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Showing posts from January, 2009

The day I met Ravi

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Today I met Ravi. I know that the following questions will pop up in your mind: Who Ravi? Why I met him? How the meeting happened? To find out who Ravi is, you need to visit an old blog post of mine. The link to the same is pasted below: http://vijitspeaks.blogspot.com/2008/11/ravi-smart-street-kid.html I hope you have checked the following youtube videos too: http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=6PrleqeCAPw http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=-URtZfIgKAU Now that you have figured out who Ravi is, I can proceed to answer the next question about the reason to meet him. I was always eager to meet him because I think he is an inspiration not only for kids of his age but also for grown ups. He learnt so many languages without having any formal education till date. He took efforts to learn foreign languages through his interaction with tourists from different parts of the world. He can sell his product in French, Iranian, Arabic, Japanese and many other languages. He is a perfect example o...

Slum Dog Millionaire - Accolades and controversies

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Today I watched Slum Dog Millionaire, the movie that has been making news all over the world. It has already won four awards at the Golden Globe and has bagged 10 Oscar nominations too. Now when this movie has started getting great reviews, certain people in India have started to raise objection against the movie. The objections are as follows: 1) The very title of the movie is found to be offensive by a self proclaimed slum leader. 2) A Hindu organization feels that in the movie Lord Ram has been insulted. 3) The movie has portrayed India in bad light. This post of mine is an effort from my side to analyze these objections from my perspective. The first objection is about the term Slum Dog. I know equating a human to the dog is demeaning. However, we fail to remember that this is a movie made by an Englishman. In English there is a phrase “dog’s life” which means to lead a miserably unhappy existence. So, the movie is about a boy who leads a miserable life in the slums and ends up be...