For those who don’t know me: I’m writing this as an Indian First, then an Andhra Pradesh Native and then an Hyderabadi.
 
This part of the post is to all the Telengana agitators and supporters – NOTHING is going to change people. It is you who should change. All you will be left with is dirty politics, corruption and naxalism. TRS or Congress or any other party is doing what ever you think ‘they are doing for good’ is NOT for your good but for the temporary power and to make something out of your sentiment. They are going to LOOT you. Everyone has a regional sentiment. That doesn’t mean you should go on the roads, protest and pelt stones at whatever you can when some selfish man says we need a separate state so that he too can be in power, don’t you think of how is it going to benefit you? How is it going to be different? Unless you are planning to send out all Andhra people out of Hyderabad and occupy their homes and properties. Is that your plan? Because I remember very well KCR saying this a few days back "Andhrawala Bhagoo, Telenganawala Jaago". Is that what you are up to? If that’s the case, then bring it on. We are all used to fighting for everything right? Fight with other states, fight with other religions, fight with other castes, fight with everyone you can whenever you get a chance. That is how we are always in India right? Bring It On!!!

Me and my wife have the same kind of mindset (lucky for me) and have been thinking we should do something to contribute for a greener tomorrow. But how? Where do we start? Our first thought was avoiding the use of plastic bags completely. Plastic bags have become a way of life here in Hyderabad and of course all over India. You only use plastic bags even though you have a choice. You use plastic bags because they come for free with shopping and you don’t have to carry anything while going to shopping. Well its easy that way right? But lately, we should learn that each family can use a significant number of plastic bags every year (about 200-500). Yes that’s a very little number of bags in an estimated 5 Billion used worldwide every year. That’s 500,000,000,000 ? That’s 1 million bags every minute? Lets not think at a level of filling the underground drainage with plastic bags and overflowing drains. Talk about destroying the planet with plastic, trash and pollution. Like the movie Wall-E?

Avoiding plastics may be a very small thing. But I guess its a good start for a better tomorrow.

Like Al Gore says in his presentations,
Our children might think..
“What were our parents thinking?”
We have to hear that question. Now!

Ya we heard that! Did you?

We want to spread the word as we follow it. But no resources are available. I mean a jute bag or a cloth bag with a message on it about avoiding plastics. Where do we get something like that? And how do we let others also use those bags with a message? How can we make our thought bigger? Much Bigger? How?

Share your thoughts and let us know your suggestions. And in the first place let us know if you are with us in this?

Celebrate your Vinayaka Chavithi Vratham / Ganesh Chaturthi with the help of these MP3 and PDF downloads.

Photo courtesy: Flickr

Thought to share this on my blog so that it might be helpful for several others in the future as it was to me this year.

The archives contain the following files:
1. Puja in Telugu Document (end.Vinayaka_vratha_kalpam.pdf)
2. Sanskrit/Telugu Puja Audio (end.sri.vinayaka.chavithi.pooja.plus.katha.mp3)
3. Puja in English Document (vinayaka_english.pdf)
4. Puja in telugu document (vinayaka_telugu.pdf)
5. Puja in Telugu Audio (puja.mp3)
6. Kadha in Telugu Audio (katha.mp3)

Download the files here:
.Rar download: (3 parts for easy download – 29.5, 29.5, 27.3 MB files)
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

.Zip Download:
Single file download (87MB)

Kamal Hassan’s Dasavatharam which is releasing today (June 13 ), is expected to hit the screens with around 1,000 prints in Tamil, Telugu and Hindi. In Kerala it is releasing in 75 screens, while in Andhra in 250 screens.

In non-southern markets movie is beeing released with about 60 prints with sub-titles across the country- the largest release a regional film has witnessed.

Theatres in Chennai are screening around 45 shows a day in 21 theatres as opposed to Rajinikant’s Sivaji, which was released last year in 17 theatres.

Kamal Hassan is making a comeback after two years… so, anticipation for the film has skyrocketed so very high.

I am eager to watch the movie this weekend in Hyderabad.

Update (June 16th, 2008):
Watched the movie on Saturday. Its no where to my expectations except the first 15min of the movie. Rest of it goes on and on and on… and I felt as if I was sitting in the theater for half a day. I heard that the budget was 60 Crore Rupees and the graphics costed a lot of money. But after watching it, I guess even 6 Crores is waste paying for the graphics. Very cheap and silly graphics. No quality at all. Kamal, you should have gone for a better animation company. Coming to the makeup; Only 2 makeups were good enough. Rest of them were crappy and scary. By the way, the picture in this post is NOT showing the original characters played by Kamal. That one is some imaginative designer’s work misguiding people.

I recently saw the movie Forbidden Kingdom and I would say the old man’s makeup on Jackie Chan is
what our Industry makeup standards should be like.

Though I didn’t like the Movie “Dasavatharam”, I would say Kamal has guts to do this movie. I’m sure no other actor can even attempt to do a movie like this just because of too many links and roles.

If I have to remake the move, I would say, the whole of the movie should be like the first 15 min. May be all roles should be historic and powerful, all the roles NEED NOT be linked in one story, there could be multiple stories shown from the history and someone can narrate the stories in between…. well thats what I expected to be in the movie.

I would say, If you still didn’t watch this movie, you can wait for the DVD/CD to be released and watch it at home.

In the recent times, I have enjoyed nothing better than this one.

I Don’t know where to start but before I write about our recent Delhi-Nainital Trip, I wanted to write about this because this is more heart felt than anything else.