectly connected to this form would go. That is because they appreciate it. They appreciate the thought behind a certain play, they understand the efforts behind it, they also understand the challenge to keep every mind in the audience engaged. Thats why I feel there is a need to connect everyone to theatre. I myself got interested by watching people around me doing it, thats the natural way of learning and am sure many theatre enthusiasts share the same story.

This connection to theatre is a key to improving awareness and it can be most effective if it is targeted at school/college students. Creating such awareness at this age can be effective because it will invoke thinking at an early age and also it will be easier for students to work together within the school/college community model. A friend of mine is doing a great job of running a Performing Arts Institute for children between age group of 8 to 14 years. This group, Chaitanya, is now active for past 3 years.

Another factor behind lack of theatre awareness is the prejudice of traditional performing arts on previous generations. Working with a local dance or theatre group was never considered a gracious way of living, in the past. Today, the urban parts of india has definitely overcome this; in fact theatre people today are considered to be very much sophisticated, but the bias is strong enough in rural parts to kill small groups.

Also, The entertainment business does not consider theatre as high as films or television. This is good in a way because this has saved theatre from being commercialized, but in return every production has faced financial challenges due to this lack of (or limited) financial support. Making money has never been the primary focus on the contrarian minds behind such activities, which is indirectly affecting penetration of this art in the society.

I was visiting Norway last November and got introdued to work of a great playwright, Henrik Ibsen. From whatever little I studied him, theatre even in his times or now is facing the same concern, I feel. Same story in the US.

With the discussion, I also realized that there are plenty of groups that are doing some great work but are not connected to each other. e.g. Pune has a great culture of marathi plays, but has limited exposure to other families like bengali/hindi plays. It is very important that such groups come together and work closely on connecting people to theatre.

This will not only increase theatre awareness but will also empower the minds to create a better place for living!!

moved my cheese...

About 8 years ago, I got my first ever email id and that was with yahoo. That was my first interaction with the Internet world.

Yahoo has been a really great portal because throughout this period, I have used many of their services. There are about 20 groups that I am part of and have been owning and moderating quite a few of them. The messenger has been a great tool and over these years, the list of friends as grown tremendously. I even have the calendar populated with birthdays and anniversaries, my stock potfolios live with yahoo. When I started blogging, I created my 360 page. I always felt comfortable going to one place where I get an integrated view of everything I need, my_yahoo is just the right answer for that.

But, this only until one fine day, I see a mail from Yahoo saying my password has been changed; I immediately went to yahoo to reaize that I can't login with my password. My account was hacked and I could not recover that through the secret questions. I raised this yahoo and did not receive anything useful. I realized that I wont be able to login to my id ever again.

So, I am slowly migrating to google for obvious reasons. One I dont trust Yahoo anymore and second is google's success. Recently, I moved all my blogs from 360.yahoo to blogspot. I was able to keep the original dates of my previous blogs and overall this sounds very impressive blogging tool.

With this first blog straight of blogspot in the new year 2007, I am all set for the next chapter with google and hopefully you will enjoy reading the stuff here!

My Marathi play - Vidhi-Likhit

Come gaNeshotsav, all yuva members get together to put up a play for a marathi one act play competition held by Maharashtra mandal bangalore. I have been in bangalore for 5 years now and have not missed a single chance to participate. I was committed even this year.

Like every year, it takes a while to get people to come together as everyone would crib about the amount of work they already have. The reason or rather, the trigger for all of us every year is different. This year it was a fantastic Sci-Fi concept from Sujay n pramod. Time Travel.

In the first theme discussion meeting that I attended pramod had written a short story from the concept that was on their mind. Pramod read the script and each one in the meeting reacted in a completely different manner. Most of us just lost it somewhere in the middle. Some of us thought it does not make sense at all, some of us had clarifications. The basic plot was explained atleast 10 times between 15 of us. Lot of questions were asked, and interestingly people had different answers to all of them. At one point, it was a complete chaos, then the guyz just decided to stop, but their wives were shouting supporting their hubby's point. It was hilarious. The discussion went on for about 4 hours that night, and we came up with a little bit detailed sequence of scenes/events. At the end of the meeting, everyone was so much thrilled and involved that we all knew that this meeting was the trigger.

By the time actual practises started, we had only 2 weeks left for our slot in the competition. We knew making a Sci-fi requires a lot of technicalities and perfect execution of those. The main actors had lot of work to make sure sci-fi concepts reach the audience in its right intention. On top of everything, the script was still evolving. Every day, someone would come up with a good point and pramod will sit n incorporate the changes. Almost everyday, we (actors) would have to start mugging new lines. I just cant imagine the pressure of all this on the director, sujay.

But Everyday, we would make some good progress either on the script, music pieces, sets or actors being able to get the feel for the play. The story required to disappear characters from the stage and a time machine that would have some flashy lights n music when on the stage. This was new, everyone contributed with creative ideas and to everyone's surprise, things were working.

The initial concept was just about, 2 people coming back from 2 different and mutually exclusive futures. There was no conclusive end to this story and initially we decided to just leave it open. But towards the last few days of the practise, we decided to give a completely different twist to the story. With every such change, we were gaining more confidence. All of us have completely different day-to-day jobs and so have other (and I think better) things to do, so noone was able to do any homework on this. Practises would start anytime between 9 - 12 pm and would go on for 2-3 hours minimum. The name for the play was not decided until we had to record the announcement piece just 4 days before the show.

The night before the show the dress rehearsal was good and the sets people worked on the craftings the entire night. On Sept 2nd, 2006, our performance rocked!! sleek!... everything that was planned was executed to the perfection. All actions/reactions, music/lights was on time. The audience was completely stunned. The theme and the entire package was completely new to the audience. We did not expect everyone to understand the play anyway, how many people understood hollywood movie, Matrix the first time they watched it. :) We all enjoyed every bit of it.

The competition had 4 other plays and 2 of them were really comparable. On 6th Sep, the results were announced. We took half of the prizes.

2nd Best Drama - Yuva
Best Direction - Sujay
Best Actor - Nikhil
Best Sets- Meenakshi, Anagha, Namita
Best Lights - Kaustubh, Sagar
Best Music - Preeti, Kedar

Outstanding performance in the competition - me.

I had also acted in a short 3 minute role in the drama that received the 'best drama'... so, it was a great day for me.

Famous actor, Dr. Mohan Agashe, was invited as the chief guest for this festival and his event was scheduled the next day after our play. We invited him to come n see our performance and he graciously agreed. The next day we met him to get some feedback, He was really impressed. He looked at me n said "your acting was good". Thats some complement. :)

I have done many many plays till date, but only 2 in which I was involved right from the point when the script was being written, one was my first ever play, LIMIT, which is in the history of the most famous competition in pune, purushottam karandak and the second is this one. All my plays are really special to me and am really glad that there is one more completely different experience to add to the list.

Mayur Shooting ...

I have been using a Digital Camera for quite some time now but never really explored the photography; until my recent visit to Valley of Flowers. My new Canon A 610 gives a great feature set of manual modes through which I could explore the magic of aperature and shutter-speed combinations. The best part of this camera is the Macro mode feature and I simply loved clicking those flowers with it. I never thought I will enjoy photography so much.

My fellow trekkers carrying their D50's/D70's have given me some good marks for my photography and have graduated me to the next level by encouraging me to buy a Digital SLR now!!

Check out some of the pics from my uttaranchal trip... here.
Thanks to my colleague, Jai Iyer, for the blog title!! ;)

Being Cyrus - Discomforts

This blog is not a review of Saif Ali Khan starter movie, Being Cyrus. But, it is about one very interesting thing that I noticed while watching it, which left me puzzled.

In this movie, there is one scene where the police officer is trying to impress a female character (Simon Singh) at his police station. Its basically a loong (in terms of camera's position wrt characters) shot where the officer is sitting to our left and moving forward-backword on his chair. The interesting part in this scene was the wall behind these two characters. On that wall, exactly behind where officer is sitting there is a blackboard which reads "Today's new word" and the below that is the new word itself.

The scene is picturized in such a way that, when it starts you can see the blackboard and only part of that word, "DISCOM". The officer is actually irritating the female and he is also moving a little in his chair. Since, I noticed that imcomplete word, as he was moving, I was hoping that he would move a little more and I could read what the word is. But, he doesn't. This goes on for atleast 30-40 seconds and then finally he moves back and the complete word is seen, that is "DISCOMFORTS". Note the meaning.

After about 10 seconds, the shot changes and it is now a close-up on the police officer. He says something and there was an laughter in the audience. The joke was in continuation with what he said in the earlier shot, which I just didn't pay any attention to.

What puzzled me is that, people not being able to see the entire wordinitially was not at all a coincidence. It seemed that lot of efforts went into shooting that particular scene as it involved a lot of coordination. But, the result this director has got is distraction of his audience. Now, I dont know how much sense does this make and then the puzzle of why would he do this ?? The director's job, as one would imagine, is to make sure the right thought/emotion comes out from the scene, may be he deliberately did that?? he wanted them not to have any clue of whats going on until the very end ?? But, I am not convinced with that, I believe the device he used was not effective, but distracting.

If you have seen that movie, did you notice this at all ??

Worst of Bangalore traffic I have seen ...

Bangalore traffic! huh!! No need for any preface!

We, bangaloreans, have lot of stories to tell, most of them talk about long frustrating waits. This one's a little different and disturbing.

Kemp Fort on airport road is one of the major traffic bottleneck for people commuting from airport to the city. On a weekend morning, I dropped a friend of mine at the bangalore domestic airport and was getting back home. As usual, there was bumper to bumper traffic at this particular section.

The moment I reached there I heard this very irritating honking. It was one maruti esteem 2-3 cars ahead of me and the driver was shouting. At first, I didnt realize what exactly he was talking. But, he looked completely panicked. I ridiculed him for not being patient about this traffic as it was really annoying to everyone around.

In few more second, I could hear what he was really shouting, "Please let me go, I need to get to Manipal hospital urgently". I saw a woman panting very heavily sitting next to that man. She was vomitting and definitely needed to get to the hospital.

That car had another line of cars in front and 2 buses standing next to each other. These buses had blocked the entire view and noone could imagine what really has happened. It could just be a red light, but there was no clue that even the driver could find out, obviously he panicked!

I realized how serious this situation is. I looked around and found all of them looking at him. There was no way that anything could have been done. Manipal Hospital was still few more blocks ahead and the traffic was not completely stand-still, it was crawling very slowly. That man was continuously shouting and looking at the lady if she is alright. The car was surrounded by other cars there was no way that others could have let him go ahead. completely helpless !

Another few minutes time, the buses moved forward and it seemed like the traffic cleared. The cars in from of this car cleared the way. I saw that car enter the Manipal Hospital entrance.
I reached home, sat down in my chair and could not stop myself thinking about this incidence.