Infotainment Kaleidoscope

Anyone born in the 70's and 80's would know how exciting it was when school vacations started. No more studies, no more nagging teachers and parents for a full 2 months, which felt like being on top of the world. Be it playing Hide-n-Seek, Kabaddi, Kho-kho, Lagori, Langdi,  or activities like cycling, swimming, badminton with friends was always fun. No special efforts were needed to exercise and keep fit. Getting sunlight and fresh air was a routine rather than a dedicated effort. Television had only one national channel (Doordarshan) that broadcasted news and entertainment programmes for 3-4 hours, beyond which other entertainment options had to be explored for good. Over the past 20 odd years, gadgets like video games, mobiles and tablets have gradually influenced our lives greatly. Children prefer communicating on social media and messenger more than spending time with each other personally. Computer and mobile games have taken the place of physical activities. Kids are a...

This is probably one of the best theme parks in the country, with innovative rides for almost all age groups, and the max thrill rides steal the show. We visited the park on Tuesday since the discount seemed quite attractive, however that was a mistake I'll not repeat. Though the Imagica site touts the Tuesday offer as "Limited tickets" available for pre-bookings, it turns out the tickets are not limited after all. It is a very clever trick to attract as large a crowd as possible, at the cost of reducing the fun offered. The crowd on Tuesdays is just too much for the park to handle, and queues for each ride extend up to 90 minutes or even more. We were just able to complete 4 rides in a single day, since most of our time was wasted in queues. The only rides we could get into were: - Nitro: simply awesome - Gold Rush Express: Great roller coaster, though slightly mild as compared to Nitro) - I for India: a unique experience which should not be missed - Curse ...

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 ...