MUKESH AMBANI'S YACHT

The photos look "extremely fake" to me... but still, i got this one from someone so I'm forwarding to you all.

 

 

 

 

 

MUKESH AMBANI HAS JUST ORDERED THIS YACHT.......         COST 20 MILLION EUROS WILL BE PARKED AT BREACH CANDY, Mumbai .....   A famous French shipbuilder ship company and one from Monaco joined hands together to build this yacht with enormous dimensions... Its 58 meters long and 38 meters wide.   The yacht... with a floor area of 3400 M2 (36600 Sq. feet.)   with accommodation for 12 passengers and 20 crew members. This is a "green" yacht. It use green energy for 20-30% fuel savings and 40-50% electricity consumption on board.   Therefore it has 900M2 (9700 Sq. feet.) equipped with solar panels, producing a daily output of 500 kW. Three decks, a 25 meter pool, a spa, a heli-pad, a 100M2 (1080 Sq. feet.) sauna, gym and massage room, a promenade of 130M2 (1400 Sq. feet.), a music room, a dining room, a cinema, sun decks, suites, terraces and a lounge. The luxury is at the ultimate level. The decks are connected by stairs but there is also an elevator. The Owner's Suite..!!!! With an area of 200M2 (2150 Sq. feet.) it completely covers the third deck. This is the view of the bedroom and bathroom. The sea view is great and there is a private terrace of 25 meters length.  The yacht has the shape of a horseshoe and has a retracting glass solar panel roof... so everything is bathed in a sea of light The spacious lounge. On the lower deck are the common premises, such as lounge, piano bar and dining area. The Dining Room The dining room opens onto the sea view.   Suites for the guests For the guests.. 5 suites with sea views situated on the middle deck. There is also a reading room/lounge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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That day

I clearly remember that day,

When I had floundered my way

Or was it my baptism bath??

The day I found the correct path??

I was standing on my balcony

That looked over my colony

Below the cars kept on coming

My neighbour’s stereo kept humming

The distant dogs were barking

While I gazed the stars, sparkling

I lost track of time as it flew by,

I got lost in the empty sky

Out ahead, in front of me,

Darkness slushed in like the sea

Inside my home, behind me,

Switches were turned on with glee

Light after light came on

(which would stay lit till dawn)

I didn’t turn back, I stared ahead

Clouds came swirling in my head

In the dark outdoors I could feel a magic,

While the bright indoors looked so tragic

There was substance in the darkness

Something I wanted to harness

Back inside, there were lures aplenty

And yet that day it all looked so empty

Decorated, scented with perfumes,

Those brightly lit numerous rooms

Hold me back it could no more,

That world I could no longer adore

In the fog the light of the streetlamp,

Had got lost, and created a swamp

Back inside, the incandescent light

Was shining sharp, clear and bright

But the streetlight glow spread far and wide,

While the room’s walls stopped the incandescent’s stride

I could not see the moon anywhere,

But I knew, I felt, it was out there

The fog, the mist, thickened into a cocktail

in the sky outside, and inside my mind as well

Everything was blurred, it made no sense

Hard to make out real and pretence

I know I could have turned back

And get everything back on track

I could just have gone back into my room,

But I could not. It now looked like a tomb.

The darkness ahead was beckoning me,

I too, wanted to plunge into that sea

My mind, my soul, wanted to be free

I wanted to fly like a little birdie

One last time, I turned, looked back

It looked like a cage, not a shack.

That moment I made up my mind,

I was going to leave it all behind.

Everything around me started to burn,

I’d crossed the point of no return.

What I did I had no idea

How it happened? Oh my dear.

I still wonder if I lost my way,

Or was I born anew that very day.

Empowering Girls will change our world

This essay got me first prize in all-Delhi.

“The women’s reservation bill which is pending before the parliament for …..” From time immemorial, Indians have come across news clippings containing or starting with this sentence. How many more years will we have to read the same articles over and over again? Why are we so apprehensive of giving women an assurance of even a meagre 33% in the national lawmaking forum when they actually deserve 50%? Are the men out there afraid, given the fact that some of them even went on to say that they’ll commit suicide if the bill is passed? And is the lady who turns out to be the president of the ruling party insensitive to this issue? Who knows? It seems empowerment of women continues to remain a distant dream, still unfulfilled in India.

So what is empowerment in the first place? The dictionary says it is “increasing the spiritual, political, social, or economic strength of individuals and communities”. And why women’s empowerment then? Why is it needed? The answer will emerge itself if you try to realise that a population, half of which consists of the fairer sex, is governed by a parliament consisting of only 10% women. But what should concern us far more is that, we have grown so habituated to it, that it doesn’t look unnatural in any way that among 500 odd people who ‘govern’ the country, there are only about 50 who can sensitise this body towards issues specific to women. Taking this figure to a third of the total will definitely change the outlook of the parliament itself. And at least I, if not everyone, believe that it will change for the better only. And no doubt, a change in the outlook of the lawmakers, changes the world we live in.

Let’s say we have a world 10-20 years from now, where women are equally (or at least nearly equally) empowered as the men. What difference will that make that we might call it a better world than the one we live in? Now, when you were in primary school, or your children were in primary school, the first lessons of life, the first pages of education, were probably introduced to you by a “madam” rather than a “sir”. Glancing back at that, I don’t think you’d wish that it were a “sir” instead. It is beautifully quoted by Virginia Satir “We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth.” Only women are capable of bestowing this motherly affection so beautifully described by Virginia Satir. A certain affection, tenderness, and emotional appeal which the women bring with themselves is needed dearly at the top levels of governance. It is only through the involvement of women in all three wings or the government, i.e. legislature, judiciary, and executive, can we make the government more sensitive. And a sensitive government can certainly bring about far reaching on our society.

We often feel that not much is being done about the persistent problem of child labour, healthcare deficit in women, free education for all, and the likes. And the single solution to all these problems lies in making the authorities sensitive to such issues. Until and unless the concerned people stop looking at them as merely paper files to be signed, or bills to be passed in the legislature, and instead actually try to feel what the problem is like in real life, we cannot expect any improvement in the conditions. Taking the blasphemously common incidences of ‘eve-teasing, I must say that the only solution is to introduce female beat constables because none other than them can be as empathetic towards the victim. So the only conclusion we can draw is that for the benefit of not only women themselves but of mankind as a whole, we need wholesome partition of women in not only politics but in all avenues of power in our society, because as Kofi Anan says “There is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women. When women thrive, all of society benefits, and succeeding generations are given a better start in life”.

Why it has taken so much time for this simple logic to dawn upon us, and why it is taking eternally long to move towards realisation of this dream, is certainly beyond the realm of my understanding. The men say that the women never come forward and the women accuse men of not allowing them opportunities aplenty, but whom are they trying to fool? Probably the most influential woman the world has seen, Mrs. Indira Gandhi once said “People with clenched fists cannot shake hands” because she had realised that the men are hardly ever ready to open their clenched fists and allow the women into the corridors of power. On the other hand, what has happened with women from the beginning is summed up nicely in the words of Alice Walker – “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.” How can women, who are just as numerous as the other sex, sit back and let their rightful places be taken over by over-pompous men?

We must remember, that the better place is always the one which promotes equality, and unfortunately gender equality seems to be critically endangered and at the verge of extinction. And yet, equality doesn’t mean women have to fight it out with the men. Rather as someone said “Instead of getting hard themselves and trying to compete, women should try and give their best qualities to men - bring them softness, teach them how to cry.” Yes, those are the shoes that women need to fill in, to make the world a better place to live in. History shows us that the fairer sex has always been the subdued one, the one dominated upon, but history also teaches us that revolutions and changes are never brought about by men alone. When men go to the battlefield, the women run the country. And history has repeated itself on the instances of each and every major revolution the world has seen. Today, the more changes are needed. And women need to stand up and demand their rights. And if they do not find their path cleared by itself, they might have to clear it themselves.

By

Arnav Gupta

XI – B, K V Janakpuri

Citations

1.    Quotes on Women’s Rights. – Pearls of Wisdom

2.    Quotes by Great women – Better World Quotes

3.    Women’s Reservation Bill, India – Open Democracy Forum

Picture Courtesy – War Production Co-ordinating Committee

When your eyes meet mine

The Robin-Hood syndrome

Glancing back at the year 2010, a few characters keep on coming to my mind. And these characters seem to be bound together by an eerie similarity. Eerie because at first sight these characters do not seem to have the remotest connection to each other and yet all of them seem reincarnations of a particular person.

Before talking about the similarity itself, I must introduce people with those characters itself. Not that 2010 is limiting factor to this list of characters, because some characters who share this similarity are from distant eras too.

Since we have to start somewhere, why not with an easily recognisable figure like Julian Assange. He created probably the largest ripples in international diplomacy and the international media by becoming the defiant face of Wikileaks – a website that has become a milestone achievement in exposing the internal machinery of governments. In the eyes of law though, he is guilty of “espionage”. (I’m keeping the Sweden cases out of picture here because they are not relevant in my piece).

Another international character who figures in my list is Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. The Zuckerberg I’m talking about here is the one we can see in the film The Social Network, the guy who begins with a plan of taking revenge on his girlfriend and ends up creating the world’s most popular website in a single night, that too when he was totally drunk. The real Zuckerberg as far I know is not totally like it has been portrayed in the film, but not too different as well.

Prabhakaran also is another character from my list. For those who don’t know, he was the founder and face of LTTE. The LTTE, although militant in it’s way of operation and thus termed as “a terrorist organisation” in international forums, was basically founded with the objective of getting Tamils their deserved rights.

A person with similar objectives inside India itself is Kishenji, who can be termed as a leader of all “naxalites” and “mao-badi” people in central and east India. He and his people are responsible for deaths of innumerable people but their fight also initially sprouted out from a demand for rights, opportunities and economic support which the state took too lightly then and now is paying heavily for. Kishenji has been has stated on the national media that he himself condemns such killings and that it is not that he ever directs his people to take innocent lives.

Talking about Kishenji brings me to Beera Munda. Didn’t click?? Arre yaar, Abhishek Bachchan’s character in the movie Raavan. The film of course is no great piece of art, but it brings to us Beera, who is certainly an outlaw but one who cares for his people. My list of characters also contains another person played by Abhishek Bachchan, Guru Kant Desai, from the film Guru. (oh, did it strike you that both have same directors and same co-stars too?? But Guru certainly scores more than Raavan as a film). Guru is a fictional character but is heavily based on the life of a great industrial pioneer and entrepreneur of India – Dhirubhai Ambani. Guru Kant Desai does rub the government the wrong way (by cheating the national exchequer millions of rupees) but ends up making a whole family of shareholders richer by a gold mine.

Bollywood films are often based on lives of such legends. Once upon a time in MUMBAI is another such film. Sultan Mirza, the character played by Ajay Devgn, is an almost perfect portrayal of Hazi Mastan on screen. The defining dialogue of Sultan Mirza in the film i.e. “I only smuggle goods banned by the government not those banned by my conscience” sums up his character in a single sentence – the antagonist with a conscience. (The film does not have a protagonist at all).

Vivek Oberio plays another such “based on real life” character, Pratap Ravindra / Paritala Ravindra, in Rakht Charitra. (albeit with much more blood and gore). Another villain with conscience, and very much like Sultan Mirza, is slain by the other villain who does not have that conscience.

This year’s biggest (probably biggest ever) commercial success was Dabangg, a full on “masala” flick, with the typical ‘hero’ (yes hero and not protagonist. Such roles are called ‘hero’ roles. Protagonist is just not the right word for it). Chulbul Pandey is a funny man indeed. He finishes off the bad guys, but he himself is no Miss Goody two shoes. He takes bribes, dances with a ‘chokri and a botal’ and does not know how to respect his father, but he is the ‘good guy’ of the film no doubt.

Lalit Modi. So where from does he jump in?? Well, you see, the names in my list have no relation with each other except that ‘eerie similarity’ they share (about which I’m going to say just a bit later). But anyways, wherever he jumped in from, he certainly gave us IPL – a brand with which the world recognizes Indian sports industry. It took sports related entertainment to totally new heights. On the way though, Modi misplaced a few thousand crores here and there as if he were carelessly arranging his wardrobe and misplaced his shirts here and there.

Other people who happen to be included in my little list are Bhagat Singh, and his contemporary reincarnation Daljit a.k.a DJ (from the film Rang De Basanti), who ends up assassinating the corrupt defence minister of the country.

So is this similarity that I’m talking about?? On asking it to one of my classmates, he said “They all were corrupt, they all did wrong things.” Now that is an extremely negative approach to it. The fact is that all these people are protagonists rather than antagonists. These are those people who have certainly flirted with the wrong side of the law, but have been on the right side of their conscience. And most importantly, they did not break the law only for personal gain, but for the gain of community at large, and that is what that makes them stand out from other ‘outlaws’.

I had started thinking about this from the last few weeks. In fact this similarity between these varied characters actually struck me while watching a film last month – Robin Hood. After watching the film, these characters, not even remotely related to each other in any way, suddenly started to make sense as a collection of very similar people. And the common factor in them is what I call “the RobbinHood syndrome”.

I’d read Robin Hood long back, at a time when I didn’t know most of these characters I just talked about. This time around, watching the film, all those names kept coming into my mind all the time. These are just reincarnations of Robin Hood, some fictional, some real. The outlaw who works for the people, the guy who breaks rules only for the good of all, but ultimately he is the good guy only, the protagonist, the hero no doubt.

If you have any doubts on them being the good guys, then contrast Gurkuant Desai with someone like Ramalingam Raju of Satyam, or compare Sultan Mirza with his successor Shoaib Khan (modelled on master gangster Dawood Ibrahim), or try to see the difference between someone like Beera Munda and someone like Veerappan, or see how Mark Zuckerberg is different from some petty cyber-thief or hacker.

It is very important to understand that doing something good while staying totally within the system is often not possible. The system and the law after all have been created by humans only, and what is right and what is wrong may have different definitions in different laws, but remaining true to the conscience is the most important characteristic of the protagonist. Often someone has to break free from the shackles of the system and take steps in order to save the system itself from collapsing.

What gives birth to a “RobinHood personality”, we can never say. It might be extreme oppression, poverty or even a strong desire of revenge, and sometimes just a crazy streak. But people with the “robinhood-syndrome” can be found on every page of history, and everytime a need arises, a robinhood-personality will be born I the future too. For that matter, even Yudhishthira, famous for his impeccable integrity, had to lie to Dronacharya about the death of his son just in order to win the battle of Kurekshetra.

I highly doubt the existence of the ever virtuous hero who takes the straight path to his goal. Often shortcuts have to adopted, so called ‘unethical’ manoeuvres have to be executed, but why should we worry if the ultimate result is in for the good of all? Breaking out of the system for personal gain might be the trait of the antagonist, but if the gain is for the society as a whole, then certainly it is a virtue of the protagonist instead.