Infotainment Kaleidoscope

I am sure every one of us has at least one experience in life where we have resented something, someone, someplace in the beginning, but eventually our views have changed. Until about 20 years ago, I used to be a proud resident of Mulund, Mumbai. Even today, I love visiting my family there, and having spent the first 23 years of my life, including my childhood, school, college and the early days of my career in Mulund, the suburb will always carry a special place in my heart. In those days, Mulund being the last central suburb of Mumbai, any suburbs further north were considered as a bit under developed. I had a lot of friends from places like Thane, Dombivli, Kalyan and even beyond, and we Mumbaikars used to often tease them as "gaon waale" or villagers. Of course it was just for fun because we never really let any geographical boundaries interfere with our friendship. But more than that, whenever we used to visit any friends staying beyond Thane, we dreaded the crowd...

Once upon a time, there was a 10 year old boy named Sandeep. He was good at drawing. But very soon he started getting overconfident about himself. Whenever with his friends, he boasted about being the best artist in the class. His classmates seemed to be quite impressed with him. There was another boy in his class named Sohan. Although he worked very hard and was very good at drawing, he was humble and never praised himself in the company of friends. Then came a time when the teacher announced a drawing competition to be held after one week. Sandeep, being very sure about his drawing skills did not think it necessary to practice for the competition. However, Sohan practiced his drawing skills daily and prepared himself for the competition. On the day of the competition, Sandeep drew a river and a boat, but did not colour it well. At many instances his colours went outside the picture border due to lack of practice. On the other hand, Sohan drew a beautiful painting of a lands...

Once there lived a young and ambitious man named Sohail on the outskirts of Mumbai. He wanted to start a business and noticed there was not a single sweets shop in his neighborhood for about 5 km. He therefore, bought a shop in his locality and started selling sweets. The quality of sweets he sold was excellent, people liked the taste of the food and his business started flourishing. The immediate success in business made Sohail overconfident and he soon started being arrogant to his customers. He also began using low standard materials for preparing sweets, due to which the quality of his products deteriorated. Another young man, Sunil identified this as a great business opportunity and set up another sweet shop at some distance from Sohail’s shop. He sold better quality sweets than Sohail and was also clever enough to be polite to his customers, thus gaining their trust. Very soon, most of Sohail’s customers shifted over to buying sweets from Sunil’s shop. Within a few ...

Once there were two classmates, Sohan and Rohan, studying in Std. V. While Sohan was sincere in his work and always completed studies on time, Rohan always idled away his time either playing or watching television. He did not realize the importance of time and believed he could pass easily by studying a few days before the exams. As time passed, both friends grew up. Sohan continually performed well in his studies. Rohan did not really fail in the exams, but saw his grades deteriorating each year. Parents, teachers as well as Sohan advised Rohan about the ill effects of his lazy attitude. However, Rohan ignored everyone’s advice. Finally, both friends reached Std. X, the last year in school. Everyone was working hard, since after the final exams, there would be a fierce competition to get admission in colleges for higher education. Rohan still did not change himself. During the exams, Sohan secured an excellent score of 96% marks and obtained admission in one of the best ...

Once there were two friends, Sandeep and Mohan studying in Class VI. Both were good at drawing and coloring. Sandeep was very over confident about his skills and used to boast about how fast he can complete his drawings. Mohan on the other hand had a systematic approach and gave attention to the details rather than concentrating only on speed. He also practiced the art regularly. During the drawing competition at school, Sandeep drew a beautiful landscape very fast. However he made haste while coloring the picture due to which he missed out filling up a few areas, as well as the colors overlapped borders at many places. Mohan too drew a fabulous landscape, and took due care to color the picture without any errors. When the results were declared, it turned out the Mohan had won the first prize, while Sandeep, due to his haste had lost out. Even the second and third prizes were bagged by other students who performed better than him. So friends, we must always remember that “...