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