Something Special

Yesterday’s Economic times reported an interesting article about a group of Indian kids who bagged the second place in the Indian leg of the First Lego League, an international robotics contest.

 

So what’s so great about it ? Nothing much just that these kids belong to the Spastics Society of Karnataka, thats not it they were competing with normal kids!!! 

Their team Super SAPpians (as SAP was one of the corporate sponsors), the group of nine school children namely — Avinash, Karthik, Padmini, Shiva Kumar, Sanjeev, John, Leo, Nivedita and Hemalatha along with some help from a group of software engineers (volunteers at the Karnataka Spastics Society) entered the fray with some normal kids and won the second prize at the contest. They call their invention “Robby The Grabber”. Just within 80 seconds Robby the Grabber completed three out of four assigned tasks and winning the second position.

 

 

Some of these kids cannot maintain eye-contact with others are yet maths wiz kids, some of them are immobile and dictate software commands which are fed through a keyboard by some who have “relatively good” navigation skills while some others trouble shoot errors and assemble the robot. They talk about team effort, user-friendly interface and such things, which could inspire anyone. These kids have gone a long way to prove the unthinkable. The support provided by Corporate towards such a cause is truly appreciable.

Organizations should also encourage their employees to participate in such social venture and promote a day of service. Whatever may be the cause, be it a global warming awareness campaign, a playful day at an orphanage or helping special schools we should contribute our might towards the society.

Disclaimer: All the views expressed in the blog are the views of the Author at that instant of space-time continuum and Author reserves the right to change, invert or altogether deny any of the views. 

Jodhaa Akbar – Much ado about nothing !

On Feb 15th 2008, film-maker Ashutosh Gowarikar released his new flick ‘Jodhaa Akbar’. The movie was shrouded with controversies much before its release. The movie made headlines on News channels and was on the cover of most magazines and dailies.

Last Saturday we decided to watch the movie ourselves and find out “What’s all the controversy?”. Getting the tickets was the easy part, watching the movie was not. I am glad that we were 10 minutes late !!!

As expected the movie was lavish, with great outdoor shots, lots of characters and magnificent cinematography. The movie is definitely an ‘eye-pleaser’.  The story line is average, once you see the movie and dig-up wikipedia for its historical accuracy the storyline becomes poor. I personally felt the story line to be scattered all over.

Although I have never met Akbar, I didn’t find Hrithik any close to Akbar’s personality. The mental perception I had of Akbar for years just didn’t fit for Hrithik. His acting though was appreciable.  Aishwarya Rai however was good, here there is no concept of mental perception, jodhaa bai never existed in there. The movie however was quite long and it was not interesting enough to make you ‘glued to the seat’. This restlessness makes the 3hr 30 min saga feel even longer.

If you watch the first half of the movie, its quite easy to guess the climax and the ending of the movie.  Characters other than leads (Hrithik and Aish) were not that appealing. 

The final verdict: The movie is average but the controversy hooked all.

Disclaimer:

All the views expressed in the blog are the views of the Author at that instant of space-time continuum and Author reserves the right to change, invert or altogether deny any of the views.