How much is your blog worth

how much is your blog worth?

don’t know. check it here.

http://www.business-opportunities.biz/projects/how-much-is-your-blog-worth/

the results of this left me happy and content.

according to this website, my blog is worth $2,258.16 or INR 90230, if dollar is equivalent to INR 40.

thats great na.

but it is still way lesser than some of the established blogs like sepia mutiny and india uncut that are worth $217,912.44 and $245,010.36 respectively.

chalo, kuch nahi se kuch accha hota hai.

Why no TAM for Bihar

Did you know this?

Except for Bihar, Jharkhand, J&K, and the North Eastern states, TAM meters are available in all states.

For those who do not know, TAM meters are used to calculate TRP or Television Rating Points.

The voice of biharis (jharkhandis included) is considered insignificant in media. and therefore no TAM for bihar.

For J&K and the North Eastern States, this is well understood because they are war torn and certain rights of people living in these states are curtailed.

but why Bihar and Jharkhand.

Don’t media habits of the people of these states have any impact on the advertisers?

this explains why bihar finds so little mention in print and electronic media.

and whenever biharis find mention in media, it is to make fun of their rustic habits.

being rustic for a punjabi sikh is worth showing. being rustic for a bihari is worth nothing.

Mahabharat 2.0 & Khatron Ke Khiladi

after a long, long time, i am actually waiting to be home and switch on the TV.

so what’s gripping my attention these days?

there are two daily serials that i long to watch – Mahabarat and Khatron ke Khiladi.

mahabharat comes on 9X channel at 9 in the night. the best thing about mahabharat is that i do not draw comparison between the old and new mahabharat. this generally happens with remakes of popular TV serials and movies. so when NDTV imagine came up with a new Ramayan, it failed to grip my attention – it appeared as an old wine packaged in a new bottle – the serial has been directed by the same Sagar family.

so why wasn’t i drawing comparisons with the old mahabharat directed by B.R.Chopra?

yes, the story is the same. still the way the director has filmed the scenes gives you a feeling that it is actually new.

not the usual chronological way of depicting scenes from the epic mahabharata. so if the director has to bring the krishna story to the fore, it is not the customary “once upon a time, in a kingdom called mathura …”. in the new version, the story of krishna is brought to focus by Kunti (who is a relative to krishna) who rues about the cruel kansa, the brutal uncle of krishna.

the old mahabharat showed each character as a supernatural being. the new mahabharat shows them as more human.

more so, the story is moving at a steady pace. in a single episode, the director covered six important incidents of the epic – the marriage of pandu with kunti, the marriage of pandu with madri, pandu getting cursed by a sage, pandu giving up the throne and leaving for the jungle, the birth of yudhistra (first son of pandu and kunti), and finally gandhari conceiving through a fairly interesting method – a period as long as two years (according to the serial).

i am loving the serial and bet you too would like it.

however, there are also some points where the serial lags behind:

1. the choice of actors is not very good. dhritrashtra doesn’t know how to act. so does pandu. maharshi vyas overacts.
2. the pace with which the serial is going is okay for people who have read the epic or seen the old version of the serial. people, who don’t know thru either sources, will be confused or get half baked information.
3. the ladies of mahabharat seem to have received the same boon as all actresses of ekta kapoor soaps. they never age. see the mothers of pandu and dhritrashtra. gandhari and kunti appear bigger in age than these two ladies.

about the next serial now. fear factor – khatron ke khiladi is the flagship serial of Colours, a newly launched TV channel.

i wasn’t very excited to see fear factor again. but there was akshay kumar who was first hosting a serial and so it was a must watch. gripped my attention from the first day onwards.

there are 13 female participants, all of them models. they are accompanied by army officers with plenty of experience at stunts.

the stunts are actually daring, puts you on the edges as to what will follow next.

6 episodes have gone by and with each day passing, the excitement is on an increase.

my personal favorites among the participants are yana gupta, nethra raghuram (2 of the most athletic participants). also there are anita (anjali of kavyanjali fame) and urvashi (i have started liking her. its good to see her make faces at the stunts. in last night’s episode, she was seen pleading to akshay kumar for a safety band. ha ha). pooja bedi is good but she tries to act too childish.

6 participants have already left. out of them, i was actually praying for vidya to leave. it was really disappointing to see her pilot – if a participant wins, the prize money goes to the pilot – his dream was shattered – all because of this silly girl who refused to do any stunt – shattered all her reputation of sturdy girl from chak de.

can’t gather any negative points about this reality show.

really a breather from the current package of reality shows that dealt with songs, dance and quizzes. there are so many that i can’t remember any.

so the conclusion is that my prime time views are pretty occupied and satisfying as well. touchwood.

Take a leave and get beaten

imagine that you join office after a day’s leave and your boss and some of his favourites start beating you up for taking a day’s off.

“what crap! I am not a bonded labour to get such kind of treatment”, you say.

but one people’s representative was subjected to this kind of treatment when he didn’t attend the confidence vote at the lok sabha on 22nd July, 2008.

The MP, Chandrabhan Singh, alleged that he didn’t take leave because he didn’t want to vote with his party, BJP. He said he was ill and so didn’t attend the Lok Sabha session. His party, the BJP, insisted that he willingly didn’t attend the session to benefit rival congress.

syndicated from the DNA:

Expelled Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Chandrabhan Singh on Thursday alleged that party leaders LK Advani and Rajnath Singh were conspiring to murder him and had planned the attack by the party’s youth wing members on his New Delhi residence.

“The attack was planned by the party chief Rajnath Singh and Leader of Opposition LK Advani. They wanted to murder me,” Singh said.

Police said the MP was in his North Avenue home – a stone’s throw from Parliament House, the President’s Estate and key central ministries – when it was attacked by about 60 members of the BJP youth wing.

The placard-carrying activists hurled stones and bricks at the house, smashing many windows. They also damaged a two wheeler, broke a wooden door and destroyed all the flower vases in the house.

The lone constable at the spot tried to stop the protesters, but soon called for help. The police then whisked away about 20 activists.

“They threw bricks at the house and broke window panes. One person has been arrested and security personnel have been deployed,” a police official said.

The MP from Damoh in Madhya Pradesh was expelled by the BJP on Wednesday for abstaining during the trust vote in parliament on Tuesday.

“I did not abstain to help the government during the trust vote. I was not well at that time and vomited blood. I was rushed to Ram Manohar Lohia (RML) hospital and since there was no space in the ICU, I was referred to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). Had I been well I would have voted in favour of my party,” Singh said.

“Had Advani and Rajnath vomited blood, would they have gone to vote? The members of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha were chanting ‘Advani zindabad’ and ‘Rajnath Singh zindabad’. It is clear that these two leaders sent people to vandalise my home and murder me,” he alleged.

BJP leader V.K. Malhotra refuted Singh’s allegations, calling them false and baseless.

“We took four of our MPs, who were critically ill, in special ambulance to the parliament. They came and voted from the lobby. But Chandrabhan disappeared at the last moment,” Malhotra said.

“All his allegations are false. No one was sent to his house by Advani or Rajnath Singh. No one was even chanting slogans. His fear of losing his constituency and membership of parliament is forcing him to level such baseless allegations. We are demanding the cancellation of his membership in parliament. He has betrayed the party,” Malhotra added.

On Wednesday, BJP activists held a noisy protest outside party MP Haribhau Rathod’s residence in Mumbai and attacked his house at Yavatmal in eastern Maharashtra for staying away from parliament during the trust vote.

Rathod was among nearly 10 BJP MPs who were either absent during the voting Tuesday or voted for the government in defiance of the party whip. One was present in the house but did not vote.

Crowd pullers

when sunny deol’s dare devilry in the movie ghatak inspires the crowd to fight against the local don danny, we hail it as good prevailing over the bad. we again appreciate the crowd when it rises to save cops who poured acid in the eyes of criminals in the movie gangajal.

However, in a real life incident, when a similar crowd gathers to hand out justice to some petty theives (and the latter die in the process), their act doesn’t fetch appreciation. it is branded as brutal and uncivilised, not coming of a cultured society as india. TV channels across india, are out pooh-poohing the perpetrators of the barbarous act. people are glued to their TV sets (news channels repeat video of the barbaric act) trying to think how cruel some people can be.

some thousand miles away, at the place of the incident, the entire village believes that the act was for good. that the theives lost life was for good since they do not believe court of laws would have acted as fast.

The Infamous Role of the Media in Arushi Murder Case

I also write for Indimag. Read this article that appeared there:

After every high profile case is solved, the media engages in a intra-industry introspection session on their role in the case. Media houses run amok to take credits for the firsts. “Blame-storming” is the name of the game !

With the Arushi murder case allegedly solved, the media is engaging in a similar exercise.This time a debate is ripe on how the media botched up the case.Even before evidence could have been presented in the courts, the media was already out with the verdict ; not once, but quite a few times.However, since handing out justice is not the core competency of the media — fortunately, they obviously erred. Of course, they were assisted by the faulty evidence gathering of the Noida police (the police are too thick-skinned to accept their fault).

The culprits (as discovered by the media) were many. First was Hemraj, the domestic help (who was later found to be one of the dead). Next was Dr. Rajesh Talwar (the father of Arushi). Stories about Dr. Talwar’s illicit relationship with a colleague and neighbour floated around adding to media’s masala. Arushi too was linked with Hemraj. There was a slew of servants and employees who continued to fall into the net. Targeting innocent people continued like a detective serial on the tube making for eye-catching headlines until the compounder Krishna, finally admitted to having killed Arushi, avenging his mistreatment by Dr. Talwar.

Sensational media houses like NDTV are now blaming the sleazy news channels for the chaos !

Media sure cannot miss the blame. For quite some time, Arushi became a TRP fetching machinery. Media shamelessly resorted to seeking out a commercial advantage from a slain girl – what else can the act of media be called ?

Now, Dr. Talwar has been given a clean chit in the case. Was the media hiding face? No, instead, it was out there at Dasna Jail, following his every step. What a shameless pack of journalists we have. Will the media learn their lessons from the Arushi case? I don’t think so. With the Arushi case coming to an end, they are already on the lookout for new cases that they can botch next while increasing their TRP…

Feeling very low today

feeling very low today.

it was all planned. then all of a sudden the plans were shattered.

it was my best friend’s marriage. we had been friends since childhood. the marriage was to be held at a place near benaras. mother knew my closeness to the friend. so she had personally bought the gifts – a beautiful saree for the bride and a shirt for the groom, my friend. also there were other gifts. the tickets were done – the friend had personally got the tickets done. today i was to take the train to benaras. i had come to office along with the bag and baggage.

and then the hurdle came from the most unexpected quarters – the boss.

god knows what was preventing me from hinting my travel plans all these days. i didn’t disclose to him my intention of going out of station until today. can you believe how irresponsibly i behaved. to add fuel to the fire, i was on leave yesterday – i was busy attending interviews lined up for the day.

when i disclosed to the boss’s secretary that i haven’t yet talked about my travel plans to boss, she said the most obvious “… that’s so very unprofessional”.

boss echoed a similar feeling when i gave him a call at around 11. he didn’t appreciate the unprofessional behaviour coming from me. i tried to convince but to no avail.

all he was ready to give me was until monday first half.

i committed to him that i will be there by the stipulated time.

although, i knew it very well that this was almost impossible.

on monday, the train was scheduled for 4.30 in the evening. the latest i could reach back delhi was until 7 in the morning, tuesday.

i knew this very well. still i agreed.

that’s really very unprofessional of me. i thought i will give an excuse to boss and he will forgive me.

but the tone of his was giving me chills within my nerves. what if he is really pissed off by my behaviour.

i talked to family and within minutes of explaining the situation everyone was telling me not to go.

i finally relented. i am not in a state now to be thrown out of the job. several interviews later, i have not heard of any positive response. besides, i have heard that a person out of job for even a month is treated as a fresher. this job has already reduced my skills to a rubble. now i don’t want the loss of it to further worsen my situation.

so i excused myself to this friend of mine. he was very disappointed. thankfully, he was reasonable enough. we agreed to meet up after he comes back to delhi with his wife-to-be.

boss was the next to receive a call from me. this time he showed no reaction at all when i confided in him that i have cancelled my trip. devil

family were the last to hear about the reaction of the concerned parties. mom heaved a sigh of releif.

now news had to be broken to people at office that i am not going to benaras. didn’t tell them about the boss angle. just told them that the wedding has been cancelled because of some personal reasons.

anyways the things have finally settled down. there were of course some losses that i bore:

• it would have been a memorable weekend activity
• it had been long since i had attended a marriage, the last being my brothers
• i had planned some really fun and memorable activities during the shadi (again i would have been the centre of attraction since i was the groom’s best friend)
• the train tickets are unrefundable now. not my money. but u see, wastage of money is so bad.
• my friend and me had been planning about this marriage since long. he was very disappointed.

it all happened because i didn’t talk to boss on time.

but whatever happened has happened. it’s little use to cry over split milk.

anyways, there is a trip to nainital that’s on the cards now. maybe next saturday

barely had i suggested about my cancelled trip that everyone started coaxing me to come along to nainital. imagine 10 people on ur skype chat forcing u to join the trip. i gave all kinds of excuses, to no avail altogether. finally i have asked them for time to discuss family. mother is leaving with bhabhis the day after. won’t they feel bad. will talk about it in the evening today.