If you’re dieting, walking, eating healthy and still not losing weight — this video explains the real reason.
I share my experience with sleep, hormones, stress, and weight loss for women 35+. Watch the full video above and tell me in the comments what your sleep pattern is like.
Just the lesson.
The detour.
The mistake that made him better for someone else?
That’s what I used to believe.
Until I started writing these stories —
about women who were never chosen…
until one day, they were.
These aren’t fairy tales.
They’re not fantasies.
They’re what happens when you’ve spent half your life invisible —
and then someone walks in and sees everything.
No filters.
No fixing.
Just love — late, real, and impossible to forget.
📘 The Gift in the Hills — a second chance that feels like the first time.
📕 Salt and Steel — coming soon.
Read if you’ve ever been the woman who stopped expecting anything.
And secretly still wanted everything.
I didn’t write this to explain anything.
I wrote it because something has changed—and I’m not ready to talk about it out loud.
Not yet.
But maybe you’ll feel it between the words.
I didn’t expect it to feel like this.
Not at this age. Not in this life.
But there it is—a steady pulse underneath my skin.
Not loud. Not needy. Just… present.
Like the way dusk touches your cheek before you even realize the sun is gone.
This isn’t a post about a person.
It’s not an announcement. It’s not a phase.
It’s a shift.
Something in me is moving.
Something in me has moved.
I’m still the same woman—still forgetting the laundry, still Googling how to love a teenage daughter who both needs me and can’t stand me. Still alone. But no longer lonely.
But something has changed.
Maybe my questions now get the answers they seek.
The air feels heavier in the evenings.
Songs hit differently.
Words arrive slower. Truer.
Someone listens. Someone responds.
It’s not about falling in love.
It’s about recognizing it.
Not in someone else. But in myself.
This thing that’s been unfolding… doesn’t want to be named.
It doesn’t care if anyone understands it.
It only wants to be felt.
And it is. Deeply.
I wake up with it some mornings.
Sleep with it curled around my thoughts.
It’s not a crush. It’s not a fantasy.
It’s not a man, and yet, it’s him.
He exists in the rhythm of how I breathe lately.
In the way I pause before saying certain things.
In the silence. A presence that is only mine.
No, I’m not telling you everything.
But I’m not hiding it either.
This is me, letting it breathe.
This is me, finally… not waiting for permission to feel alive.
And if it reaches you in some corner of your own quiet night—
then maybe, just maybe,
you already know what I’m talking about.
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The night had long since stretched into one of effortless laughter, sarcastic critiques, and moments where Arin found himself genuinely surprised by how much he was enjoying this ridiculous, chaotic tradition.
The movie was now deep into its climax—a scene so absurdly over-the-top that even the most forgiving audience would struggle to take it seriously. The hero, drenched in rain, looked up at the sky in anguish as the heroine ran toward him in slow motion, her hair miraculously staying perfect despite the storm.
Shanaya threw up her hands. “Why are they running toward each other like that? She’s five feet away! Just walk like a normal person!”
Astha sighed, shaking her head. “Because drama, dear child. If they had normal conversations and walked at a normal speed, we wouldn’t have this cinematic masterpiece.”
Arin, watching the exaggerated wailing on-screen, smiled. “Masterpiece? That’s generous.”
Astha gave him a solemn nod. “We’re in the presence of greatness. Look at this man’s pain. He’s been in love for exactly three business days, and now the world is ending because of it.”
Shanaya mimicked the actor’s dramatic pose, pressing a hand to her chest. “Ah yes, the greatest tragedy known to mankind—falling in love with someone you just met and immediately losing them. Shakespeare could never.”
“Truly a loss for literature,” Astha added. “Imagine if we all functioned like movie characters. ‘Oh no, I made eye contact with the barista for two seconds longer than usual. Guess I have to quit my job, move cities, and stare at the ocean while pondering my entire existence.’”
Arin let out a genuine laugh, shaking his head. “This is ridiculous.”
“Welcome to our world, Arin,” Shanaya said, patting his shoulder. “We take our terrible movies very seriously.”
“Clearly.”
As the credits finally rolled, they all sat back, the room now filled with a comfortable kind of silence. Shanaya stretched and yawned dramatically. “That was exhausting. I feel like I lost brain cells.”
“You had some to begin with?” Astha teased.
“Wow, the betrayal.” Shanaya gasped. “Arin, did you hear that? My own mother. Just throwing me under the bus.”
Arin, still smiling, glanced at Astha. “I’m starting to think there’s no one she doesn’t throw under the bus.”
Astha smiled. “Oh, don’t be so dramatic. You survived your first roast night, didn’t you? That’s an achievement.”
Arin exhaled, shaking his head in amusement. “I suppose it is.”
Astha stood, stretching. “Alright, children, time for bed. Some of us have jobs in the morning.”
“You say that like I don’t also have to wake up early,” Shanaya grumbled.
“I do say it like that, because you’ll be in bed hitting snooze while I contemplate throwing your alarm clock out the window,” Astha replied.
Arin, who had been a quiet observer in many parts of life, realized that he wasn’t just observing anymore. He was part of something here, part of an easy familiarity he hadn’t even realized he craved.
He looked at Astha, who was gathering the empty popcorn bowls, and at Shanaya, who was pretending to be mortally wounded by her mother’s words.
Somewhere between sarcastic critiques and overcooked pasta, he had been welcomed into their world.
And for the first time, he wasn’t just a visitor in someone else’s story.
He was becoming part of it.
DONT WORK IN JAIPUR RUGS
Attention Job Seekers: A Wake-Up Call!
The job search journey is no walk in the park. It’s a rollercoaster of applications, interviews, and negotiations. When we finally land an offer, resign from our current role, and step into a new opportunity, we carry dreams of growth and success.
But what if the reality is a nightmare? What if the company operates with a hire-and-fire policy, leaving employees stranded after just days on the job? What if the company operates on intuition rather than actual facts?
Let’s talk about @JaipurRugs, a company where alarming workplace practices have been reported:
➡️ “Hired today, fired tomorrow”: Employees have been let go within their first week—without any explanation or fault on their part.
➡️ A culture of hearsay: Leadership allegedly listens to gossip from old employees rather than evaluating new hires fairly.
➡️ Extreme micromanagement: Employees are judged for trivial things like bathroom breaks or the fact that they have been seen near the fruit stall instead of their actual performance.
➡️ Zero accountability: When fired, employees are simply told they “don’t fit” the culture, leaving them jobless and confused after leaving secure roles.
This toxic cycle traps employees who join with high hopes, only to be left unemployed, demoralized, and disrespected.
Job Seekers, Take Note: Research every company thoroughly before accepting an offer. A healthy workplace values its employees, promotes growth, and communicates with transparency.
Your career is your most valuable asset—protect it. Don’t let false promises derail your path to success.
Have you experienced or witnessed similar practices? Let’s create awareness—share your stories in the comments to help others make informed decisions.
#CareerGrowth #JobSeekers #WorkplaceTransparency #ToxicWorkplaces #LeadershipMatters #EmployeeWellbeing #ProfessionalAdvice #CareerTips #WorkplaceEthics JaipurRugs Anonymous #Jaipurrugs
Sanjeev Sharma and his team at Space X spent hours preparing for the launch that has taken the world by storm. They have spent hours in going through every little detail of the launch. But even today, weeks after a successful launch, he is still in a state of disbelief and wonders ‘did it really happen?’
What was your feeling when you saw that rocket booster come back?
When you work on a project and you know all the possibilities of outcomes and you play that in your mind. I think for the last two months, all of us have been constantly playing everything in our minds with paranoia. But once you see that happen in front of you, it is something else. I’ve been to the site several times, so I know the scale of things that we’re talking about. It’s not just a video for me. So once that happens in front of you and you’re watching, it almost sort of becomes an out-of-body experience. Yeah. I’m not even aware of myself. I’m just looking at that thing. And it’s just a brain trying to figure out what’s going on. What’s going to happen next? Is it good? Is it bad? That’s all that’s going on at that moment. Your whole being is just logged into that and watching it intently. So that was kind of like, it just consumes you completely. And then once that happens, it’s like for days it felt as if we were high. It’s impossible to even get to a normal soon. Yeah, the first thought is disbelief and thank God. That’s kind of the first thought. I’m still not on a nominal plane, even after so many days of this happening. I still have to pinch myself when I wake up and say, this already happened.
Engineering is all about, if it’s permitted by physics and you design it well, and you want to make it happen, you will make it happen. I always tell young engineers that the job of an engineer is not to throw spaghetti at a wall and see what works. A lot of people think that’s what we mean when we say it’s an iterative process. That’s not what it means. What it means is to look at all the factors, design everything, have an expectation of it working that’s far higher than just 50-50, and then leave it up to nature because you always learn something new when you’re doing something that revolutionary. But that’s where we are with a lot of these things. Success is not the default option. It’s one of the options. But you feel confident that there is a chance of success by the time you finish the process.
It is difficult for you at the very beginning, it feels impossible, and it feels like crazy to even try and do this. As you progress along and find paths ahead, by the end you get to a point, you get to a point where you feel that success is one of the major probabilities. Especially things like if you’re designing a bridge, you should know before the bridge gets inaugurated and open for public use that this bridge is going to be able to last for 20-25 years, take all of these service loads that it’s designed to. It should not be a guess. Engineering is not a guess; it’s designed by intention. When you’re pushing the boundaries, there’s always room for failure. You have to leave room for failure. But success is one of the major probabilities so you should try to get to that place before you finish your design.
These days, design is coming up in India in a big way. What do you think about that?
Yeah, I think design is where everything starts. It doesn’t stop there, but everything starts there. If you have a good design, whether it’s a product or it’s, you know, just a commercial everyday stuff or service or a phone app, you have UI, UX designers for phones, etc. So, there’s a lot of emphasis here in the US on design because everything starts from there. If I were to kind of step back and look at it, I think the over-emphasis on design in the US is almost a fault because right now you speak of, you know, that India is kind of waking up to design, whereas the US has over-emphasized design and under-emphasized manufacturing and operations.
Do you think that’s a good thing or a bad thing?
I think that’s a bad thing because what we’ve become is that we design chips, everything from chips to products, everyday products, maybe clothing and everything, we design that in the US and get it manufactured elsewhere. In China, in Vietnam or even India. But as an engineer, I see the value chain from design to delivery to the end customer as being one flow of value. And as a country, we cannot lose capabilities along the entire value chain. Because of globalization, I accept that it makes sense to best and most effectively use resources that exist anywhere in the world. But as a country, we cannot lose our strengths in any way through this value chain, whether it’s manufacturing, whether it’s operations, everywhere you see, everywhere you look at, you have tremendous room for innovation, for invention, for insight, for growth. Like I’m saying, I worked on, in the company Seagate, I worked on products that were, or equipment that was used for the manufacture of hard drives. And through our work, we could improve productivity by 40% and improve capability at the same time.
It’s like changing wheels on a moving car. So, I think innovation exists in every block of this value chain, but it starts with design. So, I wouldn’t downplay the role of design, because once you design something that’s ineffective, no matter how good of a delivery system you have, or how good of a manufacturing system you have, it will never withstand competition. So, design is very critical, but it’s not the only thing.
What is a typical day in your life?
I’m an early riser, so I normally get up at about 5.30 to 6. And usually catch up on the last day’s happenings. I have this habit of just following world events and what that means, pondering and following technology. So, I catch up on that kind of media feed. I’m very, I’d say, a voracious YouTube consumer. I find YouTube to be a very good tool to search and find things and kind of subscribe to channels, etc. I like that mode of content delivery. So, yeah, it used to be newspapers once, but now it’s YouTube. So that’s what my morning’s about and then I try to get to work. And usually, we have long working hours. What time do you get to work? At about 9, 9.30. It’s just very flexible in the US, especially after COVID.
We do have expectations or requirements of a time that you have to overlap with your team. And companies like SpaceX and now, I guess, almost all companies are back with a policy of being on-site in the presence of your team. I like that because I’ve always worked in hardware development. And it’s very different from software. In hardware development, if you’re not close to your colleagues who are also doing the same development project, and if you’re not close to the hardware, you lose a lot of insight. So, I like working in teams on-site in the office. So, I work from 9.30 to maybe 6.30 or 7.00. And then drive back.
How long does it take you to drive?
Well, LA is one of the worst areas for traffic congestion. Luckily, I take only about 35 minutes in the traffic. So, I live close by so that I have to commute less. When I was in the Bay Area, it used to take me one hour.
Concluded
This article by Shailaza Singh appeared in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on November 7, 2024
Part II
Being valued is what we missed in India!
Today, he may be the principal engineer at Space X and the cynosure of all eyes but life was not easy for Sanjeev Sharma. Employed in a cushy government job in the Indian railways (a feat most Indians aspire to accomplish), where he did not even have to carry his own bag, he could have continued to live a comfortable life in India. However, after a decade of service, he decided to go to America to learn more about his first love- mechanical engineering. But it was a precarious move. It was a new land and he had to start from scratch, not to mention also risk the ire of his family who wanted their only son to stay with them in India.
When you first went to America and then decided to stay there, what was your parents’ reaction? Were they supportive?
I think first-generation immigrants always have to face this kind of challenge. Initially, my parents did not support my move. But over time, they have accepted it. I have two sisters who live close to my parents in Delhi and take care of them. I also keep visiting them every couple of years and also talk to them frequently.
What was the move to America like?
I did not move to America in a very planned manner. By the time, I decided to move, I had been married and had a one and a half-year-old son but I did not take them along because when I went back to college after eight years, the university said that first they needed to see my performance and since I had some experience, they would consider me for some research projects, without which I would not have got any tuition waiver or funding. Moreover, as a government employee, my wages were not enough to save for even one or two semesters’ worth of tuition on my own. So, I went there, worked hard, got the research projects and the tuition waiver. It was then I brought my wife and son here.
How was life there?
It was tough. When I went there, I was thirty years old, which is young according to my standards. UC Boulder is on the foothills of the Rockies and it gets really cold. It snows a lot. I wasn’t at all prepared for the climate. I remember I had to pick up a job on campus to earn money. I was paid seven dollars an hour for picking up the mail from the PO box of the university and sorting it out for each department. Then I had to drive around in a van and deliver it to the front desk of each department. So, after the first two classes, I used to deliver the mail. At that time, I used to dress in a shirt, pants, and black leather shoes, which was what I wore in my Indian job. So, I would go around dressed like that in that cold. It was a very different scenario from India where I as a railway officer did not even carry my own file and had an official car to take me everywhere.
How did you start working in Space X?
As I mentioned, I was working in Seagate technologies. There came a time when the computer hard disk (HD) drives were replaced by solid state drives (SSD) and the industry went through a downturn. I decided to move from Minneapolis to California primarily to escape the exceedingly cold weather.
I applied to SpaceX on a whim. I did not know much and at the time I didn’t know anything about aerospace. To my surprise. I got the opportunity to interview and got accepted. I joined SpaceX in 2013 and by that time they had they had gained some name by being the only private company to drive a capsule to the International Space Station, dock it and return it with goods By then, they had a contract with NASA and they were the first private company to pull off such a feat and it would be able to accomplish that so it had a lot of promise, but it was still a startup with an uncertain future because space business is very risky. I still decided to take a jump though Seagate people very nicely told me to come back if things didn’t work out.
I worked as the dynamics engineer in the structures group where we were tasked with designing and getting the first stage booster back and reusing it. But I didn’t have any experience in space but I was very well-versed in the transportation and management of large mechanical structures. I realized that my experience in large structures weighing tonnes along with my experience with small hard drives with spans of millimetres and micrometres came together in Space X. Even to this day, SpaceX has a philosophy of not hiring for experience but hiring for drive and talent. They look at your track record and whatever you have been able to accomplish, especially the hard things And that’s true for entry-level engineers as well as senior engineers with experience But they don’t insist on hey, we have to you know, design this frame thrust structure of the rocket Do you bring 20 years of thrust structure design experience with you? They don’t ask that question. So that’s how I got my foot in the door. And it was a great opportunity to learn and do but it was a completely unbounded problem. No one in the world at that time had recovered a liquid propellant booster after an orbital launch.
There was very little precedent that I could look at, very little research on the project but as I said, I was working along with a great set of people and learned a lot from that and we kept moving through and I think in the 21st flight we had already recovered a booster and then subsequently from there on my efforts focused on how to get the maximum kind of reusable life despite the metal fatigue and crack growth in space and manage these things to ensure the reliability of the reuse. Once I had done that the project was almost complete. So, in 2018 I was looking for a new project.
During this time, I decided to move to Northern California since my son was in Berkeley area. So, I started working for Matternet, a company specializing in medical drone deliveries. As the head of engineering, my job was to get them through the process of certification by the Federal Aviation Authority, which is the regulatory body. The certification is a must even if you have to fly a small drone. It was a tough job since it is still not freely permitted in the US to fly an autonomous drone without a human supervisor or an operator in commercial airspace. Because of those restrictions, it’s hard for a company, for a drone startup to grow at a pace that is required for a startup to grow, to get funded, and to get revenue streams. Our development slowed and then I told my boss that I needed to look for a different job because my whole focus was to come in and work on something new.
In the meantime, in 2022, one of my friends from SpaceX called me back and said that they need people here back in the new Starship project. had heard about the Starship. I was, following every detail of SpaceX because I kind of missed the really fast pace and I thought I already had the skills I needed for the job.
I thought this was one place where I could apply my skills to a new product which is why I took the jump back again and I’m now back in Los Angeles working for SpaceX again.
You talk about how engineers are working so hard and coming up with such inventions. Tell me, what will it take for engineers in India to reach a level like you’ve reached? Probably not going abroad, but in India?
That’s a great question. I think before the Industrial Revolution, there was hardly any difference in the technological or scientific understanding of things around the world. India was probably leading the entire world in terms of technology.
With the Industrial Revolution, we saw that there was more and more focus on growth or, new technology coming from Europe rather than anywhere else in the world. And it’s not because of any other reason, like, people sometimes kind of say, oh, they have more brilliant people over there. Well, the people were the same, like, two generations ago as well. What changes is, I think the principles of intellectual property rights, the principle of capitalism, I grew up in an India, which I regarded as socialist. I think everything was controlled by the government. So in that scenario, it’s very difficult or the individuals do not have the incentives to make something new and gain from it. So even if you make something new, you’re going to gain nothing. And in that, so that’s what’s been holding India and the countries like India back. It’s not that they don’t have brilliant people. It’s the layers that exist in the society of valuing invention, valuing intellectual property rights, valuing, you know, capitalist systems of reward, and accepting failure. When failure occurs, even in the U.S., I think seven out of ten startups will fail and everyone knows that. But it’s not held against you if you have on your resume that you started six startups and all of them failed. It’s not at all negative. So, that’s one of the fundamental reasons why new growth and development have been held back in India for so long. And now I see a refreshingly different view from here in India that we are now seeing a very cultural change, in the society itself. We need to work on that first before we start looking at individuals who become successful out of that. So, you need to make the field fertile before we focus on the crop. The crop is great engineers and great products. The field is to respect intellectual property rights, have a system of reward and risk-reward, and also have, you know, a tolerance to failure and allow people the resources to work on new things.
To be continued…
This article by Shailaza Singh appeared in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on November 6, 2024
A couple of weeks ago, Elon Musk’s company Space X made headlines when it successfully launched its colossal Starship rocket and caught the returning 232-foot-tall booster using ‘chopsticks’, at the launch pad, a feat which has never been attempted in human history and brings Space X, a step closer to its goal of building a fully rapidly reusable rocket system for sending cargo and humans on interplanetary expeditions. Rashtradoot brings you an exclusive interview with one of the team’s key members who accomplished this feat- Sanjeev Sharma who is working as the principal engineer in Space X.
What would you do if you got 100 million dollars? Perhaps, you would buy a palace or take a grand trip around the world? Maybe you would just live life king-size for the rest of your days? But not Elon Musk. When he sold off his stake in PayPal, a payment platform, he founded Space X, a spaceflight services company in 2002. Later he also invested in Tesla, an electric vehicle manufacturing company, and acquired the social media platform Twitter and renamed it X. Today, Space X has become the world’s dominant space launch provider rivalling the Chinese space program launch Cadance. It helps NASA and United States Armed Forces in their Space Missions too. In fact, its Crew Dragon space craft will also be bringing back Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, the stranded astronauts in the International Space Station since NASA’s Starliner developed propulsion problems and was deemed too risky to be deployed for the return of the two astronauts. Two weeks ago, Space X’s Starship launched and caught back its colossal rocket’s booster using ‘chopsticks’ as its giant mechanical arms are affectionately called.
Since the launch of Starship, the internet has been obsessing about Sanjeev Sharma’s resume on LinkedIn. There have been articles about how he is one of the ‘key men’ in Elon Musk’s team and how he has been instrumental in the recent success of Starship. People have been commenting on how this man made his way from Indian Railways to become the principal engineer at Space X. We at Rashtradoot decided to call America and talk to the man instead of merely pondering over his resume. He was only too happy to oblige because in his words, this Leo ‘wanted to speak for himself rather than people interpret his resume’.
So, here is an exclusive interview with the man himself.
When did you decide that you wanted to be an engineer?
From very early on I knew that I wanted to be an engineer because my dad is also an engineer. He’s a technical engineer and worked for the government for years. I loved mechanical stuff like taking things apart and looking at how they work. I ended up at the University of Roorkee (now IIT, Roorkee). Back then, it was not an IIT. But actually, I wanted to enroll in the Indian Railway Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineers because I was more interested in the mechanical engineering aspects of large structures and the institute was famous for the hands-on training they provided. However, admission to UPSC through the central selection committee is so long that it takes about eight months after the higher secondary. So, since I didn’t want to wait in case I didn’t make it, I joined the University of Roorkee. Luckily the results came in after eight months and I got selected.
After completing my course, I became the assistant mechanical engineer in Dhanbad in Eastern Railway (as it was known at that time). Soon, I got promoted and became the divisional mechanical engineer. It was a very tough place to work in. It was all coal mines and the primary job was to check the freight in terms of railway wagons and trains and engines get combined into a train and make sure that we dispatch these trains over to northern railway or thermal power plants everywhere. The area was so out of place. There were hardly any facilities but I enjoyed my work there. That place shaped my work ethic.
I was surrounded by very hard-working people. But all said and done my motivation has always been about doing new things rather than working on the existing things or maintaining existing things or processes. So, I was there only for two and a half years and then in 1994, I was transferred to the newly established rail coach factory in Kapurthala. At that time, Punjab was coming out of terrorism and no one wanted to go there. But it was a very modern setup with a supercomputer, high-tech machines, and systems. So, I went there in 1994 and stayed till 2001. I started as a senior design engineer and was promoted to deputy chief engineer in mechanical design. We had to do everything from scratch including migration from manual and mechanical printing to computer-based systems which was first even for the private sector in India. At that time, we also got some grants from the UN and as a result, we got international experts to come to us and teach us how to design from scratch
Before that, I used to think that a lot of our engineering was essentially iterative and just tweaking what we had. But then when we worked with these international experts who taught us first principles and how to go about it I realized that I needed to learn more if I wanted to be better.
By that time, I had already been in the workforce for about eight to nine years. By the end of 2001, I had applied for further studies. I wanted to get a master’s degree in mechanical engineering and focus on areas where I think I lacked in terms of computer simulation analysis. Today, everything is available online, but back in the 2000s, you couldn’t learn anything by yourself since there was no internet. So, one had to go back to school.
But why did you choose an American School?
The reason was I wanted to learn at the best school possible. Also, I tried to apply to schools in Europe that were focused on railroad engineering or railway engineering, but the tuition cost was too prohibitive and they had no scholarships. So, the US was the one place where they did not have a strong railway focus, but they had a mechanical focus in related areas like automotive and aerospace. Schools in the US promised tuition waivers and scholarships for bright students, and that’s why I applied to the US. I got accepted into the University of Colorado at Boulder. I took the thesis option as a part of my master’s because that helped me to get a tuition waiver. So, I had to research hard disk drives. After some time, I got my research assistantship. I worked on the research and completed my project which the sponsors of the project liked. After completing my MS, I wanted to go back to India.
However, though I wanted to come back, I could not because of two reasons. One, I was always interested in product development research and design. Mechanical engineering is my first love. But my experience in the Indian Railways taught me that in India, the reason most people do engineering is not to get into the technical aspect of things but just to use it as a stepping stone to doing MBA in an IIM to become a well-rounded general administration sort of an officer. Had I gone back, I would have been responsible for human resources or procurement or something like that and would have lost this side of the work.
So, you wanted to remain on the technical side of things?
Yes. it excited me to be an engineer and bring new technology for the benefit of society at large. For example, my research and work on hard drives. I realized that if we produce hard drives that can store data cheaply, it’s easy to unlock several uses for digital data, which is precisely what happened. All the progress and information technology revolution would not have happened had the hard drives not updated their capability by 25 percent every six months for decades. Just imagine, the first 512 MB hard drive produced by IBM cost thousands of dollars and today you can get a hard drive of many terabytes for merely 20 dollars or something. So, it’s mind-boggling and all of this has been done by engineers like me and much better than me. This is how we see things improving in society. It’s the result of thousands and thousands of engineers, scientists, and technicians. It’s exciting for me to be a part of this revolution and that is what I have always wanted to do. And so that’s that was one part of the decision
The second reason was that the company (Seagate Technology) that sponsored the research into hard drives came back with a job offer in their R&D centre in Minneapolis. I worked there for about nine years First as an individual contributor and then I was promoted to a team lead. My job was to help in producing very complex electromechanical devices, which I had to take back to the company’s factory in Singapore. So, I was constantly shuttling between Minneapolis and Singapore. But after doing that for nine years, I saw a shift in the technology trends. During this time, I also did a master’s in management of technology from the University of Minnesota. So, I was doing my regular job during the week and on the weekend, I would drive up to Minneapolis downtown or the city campus and attend my classes.
Coming back to the point where you said that people study engineering in India not because they want to do engineering but because they want to do MBA and get more money. Could you talk about it?
Well, I have been out of India for a good two decades now. But when I was there, almost everyone who was doing engineering saw it as a stepping stone to becoming a manager. The best brains in IIT would either leave for the US or stay with India and do an IIM and become an MBA grad. This meant that all the physics, science and engineering that was learned in school was only supposed to be a stepping stone for a career in MBA finance, or private equity. In those days, those were the kind of hot careers to pursue and IIT in the resume was just needed to make it look good.
I, on the other hand, wanted to stay in engineering and not do an MBA. Also, in India, there were very few companies doing original research. Back then, most of our research in India in the engineering domain was reverse engineering. So, it was just about looking at technologies that have gone out of their patented life or technologies that are available and adapting them. It’s mostly innovation, not invention, a lot of which did not require higher-order skills. All it required was to be able to interpret and copy. With such a mindset, organizations and society would value a manager’s role more than an engineer’s role.
In the US, it’s always been different. Here, good engineers were far more valuable than good managers because companies like IBM and like Seagate had totally different promotion channels for good engineers and they would keep their best talent and reward them for any new inventions patents, etc.
There was far more recognition both within the organization and outside the organization for good engineers, whereas that was not the case with India I think that’s why all Indian engineers aspire to be something else but not do engineering.
To be continued..
This article by Shailaza Singh was published on November 5, 2024 in Rashradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section.
Israel vs Palestine
Part II
What happens when a nation is at war? For those living in the country, it becomes a never-ending battle to survive every day. For those who do not live in the country, it binds them to their besieged motherland and leaves them vulnerable to attacks in the foreign land.
In his recent article titled “A brutal year and the tale of two Israels” which was published in the Guardian, Jonathan Freedland writes “There’s the Israel you see on the news: the mighty bully, wildly lashing out at its neighbours, that, not content with turning much of Gaza into rubble, has now rolled its tanks into Lebanon – apparently for no better reason than because it can. This Israel is the one indicted by the world’s courts, where it is accused of the most heinous crimes. This Israel has, for a year, brought out millions in mass demonstrations in the major cities of Europe, the US and beyond, a scale of protest unseen for two decades, politicising a generation that has decided that opposition to Israel is the great issue of our age. And then there’s the Israel you glimpse in the testimony of the men, women and very young children who survived a massacre – telling how they huddled, alone and undefended, in bathrooms and kids’ bedrooms, for long, terrified hours as Hamas men surrounded their homes, firing bullets through doors and hurling grenades through windows, before eventually setting house after house ablaze, yelping in delight at what they themselves called a “slaughter”. This Israel is the one still yearning for the hostages seized that day, scores of whom remain in captivity in Gaza. This Israel is the one whose north has been pounded by Hezbollah rockets for 12 months straight, forcing about 65,000 Israeli civilians from their homes.”
He further writes, “Take the war that has caused so much pain for all of the last year. What the world sees in Gaza is a benighted strip of land that Israel has crushed, heedless of the consequences for civilian life. What Israelis see is a cruel Hamas enemy that revealed its true face on 7 October and which has embedded itself inside and beneath the streets and homes of Gaza, using the entire population as a human shield, so that when innocents die there, it is Hamas who should bear the blame. You can keep on like this, each example exposing the gulf that separates Israel from a swath of world opinion. But all this only points to the deeper difference. To most outsiders, Israel is a regional superpower, backed by a global superpower. It is strong and secure. But that is not how it looks from the inside. Israelis see their society as small – the size of New Jersey – besieged and vulnerable.
For several decades, the rest of the world could say such talk was absurd; that whatever Israel’s origins, with the state established just three years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the country that existed now was muscled and armed, with nothing to fear. But then came October.”
You have talked about the tale of two Israels. One which is struggling, the other which is standing strong. How do you think this war is likely to end?
“It is a very hard question. Wars usually end when both sides are exhausted and have come to the conclusion that they are not going to win this war by military means and that they will have to negotiate. That’s usually how conflicts end or they end with one side utterly defeated and in total surrender. That’s just how history has tended to work. In this case, I don’t see the latter ever really happening. So instead, what you have to look to is what diplomats have been working on for many, many months, which is the ceasefire agreement by which there’d be a pause in the fighting, there would be a release of the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza and a release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails and an agreement to stop the fighting at least for a while. That seems to me the best way of ending things, although it may only be a pause. The problem has been that Hamas, it seems, is not really ready to go through with that. They’ve never fully 100% said yes. And Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also never said yes and people debate the reasons why. But there is a ceasefire agreement there and neither side has yet been ready to do it and so the war continues. So, the best way of ending the war will be a ceasefire agreement on both sides and then a negotiation that delivers that ceasefire agreement that might continue and eventually get on to the longer-term core issues of this conflict.”
Since the war, how have the lives of Jews living outside Israel changed?
“Their lives have changed since October 7th in a couple of ways. Firstly, a whole lot of people who had not particularly identified strongly as Jewish before suddenly found that they felt very connected to the events of October 7th and they felt connected to Israel, which is after all the largest Jewish country in the world. And I found that lots of people I’ve known for a long time who didn’t feel particularly Jewish before suddenly felt very Jewish because of this attack on Jews in huge numbers and with such devastating consequences. They felt a sense of solidarity that they didn’t even know they had in them. Jews are continuing their normal lives, Jewish events go on, and people live and go to school and go to work in all the ways they used to.
The difference is that there has been the most enormous increase in recorded incidents of anti-Semitism, meaning anti-Jewish racism. The figures are through the roof in Britain and in America. The figures have increased by an enormous quantity. And that is deeply troubling, that as soon as there was this huge attack on Jews in Israel, then Jews themselves were attacked all around the world. And that started happening even before Israel’s military response in Gaza. So, you can’t say it was just a direct protest at Israel because, for one thing, it came before Israel had reacted. But for another, the targets were not Israeli, they were Jewish targets. So, synagogues were vandalized and there were threats outside Jewish schools. So, yes, there is more security and there is more nervousness. You do hear about Jewish people who used to wear, for example, the kippa, the religious skull cap that men wear, but some Jews were no longer wearing those things because they didn’t want to be identified as Jews in public. So, there was a kind of nervousness, but very much continuing to live and work and go out in all the same ways as before.”
How will this war really end?
“In some ways, this is the same question. How will this end? Probably in a ceasefire agreement when both sides feel exhausted from fighting. There was just one other thought I was going to mention about how and how this could end.
There is a group of Arab states who are very opposed to Iran and are opposed to Iran’s proxies, its allies, who have surrounded Israel with a so-called ring of fire. And I’m thinking, like I wrote in that article that you mentioned, of the Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. They’re all arms of Iran. There are a whole series of Arab countries that oppose those allies of Iran. And here I’m thinking of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt, and others. Those countries have offered a kind of new alliance with Israel, all lined up against Iran. What Israel would have to do to make that alliance happen is accept that one day there will be a Palestinian state. I think Israel should make that move. I would like the Prime Minister of Israel to say yes, we accept that one day there will be a Palestinian state alongside Israel. I think that’s the moral thing to do and it’s strategically the right thing to do for Israel’s own sake. However, the current Israeli government is not ready to make that move and does not believe in it. I think they’re wrong. But to me, that would be a very good long-term way of ending this war and forging out of it a new alliance, which offers a new possibility for Israel’s future. I think that option is on the table. But many people in Israel, including the Prime Minister and the government, do not agree with me.”
..Concluded
This article by Shailaza Singh appeared in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on October 24, 2024
JEWS CAN DEFEND THEMSELVES
What is about the Jews that throughout history they have been persecuted and oppressed? Why does this Israel-Palestine war show no sign of abating? Award-winning author and journalist Jonathan Freedland believes that the answer is not that simple.
Ever since I met him at the Jaipur Literature Festival this year, it has been an ongoing conversation about a plethora of topics including the year-long raging war between Israel and Palestine and the Jewish community with the award-winning British author, and journalist, Jonathan Freedland. He is also a columnist at the Guardian and the host of the Guardian’s Politics Weekly America Podcast. He also presents BBC Radio 4’s The Long View and is the author of the award-winning The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World, along with several thrillers under the pseudonym Sam Bourne. He is a past winner of an Orwell Prize for journalism.
When we met at the Jaipur Literature Festival, the very first question that I asked him was about why is there so much hatred for Jews? Hitler persecuted them, they have always been talking about the promised land but their promised land has always been besieged with wars.
Jonathan said, “I don’t think the explanation will lie with Jews but instead it will lie with the people who hate them. And so have to ask why is it that there has been this hate throughout history. There are all kinds of theories about it. The one that is probably the heart of the matter is that in the Christian world, the Jews stood out for refusing to embrace Christianity and that became very irritating for the followers of Christianity for centuries. It was an irritant to them that there was this group of people who were refusing to fall in line and the very fact they continued to exist proved that there was another way. For example, in England, the country I am from, the only minority at all in the 12th century in England were Jews. Everybody else was Christian. Today, we’re used to minorities. But for many centuries the only minority in all of Europe, before there were Muslims for example in Europe, would have been Jews. So, for the masses, there is indeed something annoying to people about a group that refuses to fall in line with everyone else. That’s one part of it. There are different things in the Muslim world. Again, the refusal to adopt the main faith is part of it. And then there is another theory which says, it goes back even further, which is Judaism, the religion, offered the form of the Ten Commandments (which were the first sort of moral rules). People don’t like rules and they don’t like to have to behave in a certain way and Jews have been in this theory. I’m not saying I necessarily agree with it. Jews have been like a guilty conscience to mankind.
Jews are around sort of saying you should behave better, you shouldn’t kill, you shouldn’t commit adultery, etc. according to the rule. Therefore, people would rather not have a voice in their ear saying to behave better. I believe this was also because 5,000 years ago, Judaism was the first religion to insist on there being one God. Monotheism begins with Abraham and the Jews and then Christianity comes next and then Islam after that. And therefore, before then, with many gods, you could live differently and Judaism has sort of come along early and spoiled that way of living. But all said and done, the truth is that it is hard to work out why there is prejudice against black people, why there is prejudice against people who are not white or people who are brown. It’s a very hard thing to explain why prejudices live on.”
Why do you think Hitler hated the Jews?
“Well, he was steeped in anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish racism for centuries. I don’t think there’s any value in trying to think of there being a rational or logical reason why people hate minorities. They always have.”
From Hitler’s time to this time, when the wars are continuing, what has changed?
“The big change in the world for Jews anyway has been the fact that Jews are no longer unable to defend themselves. So that for 2,000 years Jews were always a minority who were vulnerable because they never had any means to defend themselves. It’s fascinating, in 1947 there were two big partitions in the world, one that created India and Pakistan and the other one that created Israel. That vote of the United Nations in 1947 said there should be a Jewish state and from 1948 onwards there has been a Jewish state. And now for the first time in 2,000 years, Jews have an army and can defend themselves and that is a very big difference. In the big sweep of Jewish history that’s the big change.”
So, now that the Jews have a great army and are defending themselves, can it put an end to this hatred in the long run?
“No. It has been there for many decades. But it is as strong now. Anti-Semitic attacks in London are high, they’re up. More now than in many decades. Same in the United States. So, it has not ended the hatred. But I think it has meant that people, the attitude is different because there is now a place where Jews are defended. Now as it happens, the act of defending themselves has been part of this war between Israel and Hamas, which of course has brought out a whole lot more hatred for Israel and therefore for people who stand with Israel. So, the ability of Jews to defend themselves has not ended the hatred, it has in a way just created a new set of problems.”
Can you relate some anecdotes that have shaped your writing?
“There is this stereotype about Jews that they are miserly with money, that they hold on to money. It goes back a thousand years actually to the time when Jews were not allowed to do other jobs and the only job, they were allowed to do was to lend money. The king would allow them to collect taxes or lend money. And so, this arose, this idea that Jews are somehow mean with money. So, years back, my wife and I, were a young couple looking to buy our first home in England. We were at a flat that we liked and we asked the agent who was showing us around about would the place cost. The agent told us the price and said that we could negotiate with the owners of the flat. He said that the owners are Jewish and added that they might squeal a bit. He used the word squeal which one would use for the noise a pig makes. It was a very racist thing to say, that the people who owned the flat would somehow want more money and would behave like animals. It was just a small moment, you know, it came and it went, but it was proof to me that there are still these attitudes. This man didn’t know that we were Jewish. We told him we were; he was very embarrassed. It was just a prejudice that just came out. But all the time, you know, even if it’s not me personally, there are these stereotypes that sort of live on, you know, this idea that Jews operate and conspire in secret networks. And so, I remember once at work, a friend of mine had phoned and left a message with a number, and the colleague who took the number said, one of your networks called. He didn’t say one of your friends, he said one of your networks. And he would never say that to somebody else, but the word came to his mind because he knew I was Jewish. And so immediately he thought Jews have networks as if they are sort of secretive.”
In India, there are two worlds. In one there’s a caste system where people are treated differently on the basis of their caste and in the other India, the caste system doesn’t matter. It is more cosmopolitan. Is it the same for Jews as well?
“I think that’s very interesting, what you said about India. Maybe it is something like that, where both things can exist at once, where on the one hand, you know, you can grow up and live without really encountering these prejudices. On the other, it’s there. So, for example, if you go past any Jewish building in London, or Paris, or Berlin, well I don’t know about America, but certainly in Europe, you will always see a security guard outside the door of a Jewish school, a kindergarten even, for three and four-year-old children because even these buildings are prone to attack. If you go to a synagogue or a Jewish house of worship, there has to be security anywhere in the places I’ve mentioned. We get used to it now, we’re just, that’s part of life. But that’s not there because people want to do it, that’s there because they have to do it. There is a security threat. So, these communities are living under threat. I’m not a particularly religious Jew, so I don’t wear a cap, but people who do wear a skull cap, are vulnerable in traveling around. Some choose now not to. Even if you just get on with your life, it’s there.”
To be continued…
This article by Shailaza Singh appeared in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on October 23, 2024.
‘What are you weaving?’ I asked,
She replied, ‘I am weaving my dreams.’
‘How do you weave dreams in a loom?
Sitting in a village, in a small little room?’
‘It is a magic rug that I am weaving you see,
I am weaving freedom to liberate me.’
I still was wondering, so I asked again.
‘How do you weave freedom with a rug?’
Just then her daughter came and gave her a hug.
‘This rug that I weave ensures that my daughter will go to school,
That she will stand up for herself and break the patriarchy’s rule
That she will follow her heart’s desire
That she will get wings to fly higher.’
She smiled as she wove, her smile singing a thousand songs,
The hapless dame had transformed into a woman- powerful and strong.
With her sang a thousand more,
As they tended to their families and finished their chores.
The rugs they wove,
Have woven their lives,
A tapestry of power, independence, honor and love
In which they now thrive.
-Shailaza Singh
I will not say that the fear is not real. Of course, it is! Because you are always worried about things like am I saying something wrong or am I crossing boundaries when I am talking to a senior from the industry. And also, you don’t have any backing. So, you don’t know where to fall back. I will come back to the class thing- the middle class. For example, I don’t have any kind of family money to fall back on. This is the only space I can succeed or fail. So, there is no option for failure.
Abhishek Banerjee is probably one of those rare breed of celebrities who are very prompt with their replies. A conversation with him is about living life king-size. His philosophy says to build a good life first and chase your dreams after that. Acting has been the first and foremost love for this casting director who is now living his dream. Some snippets from a wheeling conversation:
Did you always want to become an actor?
Yeah, since childhood. I did my first play, Ramayan in Kalpakkam, near Chennai, which is a nuclear power station. My dad who retired as a deputy commandant in CISF (Central Industrial Security Force) was posted there at the time. I was quite bad in it.
How do you know you were bad?
I saw the recording and I knew this was not good. But I worked on improving myself. Finally I came to Kirori Mal College in Delhi where I joined the Theatre Group and trained for three years. It was here that I learned all the basics of acting. After that, I went to Mumbai.
You are an actor as well as a casting director too. Has the actor in you ever interfered with the casting director or vice versa?
As a casting director, it interferes when I’m acting, because if I’m not able to do a particular scene, then I’m always going back to the basics of how I would direct an actor in the audition room. So sometimes I tend to direct myself when I’m not getting the notes right. I have always been greedy to act. But when I was casting, I was very professional. And I like that about myself. If you give me any job, I’ll forget about my selfish needs. I will first fulfill the job. Probably this is because of my dad’s defence background which made me a very disciplined kid. And I’ve seen him serve for the country selflessly. So I think that culture any army kid or any paramilitary defence kid will have. We would like to, , do the job first and then think about what we’re getting.
But the road to acting is full of struggles. Isn’t it?
I think I have always told myself that I don’t want to live in poverty and dream big. I always wanted to live my life first and then chase my dreams. I wanted everything. I wanted a car. I wanted a good house. I wanted to wear good clothes. I wanted to go for foreign holidays. And I didn’t want to wait till my acting career took off. Yes, in the last six years, I’ve been earning as an actor. But just think, if I hadn’t been able to earn before I got success as an actor, I wouldn’t have been able to travel abroad. I wouldn’t have been able to see Europe. I would have not been able to see the world, interact with people or eat amazing food.
And I seriously feel as children who belong to middle-class families it’s our responsibility to fulfill our life first. I never wanted to be a burden on my parents. I never wanted to make them break their provident fund or investments. I hear stories like that. I didn’t want to do that. So, I wanted to earn for myself, fend for myself, and then continue chasing my dream. Because I chose that dream, not them.
What happened with Dharma productions?
When I first came to Mumbai, my friend Anmol and I got a big opportunity to cast for the movie Agneepath starring Hrithik Roshan. But it didn’t work out for us because we were new and weren’t mature enough to cast a proper commercial film. We were doing Indie films. Okay. So we did not understand that for a film of that size and stature, we needed actors who have presence so that they don’t get overshadowed by huge stars Hrithik Roshan or Sanjay Dutt or Rishi Kapoor. Now I understand that. When I did a film like Veda, I understood that it takes a lot to stand in front of John Abraham. So, yeah that kind of maturity was not there.
Moreover, at the time I went back to my native place, Kharagpur, because my dad called me for Durga Puja. And those days, my dad was more important than my job. So, we could not work well. And they fired us. But these kind of things happen all the time. Many people get fired from many jobs.
Didn’t you feel depressed about such a setback in the very beginning of your career?
Of course! Both of us cried like babies I still remember Anmol and me, we went to meet Rajkumar Gupta, the same very Amar Kaushik, who directed me in Stree and Gautam Kishan Chandani, who was our casting director, our boss. And we were crying. Anmol was crying. He was in tears. I was not in tears, but I was almost teary. We thought our career was done and now nobody is going to give us jobs, etc.
But they made us realize that we could not take things so casually and we had to become more open-minded. After that debacle, the first movie that really gave us the confidence that we could make it in this industry was Akshay Kumar’s Gabbar which was produced by Sanjay Leela Bhansali.
Today, I am very proud that we both that despite the fact that I had no idea how of how this industry works and making such mistakes, I have been able to manage a place in this industry. And we learned from our mistakes. And we managed a place in this industry. And this is the thing which I want to share with the youngsters. Because usually what happens is, I have seen a lot of youngsters who get bitter. I worked with Dharma again on movies like Okay Jaanu, Kalank, Student of the Year 2, very recently Kill, Gyaara by Gyaara. I even acted in Dharma’s production, Ajeeb Daastan.
I will not say that the fear is not real. Of course, it is! Because you are always worried about things like am I saying something wrong or am I crossing boundaries when I am talking to a senior from the industry. And also, you don’t have any backing. So, you don’t know where to fall back. I will come back to the class thing- the middle class. For example, I don’t have any kind of family money to fall back on. This is the only space I can succeed or fail. So, there is no option for failure.
So, you have to guard yourself constantly?
Yeah, of course, I have to. And I have to also be very confident that I am here to do this. And I can do it. For me, both my movies, Veda and Stree 2 releasing on the same day is a big message for all the outsiders that there is a lot of hope only if you have the strength to survive. To face rejections and to fight on, to move on.
How did Stree happen and Jana happen?
So, during my struggle days, I was not getting any opportunity as an actor. Amar Kaushik, was the associate director to Rajkumar Gupta. And I was the associate casting director to Gautam Kishan Chandani. Okay. And Gautam sir and Raj sir are very good friends. And they used to always work together. And invariably, even I used to work with them. So, now, I used to give cues hope that one day Raj sir would give me a role. But that never happened. And Amar Kaushik somehow saw the potential in me, always. We became friends. After some time we did Devasheesh Makhija’s film Ajji. Amar saw it and loved my work. And then, a few years down the line, he made this short film called Abba which won the Berlin Best Film in the finale. And I saw that film and I was blown away. I could not believe a guy who dances to Govinda songs, remembers dialogues of Kader Khan, making a film so fine and so refined like Abba. So, I complimented him on the movie but that was that at the time. Later on, I worked with him on No One Killed Jessica and Go Goa Gone, all small roles. And then I got to know that he’s making Stree. I immediately called him up. He asked me to audition for Jana, a cute and innocent character. The problem was I’m just not like Jana in real life. I’m very street-smart and a go-getter, completely antithesis of Jana. So, I told him that, no, I don’t want to do this cowardly character. I want to do Bittu. He’s more like me. And he said, no, no, no, we are considering Aparshakti Khurana for that. So, I just went ahead and gave the audition for Jana. And the minute I gave it, I knew this is me. Now, as a grown-up Abhishek, I’m unlike Jana. But when I was a boy called Gola (my Bengali nickname) I was exactly like Jana. I was a scared kid, mama’s boy, so yes I could play Jana with ease when I channeled my inner child.
According to you, do girls have more reason to become stree or the boys Sarkata in today’s world?
Oh, no, no. The women have more reason to become stree. Because stree is power. And I think that’s what we’ve always talked about in the film. That women can do anything.
Are you somebody who believes in ghosts?
I believe in energies.
So, did you have any experiences while shooting?
One night, me and Rajkumar were sitting and eating food in Chanderi. Our staff had gone back. It was late at night. Suddenly, we heard a noise. I immediately grabbed a stick that was lying nearby. And Rajkumar was very scared. And we both were discussing what to do. The noise was getting louder. It sounded as if someone was heavily panting. And I was like really getting scared. Because we were alone in that hotel. It was not a 5-star. It was just a guest house. There was no security, nothing. We kept contemplating for a while. We started following the noise. And the panting kept increasing. And it was like really growing louder and louder. And finally, we gathered some courage and we peeped from the wall of the guest house. And we just saw a huge monkey coughing. The monkey was looking at us. We are looking at the monkey. The monkey just showed us some teeth. And he just ran off. He climbed the tree and started coughing there. I have never seen a monkey with a bad cold. Poor guy!
Now how has your life changed after Stree 2?
I am back on the sets and suddenly I am getting some lead role offers. Which is great. I have been waiting for that. A lot of people have called. People now know me on the road. It feels great. Famous is one thing. And to be loved for your craft is another thing. So, when you have both that’s an amazing space to be in.
So which set are you back in?
It is a new movie called Hisab directed by Vipul Shah
–Concluded
This article by Shailaza Singh was published in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on September 6, 2024
Amar Kaushik, the director of movies like Bhediya, Bala, Stree and most recently Stree 2 is what you would call a complete movie buff. He has grown up watching movies, he lives movies, breathes movies, and even makes movies!
When you first start talking to Amar Kaushik, it is difficult to imagine this soft-spoken man as the director of movies like Stree, Munjya and the current reigning blockbuster Stree 2. You would imagine him to direct a gentle romance rather than a horror comedy. But then appearances can be deceptive. When he gets talking, his tales can completely captivate you and then you realize what makes him such a great story teller.
Some excerpts:
What are your earliest memories of your childhood?
My father was a forest ranger. When he was posted in Arunachal Pradesh, we used to hire VCRs and watch films. We always had electricity outages. So, we used to finish one film in three days depending on the electricity. So, when I would watch the movie, it would stay with me for all the time. I remember watching movies like Khoon Bhari Mang, Maine Pyaar Kiya, and all those Hindi classical, 90s films.
So, did your time there influence the movies that you have made so far?
Yes, my movie Bhediya has a lot of influence from that part because I have lived near jungles and watched my father. At that time, he had to battle a lot of smuggling of wood and trees. So, I did use a lot of those memories in Bhediya.
What about Stree and Munjya? Where did those movies come from?
These movies have been inspired a lot by Kanpur, where I did my college. Things like friendship of friends, the small town environment, how friends keep talking for hours about the same thing, how in every group there is a person who gives of gyan, how every little thing is blown into a big thing.
Let us talk about the Stree movies. In the first one, the Stree abducts the men and in the second one, the women are being abducted. How did you come about the idea for the second one?
This was the demand of the script. In the first one, Stree has left, so what was next? Niren Bhatt, the writer and I had a lot of discussions. In the first part, we already had established the back story of why Stree was killed and how she comes back to exact vengeance from those who killed her. So we decided to bring back the character who had killed her and whom she had killed in return by chopping off his head. So, we got this character called Sarkata. He was someone who could not handle modern women and believes that women should be subjugated and enslaved.
So, he comes back as a ghost and starts abducting those women who were modern in their thinking. But it takes time for the townspeople to realize that someone is abducting the girls. Initially, everyone thinks that since the girls were modern, they were simply running away in pursuit of better opportunities. The irony was that in the first part, when the boys were disappearing, everyone knew that they were being abducted by Stree but in the second part when the girls were disappearing, no one thought that someone was abducting them. So our film starts from that point where we see that the Sarkata has captured this girl and taken her to his realm by breaking the wall of her house in the process. It is then everyone realizes that the girls are not running away but they are being abducted. And that’s how the story started. We then started developing the characters integrating the old stories and tried to figure out who would rescue these women and who Shraddha Kapur’s character was. Every answer came after that.
The VFX in Stree 2 are even better than the first part. How did that happen?
We used to see a lot of foreign movies with such amazing effects and often get frustrated about why can’t we do it in Indian cinema. These effects demand a lot of money and obviously, one doesn’t have that much money because the collections are not that much. So, you need to be smart enough to invest your energy and money in small sequences and show parts of the entity. Sometimes, you show the head, and sometimes you show the hand or the leg in small sequences throughout the movie to create the mystery and so that you can spend more money on making the climax grand. Yes, it has been a gradual learning process and now we have an excellent VFX team. For each scene, we had a lot of discussions. For example, in the scene where Shraddha Kapoor gets into the body of Rajkumar Rao, I used the concept of Ardnarishwar but I wanted to do it differently. In most movies, we see that once the ghost gets into the body, you just see the other person and not the ghost. I wanted to see both of them even though she entered his body. So that was something we experimented in VFX.
So, how do you create the balance to enhance your horror elements without overshadowing the comedy parts?
When it comes to horror comedies, we are very clear that if this is horror, then we should treat this as a proper horror sequence. We should not buffoon this. We should go full horror in those things. And people should feel that. And then comedy should come very organically from that scene. It’s a very difficult thing. Actually, while doing such scenes of horror, one has to be serious. And then you also have to be aware of the kind of mood on the sets. For example, in the case of horror, no one should laugh or smile. Then I put something in between that sequence where humor comes from. For example, lets say everyone is quiet in a scene and then someone will suddenly say ‘Bhago’ and his way of running will be very funny. Or maybe they are running and someone has said something and the other person reacts to it, which can be very funny and then they realize that they are being pursued by the ghost and they start running again. So, it’s these little things that strike a balance between horror and comedy. So, first you need to get it down on paper and then handle all the sequences on a scene-by-scene basis.
Laughter is probably one of the most difficult things to do. While shooting do you have a measure of how would the final scene be? Whether the intended humour will make people laugh or not.
I go by my instinct. I keep looking at my script and monitor. And the scenes are shot quite organically. One character says something and the other one replies. So, you have to take shots with three different cameras. But then the magic also lies in the editing. How you will cut the scene, how you will edit it out, where you have to stop the punch where you have to make the music stick, where you need silence, all those things add to that horror. If you’re just standing and saying the lines, but the reaction isn’t correct, or the music isn’t correct, or the situation isn’t correct, or the camera angle isn’t correct, then it doesn’t work. But when everything comes together, obviously you need the best of the actors to do comedy. The way they react to the dialogue, they have to keep on repeating every time. For example, if there are five takes or ten takes, they have to keep on repeating the same energy, the same joke in the same manner. So you have to have very great actors to do comedy. And then there are some other aspects, like the music, how to sound, how to edit. So when the public sees all of this, they enjoy it. That’s interesting. Because you say a joke, so you have to say it once and laugh. How do you make them laugh again? How do you do this And then you have to ask yourself, yes, this will work, this won’t work. Ultimately depends on the director’s instinct.
When you do a movie or an artwork, it’s like your own child. Don’t you get biased towards it? Like how do you develop an objective view?
One understands these things. Sometimes what happens is, the actor is not comfortable while saying that line. It all depends on how that line is coming out of his mouth. So the actor has to be very comfortable while saying that line. You need to understand every joke’s germ. Why is this joke coming out? Sometimes what happens is, you’ve written it well, but when you say it, it doesn’t work. Then you need to, as a director, you change a few things, change a few lines, and then change the mood, change the lines and the way it is to be said. Like how to say it. This isn’t working, let’s say this. Then you develop by gelling up with the actors, that this isn’t working, let’s do something more. And then they give you a character-related something.
You’ve had the same actors for the two movies. Have the actors also helped you by evolving into their characters? For example, there’s Shraddha Kapoor, or there’s Rajkumar Rao. He probably knows more about Vicky because he’s lived it. So, does that help the director?
Yes, obviously. The actors know these things. With the actors, like Vicky and Jana, they know their characters. So, it is very easy for them to just come and start doing the same thing. Get into the skin of the character. And they’ve lived the characters for the last five years. They know that character very well. But after that, you have to stop them from overdoing anything because there is a chance of that too.
But you’ve used a lot of legends. People are bringing it up on the internet that there’s a British Army officer in Lansdowne whose head was chopped off and he roams around as a headless ghost. Did you do any research on this?
No, not at all. In the film when Chanderi Puran is being narrated by Rudra Bhaiya, it was said that Stree came back and chopped off the head of the person who murdered her. So when he comes back, his whole body can’t come with his head. His head will have to be shown as separated from the body.
Any scary incidents on your film set while filming? Did anything happen?
Yeah, a little bit. Whenever we go for a shoot, we go to locations where there are spooky locations. Because it makes our work easier. I intentionally ask the team to look for spooky locations. So when the actors reach there, they get to know the stories of the place and obviously, they are scared and when they shoot the scene, they look scared. So half the work is done!
You didn’t get scared while making the film?
Yeah, but that’s what I made the movie. To exorcise my fear!
Normally, in every movie, there is a point when people see their mobile phones because the sequences get repetitive. How did you ensure that the audience remained interested?
This is what my agenda has been whenever someone watches my movie, they should always remain on the edge. They should be so involved that they don’t want to miss any dialogues. So, I try to pace the movie in such a way that my audience should always be engrossed in the movie completely because I get irritated when someone is looking at their mobile in the middle of the movie.
To be continued………..
This article by Shailaza Singh appeared in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on September 5, 2024
Though he has a master’s degree in engineering followed by MBA, Niren Bhatt’s life has always been about writing. He has written plays in his school, and in college and now he writes for a living. The stupendous success of Stree2 has made him the cynosure of all eyes. Some excerpts from a recent interview:
How did you get into writing?
I grew up in a small city called Bhavnagar in Gujrat where only 1 or 2% of people speak Hindi apart from that everyone speaks Gujarati. But my mother was a professor of sociology and she used to take me to her college. There she introduced me to the library. She used to take me to youth festivals and that was my first introduction to theatre. I found it so fascinating that I started doing and writing plays in my school. I wrote a lot of plays in my college too and some of them even won state and national awards. I was a good student and I continued doing theatre and even wrote songs. Most of my plays were very popular because they were musicals.
But if you were so inclined towards writing, why didn’t you choose it as a career in the initial days?
(Laughs). I was good in my studies so it was natural that I would do masters in my engineering and then MBA. These days, there is a joke going around in the industry that with double masters in engineering and management, I am the most educated writer here! So, once I completed my engineering, I worked in a corporate setup for like around four years I was a business consultant at a cushy corporate job with a big fat salary.
When did you realize that writing was your first and only love?
After some years in the corporate world. I realized that this life doesn’t belong to me and I don’t belong to this world. I am a creative person and I need to find my own thing. So that’s when I started writing alongside my corporate career. Managing two things at the same time was very hectic but I started writing plays, films, songs and whatever came my way. It was in 2011 that I finally left my job and became a full time writer.
Didn’t your family object?
Initially my parents didn’t know. I didn’t tell them. My wife knew and she being an artist supported me wholeheartedly. It was when I started writing for Tarak Mehta ka Oolta Chashmah and it became the most popular show in the country that I told my parents about my writing and that I had left my job. For my mother, it was a matter of pride and she also supported me in my decision. Somehow my life in a way built by very strong females. My mother, and my wife, have always supported me and motivated me and somewhere I think it reflects in my writing also.
What inspires you to write the horror genre; especially the horror comedy?
I have always been writing comedy from the very beginning. Whether it was serials like Tarak Mehta Ka Oolta Chashmah or movies like Bala or Bhediya, comedy has been predominant in my work.
I always had a fascination with horror because I’m a very voracious reader. I read a lot whether it is Hindi literature or Urdu literature or Gujarati literature or English literature. So, I was a big fan of authors like Neil Gaiman and Stephen King, Peter Straub and I have devoured almost all their books. I actually started my writing career in television with a horror show. It was called Yeh Kaali Kaali Raate which was produced by Rajiv Mehra, who later made films like Chamatkar (starring Shahrukh Khan, Nasiruddin Shah) and serials like Office Office (starring Pankaj Kapur).
Could full time writing support you financially initially?
In the initial days of switching my career from the corporate world to full time writing, I was very speculative whether I’ll be able to survive or make enough money from writing or not. But I took a plunge and in a couple of years, I think things fell in place and I started writing episodes for Tarak Mehta ka Oolta Chashmah.
Now, by that time, I had written story and lyrics for a Gujarati film. It was called Bey Yaar which became a very big hit. From there, my Gujarati film career also took off. So, parallelly, I was writing television, Gujarati films, songs, and Hindi films. Some of them worked, some of them didn’t. I also wrote for OTT which made me confident that my writing would be able to support me.
How did Stree 2 happen?
The first movie Stree was based on a folk legend called Nale ba. Naleba is a legend of Karnataka. For many years in the past people used to write Nale Ba which means come tomorrow on their doors because they believed that evil spirits roamed around in the night and could be distracted by writing Nale Ba. So, the first story was written by Raj and DK. I loved the first part and the crazy energies of all these actors. Amar Kaushik, the director roped me in for the second part. By that time we had already done movies like Bala, Bhediya and a couple of other films that Amar was directing. So, we already had a four-year-long association. The final script of the movie happened only after rigorous writing for around two and a half years and about 15 to 17 drafts later.
How did the drafts change in those years?
We had two completely different versions of it. When we started working on Bhediya and we discovered what all we could do with VFX. So, for Stree 2 we wrote a completely new version of it and then it also went through, like, numerous drafts. Because, see, in this kind of film, you need to write a lot because it’s also about the dialogue. It is not just about the progression of the story. For example, we showed Shama, the girl friend of Pankaj Tripathi who was mentioned in the first part. For a movie to become an enjoyable experience for the viewer and the creators, one has to do a lot of brainstorming. Characters are created, discarded, written about, and sometimes included but in the end, it has to satisfy the needs of the narrative and the story.
Who are involved in this kind of brainstorming?
It is generally between Amar Kaushik and me. I throw up an idea, he throws two ideas back at me, then we decide, out of all these three ideas, what we want to do and then I write down with dialogues and everything and then we take a call whether it’s working or not. If I have some concerns, I raise them to him and tell him that see, I think, this scene is good, but it can be better with dialogue, but it has this kind of a flaw. So, if he has a fix to it, then, he says that we can fix it in this way, but, these dialogues are working. So, this is how we have worked. Though it is a hard process to follow, I think it has worked for us.
How does writing for a web series differ from writing for a movie?
Writing for a web series in a way is very fulfilling for a writer because the film has only about 120 to 140 minutes of the story. It is like fitting an elephant into a matchbox! And I love all my characters in whatever movies or series I have written. So, I would like to go into all their stories. I would like to explore all their equations, but films are more or less about the hero’s journey and it has a plot that follows one person’s journey mainly.
And that’s why the scope of exploration of all other stories is less in films. Hence writing for OTT is a dream for a writer, but it’s a very hard process because again, it’s like, like I said, it’s 120, 140 pages in films, but in OTT is 500 pages of script. It’s like writing a novel. Okay. There are like six to eight episodes, each episode is supposed to be like a film, it is supposed to have a beginning, middle, and an end. It is also supposed to have a cliffhanger, which will, make people watch the next episode and binge-watch the whole show. And it is also supposed to have a story of a full season. On top of it is also supposed to have a broader story, which will span across two or three seasons. Yes, it gives you a lot of opportunities as a writer, but it’s a very tough job.
What is the life of a writer like? What’s your daily schedule?
I used to be a very erratic writer when I started because I was working so hard and also doing a corporate job. With time, I have learnt. I read a lot of books on productivity and time management, what are the psychological challenges one faces as a writer or as any creative, and how to overcome them. That gives me a perspective of what to do. I try to keep it very simple. I try to be like a clerk in a bank in terms of following a schedule of writing.
I normally wake up around 8 or 9 am and go about my morning routine. For some time, I read and then I take a walk or go to the gym. At about 10.30 or 11, I start writing. I write till about 2 or 3 pm. If there are any meetings scheduled, I go for those. Once I come back, after everyone is asleep, around 9 or 9.30 pm, I write again till 11 or 11.30 or even 12, depending on the deadlines. There have been times I have written for the whole day and whole night. But now I avoid writing nights because it is not a very healthy schedule to follow. When I was writing television, I wrote a lot of nights.
Do you write longhand or on the computer?
I’m a techie. I write using my computer. And so I have a desk which is a standing cum sitting desk. I have a mechanical keyboard. I adjust the laptop at different levels so that my neck and fingers don’t get hurt. I’ve had all sorts of health issues related to writing, sometimes finger pains, sometimes shoulder pain, and sometimes neck pains. And all those are recurring physical issues associated with writers. Then I consulted doctors and they advised me to spend money on ergonomic equipment, ergonomic stands, ergonomic chairs, ergonomic tables, mouse, a keyboard, so that I can work for long hours without harming my body.
Have you ever been spooked?
I never get spooked. I am a person of science. And now if you ask me, personally, I don’t believe in ghosts. I like the idea of it. Because somewhere ghosts are metaphors. For example Sarkata is basically a metaphor for patriarchy. Pankaj Tripathi says also that he is Chanderi ka Pitru who has come back to establish his power. So pitru is basically patriarchy. So I mean, ghosts for me represent different aspects of humans.
How much of your writing is modified on the set?
A lot of it. Okay, because we have a process, me and Amar that, I always have to be on sets of all my films. And I sit next to him. And we both are looking at the scene and we are talking constantly whether it’s better than what we have written or it’s not coming out as we expected. Who is doing what, which is like taking the scene in that direction? So what can be funnier in this? Of course, our actors are champions. So Raj Kumar Rao, Abhishek Banerjee, and Pankaj Tripathi add lots of things they are performing in the scene. A lot of improvisations happen on set.
After the shooting for the day is over, I rewrite the next day’s scenes again and I think the best one-liners and the best dialogues have come from there.
What advice would you give to someone who is new in the industry or wants to make a career in the industry?
I always have the same advice for me as well as anyone who wants to make it big in the field of writing. It is a hard thing to do but the foremost thing to do is to cultivate discipline in your writing. The second thing is to read a lot because the more you read, the better you will get in writing.
…To be continued
The white screen, the cold machine
The black fonts
Can they convey the feeling or the care?
The cursor blinks and stares
The wordy promises, the smilies everywhere.
The Gifs of love, affection and passion.
The chats with an unseen stranger
The bold confessions
Who is it on the other side pretending to be the perfect mate?
The caring goodmornings and the messages’ spate.
The lonely get lonelier, entangled in the emotive wires.
For the moneyed, love can even be hired.
The rest keep wandering in the labyrinth of desires.
Will these miniscule drops douse that fire?
No man is an island no longer holds true
Each one a floating lone boat
Eternally searching for his island new…..
– Shailaza Singh
Marcus du Sautoy is a professor of mathematics who loves to play games with Maths. Though initially he found math tough, once he discovered the magic of Math, there was no going back.
For most of us, a person good in mathematics would perhaps look like a nerd, wear high power spectacles and would constantly prefer company of books over humans. At least, that is the perception we have grown up with. However, Marcus Du Sautoy begs to differ. Marcus is a British mathematician, Simonyi Professor of Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, Fellow of New College, Oxford and the author of well-known books that dispel the myth and terror associated with mathematics. When I caught up with him for a tet-e-tat on the sidelines of the Jaipur Literature Festival this year, I realized mathematics was not just about numbers but also nature. Some excerpts from a freewheeling chat with the man who loves to play games with math.
What is it like to visit the Jaipur Literature Festival?
Oh! Its hectic but so much fun. I get to talk about everything. I have been to seven sessions and each session has been a different experience. Today was games, yesterday was parenting in the digital age, I have done AI and publishing, AI and creativity, and tonight I’m talking about free speech.
So what do you like about the Jaipur Literature Festival?
This is my fourth time at the Jaipur Literature Festival. I love the fact that it brings so many people from different disciplines, different countries, different philosophies, and that I think is what’s so exciting, sharing time with people with very different ways of looking at the world. So, I’m a scientist, so it’s nice to bring a scientific perspective on political issues, for example. I like the variety.
Have you been to Jaipur before?
I love coming to India, and especially Rajasthan. Last year I came with my wife, and after the festival we travelled around Jodhpur, Udaipur, and I’ve been also other places before that. And in Jodhpur we got to know a very wonderful family who are into making carpets, and today I’m having two carpets delivered to my hotel from the family. We are good friends with them. They invited us to their daughter’s wedding, but unfortunately it was two weeks before the festival, so we couldn’t go.
Was mathematics easy for you as a child?
Math wasn’t necessarily easy for me. I think that you have to remember that mathematics is a little bit like learning a musical instrument. You can’t play the piano immediately. You have to practice, spend time in that world, and gradually it gets easier.
I think people have to remember that you don’t have to get everything right the first time, but you have to understand why you got something wrong and learn from that. I only fell in love with mathematics when I was about 12 or 13, and the key for me was seeing some exciting stories of mathematics, not just doing multiplication and all the technical side. And again, it’s like learning an instrument.
If you just did scales and arpeggios, you get bored. That’s not music. Sometimes I feel like the mathematics taught in school is not the real mathematics. Fortunately, I had was a teacher who showed me these stories about math. Things about prime numbers, Fibonacci numbers, infinity, geometry, and for me, that was what made me fall in love with the subject, seeing there were so many exciting stories inside there, which if I had learnt the mathematics I did at school, I’d be able to understand or now write myself.
Okay, can you share some of those stories, maybe one story about what made it so interesting for you?
Yeah, sure for example, Fibonacci numbers, which many kids might see, but it’s not on curriculum. So these are numbers which go 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, and there’s a pattern because you add the two previous numbers. 5 plus 8 gives you 13, 8 plus 13 gives you 21, 13 plus 21 gives you 34. So, these numbers are growing out of the other numbers. Now, these numbers are all over nature. If you count the number of petals on a flower, it’s either 5 or 8 or 13. If you cut open a fruit, like an apple, you get a 5-pointed star. A banana has a 3-pointed star, a persimmon has an 8. If you take a pineapple and you count the number of cells, it’s a Fibonacci number. When I tell this to my children respond about nature doing mathematics, they start thinking that math must be important, it’s not something arbitrary. But the other beautiful thing is these numbers are important in music as well. If you’re a drummer, a tabla player, with long and short beats, the number of rhythms goes in this sequence, 5, 8, 13. So for me, that’s the kind of story you want to tell. Then the numbers start to creep into nature, into music, into poetry. And then that connects with the things, you know, maybe your child is not immediately interested in numbers, but they might like music. Or they might like the garden. For me, that’s the key, is finding why mathematics is everywhere. And then the children start saying, I want to understand the world, I need to understand maths.
How can teachers convert mathematics into a game for children?
I think we’re in a golden age where a teacher who may not be so confident with mathematics can still teach well because there are lots of resources on the internet that they can use to try and help the children. In particular, for example, I created an internet maths school based on gaming. It’s called MangaHigh.com, and what we did was to take the mathematical curriculum, turn it into a game and then the kids learn the mathematics by playing the game. And the game is clever enough so it understands, well, the student is finding this difficult, so it takes them down a level to lift their confidence up, or if a student is just eating it all up, so it pushes them to the higher levels. I think we’re in a great age where technology can help a teacher to, not replace a teacher.
Somewhere, you said that there is a possibility that AI can become conscious. What if that happens? Will we be in danger?
With new technologies, there are always positives and negatives, and it’s about how we use that technology. So, if AI becomes conscious, we want it to be empathetic to the human race. We can we create AI that understands us and we understand it. So as with any new relationship, it’s about building trust. If the thing is conscious, it’s sophisticated, then we’ll understand because we want to create an AI which isn’t incentivized to wipe out humanity.
How can that happen?
I think what AI is very good at is learning behaviours. So if we give it empathetic behaviour, then it will produce empathetic results. If we lead it astray by depicting abusive behaviour, it will respond with abusive results. We’ve seen many examples of this, where a chatbot put online interacts with people who are racist, misogynist, and it learns how to repeat that, and that’s what we don’t want. We’re at the momentin control of its evolution, and so we need to take responsibility to take it in a positive direction.
Does that mean that if we create robots or anything, it will learn that behaviour?
Yes. And unfortunately, because it’s learning on human behaviour, and human behaviour is not always terribly good, there are dangers that this thing is learning to succeed at the expense of everybody else. That is not a great learning model.
So, will we need to reformat the humans first?
(Laughs) I think so, right? That’s a very good way to put it. But I think that’s what’s interesting and I think people don’t realize this, the AI that is emerging is a reflection of our values and our way of looking at the world, because it’s learning from our world, our art, our writing, our literature. And so it’s not a new thing. It’s a new take on an old thing, which is humanity.
..To Be Continued
This article by Shailaza Singh appeared in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on July 10, 2024
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