My Indian Life: Kalki tells stories of young India in BBC podcast

As a child growing up in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) in the 1970s, I remember my mother always had the radio playing in the background as she did the house work.

It was the size of two bricks and the state-run All India Radio was her prime source of entertainment. She got her news from it and heard Bollywood songs on it. On the nights my father would be away travelling on business, my sister and I would get into her bed and the three of us would together listen to Hawa Mahal, a hugely popular programme which aired fictionalised radio dramas.

Though television made its first appearance in India in 1950, it invaded our homes only in the 1980s. We huddled around TV sets watching soaps, Bollywood films and songs; and radio was relegated to the sidelines.

Listen to Kalki Presents: My Indian Life
But over the past two decades, the internet has created yet another shift in how we access content - younger generations consume most of their content digitally.

In the print industry, magazines and newspapers are being displaced by websites, books are being replaced by e-readers, video is being streamed on YouTube, Netflix, Hotstar and Amazon Prime, and audio is being played on music apps.

To get a sense of how plugged-in young Indians are, you need not go far. On the Delhi Metro, thousands of young men and women are glued to their smartphones, with their earphones plugged in. Some are watching videos, but many others are listening to audio content.

And as we launch Kalki Presents: My Indian Life, the new BBC World Service podcast, we are focused on these millennials.

The potential is huge. India is a young country - of its 1.2 billion people, about 600 million (or more than half of the country's population) are under 25 years old; and more than 423 million (or one in every three Indians) are between 15 and 34 years of age. There are 450 million smartphone users and 414 million internet subscribers. And by the end of 2018, about 530 million Indians are expected to own smartphones.

The sheer numbers, says journalist and writer Snigdha Poonam, makes young Indians "important for the futures of their own country and that of the world".

Poonam wrote a book called Dreamers that came out at the start of the year. It's about the challenges the youth face - and present.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-45055091

Read more about: Hindi Podcasting

5 Benefits of Poetry Recitation in a Child’s Literacy Development

In the previous post, we saw that singing and poems recitations are unfortunately not included in the curriculum of most schools in Malaysia.

Yet research suggests that music has direct impact in helping young children develop literacy skills.

What about poetry and recitations then? Do these also have significant impact in helping our young learners develop literacy skills?

What Is Poetry Recitation?

Poetry recitation is literary work where ideas and feelings, accentuated with the use of distinctive style and rhythm is delivered through a public speaking activity with a focus on rhythm, alliteration some repetitions.

Poetry as an art breaks across grammar and syntax to create something new and imaginative for the children. It provides an adventure for the mind.

What are some benefits of using poetry and recitations?

1.  Poetry and Rhymes Help Develop Rhythm
Reading rhyming poetry out loud makes it easier for younger children to learn new vocabulary words.

This is attributed to the rhythmic structure of the stanzas that help create a known context to new and unknown words. They are also introduced to words that sound alike but with different meaning.

Experts in literacy and child development have discovered that

“If children know eight nursery rhymes by heart by the time they’re four years old, they’re usually among the best readers by the time they’re eight.”

Quote taken from Why do children love poems. Fox, Mem. (2001). Reading Magic, Why Reading Aloud to Our Children Will Change Their Lives Forever. San Diego, CA: Harcourt.

2.  Poetry and Rhymes Help Develop Phonemic Awareness
Children reciting rhythmic poetry learn and understand pitch, voice inflection, and volume.

With young learners, it is infinitely more difficult to grasp the usage of voice variables. Reciting poetry helps place emphasis on the sound and the rhythm of language, thus building a child’s phonemic awareness and help to solidify a foundation for reading abilities.

3.  Poetry and Rhymes Help Develop Memorization Skills
Children also learn to pick up patterns and sequences in poetry recitations. As they practice memorizing the poetry to recite, it links memory with audio and visual events, helping them develop memorization skills.

The benefits do not end here. Being proficient in memorization, patterns, and sequences in turns give students an advantage in learning new languages, reading comprehension and mathematics.

Source: http://scholar-base.com/5-benefits-of-poetry-recitation-in-a-childs-literacy-development/

Read more about: Hindi Poetry Recitation

Hindi-Urdu in Bollywood Films

We read the new film review of the Hindi/Punjabi film “Manmarziyaan.” This is the first time a Bollywood movie has been labeled a Hindi/Punjabi film in a review. This is good. A microscopic look at the Bollywood movies produced and an analysis of the dialogues, songs, gazals and geets in each of the movies reveals that all the movies produced in Bollywood are Hindi/Urdu movies. There is voluminous and hard fact data available that says the same thing.

In these movies the characters would be delivering dialogues in plain Hindi and plain Urdu. Every year several movies are released in which the characters end up in court to prove their innocence. The outburst in the court room by the hero or heroine, the emotional pleas by the relatives of the heroes and heroines, and the legal language used by the lawyers and the judge is always more than 80 percent in the Urdu language.

When it comes to moral lectures, religious themes and/or praying to Bhagwan, Khuda or Allah, these writers use Hindi dialogues or Urdu dialogues appropriately. We know that Hindi and Urdu are similar languages. They complement each other and the writers use these languages to provide the best possible combination in the movies to Indian audiences and audiences around the world.

In a nutshell, the similarity of the Urdu and Hindi languages has enriched the culture and language situation in India. The writers use these languages, Hindi and Urdu, to provide the best possible combination in the movies to the Indian audience and others throughout the world. We are glad that the reviewers are taking a note of this fact and it should be embraced by all.

Source: https://www.indiawest.com/letters_to_editor/hindi-urdu-in-bollywood-films/article_152432f4-fa6f-11e8-9837-3b8154805eee.html

Read more about: Hindi Urdu Interviews

Here are a few Indian podcasts that focus on local content

Before we accepted the word podcast, a mash-up of pod, from iPod and cast from broadcast, the listening format was called an audioblog. It’s been around since 2004, but in India, podcasting is just picking up, with better data speeds and more options in terms of apps. Google has just come out with its own native one and indigenous content creators are trying their hand at it. Here are four popular ones, with their journeys.

On the podcast: We talk to travellers and experts about itineraries, destinations, experiences and all things related to travel. We have over 2,00,000 listens so far and are about 40 episodes old. Podcasts offer a great medium to have deep, meaningful conversations that listeners can feel personally connected with. My first tryst with a podcast was through the Amateur Traveler by Chris Christensen that took me on a virtual trip to different cities in the world. That has been my biggest inspiration.

On the Indian interest in podcasts and the road ahead: In India, initially, there were only a handful of creators and a tiny group of listeners. However, podcast networks like IVM and Audiomatic have ensured that the medium has gained quite a bit of traction. Music apps like Saavn have also started including them in their offerings. I believe that India will emerge on the podcast landscape, growing in terms of listeners and creators. The availability of cheaper smartphones, increasing affordability of data packs across the country and the launch of an Android podcast app by Google will ensure its growing popularity in India. As the quality and quantity of podcasts improve, so will the adoption. This is a cyclical process that leads to great content being produced and consumed. And with voice-based applications and technology finding an audience in India, it has become even easier to access and consume.

On the podcast: My friend Naren and I were toying with the idea of doing something different and thought of starting a podcast that broadly dealt with breaking down important events from the news in a funny manner. We wanted to stick to audio and were not very keen on the video podcast format that many comedy groups, such as AIB, work with. The response has been slow and steady, and we are happy that we have a loyal listener base. We get a lot of repeat listeners. I was deeply influenced by The Bugle, a podcast that offered a funny take on current affairs and was hosted by Andy Zaltzman and John Oliver.

On the medium: We were one of the early adopters of podcasts in India. With the entry of platforms such as IVM and Audiomatic, the Indian podcast scene is bound to become more interesting. These platforms have podcasts that cover a host of genres, from the popular ones to the obscure.

Source: https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/gadgets/pod-saves-the-world/article24433553.ece

Read more about: Hindi Podcasting

'Finding’ the ‘lost’ Urdu: But did the language ever really go away?

There is Faiz in the air. Urdu, the “lost” language of the poets, the hopeless romantics and the ardent idealists, is “re-emerging”. Several online Facebook groups are dedicated to varied Urdu poets, and Urdu learning websites such as Rekhta and Urduwallahs are becoming popular. Pakistani soap operas, broadcast on Zindagi channel, too are helping “revive” the language that “got lost due to Partition”. A large number of mushairas and qawwalis are being held in metropolitan cities, thus further helping Urdu make a “comeback”.

The question, however, is, did Urdu really go away? If anything, it has stayed on, through Bollywood songs, and since the 1990s, through Hindi news channels. Hindi news channels relay “khabrein”, not “samachar”, as was by Doordarshan. Reporters talk of a “shakhs”, not a “vyakti”, and use “adalat” instead of “nyayalaya”, for example. So, since the 1990s, the use of Urdu in popular media has gone beyond just Hindi cinema and extended to television news. Certainly, the language has not been “dying” as Urdu “revivalists” claim.

What has been dying is not the language, but the credit given to the language. Most people don’t know that many of the words spoken in Hindi films or news channels are Urdu. This is not a case of war between Hindi and Urdu. Both languages are closely linked to and depend on each other for their survival. After Partition, Urdu came to be identified with Muslims. “Muslim” Urdu became the state language of Pakistan and was imposed on native Punjabi, Sindhi and Pashtun speakers. In northern India, the land of Urdu and Hindi, the language lost its popularity among non-Muslim Hindi speakers because of its “Muslim” label. Publishers of Urdu books began focusing only on religious literature, further making it less attractive for the non-Muslim audience. In sad contrast, there was a time when Hindu poets like Firaq Gorakhpuri added so much to Urdu heritage.

After Partition, and even now, it is Hindi cinema and news that have ensured Urdu its space in popular culture. But let’s not get patronising here. Urdu writers such as Salim Khan, Javed Akhtar, Sahir Ludhianvi and Shakeel Badayuni have contributed immensely to Hindi cinema. In fact, many Hindi film titles are in Urdu, like Mohabbatein, Kurbaan, Dil, etc. Most Hindi film singers and actors take classes in Urdu diction. Had it not been for Urdu, would we ever have timeless Bollywood dialogues like “Mogambo khush hua” or “Kitne aadmi the” or “Main tumhara khoon pee jaaoonga”?

Source: https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/finding-the-lost-urdu/

Read more about: Hindi Urdu Interviews

Being a judge at a poetry competition

The occasion was India’s first home minister, Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel’s 139th birth anniversary, which was decided to be celebrated as Rashtriya Ekta Diwas.

As I was entering the school’s main gate, I was a bit hesitant as it was my first experience. But I were thinking that it is going to be a new learning to be added to my journey. I told the guard that I am here as a judge. And I was surprised when the guard answered me in English, he welcomed me & said,’ma’am if you want, you can wait here.’ He meant till someone comes to receive me. I smiled appreciatively at his efficiency.

Then I saw two girls from the ‘students on duty’ came forward & welcomed me along with the teacher I knew. These girls escorted me throughout my presence at the school. I must admit I felt overwhelmed. As I entered the school I could feel the youth energy flowing abundantly everywhere. Waiting to get moulded, to be guided. I thought one day I would really like to work with them.

After the assembly, the principal gave a short, motivational & influential speech, which I heard like a student. After that all of the students spread into different directions to move towards their respective places designated for separate competitions. And those two girls escorted me to the place where the Hindi poetry competition was to be held. Over there I met the other judge, who is a Sanskrit professor at a government girls college in Gurgaon.

I was glad to see that there were almost forty students from classes 7th to 10th, including a few children from two other schools as well. As I sat on the judge’s chair, I felt a great sense of responsibility. The students were given three topics, out of which they had to pick one of their choice & had to write a poem of 10-12 lines in the given 20 minutes time. When they were done, one by one they came on the stage to recite their poems. We had to judge them on four criteria: relevance, expressions, confidence & expressions. I heard each of them attentively. After that I, along with the other judge, took the best marks from both of us’ sheets & added them to decide the first & second position.

They called me on the stage to announce the winner. I was a bit nervous but I knew being a poetess, I have to give them some poetry tips honestly. I first thanked the school authorities for inviting me. Then I said that I am glad to see you many in numbers as there is a lot of work to be done in the field of hindi poetry and you are the future & it’s great that you are taking interest in it. Then I told the children a little about writing poetry. I said, ‘a poetry should be like a river, just like a river flows flawlessly, a poetry must be flowing. It must have a message in it. There must be a proper beginning, middle & an end, rhyming is also equally important. I told them it is not easy to write, not everyone can, because for writing a poetry one has to be in sync with the universe, so that one can pick just the right words from the stream of thoughts flowing into the cosmos. Use of selectively chosen words should be there & one can use a lot of synonyms as well.’ Then I announced the first & second winners, called them on stage, told them why they have been chosen.

Source: https://www.speakingtree.in/blog/being-a-judge-at-a-poetry-competition

Read more about: Hindi Poetry Recitation

An Interview with Chef Kunal Kapur

Celebrity chef and restaurateur, Kunal Kapur is famously called the “curry and kebab guy” by some of the best food critics worldwide.

Born in a Punjabi family, his love for food started early. Proud recipient of Sir Edmund Hillary Fellowship 2012, titled Gourmet Guru by Food & Nightlife magazine and honoured as one of the top 20 chefs in India, the executive sous chef of Leela Kempinski, Gurgaon has many laurels to his credit.

He talks about food, the changing food scene in the country and his future plans in an exclusive chat with AskMen India.

How do you describe your style of cooking?

My style is rustic, simple and homestyle bursting with flavours.

Which is the dish you call your Signature dish?

Haleem Kebab has been my signature dish that has stood out and has been appreciated by all. There are a lot other chefs who have tried to copy it.

Is there a secret ingredient that you love to cook with?

There are a few spices that I play with when I am cooking Indian food. They do the trick all the time and get me accolades. They are my best kept secrets.

Is there a Chef you truly admire and why?

Chef Sanjeev Kapoor is an inspiration. He has faced many odds in life but never gave up on his dream of making food big in our country. I draw immense inspiration from him, want to be like him.

What is Chef Kunal's favourite meal?

My favourite meal is the Karela Subzi that my mom cooks. Karela is cooked every second day in my house and it is because I like it. I just wrap a few in the chapatti, make a roll and enjoy it on the go.

Do you have a guilty food pleasure?

I am addicted to chocolates. I am a person who has to have a chocolate a day.

Are you asked to cook at personal gatherings? Does it annoy you or you enjoy it?

Actually I am expected to. My family feels that they have a privilege of having a chef at home. I am the most loved and pampered in my big family. So I get my family involved as well and we all cook together whenever possible.

How do see the food scene changing in India?

It’s simple math actually. More spending power = More Travelling = More Eating out. Cooking was once considered an option for the hopeless in academics, but is now a sought after career. Food is the 4th largest employer in India and there has been a huge thrust to the food economy of India recently.

Travel is not about the destination anymore, it’s about sampling food. The latest trend in India is to go local, research and bring out the lesser known ingredients or dishes in a new avatar.

Source: https://in.askmen.com/cooking/1097548/interview/an-interview-with-celebrity-chef-kunal-kapur

Read more about: Exclusive Celebrity Interviews

Hindi publishers adopt technology, new strategies to revamp business (Literary Feature)

Hindi language publishers are adapting - and how - by offering fresh content, launching mobile apps and aggressively marketing their books to resurrect the genre's lost stature against the giant rise of literature in English.

To keep pace with ever-changing technology and reconnect with their dwindling readership, one of India's oldest publication house - Rajkamal Prakashan - has changed its business model to present itself as an "evolving" publisher in tune with the times.


"Readers want change and as a publication house if you fail to understand their requirements then your business model will fail. So it was very important for us to go digital and publish e-books. Now, we have even launched an app," Rajkamal Prakashan managing director Ashok Maheshwari told IANS.

"Also, there was a big void in the Hindi publishing industry. Either we had pulp fiction or literary writings, so we decided to fill this gap and started publishing novels that are contemporary, which youngsters can relate to," he added.

The winds of change can be seen from the way Rajkamal has understood the value of the online retail market.

A testimony to this change is its latest novel "Ishq Me Shaher Hona" by journalist Ravish Kumar, for which the publication house signed an exclusive online deal with amazon.in <http://amazon.in/>. This was in line with what the publisher of President Pranab Mukherjee's "The Dramatic Decade: The Years of Indira Gandhi" had done by signing a three-week exclusive deal with the online retailer.

The Hindi literary heritage boasts of prominent writers like Premchand, Mohan Prakash and Amar Goswami, who heralded a new era by mirroring societal evils through their writings. However, the past two decades have diminished the aura of Hindi literature and many blame the rise of link languages for such a gloomy situation.

Source: https://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ians/hindi-publishers-adopt-technology-new-strategies-to-revamp-business-literary-feature-115022200697_1.html

Read more about: Hindi Literature Video

Sumitranandan Pant: The man who revolutionized Hindi literature

Sumitranandan Pant one of the famous poets of the twentieth century was famous for romanticizing his poems inspired by nature, people and their beauty. He was born on May 20, in Kausani village in Uttrakahnd into an educated middle-class Brahmin family in the year 1900.

He enrolled in Queens College in Banaras in 1918. He began reading the works of Rabindranath Tagore and Sarojini Naidu. He also read about English Romantic poets such as Wordsworth and Blake. These poets had a major impact on his life and work.

He published Pallav in 1926. His work made him famous and earned him recognition. He came to be associated with Hindi renaissance. He expressed dissatisfaction through his book and said: "think in one language and express themselves in another."

One of the major poets fo the Chhayavvadi school of Hindi Literature, he wrote mostly in Sanskritized Hindi. He authored twenty-eight published works including poetry, verse plays and essays.

He also wrote progressive, socialist and humanist poems. David Rubin talking about Pant once said: "In the early forties the new psychological and experimental "schools" were emerging. It was typical of both Nirala and Pant that they themselves anticipated these trends and, by the time the new approaches were in vogue, they had already moved on to newer areas of experimentation.

Source: https://www.devdiscourse.com/Article/agency-wire/8154-sumitranandan-pant-the-man-who-revolutionized-hindi-literature

Read more about: Hindi Literature Video

Women and Urdu Literature

Urdu literature is coming to its own. Due to the Progressive Writers’ Movement, and the subsequent addition of European-like genres and styles into the literary tradition of Urdu, as it has been explored, it was only a matter of time before women would begin writing and enriching the largely male-dominated sphere of language. Just recently, in June 2017, in a mushaira held in Delhi, many women poets read their unique, innovative poems, which did not necessarily follow any traditional Urdu approach. And perhaps that is why, they will give new direction to Urdu poetry, and help it from becoming a stagnating literary tradition focussed solely on ghazals and shers of poets of a bygone era. In this interview, Professor Rakhshanda

Jalil gives an insight into the contribution of women to the Urdu literary canon, and of how the landscape is slowly, but surely, changing in their favour.

Not necessarily ‘crude’,’obscene’. It was considered ‘gharelu’, of the domestic realm, so that it would be more flavoursome, more idiomatic, like more pungent. Not necessarily crude, I wouldn’t use that word. But the distinction between high literature and low literature being so sharp, that ‘rekhti’ was considered closer to folk, as it were. There were established poets even in the Mughal empire – a man called Nazni, who is mentioned in this wonderful book which you must read (it is available in English translation, translated by Akhtar Khambar). It was a book written by Mirza Baig. It is called The Last Mushaira of Delhi or Dilli Ki Aakhari Kshama, and it is like a galaxy of greats. It is a fictional account of a mushaira that could well have taken place – we don’t know whether it actually did – but the who’s who’s, from Ghalib, to Mir, to
Dagh, just about everybody, is there. And this man Nazni is there. (He is a real character, not a fictional character). And Nazni writes in ‘Rekhti’.

So what I am trying to say is that the presence of rekhti poets, of men writing in women’s voices is there almost till the Mutiny times. So we have had established poets reading in mainstream mushairas in women’s rekhti idiom.

But why did they use it?

It was just a genre, it was a bonafide style. And Nazni did a bit of histrionics as well. He would ask for an ‘odhni’ to be brought, and he would put that on, and he would speak on women’s issues, women’s saas, bahu, etc. – that kind of thing. And he would use the women’s idiom, the ‘muhavare-wali zabaan’. ‘Muhavaras’ are in the realm of low ‘geet’. It never had the place in standard Urdu.

And do look out for this book, if at all you’re interested by Carla Petievich called When Men Speak as Women.

There is a tradition like this even in Hindi literature….

Of course, the baara-masa tradition. And why just Hindi, in all the bhaashas, baara-masa tradition – which is a poetry of ‘viraah’ (separation) from the beloved who is gone, which could be romantic, it could be secular, and it can be religious. So the notion of ‘viraah’ has been picked up by the baara-masa poets in Gujarati, Marathi, Hindi, Braj, Khadi Boli, Urdu

Source: http://anandfoundation.com/women-urdu-literature/

Read more about: Urdu Literature Video

This city based theatre group is reviving classic Hindi literature

The year was 1958. Prolific Hindi writer Mohan Rakesh had penned down a fictitious story on the mythological character of Kalidas. Ashadh Ka Ek Din was a three-part Hindi drama, where, contrary to the existing norms, Kalidas was not a mystic. He was a common man, living in Kashmir with his lover Mallika, leading an average family life. The play was a realist drama coupled with human emotions including rage, mirth and jealousy.

This refreshing approach to mythology made Kalidas a relatable character for the first time in the history of Hindi literature. The play went on to spur the beginning of a new movement in Hindi literature called the Nai Kahani (New Story) movement. The idea was to challenge the idealistic nature of Hindi writing and emphasise on real time social issues such as social inequality, disparity and injustice. Moreover, the stories belonging to this period had no sense of catharsis and provided no false hope of a better tomorrow.

“Rakesh’s stories and the works of his contemporaries such as Premchand and Manto have alarming relevance even in the 21st century. Despite that, Hindi literature is fast disappearing from bookstores. So, we took up the challenge to revive these stories,” says actor KC Shankar. Along with his troupe Jashn-e-Qalam, Shankar has been staging dramatic readings of works by authors like Manto and Harishankar Parsai since November 2014. The troupe will perform Mohan Rakesh’s Parmatma Ka Kutta, Chhoti Si Cheez and Uski Roti on November 28.

Source: https://www.hindustantimes.com/art-and-culture/this-city-based-theatre-group-is-reviving-classic-hindi-literature/story-rqyKT8onc1RkD4IFqSqxcK.html

Read more about: Hindi Literature Video

5 Benefits of Poetry Recitation in a Child’s Literacy Development

In the previous post, we saw that singing and poems recitations are unfortunately not included in the curriculum of most schools in Malaysia.

Yet research suggests that music has direct impact in helping young children develop literacy skills.

What about poetry and recitations then? Do these also have significant impact in helping our young learners develop literacy skills?

What Is Poetry Recitation?

Poetry recitation is literary work where ideas and feelings, accentuated with the use of distinctive style and rhythm is delivered through a public speaking activity with a focus on rhythm, alliteration some repetitions.

Poetry as an art breaks across grammar and syntax to create something new and imaginative for the children. It provides an adventure for the mind.

What are some benefits of using poetry and recitations?

1.  Poetry and Rhymes Help Develop Rhythm

Reading rhyming poetry out loud makes it easier for younger children to learn new vocabulary words.

This is attributed to the rhythmic structure of the stanzas that help create a known context to new and unknown words. They are also introduced to words that sound alike but with different meaning.

Source: http://scholar-base.com/5-benefits-of-poetry-recitation-in-a-childs-literacy-development/

Read more about: Hindi Poetry Recitation