Nasha - Get Addicted!

This music album urgently needed a review for one main reason that it might just go unnoticed by most of the people, because it is a Poonam Pandey movie. Yes, it is, but surprisingly the music astonished me! An album where people will expect sensuous, explicit and vulgar item songs, actually has very soothing and beautiful music to offer. The album composed by Sangeet-Siddharth duo (remember Murder 2) has some amazing songs in its bag.

The album starts with the title track 'Tera Nasha'. It is a very soft and soulful song, sung amazingly by Anirudh. The songs is high on romance and is a perfect love song. It leaves you wanting for more by the end. I would definitely say this song is worth being put on the loop.

A disclaimer now - The song 'Laila' is NOT an item song and NOT a cheap song which it might sound by the name. The song, sung in a very passionate and youthful voice by Monali Thakur is worth a listen and is definitely a peppy track for dance and has great head banging and foot tapping beats (let us forget the part that it might have Poonam Pandey in the video).

'Besharam' brings back Shaan once again, and this time with Ansuha Mani (Dhoka fame from Johnny gaddar). Shaan does not fail to impress and creates magic with his cute and romantic voice. Although, I would say he now lacks the "Jab se tere naina" charm, but the song is an instant catch for its appealing lyrics. A big Kudos to the lyrics writer here, and this song will appeal to the naughty and 'besharam' youngsters who will be able to connect with the lyrics.

'Goti song' is another song from the dark genre of 'Khoon choos le', or I would even say 'Sutta'. This song has explicit lyrics and catchy tune, but somehow it still picks up on you because of the humour and satire. It surely leaves a naughty smile on the listener's face.

'Laila unplugged' is sung by the music directors themselves and is definitely a better version that the original one. The album ends with 'Nasha - the addictive mix', which is just another remixed track without which the music albums now are not complete.

Conclusion: Forget the point that the movie stars Poonam Pandey. Listen to the tracks as this album has some great not-to-be-missed tracks. Tera Nasha and Besharam are worth being chart busters if this album gets noticed. Goti song is also definitely worth a listen for its youth appeal. But looking at the current music scenario, the album could have contained an peppy item song as it seems to be the need of the current music scene of India. But for once, do go through this album ASAP and choose what you like!

My Verdict: (on a scale of 5) - 3

(It might be a little erotic and inappropriate for the Indian sensibilities but I personally really liked the concept of the cover)

Chennai Express - Music Review

The much awaited music of Chennai Express has been launched finally! The music album directed by Vishal-Shekhar with songs penned down by Amitabh Bhattacharya has got something for everyone. The music is excessively delightful at places but definitely lacks a spark at others.

Starting with the Title track, I must say there could not be a more befitting track for Chennai Express. Kudos to whoever thought of bringing back SP Balasubramaniam (SPB). The song starts with awesome groovy beats that will definitely make you tap your feet. SPB creates magic once again and his part gives you an awesome 90s music feel, and you cannot help but remember "Aaja shaam hone aai". The lyrics are funky, singing is undoubtedly amazing and this song will make it to the chart busters for sure. No one can guess SPB is 67 years of age and singing this song with the same young man's charm.

One two three four, is another dance track from the album. The song has already made it to the top songs list on major radio stations. The song has an underlying Dhol beat that gives it a great pitch and rhythm throughout. Vishal Dadlani is definitely impressive in this fast paced and catchy tune.

Titli, as a romantic respite in the album, is worth a listen for its classical base and great singing by chinmayi Sripaada and Gopi Sunder. But as the only romantic and soft track of the album, Vishal Shekhar could have done a lot better having created some amazing songs in the past.

Arijit Singh, after a series of super hits one after another, completely fails to impress in Kasmir mai, tu kanyakumari. The lyrics are attractive, but the music is totally a disappointment. Tera raasta chodu na is another disappointment from the album. This could have been made into a better blues genre and something much better was expected from a talented singer like Amitabh Bhattacharya who has made us fall in love in ektara, ek lau, Aazadiyan. The song only picks up from the first stanza, worth a listen still for Amitabh Bhattacharya and beautiful lyrics.

Ready steady Po is a very average dance track and it can definitely be given a miss.

Conclusion: The music of Chennai Express is again Rohit Shetty Shtyle - fast paced, funky, funny and groovy. The lyrics are not great but good. Vishal Shekhar have done a good job with the fast paced songs. The album could have been much versatile with a better romantic song than Titli. All in all, the music has a great mixture of South Indian-ness as well at right places, thereby suiting aptly with the theme of the movie.
Do not miss SPB's return in the title track (worth being played on the loop), One two three four and Title (for a romantic respite). that is pretty much all. The great artists and singers could have been better utilized up to their potential.

My rating: (on a scale of 5) - 2.8

फिर बरसात आई...

एक अरसा हुआ, फिर घिर कर 'पावस' मे बरसात आई,
एक अरसा  हुआ और फिर तुम्हारी याद आई,
चुप थे हम भी और सिले थे लब तुम्हारे
एक अरसे के बाद ज़ुबान पर फिर एक बात आई...

पास थी तुम, पर फिर भी मेरे ना हाथ आई,
जीत कर भी हमने, आज खुशी खुशी फिर मात खाई
जब मिली थी तुम पहली दफ़ा, उस चाँदनी के तले
ऐसा लगा था की एक अरसे के बात फिर रात आई....

तुमसे मिलने की चाहत इस दिल मे बार बार आई
सुकून भी आया और ऩफ़रते भी हज़ार आई
पैरों मे छाले थे, दरवाज़ों पे ताले थे,
आज झरोखे खोले, तो चेहरे पे फिर अरसे बाद बौछार आई...


आज फिर ठंडी हवाओ की सौगात आई
फिर आसमान को सजाने बादलो की बारात आई
बड़ी सूखी सी थी दिल की बंजर ज़मीन मेरी
'पावस' के लिए, तुम फिर बनके बरसात आई...

THE STARTUP PHENOMENON

India is a country which boasts of its intellectual horsepower, huge proportions of a talented and stalwart youngsters and maturing market. However, despite of all the aforesaid claims, India is not able to meet the broader socio-economic targets. As per a recent report of Planning Commission, India needs to support almost 10,000 scalable start-ups by 2022 to effectively create jobs for 140 million job seekers. But currently only some off 450 start-ups have been launched and overall just 200 are funded by angel investors/VCs every year. There has definitely been a sudden surge in the aspiring student entrepreneurs who wish to become the Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerbergs of India. But something has been holding us back. Some things are going wrong and we have not been able to put this act together.

I would not use this platform to avowal about my start-up venture or advertise it in any way, but given my personal experiences with SpringTide, an online flipbook magazine aimed at providing a platform to youngsters to express themselves, I would say that it is somewhat Herculean. May it be the cumbersome procedures of getting incorporated as a company under the Ministry of Corporate Affairs or complying with the legal formalities of VAT, Service Tax, Sales Tax, TDS, TCS, Income Tax, Wealth tax etc, it is really a task that can make you go “WTF”.

But I would not blame the system and the authorities for all the failures of the start-up system. There are mistakes made at both the ends. I, as an owner of a start-up venture, would speak for fellow entrepreneurs. Firstly, I would say that we, as Indians, are a scared race. We are not ready to take risks and make mistakes. We are too pessimistic and we give up too fast. We want to reach the top of the building without having to climb the stairs. We are hard working, dedicated, focussed and immensely intelligent but we lack patience.

For all those who feel that there is a dearth of capital in the start-up scene need to do some serious rethinking. We are not Silicon Valley, for sure, but undoubtedly the excitement regarding Indian start-ups is growing globally at a surprising rate. Just for examples, only in December 2012, Plivo, the cloud telephony start-up raised $1.75 million Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Qualcomm Incorporated and SV Angel. WhistleTalk, a Bangalore based start-up aimed at making recruitments easier, has raised $400,000 from Hyderabad Angels. Mast Kalandar, a food chain, raised $6 million from Helion Venture Partners and Footprint Ventures in third round of funding. Gaming start-up MadRat games received investment of $500K from Blume Ventures and First Light Ventures. Sharedcab received angel investment of $1 million from Anupam Mittal, Sasha Mirchandani (Kae Capital), Blume Ventures and few others.

And trust me, these are very few examples. Moving ahead, another big mistake we do as entrepreneurs is not anticipating our customers’ potential needs. Say for example, we are starting a bakery in a neighbourhood. In such a case, we need to consider the fact some customers might want the products to be delivered to their houses. Also, many customers might want to return products. Hence, providing allied services, after sales satisfaction and services additional to your product is a necessity.

Every business needs to have a Unique Selling Point, i.e. USP. A business always gets born from a vague idea which strikes us during shower or a highway drive. But every idea needs to have a proper blueprint or a business plan. The age-old technique of solving this problem is to think of the top three problems that your product/ service solves. This will give clarity to the business idea and help you to converge upon using the limited resources in the right direction.

In the current set-up and situation, one of the biggest mistakes that an entrepreneur is committing is to start up without an online presence. This is something that hold true even for already established businesses looking to expand and for youngsters exploring into new dimensions of businesses. No matter what field you are going into, an online presence is very essential. For example, Tata Docomo is ruling the social media world with over 1 billion Facebook fans followed by the brand of Vodafone Zoozoos with around half of those.
It is a time where customers, clients and associates are found and made online. It’s time to realise that the eyeballs have shifted from Yellow Pages to Google Chrome!

One thing that every student entrepreneur or an aspiring start-up owner needs to learn by heart is that the term “Flexible working hours” is a myth! Let’s face the reality – if you are starting a business, it is your full time responsibility, your full time job and in fact you need to feed, sleep and drink on your business day and night. Think of it as a kid of yours... Can you really just restrict to 10 am to 6 pm to look after your kid?

Being a control freak is good, but sometimes it can backfire. It is true that holding the power to take decisions is very important, but some things should be delegated at the right time otherwise it just ends up in a mess. Bootstrapping is good until you can manage it. Personally, my co-founders in SpringTide wanted to opt for a VC and I have been against this always because of the major reason that the decision making power is diluted. Hold that power till the time you really can...

Again, the most important lesson remains that you got to take risks and you have to be ready to face some losses to. Minimum investment concept is cool, but there is nothing such as zero investment IF you are looking to earn. And here investment does include the investment of time...

Therefore go out, have some fun, play cool, play hard, have a nerve and take risks... You never know, you might be the Indian Mark Zuckerberg!

(A detailed write-up on what I spoke at the International event IGNITE on April 3, 2013 in my talk) 

Tryst with Electricty

It was one of those rare days when I was entrusted with the task of depositing the monthly electricity bill of my house. Reluctantly, I dragged myself to the electricity company's office. Not that I had expected to be welcomed with garlands and tilak, but nor did I expect in my wildest (or creepiest) dreams, what I faced there!

A typical government department seen ensued before my eyes as I entered the premises. The desolated ground welcomed me with not a single living thing in sight. Hot mid-May afternoon winds blew whistling in my ears and it seemed as if I had come exploring an inhabited desert. Itna sannata kyu hai bhai, echoed in my ears, as I tried to find a pinch of humour to entertain myself.

I walked towards the only 2 rooms situated in the other end of the premises. As it came closer, I could see a queue of 5-7 people, some itching their private parts objectionably in public and others wiping off their sweat. As I reached the queue, I realized I was the youngest person around. Not that I felt odd, but it just seemed as if I lived in 18th century. I joined the queue standing at least 7 steps away from the uncle in front of me, whose shirt was all wet with sweat.

The queue cleared at a pace of what seemed to be like 20 minutes per person. My turn was next and I was becoming extremely impatient now and a game of Subway Surfers on my mobile also failed to entertain me in the gruelling situation. Some matter seemed to have occurred with the man who was inside and some enlightening mother-sister abuses filled my ears. As the customer left the room fuming and hurling abuses loudly, I went inside already a little terror stricken to be entering the Roadies audition room. My turn finally came, by which time I had also become sweaty and exhausted and I immediately felt sorry for others in the queue.

The room was in itself a stress-giver. In 45 degrees of a Jaipur afternoon, the room boasted only a softly revolving fan. The fan made creaking sounds and I had a feeling that it would fall down on me. There existed a cooler in the room, which did not work (surprisingly) but ironically belonged to a company "Magic-Cool". Unfortunately, it did no miracles for me. The room had more spiders than humans and cobwebs surrounded me and I felt like an invader in a spider-city. In a distant corner of the room, two lizards blissfully fought among themselves over mosquitoes. It was difficult to determine who populated the room more - spiders, lizards or mosquitoes. And I realized the importance of co-existence!

I reached the desk where an old man sat along with an equally old lady. The old lady stared at me and I immediately stood straight like I was being interviewed. I had anyways not expected a formally clad, young corporate lady serving me cold drinks, but nor had I expected to be stared at by a distant relative of Conjestina Achieng. The old man snatched the bill from my hand and the scary auntie took away the money I was holding. Although it was meant to be given to her, I felt like being robbed in broad daylight.

I looked around at the junk of old files, beedi remains and used stationery as the old man and woman did the formalities. The man banged the table hard while stamping my bill, and the poor table wobbled almost warning the man that it would soon resign, given the atrocities that he performed.

I grabbed my receipt and rushed out of the hell-hole, happy to be finally free and super happy of the fact that e-billing was slowly making its way through government departments too. Kudos to technology! Phew!

The Art of 'Writing'

Writing for me, is not just putting down my thoughts on a piece of paper. I would rather call it my form of escape. I write when I want to shut the whole world out from my mind and immerse myself into myself. Its a trip for me that I take every time I sit down to write. I can travel the whole world and beyond in a few minutes when I delve deeper into the layers of my heart.

I started writing at a very early age. My vocabulary wasn't very vast back then, my sentences were weird and I wrote horrendous. But becoming a better writer was like a passion to me. I kept working on it and kept writing more. Many things have worked for me and many did not work in a very good way.

I have tried to recall my experiences and I have compiled a few tips that could help other budding writers like me. I am no best-selling author, nor am I a certified authority, but I have learned from my past experiences and I would like to share whatever I have gained.

A. Expand your Resources - Keeping a dictionary and a thesaurus while writing is a very good idea. When you are stuck at a word, and you want to use any of its cool sounding substitutes, a thesaurus works the best. Not only does it develop your own vocabulary but also makes your piece of writing a treat to read. Also keeping a check on social media, television etc. helps you to get acquainted with all the "in" words of a particular time. You can throw in some of those words to make your writing easily understandable and accessible to all age groups.

B. Get Involved - Get involved with everything remotely related to writing - join clubs, forums, online groups, follow authors on twitter, "Like" publishers on Facebook, get in direct contact with other like minded people because they will always have their opinions, which will help you to gain a fresh perspective on something that you never knew. It is imperative that you surround yourself with people related to writing because networking is very important for writers.

C. Write, Write, Write... - Write down every single thought that occurs to you on a piece of paper, a tissue paper, or simply your notepad app on your mobile. Refine it later and see how you can do magic with a simple line. Explore other areas of writing and go into the technicalities. To be a good writer, writing more is far more important that reading. When you write, you make extra efforts to improve your work and that is how you learn!

If you have reached till this point of this article, then for sure, you are interested in writing. You have that bug in you and you want to write more...
Me and my team are doing some awesome things for budding writers @SpringTide. Reach out to us at www.facebook.com/springtidemag and check out how YOU can be a published author.

Trust me, the world is waiting to hear from you.

The "F" Word...

An All Girls Rock Band in Kashmir is silenced by the atrocious claims on some religious leader, Tamil Nadu government puts a ban on the release of the movie “Vishwaroopam”, the Ashish Nandy FIR on what he expressed in Jaipur Literature Festival 2013, another Rushdie-banning bickering, the want for ‘The Da Vicni code’ to be banned in India by Christian groups and frequent cases of Facebook-arrests are all examples of how the freedom of expression is being curbed or more rightly, being kept under a siege in the current scenario in our country. Looking at the recent developments and ongoing embroilments, the new forbidden “F” word is undoubtedly “FREEDOM”.

Due to domineering social groups, a spineless government eyeing for vote banks and an innocent public, the problem of this siege has been exacerbated. The Palghar incident where Shaheen Dhada was arrested and mentally tormented for weeks by hooligans and policemen alike over something that she had written as her personal opinion, due to lack of immediate action, clarified legal forces and misleading laws. Vishwaroopam was banned under Section 144 of Code of Criminal Procedure, which empowers the government to issue orders “in urgent cases of nuisance or apprehended danger”. If that was a case of nuisance for the government and if that was urgency then I feel terribly sorry to say, that we are being run by corrupt cabinet, guided by orthodox laws and lead by mindless people who are not able to identify urgency.

Media faces censorship, movies face ban, literature faces FIRs, cartoonist faces harassment and all that we are left with is a Constitution that provides an “absolute freedom of expression with some exceptions”. If our government and the political party in power really believes that all above cases were under “exceptions” to absolute freedom, then there also have been enough incidents lately that have endangered the “security of the state” (Reference: Akbar Owaisi), threatened our “Friendly relations with foreign countries” (Reference: Honourable Ministry of External Affair), crossed the limits of “decency and morality” (Reference: Digvijay Singh on his sexist remarks) which are all provided as cases of exception to Article 19 of the Indian Constitution.

The sad part is that Kamal Hassan agreed to carry out the cuts in the movie Vishwaroopam as demanded by certain Muslim groups. It is not a settlement but surrender by the producer of the movie albeit for pragmatic reasons. However it does lay down a bad paradigm because it concedes to certain intolerant groups demanding a ban, a veto or appellate power over the decision by Censor Board. 

 A liberal democracy is the one where all groups of the country can accept the fact with dignity that people can have different opinions, beliefs and ideologies and have equal right of voicing them without a fear of legal penalties and social harassment. However our country is at a stage where each and every expression is viewed with acrimony and dudgeon and there are immediate obstreperous demands of ban or arrest. You never know which Facebook status of yours might affect a certain social group and the next time you check, you might be in prison.

Our government has very effectively kept up with the changing times and before being active on the social media themselves, they have started placing internet bans and social media censorships by keeping a tab on everything that is being written or shared on the internet. Against such infringement and invasion, there have been some very strong voices which have been raised effectively, one of them being “Save Your Voice” campaign by Cartoonist Aseem Trivedi and journalist Alok Dixit, opposing the Information Technology Act of India and demanding democratic rules for internet and social media.

Basically, the point is that any Digvijay Singh or Lalit Modi can say anything anywhere without facing any legal action, which clearly proves how money, power and position work in this country since ages. We are all a helpless crowd. The rich and the powerful are now striking back even harder baffled by the Internet Democratisation that has brought together the youth of India. And the Youth of India is now raising a strong voice, which is loud enough to reach the people sitting at the very top.