A bunch of my random thoughts... The Name 'Sapney aur Sitarey' it self has a story.. to know me more.. keep digging older posts...
About Me
- Vishal Thakur
- "Badlaa naa Apne Aap ko, Jo the Wahi Rahe. Milte Rahe Sabhi Se Magar Ajnabee Rahe" -Nida Fazli
Thursday, May 28, 2009
28th May...
Sunday, May 24, 2009
The Crackpot
Long time, no posts, where were I???
Nothing special, was a little busy and was thinking on making a long post, but it seems as if work will keep me busy for a couple of more weeks and wont be able to script "My Best speech at IIPM" and some more "Horizon Episodes" pretty soon... But decided to mail some smaller posts regularly and to share some motivation stuff.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
"Against the Mission & Vision"
At IIPM they do not teach you the things in straight bookish way. (I agree many other institutes promote innovative learning techniques, but as I have been to IIPM only, I will talk about it only..) Most of the subjects are taught in an open atmosphere where you are allowed to develop your own point of view..
Our Professor while teaching Mission and vision, initiated a debate, whether these statements are really important in an organization or not?
Do organizations really follows these statements, or they frame one after they have achieved their monetary goals..?
The assignment given to us was a group task, we all were to take part in a debate over the importance of 'Mission & vision statements'. Another twist was - it will be decided by lottery system that which group will speak 'for' the topic & which will speak 'against' it. This lottery system to decide for/ against in a debate is a common practice at IIPM. I always hated it, but after joining corporate world i understood the importance of it.
In corporate world many a times you promote some thing which you do not like or believe in and vie versa. Those debates at IIPM has enabled us to look beyond our own liking and preferences. As being an assignment, those debate caries good % of marks and to prove your stand better (which you have not chosen but have got by luck) you really need to do a 360 degree analysis of the topic. At times we discovered really amazing yet unknown facts & views about the topics which seems to have a unanimous general opinion.
Personally i used to believe in the concept of 'Mission & Vision Statements' but as we got to work the other way round finally, i found my self in total distress.
We formed a team of three, we had a slot of 12 minutes to give (do) what ever we could speak, act, show, describe or even mock to convince the audience including our professor that there is no better (or worse) crap that having a mission & vision statement in an organization.
It was our 2nd & final year and we have learnt it quite well that our presentation must have a 'deadly' balance of content & spices. When i say deadly balance it means 60% masalaa and 40% content. But the challenge was 40% content requires 70% of the time available ( that's the most boring part of good content-always), so We had to create a masalaa which can be delivered in say 3 minutes but leaves a lasting impression (about 60% of the total impact of your presentation).
Following was the actual classification of composition:
1. Speaker A- Total Masalaa (Which was me)
2. Speaker B- Content+Masalaa - Examples of organizations who has bright mission statements but fail to follow even a bit of it. ( My god... that girl has raped (of course verbally.. you nuts) DTC (Delhi transport corporation) and Delhi Police, who says ..'pachass varshon se aapki sewa me' and 'with you for you, always' respectively)
3. Speaker C- was a content speaker totally speaking things which are available in books or on internet against mission statement.
So I had to deliver a masalaa speech of 3 mins which should be capable of blowing the audience. I loved (still love) to start a speech or a presentation which a couplet (sher -o-shayri-kavita etc.) I was skeptical whether it will be accepted or not, also i wanted to develop an Orator out of me who can give a good speech without using couplets & poetry. ( it was a useless challenge i had taken, but it had enabled me to use other stage techniques like pictures, tricks, games etc., but I still prefer my collection of couplets over to all those techniques, as I know that I can create a better impact out of it)
Anyways, I was in search of a deadly starting. i thought of many possible ones but was leading to some obvious kind of options which i really didn't want to take up. After so much of speculations I decided upon one, which was really an off beat attempt for me, at least I have never tried in that style till date, but I gave it a try and it served the purpose really well.
So here is the script of the drama I did.. I do not have a practice of writing speeches, i never do. It was the first and perhaps the last time when i did so, unfortunately i lost the real script but most of it is written on my mind, pasting it here directly from the cerebral records...
It was Monday morning , 30th of August 2004, Also co-incidental with Raksha Bandhan that year. We had our classes and it was the 2nd lecture, around 10.30 when we were supposed to come up with our presentation.
The first presentation was from the team speaking for the motion. Guys came, spoke, shouted and gone. (in today's world it is really boring to talk obvious things to people) Audience was expecting some out of the box masalaa.. (Who so ever has invented this phrase 'out of box' must have born before Galileo, as he used to believe that this world is like a box and not like a ball, but just imagine how would it sound if some one says..'out of ball idea..' just joking guys.. some loose talks.. lets go back to the topic)
I have no slides to show but our content speaker had, so first we set the LCD. Then I stood in the middle of the width of the room ( i hardly used podium, which was always there in an IIPM classroom), Looking at me people were not expecting masalaa as i was better known as content speaker.
I was standing with my hands and legs joined, both my elbows touching my body giving a slight hind of a feminine pose, I gave a smile to all of them, tuned my head to each one and peeped into their eyes. and said..
Good Evening...
(Shocking.. 'good evening' at 10.30 AM, some of the nerds looked at their watch and grinned giving an expression that says ' its equivalent of mass killing when you say good morning after 12, and good evening before 5 PM)
I repeated..
'Good Evening and thank you for this opportunity' ( My tone and style was mocking that of a lady, i continued..).
"If I shall go on to become Miss world today, I shall take over from Lisa onto my duties, with as much sincerity and dedication, to go on to become an ambassador of
peace, (pause)
goodwill, (pause)
harmony (pause)
and compassion, and trying to do full justice to our motto, 'Beauty with a purpose.' (pause)
Remember, people, I'll always be there for you,
thank you!"
(then i opened my hand mocked the action of wiping a tear from my left eye, moved from that position and stood few steps away and clapped 3 times and said...)
Good Morning Friends, this is Vishal Thakur, and that was (Pointing towards my previous position) queen of our hearts Aishvarya Rai
at Sun city, South Africa in 1994,
in the miss word contest,
in an answer to the question "what is your mission if you go on to become Miss World Today..?"
(the Pause this time went around 30 -45 seconds as audience were clapping...I wanted to say few words that how Aish had a so called mission and did nothing quotable towards it till then... but the audience's response has confirmed i need not elaborate it... I started again..)
This was an example of how people play with words or rather what could be the difference between words and the work.
Mission statements are often like statutory warning written on a packet of cigarettes "Cigarette smoking is injurious to health", everybody reads it but no body follows it..
I have said some more similar sentences further which i am not able to recall right now...
But the purpose was served and i had discovered a new Masalaa speaker with in me...
By for now..
Will share one more speech from IIPM...
Luv
VT
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Well Begun... :-)
Right now I am in a bus moving from Dadar to Thane, Thanks to these BRTS AC coaches which are providing such a comfortable seating that i could not resist blogging...
Well..we started really well ( i do not think its just my blog only.. ) as mentioned in Aaghaz, I started this blog to reconnect with our good old fellows and to relive our good old days again, there could be no better response than what i received from the moment i made my first post.
Bhuvan became the first follower, almost immediately after launch.
Got an SMS from Aaquil sir next morning saying ..." Seen ur blog. gud tht u remember ur gud old days. God bless. Aaquil Bunglowala."
Next was a call from Ankit, as he mentioned he just loved it.
Priyanka Anchaliya- Joined the followers, Her comments are true compliments and encouraging. Thanks priyanka.
Aishvarya was next, followed by Runjhun and Ankira.
Shweta- Great friend from my class, its always encouraging to listen from such a friend.
Last but not the least Neerav, well he was too emotional while commenting...
Apart from that what made me really happy are the amount of communication happened off and on the blog with all my dear friends.
During last 5 days I have spoken to Mohita/ Prajyot, Ankira and Runjhun, sat for a long session with Ankit made and received several calls from Neerav, Recieved Email from Tanuja ... I think i am successful in the purpose of launching this blog.
May be 'successful' is a bit too early and too official term to be used, but surly its an honest 'well beginning' and I wish we all can keep this channel alive for good.
Hey. Prajyot and Mohita became parents this evening, Congratulations to them and I wish the baby girl must become as intelligent as her papa and as confident as her momma., ( dear prajyot and mohita, i hope you wont mind me sharing this good news with the world..)
So signing off now, my next couple of post will be on my few speeches given at IIPM (my MBA Alma matter).
At IIPM i didn't get so much of stage life as i lived in SVITS. Most of my oration was due to assignments and presentations but surly IIPM played a key role in developing an English Orator in me. there were couple of speeches which took place due to interesting examination pattern of the institute, will document them here for all of you.
Hey, please don't expect a bomb, those speeches are quite ordinary as compared to ones delivered at SVITS, but yes, none of you got to listen to them, therefore i will share them here with you.
Just now I got a call from Mahim Mam, though she is yet to check out the blog but, let me thank her in advance...
bye for now...
Luv
VT
Friday, May 8, 2009
Sapney Aur Sitarey-Story behind 'the story'
Muhabbat karte karte zindagi Sach bol deti hai” - (Author not known to me..)
Sapaney Aur Sitarey, was a story of seven true dreamers, those who did not only dreamt but achieved it also, of course not in the most preferable way but surely in the most memorable way.
Well “Sapney Aur Sitarey” in the most elementary form is a Hindi Story, published in SVITS college magazine Horizon’s 3rd edition which got published in May 2003 (Exactly 6 years back). The Scan copy of the story is attached here, however there is a whole interesting story behind this story…
Horizon project was headed by “Aaquil Sir” (Mr. Aaquil Bunglowala). He was the chief editor (or you may call him ‘Editor in chief’ -as Saurabh Bararia used to say). The editorial board was divided into two parts, English & Hindi. The English team was led by “Saurabh Bararia” and the Hindi team by me.
(Horizon -03 is an important chapter of my college life and I think of writing a whole series of that, step by step in following posts..pls mail your suggestions)
The editorial team was given a very interesting & challenging assignment by Aaquil Sir. Both teams (English & Hindi) had to come up with a story (not an article or essay), which is written by all its members. The thumb rules were:
1. Each part of the story should come by a different member.
2. Still there should not be any disproportion in terms of continuity or genre.
3. It should come out as a masterpiece of team work, reflecting cumulative effort of everyone’s talent.
The assignment was tough and the most difficult part was point 2, as mentioned above.
Apart from having English & Hindi Classification we had three more members who were the part of “creative team” Savita Charhate, Ketaki Naik and Aishvarya Vaid (Aishvarya is Male … its just a clarification.. No pun intended). While Savita & Ketaki did their contribution in Saurabh’s team, Aishvarya joined my team for this assignment.
Team English has got a nice plot of ‘Camp fire’; in which all of them are sitting for a camp fire and each one of them sharing an experience, one by one. In a simple and effective way they completed this assignment. (I am sure Ram gopal verma has got a copy of Horizon -03, as on the same plot he came up with “Darna Mana Hai..”)
My team had to come up with the story in Hindi, and each and every one of us did not have equal hold on Hindi Literature writing (Infect all my team mates were chosen because of there Positive attitude and the zeal to do some thing exceptional – the details of team recruitment, selection and why Horizon-3 was an exceptional task will be published soon in another post..)
My team was
Hilsa Unni (the nightingale of SVITS) (final year –IT, the then)-She was a member as a representative of IT branch in the steering committee, very few people know that she writes good Hindi poetry, she was better known for her great singing skills.
Runjhun Pacholi (3rd Year IT the then) – She has a great sense of Music & literature (Hindi as well as English), A Potential Compere and Orator at that time (at least I believed firmly that she can make a very good anchor with her clear pronunciations, good command over both languages and presentable persona) She was almost a student of mine (The first student) for oration skills and, yes she made me feel proud when she conducted few of the programs pretty well.
Animesh Singh (2nd Year Elex the then)- A talented chap, with lots of guts. We noticed his talent during teacher’s day celebration, where he has conducted few programs on his own.
Aishvarya Vaid (2nd year IT the then)- I am sure he must be the winner of all his Arts and Crafts classes. I believe he can create any thing out of papers. He was on the job to choose the suitable clip arts for each article and was also coordinating with Printing press with Ankit.
Ankit Bhardwaj (2nd year Elex the then)- Ankit was chosen for English team but an interesting incident brought him in my team. Ankit is very intelligent, always ready with lots of out of the box ideas, very energetic and he always gives me the feel of a ‘Rebel’. You can expect him to come up with some out of the world solution every time.
I wished to have Bhuvan Gupta (3rd Year computers the then) in my team too (he was anyways with me always) but during the same period he was busy in the biggest project of those times, infect that event is still unparalleled-The Ankit Fadia Show... (Another story for my post...)
And, as first year students were barred to join Magazine committee I could not take Ankira In my team. Though she and some other first year students have helped us a lot in collecting Articles for the “Horizon”.
Well so that was the team; now let’s talk about the task…
Hilsa was busy in the preparation of Mukesh Nite (.. of course she does not sing Mukesh’s songs but she used to take part for the duets). Animesh was perhaps busy in some competitive preparation, Aishvarya and Ankit had a challenge of ‘writing down’ in Hindi. So in this way the purpose was getting defeated but we decided to complete the task in a different manner. After all, the task was a ‘team building exercise’ so we kept that purpose alive and came out with following solution.
1. We decided that we will write a story having seven key characters (a Multi starrer flick).
2. Each one of us will define and design one character.
3. We will brain storm together for a plot which can accommodate all the 7 characters.
4. Every one will help for one liners and dialogues in the story.
5. These inputs will be penned down by key writers – Me, Runjhun or Neerav.
So all set and done, we all gathered at my room for brainstorming. Ankit has one story idea about a young person who is dying of cancer and there are few characters around him whom he bring together and finally dies.
We did not buy that idea as it was looking too ‘bollywoodish’. But I am sure, later on he sold it to ‘Karan Johar’, who made ‘kal ho naa ho’ on the same plot, just one year down the line.
We finally took inspiration from one sad incident that happened those days. It was “The Columbia spacecraft Crash” in which 7 crew members died including an Indian astronaut –Kalpana Chawla. Our story was a tribute to the lady and moreover a salute to the ‘power of dreams’. She came from Haryana state where population of girl child and their % of education are still among the weakest in India, its only her deams & dare which made her a star- a true universal star.
So plot was finalized as the story of 7 astronauts who went on a mission but could not come back alive. We all have decided to be one of the characters in this story and each one has decided to design his/her chosen character.
The fact which makes this story very close to our heart is that character’s designed by us has quite a bit similarity with each one of us. Each character has some personality traits of its creator and the chemistry between the characters was also similar to the real one. Later on when story was published people could actually identify us in those characters. However we kept this background story, grounded and did not promoted the story that ways, but close friends knew this secret.
I wrote and played Capt. Siddarth, Hilsa was Kavita Rao, Neerav played Rahul Sharma, Runjhun was Disha Dixit, Animesh singh was Animesh Bajaj, Aishvarya was Gyan chand Bali and Akit was Abhimanyu singh.
I still remember, the fate of those 7 astronauts in the end of the story made all of us feel very very emotional, the moment we completed it, we all had a heavy heart.
There were some shortcomings in the story (from literary point of view)
1. It had a hurried storyline- as we all were editors and were well aware of the importance of keeping pages of magazine limited to 100 and the editing bug has made us to keep the narrations quite brief.
2. We could have made it more interesting and engaging by adding more detailed scenes.
But still this story is close to our heart.
Last and most important thing was the title. The story says all those 7 heroes have died for a Nobel cause (they preferred to send the records and reports in the emergency space craft, instead of saving their own life). All of them had a dream to do some thing big in their life though they could not realise their dreams in the expected way but they all have felt a sense of achievement before the end. Those seven dreams became the seven stars in the sky…Leading to the the title… “Sapaney Aur Sitarey”
Following 3 pages are scan copy of the story from Horizon 03, Neerav Thanks once again for the copies dear…
Luv...
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Aaghaz...
"Kahate Hain Waqt Har Ghum ko bhula Deta Hai.."
Well.. it seems to be one of the good qualities of 'Time' but "waqt ghum ke saath saath, kushiyon aur khushiyon ki yaadon ko bhi bhulata chala jaata hai..."
If you don’t agree, just pick up one of your old photographs from the college day's album and stand in front of a mirror and just compare it with you now. Apart from the fat earned and pimples lost there are two important things to compare:
1. The sparkle in your eyes
2. The smile (whether you wearing it in that photograph or hiding it..)
I don’t say that we do not smile now or do not feel happy these days, but the kind of excitement we used to carry, the kind of risk taking capabilities we used to boast off, the kind of "energy" we used to posses is some what disabled now.
I remember during my endeavors in SVITS, most of the times, I used to take just one meal in a day (dinner only), yet was so energetic, creative and enthusiastic.
As of now I am working as a trainer for my company and for my sessions, I am always in search of a fresh story or incident as a starter for my speeches. Last month only I was travelling Pan India to conduct one program with a co-trainer. Though the contents of the program were same for all the locations but there was one common audience. That was my co-trainer. Keeping his presence in mind, I decided to keep all stories, examples and even one liner in my session different for all the programs.
I realized it was a real difficult task. I carry good amount of reading material with me always, and since I am in this training business, I do a lot of reading, still it was difficult for me to find a different suitable starting every time. Most of the times after the session I realized that there was a better story in my mind which did not click me at the right time.
In parallel to all these thoughts, I dwell back to those old days when I was capable of relating any piece of literature to any kind of situation. I remember once on 15th of august I have narrated a romantic Gazal by Nida Fazli (also used in one of the bollywood flicks) and related it to the spirit of independence. One more incident comes in my mind When Prajyot (Prajyot Dewaskar- Naam to suna hoga..) was directing a group song with all the fresh singers in SVITS and encountered a peculiar problem. There were too many singers and the song had only two stanzas and it was difficult to give scope to every singer, then I wrote the third stanza of the song which was well matched with the theme, mood and even wordings of the original song…
Well I think, all of us have left a little part of our liveliness at our campus only. Therefore when ever we visit our campus we feel the kick. I am beginning this blog in search of that liveliness… which we feel sometimes when we visit our campus, or we see a friend from that campus or even when we a watch a movie with related scenes, atmosphere…
I know my wife (neha) would be a bit angry that “is my current life, really so boring?” Well dear, No, I certainly didn’t mean that, but yes I used to be more dynamic and more energetic few years back and you would love to see me few years younger, aren’t you..? Therefore I want to go back to my campus and would like to reconnect with them through this blog so that we can find out our lost liveliness and can add it to our new life.
I thank Ankit (Ankit Bhardwaj) to suggest me the name of the blog.. (Well this name itself has a story.. you will find it in next post…) and Neerav (I believe he is the one who still carry that liveliness with him) for his support ( for the coming post…) and the final dedication, this Blog is dedicated to my dear wife Neha.. . She was not the part of my SVITS group, hence she is least aware of those incidents/accidents and those endeavors (Swaranjali, Horizon, Quiz, Telecom and many more..) I wish this blog will reintroduce me to her, and I will relive those days and moments with her…
Insha Allah…
VT