Daud - for a cause

We had a mini Marathon in our campus here in Infosys, Mysore on Oct 16th. It was to raise fund for the social forum, 'SOFTEN', now involved actively in helping the needy.

The event was a huge success with infoscions gearing up to run along. As a surprise, Anil Kumle, Sunil Joshi and few Ranji Cricketers were also running this fun marathon.

I too was involved in a way to this event in designing banners and posters for promoting it. This image shows a 6x3ft large banner designed by me, which was hung in the campus for the event.

The First Touch

Imagine you are exposed to different varieties of art forms while you were a school kid and you happen to like an art passionately ? Probably the life and career chosen would be different now.That is exactly what United Arts Society is trying to do. They help bring in artists from various forms of art - fine arts, theatre, dance etc and conduct interactive sessions with school kids during weekends and thus wake the artist in a child.

I am happy to be part of the 'First Touch' programme held in a playschool 'Kidzee' in Malleswaram, Bangalore to expose school kids to sessions of fine arts (norton collage), basic theatre art and dance as well. The day started with few kids who had registered for the programme turning up at Kidzee with their parents in the morning. The first session was to help the kids make a 'Nortan Collage' which is japanese creative paper design art made by cutting out pieces of paper and sticking it on a chart without throwing away any bits of paper. The kids loved thinking hard to make a design out of the paper given to them and finally after an hour we could see some creativity pasted on the chart paper.The next session was about basics of theatre performance by Vineet (one of founders of the society) and it involved fun games to teach kids the lessons of observation, concentration, attraction and voice modulation. The final session was to teach kids basics of dance with couple of artists asking the kids to follow their movements as they danced.

On whole it was a fun filled day for the kids and for us too, and the idea of waking up talents in kids to help them enjoy art forms better with a series of weekend sessions would be the future plan of United Arts Society.

To know more, visit: http://www.unitedartssociety.com/

Let me play Sitar !

I struck with this not so normal idea of learning sitar after I read about a professional sitarist Manoj Mukherjee in Mysore. I went to his residance near Jaylakshmipuram and was quite taken by the artistic beauty of this fine hindustani musical instrument.

I have now started playing my first 'Sa-Re-Ga-Ma' moving my fingers hard on the long strings of sitar. My sitar master taught the sitting posture for playing sitar and he insisted on my attire to be kurta-pyjama. I was happy to accept my sitar guru after I offered him a thali of coconut, bunch of bananas, beetle leaves, agarbathi and guru dakshina, after which he wore on my right index finger the 'mizrab'.

I am hoping to get along practicing better on sitar with its calm tones of music spreading into my mind each time I strike the strings.

the boys, girls, grandmas and grandpas are well

We had a visit to the orphan boys, girls and the grandmas and grandpas staying in the Chaya Devi Ashram orphanage in Jaynagar, Mysore. The Infosys Foundation, which works for social benefits, funds the ashram and we, as part of SOFTEN, also supports them in some ways.

We were only four, but our appearance brought smiles to the faces of the inmates, and the children were happy to play around with us. I had brought my mandolin and I played few songs including 'jane-gana-mana' and 'vande-mataram'.

The oldage grandmas who live there seem to be cheerful even in their age. I was surprise when one of them enthusiastically shouted 'mere-sapnom-ki rani kaba aayega' when I started with the first line of the song in my mandolin.

We left the orphanage on a happy note and also visited 'sneha makkale mane', which is again a home for orphan kids taken care by a NGO.

to know more about chaya devi ashram : http://www.hohinc.org/chayadevi.html

onam 'pookalam' at infy

I found myself plunging in all my efforts to bring out a good appreciation for the Keralite festival of Onam at my work place in Infosys. We, a group of malayalees put our head together to come up with an attractive onam 'pookalam' (flower carpet) and we agreed on the idea of a Mohiniyattam dancer placed comfortably in a typical 'mudra' gesture on the middle of a colourful rainbow of flowers.

The full completion of this wonderful flower carpet demanded lot of efforts - buying sufficient flowers from city, getting valuable petals out of flowers spending enough manual labour, late night drawing of the mohiniyattam dancer picture, running for chopping plates for beetroot so that it could used to border the picture, laying of different coloured flowers exactly in the drawn design enclosures, cleaning floor after flowering, lighting lamps, etc

The flower carpet competition was held between teams in various office buildings of infosys, and it was a great feeling to work hard towards completing it on time. Though we didn't bag any prize for our pookalam, we knew we had a good onam at office with our pookalam being watched with smile by everybody around.

Wonderful Weekend at Trivandrum

I had a most memorable weekend after a good long journey with my infosys enr colleagues to Trivandrum to attend the marriage of our colleague Ajeesh. We started in two tempo traveller vans on Friday evening 4pm from Mysore and reached Trivandrum on Saturday morning 8. We went to the popular beach Kovalam where we enjoyed ourselves in sea water pushing each other into water, throwing balls, racing against each other, throwing mud etc We then moved back to our hotels after having good orange juice in one of those leafy beach restaurants.

I went to Shri Padmanabhaswamy Temple evening where I awe struck by the temple architecture and the divine greatness of deity of lord vishnu in anantha shayanam. The same day dinner was at our team lead Rajagopal's residence at Trivandrum.

Sunday morning we turned towards the marriage hall where Ajeesh - ShriLakshmi marriage function is to be held. We stayed there till all of us finished marriage 'Sadya' with three kinds of 'payasams', and then started our journey back to Mysore.

We reached Mysore today morning 6:30 after a long journey not boring though because of the occasional stops we had to have yummy food, played 'rummy' and watched movie in the van.

Help for Independance from poverty

We were happy to be part of a Social Service today on the day of independance to our country. There's a charitable organization called 'Operation Shanti' which is helping to needs of destitute children and helpless people in the streets and its volunteers are actively involved in Mysore.

The SOFTEN (Social Forum to Enable Needy) group in Infosys connected to 'Operation Shanti' volunteer Tracy in distributing old clothes and serving food to the destitute woman and children, today morning near KR Hospital in Mysore.

Today's programme started from Infosys Campus, Mysore where we loaded boxes of clothes, blankets and shoes to the van and we, a group of nearly 40 SOFTEN volunteers starting off before 8 in the morning towards KR Hospital in Mysore city. Tracy and her friend (both of them foreign volunteers of 'Operation Shanti' working in Mysore) got along with us in their car with containers of food. We were pleased to see Tracy interact with the street women and children who had assembled on the foot paths in front of KR Hospital. We then served Idli, Sambar, Chatni, Kesari bath to all of them sitting on the footpath. The food was served by infoscions and it was a totally different experience far too away from the daily jobs. After the food, we started distributing the set of blanket and old clothes we had brought in the van. We then moved to 'Nava Jeevan Foundation' Centre and gave them the boxes containing remaining clothes.

It was a half day engagement for all of us. But it helped us to be aware of being useful to the society we live in. Let this message spread wider through similar initiative in future.

to know more on Operation Shanti: http://www.operation-shanti.org/pages/msp_solution.html

Chak De India !

It's too great a feeling of patriotism and passion for winning that gets into our minds after watching the film. Finally Kabir Khan and his team of 16 girls has shown us what it takes to win world cup hockey medals with honour.

The film is loosely based on true story of Indian Hockey player Mir Ranjan Negi who proves himself as a coach by winning Manchester Commonwealth Games of 2002 for Indian Women's Hockey Team after being blamed in 1982 for the loss to Pakistan in Asian Games final.

Shahrukh khan did well in the role of the team coach Kabir Khan and all of us loved him for the right spirit that kept the momentum in the film going. Apparently this Yash Raj movie directed by Shimit Amin, doesn't have even a single frame which is re-shot. It's the first time I am watching a movie fully dedicated to the spirit of patriotism through sports.

It's worth watching and I would like to watch it again!

Gurukul Magazine Released

I am happy to come up with a good design for the Infosys internal e-magazine for the trainees. I had it in mind to be as sleek and light as possible, so I made this front page which is both colourful and simple.

The e-magazine was released yesterday and I am pleased to get good feedbacks. The 'Team Gurukul' was a team of four including me and we sorted out and added the contributions from the trainees including articles, poems, sketches, photographs, quiz and an interview with Venkatesh Prasad which we had taken earlier when the cricket team came to Infy Mysore campus.

Mahishasura Statue - static recognition of Mysore

This statue of Mahishasura with his big moustache, sword and a snake caught in his hand, is one of the pictures which I associate with Mysore because I remember in my school picnic seeing this photo prominantly in the tourism post cards of Mysore.
I had visited Chamundi Hills and Zoo last weekend and was happy recollecting the times when I came here as a school kid along with our teacher. That is when I realized one thing - there are few key aspects to a place which get fixed on to our mind thus giving a face of recognition for the city.

Such key recognizing features as temples, statues or monuments will remain as it is for a long period of time. It is these aspects which bring in to ourselves a feeling of relativeness with respect to various changing factors in our lives. Now for example, a school kid sees this Mahishasura statue now and comes back after 20 years to the same statue. Most probably it would be in the same shape as it is today. This brings in a good feeling of how life changed from the day he saw this staue for the first time as a school kid 20years ago to the present day because he is able to bring in the relativeness between the changing and the static.