Category Archives: Faces
Home Maker to – Change Maker (Game Changer) – Ez Vidhya Story
2001 – Chitra Ravi, a typical complaining Mom of 2 kids; about school syllabus, home work, the way of teaching, rank, mark, projects in school;
2017: Award winner as game changer who created electronic syllabus for 1st to 5th Students; now it covers 700+ schools and aiming for 10 fold growth.
Motorola’s makeover man: Sanjay Jha
When Sanjay K. Jha left Qualcomm for Motorola in 2008, he faced a daunting task. Save the once-proud Motorola handset business from the brink.
The Schaumberg, Ill.-based company faced a mountain of problems in mobile phones. It had too many software platforms. It was plagued with product delays, and it was on the verge of missing the transition to smart phones.
The past two years have been difficult, with thousands of layoffs and staggering losses as Jha pushed ahead with his strategy. Although there has been some success in gaining smart-phone market share, Motorola’s handset business is not profitable. So Jha’s turnaround effort is very much a work in progress.
Pranab Mukherjee quietly builds legacy as statesman
New Delhi: Pranab Mukherjee, India’s 13th President, will complete four years in office on Monday. Analysts say Mukherjee has largely been an effective President, who has conducted himself in a statesmanly manner.
Sworn in President on 25 July 2012, Mukherjee was till then a senior member of the Congress party and had held various portfolios in government like minister for commerce, finance, defence and external affairs besides the deputy chairman of the erstwhile Planning Commission. He was seen as someone the Congress party could rely on in case the 2014 national polls threw up an indecisive verdict.
Father of satellite Technology – Former ISRO Chairman – Tribute to Professor Rao
Professor Rao was the person who initiated me into space science.
When I joined the Thumba rocket launching station as a youngster, Dr (A P J Abdul) Kalam was my boss.
Dr Kalam was just starting the paylad integration section and I was put in charge of that.
That was the time Professor Rao had come back from the US; he was at the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad.
One of his research fellows along with a Japanese scientist was building a payload, and we were asked to integrate the payload with the rocket.
Newyork times on Ravishankar
Ravi Shankar, the sitar virtuoso and composer who died on Tuesday at 92, created a passion among Western audiences for the rhythmically vital, melodically flowing ragas of classical Indian music — a fascination that had expanded by the mid-1970s into a flourishing market for world music of all kinds.
In particular, his work with two young semi-apprentices in the 1960s — George Harrison of the Beatles and the composer Philip Glass, a founder of Minimalism — was profoundly influential on both popular and classical music.
Narayanamoorthy – Father Advice – Clean the Lavatory
NR Narayana Murthy i
s the co-founder of Infosys, a giant software company. But despite heading a huge multinational enterprise, Mr Murthy says there is one thing he does without fail every night when he returns home: he cleans the lavatory.
It is a habit instilled by his father. “We have a caste system in India where the so-called lowest class… is a set of people who clean the toilets,” he explains.
Railway Man Sreedharan
There were at least six Indian tourists at the ticket counter buying tokens for a ride last week at the Central Secretariat metro station - all in for a joy ride on one of Delhi’s leading attractions — the Delhi Metro.
With over 80 per cent of the project completed, the swanky air conditioned trains and modern stations are changing the transportation system in the nation’s capital city. Costing Rs 10,570 crores (Rs 105.70 billion), the project is expected to save Rs 600 crores to Rs 700 crores (Rs 6 billion to Rs 7 billion) on the total cost and more importantly, is slated to be completed on time.
Great Social Reformer – Raja Ram Mohan Roy
During the late 18th century , the society in Bengal was burdened with a host of evil customs and regulations. Elaborate rituals and strict moral codes were enforced which were largely modified, and badly interpreted ancient traditions. Practices like child marriage (Gouridaan), polygamy and Sati were prevalent that affected women in the society. The most brutal among these customs was the Sati Pratha. The custom involved self-immolation of widows at their husband’s funeral pyre.
Touching Hollywood Standard – Rajamouli
S.S. Rajamouli believes it will be an achievement if Indian cinema can produce Hollywood quality content within limited budget.
Filmmaker S.S. Rajamouli, who is awaiting release of his highly anticipated multilingual film “Baahubali”, believes it will be an achievement if Indian cinema can produce Hollywood quality content within limited budget.
“Hollywood is much ahead of us in writing and execution. There’s no need to compare our work with theirs. I think getting 80 percent of their quality in our content with 20 percent of their budgets will be an achievement,” Rajamouli told IANS in an exclusive interview.
His film “Baahubali”, which is being touted as India’s most expensive film made on Hollywood standards, is slated for worldwide release on July 10.
The two-part Indian epic film is being made simultaneously in Telugu and Tamil languages. The film will also be dubbed into English, French, Hindi, Malayalam and in several foreign languages.
It was through the pages of Amar Chitra Katha comics, Rajamouli envisioned the world of “Baahubali”, which is said to be the story of two brothers for a kingdom.
“My father had introduced me to these comics at a young age. Ever since then, I’ve been living in this world of larger than life characters. I love fantasy, history, folklore and mythology. I dabbled a little with these genres in my previous films. The success of those films gave us confidence to make ‘Baahubali’,” he said.
But it takes more than confidence to set a project of this scale in motion. It required someone with more than just moolah muscle. Rajamouli found all the required qualities in his producer Shobu Yarlagadda, who had previously worked with him in “Maryada Ramanna”.
“I’d discuss everything ranging from the smallest detail to the development of characters with Shobu and his team. He would never let the pressure of budget and deadlines come near me. And my line producer Srivalli single handedly managed the mammoth scale of production,” he said.
It took nearly two years to complete the film, not to forget another year that was spent on the pre-production.
What kept the team motivated?
“I developed an emotional attachment with the characters my father had narrated. To showcase these characters in the best possible way remained my motivational factor over the last two and half years,” explained Rajamouli, and added that the team always draws the motivation from the director.
The film features an ensemble cast of Prabhas Varma, Rana Daggubati, Anushka Shetty, Tamannah Bhatia, Sathyaraj, Nasser and Ramya Krishnan.
Without Prabhas, Rajamouli admits, he couldn’t have done this film.
“Prabhas and I are good friends. I knew he was my hero from the beginning. When I requested him to set aside one year for the film, he kept himself free for two years. Rana was our energy booster on the sets. He brought us and Dharma Productions together,” he said.
Thanks to Rana, the team managed to get Karan Johar to market the Hindi version of “Baahubali”.
The biggest contribution to “Baahubali” comes from its visual effects (VFX) supervisor Srinivas Mohan, who breathed life into an imaginary world with awe-inspiring visuals.
Srinivas along with over 15 VFX studios and 600 artists are still working on the film round the clock.
“Pete Draper of Makuta is responsible for the magnificent waterfalls and the palaces from the trailer. Firefly and EFX Hyderabad have contributed a lot of VFX shots through the course of the film, especially in the war sequences. Tau films are taking care of the scenes featuring the bison,” Rajamouli said.
Thousands of people worked on the film. Although Rajamouli hasn’t kept track of the numbers, he says it was every individual’s working spirit that resulted in the successful completion of the project.
“We never got into putting the numbers together. We shot the war sequences for four months. At one point of time, we were shooting with 2000 extras with about 600 technicians assisting them with costumes, makeup and weapons,” he said.
“There were hundreds of metres of chroma screens. About 30-35 assistants’ job was to ensure the chroma mats weren’t blown away. There were always two ambulances on set, a medical camp for people and a vet on standby for the animals,” he added.
Did Rajamouli ever feel all of this was too much to handle?
“Just before the start of the shoot, the sheer enormity of the logistics hit me. For about three to four days, I contemplated quitting. But the feeling washed over and I never looked back,” he said.
