December 2011

As on date, Youth Ki Awaaz has over 3 million readers every month, a 17 member strong editorial board and strategic team, 60 interns at any point in the year and has trained over 1000 youngsters in online journalism and new media skills. It has won the coveted World Summit Youth Award and was also awarded the Best Blog on social causes in April 2010 by Indiblogger.in. The founder and editor of Youth Ki Awaaz, Anshul Tewari shares his journey with us.

How did you start out and what was the inspiration behind Youth Ki Awaaz?

It started out in 2008. I was preparing for my entrance examinations after my board results were out. While the preparations were on, I came across an array of issues and realizing that the mainline media did not really pick them up, I wanted to voice myself. On approaching established media houses, I was dejected when my opinionated letters to the editor were not published. I knew I had to chose an alternative path to voice myself and thus I took to blogging. I started blogging at youthkiawaaz.blogspot.com. After about an year of blogging and getting a small but loyal audience, Youth Ki Awaaz got its very own domain: youthkiawaaz.com and I opened up the blog for readers to join in and pitch in their views on critical issues. The main inspiration has been the very problem that India and other developing nations face. The problem of inability to express oneself freely at a large scale – reaching out to a mass audience. There is an information overload and an attention deficit, but the populace that matters is the most neglected one. How do you plan to take YKA forward? Are you also working on other enterpreneural projects? Personally, I see myself sticking on not just to one start up. I am already working on my second start up, which again is a social enterprise solving the problem of credible research in the social, educational and health sector. I want to identify problems in the society and build innovative products and companies with the sole aim of solving these problems. Youth Research India, my next start up, being co-Founded with Youth Ki Awaaz’s Vice President, Mridang Lodha, will be India’s first and largest platform for young people to collaborate and conduct organized researches with the help and support of expert organizations and industry veterans – with the aim of creating credible information availability in the domain of social issues, educational problems, environmental issues and the health care sector in India. Reporting about a problem and directly impacting change have often proved to be a dichotomy. How do you plan to bridge the gap? Youth Ki Awaaz is the first step towards change. To work towards any problem, you need to first understand it and get the right kind of knowledge – that is awareness and this is where Youth Ki Awaaz comes in. Our impact is the change in the mindset of our readers and writers. Almost 60% of our interns join the social sector after our internship – and that in itself is a big impact on their lives, thus changing the lives of many others connected to them. I have a strong alignment towards the power of journalism. We combine that with the power of the youth and technology. Talking about some measurable impact, I must mention a recent case. When Libya was under turmoil (it still is) we heard that a lot of Indian nationals were stuck there. The Government was not sending ships to get them back on time and lives were being lost. The mainline media faced a problem of reaching out to these Indians in Libya or even their families. At the same time, one of our readers’ father was stuck in Tripoli and was suffering at the hands of the violence. The reader wrote a very emotional story about his father being stuck their, asking for help. Within seconds, the story went viral on twitter and Facebook with thousands tweeting about it and sharing it. We got a flood of emails from media outlets like CNN IBN, asking us to connect them to the writer. We even got an email from the Govt department asking us to not spread panic – which was actually the truth. A lot of media outlets picked the story, quoting us, and pushed the Government to send ships to get the Indians back, and in the next 24 hours, the ships were sent. We might have played a minor role in all this, but just the fact that the writer’s voice was picked up and spread by the mainline media was enough of an impact. His father is back in India and safe. And finally do you have any message for the aspiring social enterpreneurs out there? The best thing about being an entrepreneur who solves problems is that you get to change lives. I would like to push young people to pick up that one passion and go out of their way to make it big – to make it happen. That is how change is done!]]>

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Arts & Culture

The King is Surely Back

By dhaval December 23, 2011

Don 2

MOVIE REVIEW

Cast: Shah Rukh Khan. Priyanka Chopra, Boman Irani, Lara Dutta, Kunal Kapoor, Om Puri

Music– Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy

Direction: Farhan Akhtar

Rating: 4/5

Sleek, Stylish, Sexy. Don 2 is all of this.

When the promos claimed ‘The King is Back’, you couldn’t help but expect a lot of thrills and chills from this sequel of the 2006 hit. While the prequel itself had some cool twists besides some shoddy writing, it certainly gave a hint of a sequel in the end. And in Don 2, there is a furthermore indication (through a bike’s number plate) that there indeed will be a Don 3.

But how is Don 2? Well, in one word, it’s thrilling. In spite of a certain number of flaws, Don 2 works because it has the elements of suspense and surprise that a thriller should have. And whenever the screenplay dips and gets boring, there is always a man who comes in to the rescue: SRK. A word on him later!

After capturing the South East Asia, Don has his eyes set on Europe where he plans to rob the leading bank in Berlin. To accomplish his plan, he surrenders first and is thrown in a jail in Bangkok. Partnering with Vardhan, he escapes the jail and begins implementing his devilish plans. Some may say that the plot resembles Ocean’s Eleven or the MI series, but one cannot deny that some portions of the movie, especially the last hour matches Hollywood. The action and chase sequences, the twists and turns may not be too many but they certainly make their presence felt.

No doubt the first half takes its own time in unraveling and also gets a tad monotonous at times. But the film’s latter part surely makes up for it. The final hour is so spectacular that it keeps you on the edge of the seat and doesn’t give you much time to think. You remain gasping as Don conquers his enemies and wins over you, too.

Of the cast, well, it’s a one man show. Shah Rukh Khan is in an absolutely supreme form as he charms one and all with the magnetic yet wicked Don. He looks dapper and sexy in all the looks and literally steals the show with his smirk and his quick-witted one liners.

Priyanka Chopra doesn’t look a cop, though she is suitably restrained. Boman Irani is potent as Vardhan and looks menacing enough. Kunal Kapoor’s short role is adorable and he springs a pleasant surprise. Lara Dutta and Om Puri are just average while the latter is completely wasted. Hrithik’s cameo is okay but he certainly didn’t infuse the same charm as SRK.

Music by S-E-L is strictly average. I won’t blame him as a film like this had to have minimum songs. Though, I liked the song in the end credits.

For Farhan, the film could’ve been better especially in the first half. He ought to have stayed away from depending so much on Shah Rukh. But to be honest, keeping the lazy writing aside, credit has to be given to him for making such a stylized and sleek product.

The film will definitely garner a better response both from the viewers and the Box Office than Ra.One.

I am going with 4 stars out of five for Farhan Akhtar’s, or should I say SRK’s, Don 2. The film is a hell of a ride in the second half and a Shah Rukh Khan show all the way.

Watch Don 2 and end the year with a blast!

Chaitanya Sharma
[email protected]

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Biblio

Book Review: Uncle Tungsten

By Rohan Seth December 21, 2011

Memories of a Chemical Boyhood

Author : Oliver Sacks

From his earliest days, Oliver Sacks, the distinguished neurologist who is also one of the most remarkable storytellers of our time and the author of this illuminating and poignant memoir, was irresistibly drawn to understanding the natural world. Born into a large family of doctors, metallurgists, chemists, physicists, and teachers, his curiosity was encouraged and abetted by aunts, uncles, parents, and older brothers. But soon after his sixth birthday, the Second World War broke out and he was evacuated from London, as were hundreds of thousands of children, to escape the bombing. Exiled to a school that rivalled Dickens’s grimmest, fed on a steady diet of turnips and beetroots, tormented by a sadistic headmaster, and allowed home only once in four years, he felt desolate and abandoned.

When he returned to London in 1943 at the age of ten, he was a changed, withdrawn boy, one who desperately needed order to make sense of his life. He was sustained by his secret passions: for numbers, for metals, and for finding patterns in the world around him. Under the tutelage of his “chemical” uncle, Uncle Tungsten, Sacks began to experiment with “the stinks and bangs” that almost define a first entry into chemistry: tossing sodium off a bridge to see it take fire in the water below; producing billowing clouds of noxious-smelling chemicals in his home lab. As his interests spread to investigations of batteries and bulbs, vacuum tubes and photography, he discovered his first great scientific heroes, men and women whose genius lay in understanding the hidden order of things and disclosing the forces that sustain and support the tangible world. There was Humphry Davy, the boyish chemist who delighted in sending flaming globules of metal shooting across his lab; Marie Curie, whose heroic efforts in isolating radium would ultimately lead to the unlocking of the secrets of the atom; and Dmitri Mendeleev, inventor of the periodic table, whose pursuit of the classification of elements unfolds like a detective story.

Sacks, who is perhaps best known for his books ‘Awakenings’ (which became a Robin Williams/Robert De Niro vehicle) and ‘The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat’, invokes his childhood in wartime England and his early scientific fascination with light, matter and energy as a mystic might invoke the transformative symbolism of metals and salts. The “Uncle Tungsten” of the book’s title is Sacks’ Uncle Dave, who manufactured light bulbs with filaments of fine tungsten wire, and who first initiated Sacks into the mysteries of metals. But as Sacks writes, the family influence extended well beyond the home, to include the groundbreaking chemists and physicists whom he describes as “honorary ancestors, people to whom, in fantasy, I had a sort of connection.” Family life exacted another enormous influence as well: his older brother Michael’s psychosis made him feel that “a magical and malignant world was closing in about him,” perhaps giving a hint of what led the author to explore the depths of psychosis in his later professional life.

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Spo(r)tlight

Between the sticks

By Shashank Gupta December 21, 2011

It takes great courage to stand between the woodwork and spoil the opponent’s every move. Trusting their instincts and backing their agility, being a Goalkeeper is no easy task. While you need several brilliant saves to prove yourself, one slight mistake can bring you down. Rakshit Kumar takes a stand for his team and for a profession severely undervalued in the country.

Rakshit Kumar

Club: Simla Youngs FC
Milestones:
Participated in ‘Welsh International Super Cup ‘, Wales at U-15,U-17,U-19 level.
Represented Madhya Pradesh at U-19 school nationals 2009-10 securing 2nd position
Participated in U-19 All india open nationals 2009-10
Participated in National football League B 2009-10, 2010-11 from Simla Young FC.
Participated in Manchester united U-15 Cup.

How and when did you decide that you want to become a goalkeeper and follow football?

I started playing football at the age of 13 in school only, and my coach told me that I was more suitable as a goalkeeper. I was always enthusiastic about goalkeeping and thus went with it.

What are the issues you have faced in your journey so far and which continue to ail the sport?

From whatever I have seen I can say that there is lack of professionalism and apart from that there are other issues such as lack of proper guidance and infrastructure. I’ve seen many people go forward with their power of money, while deserving players don’t get their due.

What about the quality of coaches?

There are not many goalkeeping coaches in India but I had an opportunity to train under a Japanese coach and I got to learn a lot from him. Such exposure gives you a different view of the game, and brings professionalism in your game. They stress on the subtle passing game than the lob and run style our coaches follow.

What are the issues associated with goalkeeping specifically?

Grounds in India are of poor quality and not suitable for goalkeeping. The playing surface is very hard and many a times without grass cover. You have to be strong mentally and physically to play regularly in these conditions.

Where do you go from here?

I am focused towards playing for Simla Youngs FC and hope to qualify for the I-league this season. Also my ambition is to stand between the poles for Delhi in the Santosh Trophy and then ultimately for the national team.

You would advice others to take up the sport, become a goalkeeper?

Chances are definitely there irrespective of the flaws I’ve mentioned. Given the right exposure, and support from sponsors, a hardworking player will always be successful. Have a look at Subrata Pal, he is a very highly rated goalkeeper and he is an Indian!

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Arts & Culture

The Dirty Picture

By dhaval December 21, 2011

MOVIE REVIEW

RATING – 2.5/5

Raunchy? Yes! Bold? Very! Good? No!

Milan Luthria’s The Dirty Picture, is easily one of the boldest films you have seen recently. But how I wish it could have been ‘one of the best’.

It is very clear after watching the film that the makers’ foremost priority was to shock you. So in the first half you see Silk (Vidya) do all the raunchy moves, which are received by tons of seetis from the audience. The jaw dropping dialogues bring out the laughter and Silk does all that she can to satisfy those who are lured in solely by the promise of skin-show. And obviously they are unlikely to complain.

But the filmmakers could not quiet succeed in making an emotional drama that it could have been, rather, should have been. With the sole focus being on sex, the writers failed to weave a captivating screenplay. Forget this, when Silk (Balan) commits suicide in the end, it doesn’t give you a shock or a tear; it gives you a huge relief as you see the exit gates open.

Reshma, a village girl enters Madras, in order to chase her dreams, and gives it all to become a star. Not afraid to expose and compromise, she impresses all with her guts and later on becomes a siren in the South film industry. Along the way, she gets entangled in three love affairs, all unsuccessful, and receives ample hatred for doing the bold and vulgar films from the society. And as good times bid her farewell, she lays in the bed she made for herself.

With the plot being extremely predictable, what was required was a tight script which besides entertaining helps the viewer to relate with the protagonist. But here, what is served is only ‘entertainment entertainment entertainment’. While the first half is genuinely funny, engaging and shocking, it’s the film’s latter half that gives your back an uncalled-for ache.

The film is made watchable, thanks to its two stars, the ‘dirty’ dialogues and the ‘boombat’ Balan. While the dialogues are wonderfully and astutely penned by Rajat Arora, Vidya Balan is impossible to describe in a word. It’s hard to imagine who else could have gathered the guts to carry such a herculean role with such perfection. She is absolutely spectacular and, in short, is the ‘hero’ of the film.

Of the male actors, Naseeruddin Shah creates a major impact. He is exceptional and entertaining as a middle-aged South superstar and a Casanova. Both Emraan Hashmi and Tusshar are first rate, the former obviously with a better role.

Vishal Shekhar’s music is decent to say the least. ‘Ooh la la’ is a definite chartbuster; other songs though hummable, seem to be unnecessarily forced in the narrative.

Milan Luthria deserves to be appreciated for conceptualizing such a bold film but a little more effort in the writing and the end result could have been much better.

I am going with 2 stars for the film and an additional half for Vidya Balan, making it 2 and a half for The Dirty Picture. Silk certainly tries hard to make up for the flaws, but it isn’t enough to make it a ‘lovely’ picture. If you are looking for just the shock value, this average fair may not disappoint you!

Chaitanya Sharma
[email protected]

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Spo(r)tlight

Sri Venkateswara College wins Inter DU Football

By DU Beat December 21, 2011

Sri Venkateswara College scored a resounding 2-1 victory over Zakir Hussain College to win the Inter Delhi University football tournament. The series of matches hosted by Bhagat Singh College and College of Vocational Studies spanned over 2 weeks and saw 40 colleges battling it out for ultimate glory. Sri Venkateswara College created history by winning the DU title for the first time as they overcame defending champions Zakir Hussain twice in the tournament, one of them coming in a hard fought final.

SVC cruised through the quarterfinal league as they beat Zakir Hussain and IGIP 2-0 and 5-0 respectively and drew with Ram Lal Anand College 2-2 to top their group. SVC later went on to demolish arch rivals SRCC 4-0 in the semifinals. Sanil Makhija of SVC finished the top scorer with a tally of 16 goals in 8 matches. Rakshit Kumar, goalkeeper of renowned Delhi club Shimla Youngs was the standout performer in the final which included him pulling off crucial saves in injury time.

Semifinals

Sri Venkateswara College 4-0 SRCC

Motilal Nehru College(E) 1-1 Zakir Hussain College (Zakir won on penalties)

Finals

Sri Venkateswara College 2-1 Zakir Hussain College

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News

The best league in the world

By Shashank Gupta December 21, 2011

Which is the best football league in the world? This is a question which keeps ardent football fans busy. Though the English Premier League might be more popular than La Liga, or Seria A for that matter, judging a league based on it’s popularity alone would be naive. A closer look at the top contenders throws light on this subject.

English Premier League

The Premiership with its rising television ratings and infusion of massive foreign investment is the obvious choice of many pundits. It boasts of a frantic pace of football, often laden with grueling physical battles. Many big names who came with hefty price tags to England unfortunately left with nothing but a tattered reputation. Although critics say that the Premier League is too physical, statistics suggest that in 2005-09 the number of fouls committed per match were the lowest in the world.

Traditionally EPL has been a four horse race, there are always teams who have gone on to disturb the hierarchy and clinch Champions League spots and even cause a few upsets. Teams such as Stoke City, a menace at home, make encounters pretty exciting. The likes of Everton, Aston Villa and Tottenham are no pushovers either. As far as Champions League is concerned the English teams have dominated it in recent years, being well represented in the knockout stages.

La Liga

To be fair La Liga does portray the beautiful side of the game and has a lot of art, color, passion and vigour. Apart from this, off late all the bigwigs of footballing fraternity have either spurned out from this league or have migrated here: Messi, Kaka, Ronaldo, Fabregas, Villa to name a few. On the other hand, a close inspection reveals that these names are from either Barcelona or Real Madrid, which is why La Liga has been often called a two horse race. Last time a team apart from these two won the league was in 2004 when Valencia triumphed. Also, the drop in quality is evident as you move further down the table, an area where EPL fares better.

That said, lack of coverage and inconvenient match timings dont help its cause. Those who do follow it closely, say that the La Liga stakes a strong claim at being the best in the world.

Italian Serie A

Once the strongest in the world, Serie A has fallen off its perch with constant match fixing scandals, increasing average age of players and an excessively defensive mindset. It’s true that Italian football lacks pace of late, but the slow build up of the game often engages the audience. The slick triangle passing especially among the top clubs makes for a spectacle. It’s this style and the club loyalty of Italian players that has allowed Italy to fare well in the World Cups (except the last one). Teams like AC Milan and Inter Milan are considered one of the toughest oppositions in Europe and foreign teams fear a trip to the San Siro in European competitions. Sadly, the fall of Juventus has reduced its popularity considerably, and made a good league seem average.

The 2011 season has seen a somewhat surge in the quality as well as competitiveness of the league. The Juventus renaissance has made the league interesting with as many as 7 teams including the likes of Milan, Inter Milan, Lazio, AS Roma, Udinese and Napoli vying for the title.

German Bundesliga

Not many watch the Bundesliga, in fact not many know if it’s even telecasted or not. The German League is known mostly for its stadiums and brilliant crowds. The gap between powerhouse Bayern Munich and the rest has closed and there are now several teams in the running for the title every year. The problem is its popularity in comparison with the other three, especially outside Germany, which in turn doesn’t attract big investors. But the fact that Germany has finished third in the last two World Cups must have something to do with the Bundesliga as well.

You can look at all kinds of statistics, number of fouls, shots on targets, goals scored but finally it does come down to personal preference. If the others league got as much coverage as the EPL, maybe then we could reach a conclusion.

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