Recently, I saw this movie Taare Zamin Par…It is a movie which was beautifully crafted thanks to a very strong script, sublime direction and fantastic performances by all the actors. Aamir Khan and specially 9 year old Darsheel Safary have given stunning performances in the movie and both have lived their characters to the core. One of the best features of the movie is its superlative script which has really woven the whole movie quite magnificently. It will have to be said that Aamir Khan has really arrived in the industry as a director with flying colours. Every frame of the movie truly represents his phenomenal vision of the movie and it really binds audiences till the end. One of the fantastic features of the movie is that it is very simplified and has not been made larger than life as it has been seen in many of bollwood movies.
Aamir Khan has not deterred from taking risks which has really paid off well. Some of the scenes like use of animation and claymation to portray Ishaan’s(Darsheel Safary) imagination, the flip book scene when Ishaan's mother comes to know his fear of separation from family and when Aamir meets Ishaan's parents etc. have been crafted with great panache. The movie successfully highlights the problem of dyslexia with full care that it doesn't dominate the whole movie unnecessarily.
A special mention has to be made of 9 year old Darsheel Safary who plays the role of Ishaan. What a performance! He has truly immersed himself in the character of 'Ishaan' with magnificent acting skills in his first movie. Kudos to Aamir Khan again, as he has been able to carve out an amazing performance from Darsheel.
All I can say that it is a beautiful movie which is a must watch for everyone specially for children with their parents and for teachers. This is the best Christmas gift that parents can give their children. So please, please go and watch this amazing movie which is without a doubt best movie of the year!
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Monday, December 17, 2007
Bravo Narain Karthikeyan !!
Narain Karthikeyan has finally given Indian Racing fans something to cheer about by winning the first A1 GP victory in Zhuhai International Circuit. With Narain Karthikeyan sizzling on the Zhuhai International Circuit, Team India zipped to its first A1 GP victory by winning the Feature Race on Sunday. Having lost his status as Williams' test driver after the Formula One team jettisoned him earlier this week, Karthikeyan took the circuit by storm and raced to the chequered flag, quelling late charge from New Zealand and South Africa.The Indian clocked 1:08'30.759 to finish 0.502 seconds ahead of Kiwi Jonny Reid.
Starting third in the grid, Karthikeyan stepped on the gas on lap 16 when Portugal slipped back, allowing India to trail Switzerland. And by lap 22, the gap between the Swiss and Indian car had been whittled down to 4.6 seconds.In lap 26, Neel Jani of Team Switzerland developed a problem with the right rear tyre and had to bring the car into the pits, which allowed Karthikeyan to grab the lead.
There was hardly any moment to relax, however, with Pakistan toppling India from the lead before Karthikeyan showing again who was the boss.Kiwi Jonny Reid then closed down on the Indian with less than half a second separating them but Karthikeyan used all his experience of racing in the top flight and survived the late assault to drive his team to glory. him earlier this week, Karthikeyan took the circuit by storm and raced to the chequered flag, quelling late charge from New Zealand and South Africa.
With this victory, India thus became the 14th nation to record a win in A1GP.This is truly an achievement for Team India and for Narain who is hoping to get in the cockpit for Force India as one of its drivers.Although it is not quite discernible how far this victory will change the racing scenario in India any victory at the international level is quite an achievement and being first is truly remarkable!I hope that all the corporates will take notice of this victory by Narain Karthikeyan and will follow the example of Vijay Mallya for sponsoring Indian Drivers in terms of securing their place as a Formula One Driver. With Vijay Mallya owning Force India Formula One team and India aiming to be part of F1 calender, this Victory would not have come at a better time!
Starting third in the grid, Karthikeyan stepped on the gas on lap 16 when Portugal slipped back, allowing India to trail Switzerland. And by lap 22, the gap between the Swiss and Indian car had been whittled down to 4.6 seconds.In lap 26, Neel Jani of Team Switzerland developed a problem with the right rear tyre and had to bring the car into the pits, which allowed Karthikeyan to grab the lead.
There was hardly any moment to relax, however, with Pakistan toppling India from the lead before Karthikeyan showing again who was the boss.Kiwi Jonny Reid then closed down on the Indian with less than half a second separating them but Karthikeyan used all his experience of racing in the top flight and survived the late assault to drive his team to glory. him earlier this week, Karthikeyan took the circuit by storm and raced to the chequered flag, quelling late charge from New Zealand and South Africa.
With this victory, India thus became the 14th nation to record a win in A1GP.This is truly an achievement for Team India and for Narain who is hoping to get in the cockpit for Force India as one of its drivers.Although it is not quite discernible how far this victory will change the racing scenario in India any victory at the international level is quite an achievement and being first is truly remarkable!I hope that all the corporates will take notice of this victory by Narain Karthikeyan and will follow the example of Vijay Mallya for sponsoring Indian Drivers in terms of securing their place as a Formula One Driver. With Vijay Mallya owning Force India Formula One team and India aiming to be part of F1 calender, this Victory would not have come at a better time!
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Let us make AIDS history!!
When the red ribbon marks the calendar, a mass reckoning with AIDS occurs. Many people might view this as trendy rather than concerted concern. But December 1 is simply a day, which reinforces the message, "Stop AIDS. Keep the promise."
While views are divergent about the general extent of awareness of HIV and its transmission, the media has brought AIDS into drawing rooms and forced it into the public consciousness. Activists and global leaders used World AIDS Day on Saturday to warn against complacency in fighting the disease and called on governments to fill a multi-billion-dollar funding gap.
"We have made tangible and remarkable progress on all these fronts. But we must do more," United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in a message for World AIDS Day. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for an end to the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS, saying it remains the biggest challenge in fighting the disease that has infected tens of millions of people. World AIDS Day on December 1 each year brings together organizations that have been fighting the disease that has killed more than 25 million people since the 1980s. The millions of people infected and living with the AIDS virus bear the stigma of the disease, Ban said on Friday
The highlight of events across the globe was a concert in Johannesburg organized by Nelson Mandela's 46664 AIDS campaign group, named after his prison number from his 27 years in jail during South Africa's apartheid regime. An estimated 50,000 people attended the concert of local and foreign artists, ranging from Peter Gabriel to Ludacris, broadcast to millions around the world. South Africa has the world's worst rate of HIV, according to recent UN statistics, with around 5.5 million people infected out of a population of 48 million. But while sub-Saharan Africa has been hard hit, other African nations have registered successes. Mali's HIV infection rate dropped from 1.7 percent in 2001 to 1.3 percent last year, an official from the state's national council against AIDS said.
Since the first World AIDS Day in 1988 there has been progress in leveling off the percentage of the world's population living with HIV and AIDS from a peak in the late 1990s, the UN AIDS programme UNAIDS said last month. The tally of new infections fell to an estimated 2.5 million in 2007, from 3.0 million in the late 1990s, it added.
Efforts to bring anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs to sub-Saharan Africa, where more than two-thirds of those with HIV/AIDS live, were now bearing fruit, it said. But with 33.2 million people around the world estimated to be living with AIDS and 2.1 million deaths in 2007, campaigners warned there was still a long way to go. Treatment was still only available to about 10 percent of those in need, he said, while in developing countries, "the number of new infections continues to dwarf the numbers who start anti-retroviral therapy in developing countries."
One of the biggest areas of concern was ‘funding’. According to the UN, there is currently an eight-billion-dollar (five-billion-euro) shortfall in resources to fight AIDS. To meet the Group of Eight (G8) goal of providing universal access to ARVs by 2010, 42 billion dollars will be needed. So far, only 15.4 billion is in the kitty.
Activists are trying to keep the battle against HIV in the public eye on in the face of growing complacency amid progress in treating and slowing the spread of the disease. Even the Miss World beauty pageant on the Chinese holiday island of Sanya was enlisted to get out the message that the disease daily kills some 6,000 people.
Chinese President Hu Jintao appeared on the front page of major state-controlled newspapers shaking the hand of a woman HIV carrier, a day after the UN warned that as many as 50 million Chinese are at risk of contracting HIV/AIDS.
December 1 has become a time of grim stocktaking as AIDS campaigners worldwide sound the alarm over the disease's rampage through Africa, the threat it poses to Asia and former Soviet republics, and the risks to vulnerable communities such as sex workers, drug users and gay men.
Indian Paradox
As the world observes Saturday as World AIDS Day, India continues to be plagued by paradoxical and half-baked information on the 21st century's gravest health hazard, making the disease deadlier, says a new study. Paradoxical though it might appear, a new global study says, "While 79 percent of Indians understand AIDS is always fatal, 59 percent still wrongly believe there is a cure for it available today."
The study was conducted by the MAC AIDS Fund, the philanthropic arm of Estée Lauder-owned pharmaceutical major MAC Cosmetics in September 2007 in nine countries, including the US and Britain.
As per the study, although Indians generally recognize HIV/AIDS as the most serious health problem facing the country today, confusion and misperceptions about the disease reign here.
The study said that Indians generally complained of lack of access to information on various aspects of the disease, including how it is spread. As per the study, 65 percent of Indians attach a sense of shame and stigma with the disease, which contributes to the threat of it acquiring an epidemic proportion.
People in India are more uncomfortable in interacting intimately with HIV positive or AIDS victims than people elsewhere in the world, the study said, adding that 44 percent are hesitant to share a physician with someone who has HIV or AIDS. Thirty eight percent of the Indians surveyed confessed that they feel uncomfortable working with a HIV positive person, while some said they do not want to live in the same house as someone who has the virus, the study added.
Presenting the finding of the study, MAC AIDS Fund chairman John Demsey said, "The survey results illustrate the urgent need for public access in India to information on HIV and AIDS."
"This is a wake-up call that not only do we need to improve basic education about the realities of the disease - including how it is contracted and how it is treated - we also need to do some serious on-the-ground work to alleviate the sense of shame and stigma that surrounds the disease and prevents people from being safe and seeking treatment," he added. (Courtesy DNA)
Let us resolve that next year, when we mark the celebrations of another World Aids Day, there will be much more awareness about AIDS than what is the current scenario. We have to remember the basics AIDS and should refrain from any kind of discrimination against HIV positive people. We have to believe the fact that the AIDS is “just another disease” which is to a great extent controllable and people can live an active life even though they suffer from AIDS. The best way to combat this disease is to remove all kind of stigma that people try to attach with this disease and be comfortable to involve the people who suffer from AIDS and this inclusion will surely go a long way!
While views are divergent about the general extent of awareness of HIV and its transmission, the media has brought AIDS into drawing rooms and forced it into the public consciousness. Activists and global leaders used World AIDS Day on Saturday to warn against complacency in fighting the disease and called on governments to fill a multi-billion-dollar funding gap.
"We have made tangible and remarkable progress on all these fronts. But we must do more," United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in a message for World AIDS Day. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for an end to the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS, saying it remains the biggest challenge in fighting the disease that has infected tens of millions of people. World AIDS Day on December 1 each year brings together organizations that have been fighting the disease that has killed more than 25 million people since the 1980s. The millions of people infected and living with the AIDS virus bear the stigma of the disease, Ban said on Friday
The highlight of events across the globe was a concert in Johannesburg organized by Nelson Mandela's 46664 AIDS campaign group, named after his prison number from his 27 years in jail during South Africa's apartheid regime. An estimated 50,000 people attended the concert of local and foreign artists, ranging from Peter Gabriel to Ludacris, broadcast to millions around the world. South Africa has the world's worst rate of HIV, according to recent UN statistics, with around 5.5 million people infected out of a population of 48 million. But while sub-Saharan Africa has been hard hit, other African nations have registered successes. Mali's HIV infection rate dropped from 1.7 percent in 2001 to 1.3 percent last year, an official from the state's national council against AIDS said.
Since the first World AIDS Day in 1988 there has been progress in leveling off the percentage of the world's population living with HIV and AIDS from a peak in the late 1990s, the UN AIDS programme UNAIDS said last month. The tally of new infections fell to an estimated 2.5 million in 2007, from 3.0 million in the late 1990s, it added.
Efforts to bring anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs to sub-Saharan Africa, where more than two-thirds of those with HIV/AIDS live, were now bearing fruit, it said. But with 33.2 million people around the world estimated to be living with AIDS and 2.1 million deaths in 2007, campaigners warned there was still a long way to go. Treatment was still only available to about 10 percent of those in need, he said, while in developing countries, "the number of new infections continues to dwarf the numbers who start anti-retroviral therapy in developing countries."
One of the biggest areas of concern was ‘funding’. According to the UN, there is currently an eight-billion-dollar (five-billion-euro) shortfall in resources to fight AIDS. To meet the Group of Eight (G8) goal of providing universal access to ARVs by 2010, 42 billion dollars will be needed. So far, only 15.4 billion is in the kitty.
Activists are trying to keep the battle against HIV in the public eye on in the face of growing complacency amid progress in treating and slowing the spread of the disease. Even the Miss World beauty pageant on the Chinese holiday island of Sanya was enlisted to get out the message that the disease daily kills some 6,000 people.
Chinese President Hu Jintao appeared on the front page of major state-controlled newspapers shaking the hand of a woman HIV carrier, a day after the UN warned that as many as 50 million Chinese are at risk of contracting HIV/AIDS.
December 1 has become a time of grim stocktaking as AIDS campaigners worldwide sound the alarm over the disease's rampage through Africa, the threat it poses to Asia and former Soviet republics, and the risks to vulnerable communities such as sex workers, drug users and gay men.
Indian Paradox
As the world observes Saturday as World AIDS Day, India continues to be plagued by paradoxical and half-baked information on the 21st century's gravest health hazard, making the disease deadlier, says a new study. Paradoxical though it might appear, a new global study says, "While 79 percent of Indians understand AIDS is always fatal, 59 percent still wrongly believe there is a cure for it available today."
The study was conducted by the MAC AIDS Fund, the philanthropic arm of Estée Lauder-owned pharmaceutical major MAC Cosmetics in September 2007 in nine countries, including the US and Britain.
As per the study, although Indians generally recognize HIV/AIDS as the most serious health problem facing the country today, confusion and misperceptions about the disease reign here.
The study said that Indians generally complained of lack of access to information on various aspects of the disease, including how it is spread. As per the study, 65 percent of Indians attach a sense of shame and stigma with the disease, which contributes to the threat of it acquiring an epidemic proportion.
People in India are more uncomfortable in interacting intimately with HIV positive or AIDS victims than people elsewhere in the world, the study said, adding that 44 percent are hesitant to share a physician with someone who has HIV or AIDS. Thirty eight percent of the Indians surveyed confessed that they feel uncomfortable working with a HIV positive person, while some said they do not want to live in the same house as someone who has the virus, the study added.
Presenting the finding of the study, MAC AIDS Fund chairman John Demsey said, "The survey results illustrate the urgent need for public access in India to information on HIV and AIDS."
"This is a wake-up call that not only do we need to improve basic education about the realities of the disease - including how it is contracted and how it is treated - we also need to do some serious on-the-ground work to alleviate the sense of shame and stigma that surrounds the disease and prevents people from being safe and seeking treatment," he added. (Courtesy DNA)
Let us resolve that next year, when we mark the celebrations of another World Aids Day, there will be much more awareness about AIDS than what is the current scenario. We have to remember the basics AIDS and should refrain from any kind of discrimination against HIV positive people. We have to believe the fact that the AIDS is “just another disease” which is to a great extent controllable and people can live an active life even though they suffer from AIDS. The best way to combat this disease is to remove all kind of stigma that people try to attach with this disease and be comfortable to involve the people who suffer from AIDS and this inclusion will surely go a long way!
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