'Jal' team joins Rangotsav 2014
Kolkata, Mar 18 : The star-cast of the upcoming Bollywood movie 'Jal' on Monday took part in the 'Rangotsav 2014', here at the PC Chandra Gardens to celebrate Holi in a truly colorful style.
The 'Rangotsav 2014' featured music by DJ Harish, rain dance, skin-friendly colors and folk performances.
Bollywood actor Purab H Kohli charmed Kolkatans and celebrated Holi along with his co-star Kirti Kulhari, the lead stars of the upcoming movie 'Jal'.
'Jal' is the story of a young water diviner, Bakka who is gifted with a special ability to find water in the desert.
With the backdrop of water paucity, the film tells a complex and fascinating story of love, relationships, enmity, deceit and circumstances that bring about the dark side of human character.
It is a high-octane, action- drama with a shocking climax.
'Jal' was also the only Indian film to have made it to the in-competition segment of the recently in the 'New Currents Section' of the Busan International Film Festival and was also more recently the official selection in the Indian Panorama Section at IFFI Goa.
'Jal' stars Purab H Kohli, Kirti Kulhari, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Saidah Jules, Mukul Dev, Yashpal Sharma and Ravi Gossain amongst others.
Another key highlight of the film is that it marks the official debut of Sonu Nigam and Bickram Ghosh as Music Directors.
The film is scheduled to hit the silver screen on Apr 4.
Rahul Madhogaria, the organizer from Buzz 365 Entertainments said, "Elaborate arrangements for the festival are being made here this time at PC Chandra Gardens - Rangotsav 2014 by us. Holi this year coincides with World Water Day, so the message becomes even more relevant."
Madhogaria said, "We are trying to highlight on 'Masti Gulal Ki' to show how Holi can be great fun even without the use of water. We are heading toward summer and with the kind of drought in so many parts of India, we thought we would do it differently this time and send out a message to people that celebration of Holi is about colours and not necessarily asking for lots of water tankers."
He added, "We wanted to go waterless, but wanted to keep it colourful and dynamic too. Showcasing the various styles in which Holi is celebrated across different Indian states, we have beautiful arrangements that represent the country's vibrant cultural canvas."
Purab Kohli said, "I love this festival as this is only occasion for we actors to celebrate with fun. Forget your worries and have a blast. Groove yourself in colors and get painted with love, affection and celebration. It's always super fun to throw someone into the pool or dump colours on friends."
Kohli added, "Squirt coloured water on your friends and dear ones or smear their faces with Gulaal... anything goes for it's that time of the year when you can say, 'Bura Na Maano, Holi Hai'. Rangotsav at PC Chandra Gardens is the place to be in this Holi as people gear up for an outlandish display of colours here. I am just loving it here with my fans all around."
Indian Idol Academy (KYMedia) raises funding from Singapore based Investors to boost musical talent
Bollywood actor Purab H Kohli charmed Kolkatans and celebrated Holi along with his co-star Kirti Kulhari, the lead stars of the upcoming movie 'Jal'.
'Jal' is the story of a young water diviner, Bakka who is gifted with a special ability to find water in the desert.
With the backdrop of water paucity, the film tells a complex and fascinating story of love, relationships, enmity, deceit and circumstances that bring about the dark side of human character.
It is a high-octane, action- drama with a shocking climax.
'Jal' was also the only Indian film to have made it to the in-competition segment of the recently in the 'New Currents Section' of the Busan International Film Festival and was also more recently the official selection in the Indian Panorama Section at IFFI Goa.
'Jal' stars Purab H Kohli, Kirti Kulhari, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Saidah Jules, Mukul Dev, Yashpal Sharma and Ravi Gossain amongst others.
Another key highlight of the film is that it marks the official debut of Sonu Nigam and Bickram Ghosh as Music Directors.
The film is scheduled to hit the silver screen on Apr 4.
Rahul Madhogaria, the organizer from Buzz 365 Entertainments said, "Elaborate arrangements for the festival are being made here this time at PC Chandra Gardens - Rangotsav 2014 by us. Holi this year coincides with World Water Day, so the message becomes even more relevant."
Madhogaria said, "We are trying to highlight on 'Masti Gulal Ki' to show how Holi can be great fun even without the use of water. We are heading toward summer and with the kind of drought in so many parts of India, we thought we would do it differently this time and send out a message to people that celebration of Holi is about colours and not necessarily asking for lots of water tankers."
He added, "We wanted to go waterless, but wanted to keep it colourful and dynamic too. Showcasing the various styles in which Holi is celebrated across different Indian states, we have beautiful arrangements that represent the country's vibrant cultural canvas."
Purab Kohli said, "I love this festival as this is only occasion for we actors to celebrate with fun. Forget your worries and have a blast. Groove yourself in colors and get painted with love, affection and celebration. It's always super fun to throw someone into the pool or dump colours on friends."
Kohli added, "Squirt coloured water on your friends and dear ones or smear their faces with Gulaal... anything goes for it's that time of the year when you can say, 'Bura Na Maano, Holi Hai'. Rangotsav at PC Chandra Gardens is the place to be in this Holi as people gear up for an outlandish display of colours here. I am just loving it here with my fans all around."
Indian Idol Academy (KYMedia) raises funding from Singapore based Investors to boost musical talent
KarmYog Media and Entertainment Education Network (KYMedia), a Kolkata based education venture, has successfully raised an undisclosed amount from Singapore-based investors for their growth and expansion plans. KYMedia is part of “KarmYog Education Network” (KEN) started by Sourabh J. Sarkar, an educationist who is working on scalable vocational training throughout India and other emerging economies through media-and-technology-based courseware.
KEN’s previous success include GlobalTHEN, a YourStoryEduStars startup, focused on training individuals associated with travel and hospitality sector. GlobalTHEN has now been renamed as KYtravel and Hospitality Network and had successfully raised angel funding from Deep Kalra of MakeMyTrip.com, Alok Mittal of Canaan Partners India, Philip Wolf of PhoCusWright, Rajiv Vij of Carzonrent and more.
The new investment into KYMedia will be deployed for its flagship program Indian Idol Academy - a unique approach to delivering music education based on KarmYog’s innovative OmniDEL™ platform. Their new approach allows children across India to access this quality singing and performance instruction at an affordable price. Several legends and maestros such as Shyam Benegal, Hariharan, Salim Merchant, Alka Yagnik, Kavita Krishnamurthy and Bickram Ghosh are associated with the Academy. Started with a motto – “Sing with Joy … Perform with Confidence … Focus with Purpose.”, IIA aims to impart the same quality of instructions to students aged 6-15 with varying levels of musical talents, as contestants on the television show Indian Idol Junior receive.
The Academy was first piloted in few schools of Ahmedabad for 650 children in 65 OmniDEL sessions to establish the model and see if the learning experience worked – 93% of parents and children rated it 3 and above our of 5, 96% said they would recommend it to others and 82% said they would purchase the next course. With a successful pilot, KYMedia is now planning to take it to Pan India level with the first of its kind National Music and Learning Festival - Indian Idol Academy Festival of Music through a series of activations and a Grand Concert starring musical legends. Starting from April, Indian Idol Academy will be rolled out in various other cities like Kolkata, Lucknow, Jaipur, Chandigarh, NCR, Surat, Indore and Bhubaneswar.
Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Chuck Schreiner, MD of KarmYog Education Network, said – “It is our pleasure to welcome our new investors on board. The investors were attracted to the scalability of our approach and the power of the Indian Idol brand coming together to revolutionize performing arts training. We have demonstrated that our target audience and their parents love the experience we are delivering. We will continue to raise capital to aggressively expand our reach to other major cities.”
KarmYog’s OmniDEL platform was previous utilized in GlobalTHEN’s “Pawan ko Kahin Dekha Kya” program – a highly interactive workshop, designed to train drivers in soft skills, teach them the tenets of customer service and instill in them a sense of dignity. Over 11,000 drivers have been trained through this program. National Skill Development Corporation( NSDC) has also recognized OmniDEL and its program Pawan as one of the Best Learning Methodologies among all skill development companies in the country. The program was also used to train 1,000 drivers at the Maha Kumbh which won them lots of accolades. Now the team is working on making it a national movement with the Driver Jagrukta Abhiyan to train 5 million drivers in 5 years, they already have Hindustan Times as media partner and are talking to more sponsors to activate the nation-wide campaign.
With the success of GlobalTHEN (KYtravel and hospitality network) and now with KYmedia and entertainment network, KarmYog team plans to ideate, prototype and come up with more successful programs for mass education leveraging technology, experts and new pedagogy.
Mumbai, India (March 18, 2014): It is learnt that Bollywood singer Jaspinder Narula has quit Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). She had joined the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) earlier in February. However, within a month’s time, she has called it quits.
When she first announced that she was joining the party, she said that she had worked on a Savarkar project and realised the sacrifice made by freedom fighters, and thought that she has not done much for the country. She had claimed to have found the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) as the only party who talks of a corruption-free India.
She has announced to hold a press conference where she will reveal the reason for the decision. Reports had previously suggested that she was upset with the party for not giving her the ‘responsibility’ she expected.
Prior to Narula, the political party lost a few of its known members including AAP’s national executive member Ashok Agarwal.
TV channels retrained after skipper Dhoni files Rs 100-crore defamation suit
India skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni is in Bangladesh for the ICC World Twenty20 (File)
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Dhoni, in his suit, submitted that defendants had been carrying highly defamatory, scandalous and libellous false reports.
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Nilanjana S Roy: The pirate wars
One of the very few regrets I harbour about my journalism career is that I did not have the foresight to be in the Delhi High Court in 1996, when the case of Raja Pocket Books vs Radha Pocket Books was heard in front of their learned Lordships.
Raja Pocket Books were the publishers of Nagraj, a comic book featuring, "a character … attired in a green coloured body stocking giving the impression of serpentine skin and red trunks with a belt, which appears to be a snake". Nagraj's adventures had sold approximately 1,521,500 copies across the Hindi heartland, but here was Radha Pocket Books trying to cash in by creating their own serpentine hero, Nagesh.
The defendant argued that everybody had a right to depict serpentine characters in green colour; the plaintiff swayed the judge by saying, aha, but the heroes were the same, down to the number of scales - and the ripped gauntlets. As their learned Lordships observed, finding for the plaintiff, this was a clear case of attempted copyright violation: Nagesh and Nagraj could both hurl snakes with one hand, scale walls, and, most telling, "Both, when bites, the object melts like a wax".
By the 2000s, piracy had changed across all kinds of language publishing in India. In 2003, Harry Potter's publishers successfully sued Uttam Ghosh, preventing him from introducing a character called Jhontu in a sub-series where Harry Potter goes to Calcutta, a work of fan fiction if there ever was one. But they were less successful in stopping the number of pirated translations of the Potter books from English to Bengali. Book pirates in China had stayed ahead of the curve, by passing off a weird little book called Harry Potter and Bao Zoulong as a new Potter sequel. In this version, Harry Potter became a leading character in a translation of The Hobbit, with an explanatory paragraph to tell the reader how Harry Potter was turned into a hobbit one day while taking a bath.
The first book pirate I met was a printer from Ludhiana who had set up a small printing house in Noida near Delhi. Leaving his office, I took the wrong turn and walked into a building that housed another printing press. The books wrapped in neat bundles seemed very familiar. I was surprised at the range of publishers represented. "You print books for x and y, too?" I said, naming a very large textbook publisher and a highly respected trade publishing house. The man said yes, no, yesno, and ushered me out of there muttering, "Special order." It was much later, looking at the rows of pirated bestsellers at the traffic lights that it clicked: I had met one of the many suppliers of purloined purple prose who make a fat profit from illegally printing and selling bestsellers.
There was nothing unusual about his operation: the book piracy trade in India is inviting for middlemen, but the bulk of it is far larger and better organised. Publishers Weekly estimates that Indian pirates cost the global publishing industry about $36 million a year; we are among the largest book piracy centres in Asia.
The book pirates always get it right: they anoint a few (and only a few) literary writers (Amitav Ghosh, Jhumpa Lahiri, Vikram Seth), they know when the market shifts from an obsession with The Secret to books by Indian authors on diets. They also know how much the market will stand: the classic story about Chetan Bhagat's success is that the pirates were selling copies of his first book at Rs 150/- when the retail price was Rs 95/- but they still had takers.
The disappearance of the Srishti bestsellers - cheap, Rs 99 paperbacks that had taken the pulp fiction world by storm - from the ranks of pirated books is an indicator that the market for books like Oh Sh*t Not Again or I Am Broke! Love Me is cooling, with better pulp options available.
The book pirate trade in India is as efficient as the hawala market, with its own peculiar systems and rituals. Those who sell the books on the streets and at the traffic lights have no idea where the pirated stock comes from; they pick up their stock from vendors. Some vendors speak of receiving tokens to pick up parcels at the railway station offices; some pirates use a perpetually changing set of courier offices.
Most book pirates have much better market research than most publishers in India. One of the larger pirates - the trade is shifting into the hands of a few large operators who run networks of illegal printers and vendors around the country - gets his news by tracking over 600 distributors and printing presses across the North of India. His charts rate textbook publishers and trade publishers by their track record of bestsellers over a 10-year period. He prefers to use printers whose chief product is religious books, because the police are reluctant to raid those presses.
As piracy evolves, the book pirates increasingly have access to print technologies that allow them to do their own printing. There are urgent fears that as offset printing of US books shifts to India, among other markets, piracy of books in this segment will boom. The piracy trade and the printing trade are intertwined; publishers try to protect themselves by working only with trusted printers, but once a book's out, it's fair game for the pirates.
Though what we see are the popular, pirated bestsellers, those make up a small sliver of the piracy market. This could change as offset printing becomes the norm across Asia. When you see the scale of the trade, it's like seeing small-time miners give way to large, illegal strip-mining operations - the damage to the publishing environment is massive. The romantic view of piracy is that it keeps books and authors in circulation; in practice, only a handful of authors are gainers.
I'd love to see a study of book piracy in India and Asia that focused on readers for a change; it might help us see more clearly where there's an appetite for books. The one thing that pirates have that publishers don't is a map of book hunger - but they aren't sharing.
Raja Pocket Books were the publishers of Nagraj, a comic book featuring, "a character … attired in a green coloured body stocking giving the impression of serpentine skin and red trunks with a belt, which appears to be a snake". Nagraj's adventures had sold approximately 1,521,500 copies across the Hindi heartland, but here was Radha Pocket Books trying to cash in by creating their own serpentine hero, Nagesh.
The defendant argued that everybody had a right to depict serpentine characters in green colour; the plaintiff swayed the judge by saying, aha, but the heroes were the same, down to the number of scales - and the ripped gauntlets. As their learned Lordships observed, finding for the plaintiff, this was a clear case of attempted copyright violation: Nagesh and Nagraj could both hurl snakes with one hand, scale walls, and, most telling, "Both, when bites, the object melts like a wax".
By the 2000s, piracy had changed across all kinds of language publishing in India. In 2003, Harry Potter's publishers successfully sued Uttam Ghosh, preventing him from introducing a character called Jhontu in a sub-series where Harry Potter goes to Calcutta, a work of fan fiction if there ever was one. But they were less successful in stopping the number of pirated translations of the Potter books from English to Bengali. Book pirates in China had stayed ahead of the curve, by passing off a weird little book called Harry Potter and Bao Zoulong as a new Potter sequel. In this version, Harry Potter became a leading character in a translation of The Hobbit, with an explanatory paragraph to tell the reader how Harry Potter was turned into a hobbit one day while taking a bath.
The first book pirate I met was a printer from Ludhiana who had set up a small printing house in Noida near Delhi. Leaving his office, I took the wrong turn and walked into a building that housed another printing press. The books wrapped in neat bundles seemed very familiar. I was surprised at the range of publishers represented. "You print books for x and y, too?" I said, naming a very large textbook publisher and a highly respected trade publishing house. The man said yes, no, yesno, and ushered me out of there muttering, "Special order." It was much later, looking at the rows of pirated bestsellers at the traffic lights that it clicked: I had met one of the many suppliers of purloined purple prose who make a fat profit from illegally printing and selling bestsellers.
There was nothing unusual about his operation: the book piracy trade in India is inviting for middlemen, but the bulk of it is far larger and better organised. Publishers Weekly estimates that Indian pirates cost the global publishing industry about $36 million a year; we are among the largest book piracy centres in Asia.
The book pirates always get it right: they anoint a few (and only a few) literary writers (Amitav Ghosh, Jhumpa Lahiri, Vikram Seth), they know when the market shifts from an obsession with The Secret to books by Indian authors on diets. They also know how much the market will stand: the classic story about Chetan Bhagat's success is that the pirates were selling copies of his first book at Rs 150/- when the retail price was Rs 95/- but they still had takers.
The disappearance of the Srishti bestsellers - cheap, Rs 99 paperbacks that had taken the pulp fiction world by storm - from the ranks of pirated books is an indicator that the market for books like Oh Sh*t Not Again or I Am Broke! Love Me is cooling, with better pulp options available.
The book pirate trade in India is as efficient as the hawala market, with its own peculiar systems and rituals. Those who sell the books on the streets and at the traffic lights have no idea where the pirated stock comes from; they pick up their stock from vendors. Some vendors speak of receiving tokens to pick up parcels at the railway station offices; some pirates use a perpetually changing set of courier offices.
Most book pirates have much better market research than most publishers in India. One of the larger pirates - the trade is shifting into the hands of a few large operators who run networks of illegal printers and vendors around the country - gets his news by tracking over 600 distributors and printing presses across the North of India. His charts rate textbook publishers and trade publishers by their track record of bestsellers over a 10-year period. He prefers to use printers whose chief product is religious books, because the police are reluctant to raid those presses.
As piracy evolves, the book pirates increasingly have access to print technologies that allow them to do their own printing. There are urgent fears that as offset printing of US books shifts to India, among other markets, piracy of books in this segment will boom. The piracy trade and the printing trade are intertwined; publishers try to protect themselves by working only with trusted printers, but once a book's out, it's fair game for the pirates.
Though what we see are the popular, pirated bestsellers, those make up a small sliver of the piracy market. This could change as offset printing becomes the norm across Asia. When you see the scale of the trade, it's like seeing small-time miners give way to large, illegal strip-mining operations - the damage to the publishing environment is massive. The romantic view of piracy is that it keeps books and authors in circulation; in practice, only a handful of authors are gainers.
I'd love to see a study of book piracy in India and Asia that focused on readers for a change; it might help us see more clearly where there's an appetite for books. The one thing that pirates have that publishers don't is a map of book hunger - but they aren't sharing.
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