‘Reservoir Dogs’ by ASAP
August 31, 2009
ASAP Productions presents its next play: ‘Reservoir Dogs’ on September 18th (7.15 pm) and on September 19th and 20th (3.15 pm and 7.15 pm).
Directed by Michael Muthu, the play is an on-stage adaptation of Quentin Tarantino’s popular movie of the same name. Seven total strangers team up for the perfect crime. They don’t know each other’s name, but they’ve got each other’s colour right! ‘Reservoir Dogs’ is a dark tale of greed, trust, friendship & betrayal, told in a never-seen-before way on Chennai Stage.
Amit Singh, founder of ASAP Productions says this will be one of a kind. “We’re merging theatre and cinema together. While 80 percent of the play happens live, a few sequences will be shot and projected on screen. It’s a rare attempt that has never been done in Chennai.”
He also adds that, “This play is also an action-drama, a genre that has never been attempted in Chennai before.”
“We will use real guns, explosives, stunt sequences and performances of the highest class, taking the stage entertainment to a completely new level.” Amit signs off.
To book your tickets, log on to www.asapproductions.in or contact 9894511801.
Also see how many of your friends are attending it here.
Survival Guide 1: landmarks you need to know
August 31, 2009
Chennai can be a very confusing place, especially when you don’t speak the language. To get to places, you will need to know the major landmarks in the city.The Central Railway Station is one such place. Located at Station Road, Central station is one from where you get all modes of transportation ranging from buses and autos to taxis and suburban trains.
Most of the buses running through central station are Parry’s or Broadway bound buses which are major landmarks in themselves. Buses like the 17 series, the 7s, the 18s, the 20s lead to and from Broadway, Parry’s, Iyyapanthangal, Kalaignar Nagar etc.The Marina Beach is a big landmark in Chennai, stretching from Fort St George in Besant Nagar up to a distance of 12 kms.
The major establishments that mark the stretch are Presidency college, All India Radio, Madras University, both the Chepauk and the Marina Campus, to name a few. Once you are at the beach, it is easier to figure out where you need to get to from there. A few kilometers ahead, you have the Chennai Beach train terminus, which is serviced by the Chepauk, Triplicane and Lighthouse stations of the MRTS line.
The Spencer’s Plaza, one of the biggest shopping malls in South East Asia according to Wiki, is located at Mount Road (also known as Anna Salai). It is referred to as one of the landmarks of a more modern Chennai. Once you are here, it is very easy to catch an auto or a bus to anywhere else in the city as it is centrally located.
The Tidel Park, located at Tharamani in South West Chennai, is one of Chennai’s biggest landmarks. It is one of India’s major IT parks and is located just 3 kms away from the Thiruvanmiyur MRTS station. CMBT or Chennai Mofussil Bus Terminus, located at Koyembedu, is a huge landmark in Chennai. It has buses to virtually everywhere in the city including Parry’s, Thiruvanmiyur, Thiruvottiyur and Ennore.
In addition to this, there are also a whole host of buses passing through CMBT.Now that you know what they are, it is enough that you identify these landmarks to know which area you are in. That way, even if you’ve lost your way, you will be able to get back on track.
Checkmating not just the game
August 31, 2009
Chess is his favourite game for two reasons: first, he cannot run and play; and second, its his favourite game where he manages to checkmate most of his opponents as he thinks as many moves ahead as he can.
Twenty-four-year-old E.Saravanan, founder of Ability Works, a designing firm may be just another polio victim. But, today he has managed to checkmate polio too. Proof of which is his one-and-a-half-year-old firm, which has bagged orders from TVS Lucas, Chennai Automations and NGO Young Helping Minds (YHM), to name a few.
It’s from this small 200-sq-ft office space in Padi, where he functions from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. He takes orders, undertakes desktop publishing, prints the brochures and finally delivers them. Saravanan, became a victim of Polio when he was very young. He did his schooling at Andhra Mahila Sabha for physically challenged and enrolled into diploma of Electronics and Communication Engineering at Muragappa Polytechnic College in 2004. However his disability was his lifetime opponent. “I decided to discontinue as it was difficult to climb up and down from labs to classroom. It was then I met my Nagappan,” remembers Saravanan.
R.M.Nagappan was Saravanan’s college senior. “I came to know about Saravanan through my friends. I felt ashamed of wasting money lavishly on parties and food,” says Nagappan. “With the support from my friends, we decided to help Saravanan.”From then on Nagappan and his friends used to carry Saravanan to his classes and labs and encouraged him to participate in Chess competitions. Inspired by Nagappan and his friends’ effort, Saravanan’s classmates who initially ignored him took the responsibility thereafter. “Our next step was to help him financially. Hailing from a poor family of daily wage earners, he couldn’t afford to pay his full fees. So we pooled in some money and paid partial amount,” says Nagappan.
Saravanan’s incident and the encouragement given by the fellow students made Nagappan and his friend Sathiyan to form a trust named ‘Young Helping Minds’ (YHM) in 2006.Saravanan was YHM’s first beneficiary and YHM started its expansion.Meanwhile, Nagappan and his friends passed out and were placed in different companies becoming financially strong to continue their support.
“Due to poverty Saravanan couldn’t afford medical aids and his disability severed. Thus we with the help of another NGO, pooled in an amount of Rs.33000 and bought him a Blood Vascular machine which would help him to keep his nerves in movement,” says D. Sathiyan, assistant managing trustee, YHM and IT Administrator, Covansys.
In 2007, Saravanan also passed out with first class and was placed in HCL technologies through campus, but couldn’t continue. Later with the help of Nagappan’s friends and his knowledge about computers which he learned during his schooling helped him open Ability Works.
Not stopping with that Saravanan has now become a donor of YHM.Saravanan takes care of the database of YHM and maintains blood donors’ contact to alert during emergencies. “I owe a lot to YHM. They are the reason for keeping check-mate for my disability,” says Saravanan with a smile.“We are happy that Saravanan can live independently. Now he is donating 10-15 percent of salary to YHM,” says V.Kaviarasan, Event Organizer YHM, Maintenance engineer, Ford India Ltd. “We are also in a mission called Vellicham to help many Saravanan’s to stand on their on feet.”
YHM conducts various such camps and events all over Chennai every week in order extend their support to uplift the under privileged.
“It has been a great journey so far”
August 11, 2009
The “baby of the house” gets taken out to coffee by the likes of L.K. Advani and other stalwarts of the Parliament. She also lives in mortal fear of having said something untoward or incendiary during her countless election rallies in the past few days. “We all do mistakes and regret later. I am very tired, campaigning rigorously for the past 10 days but still I have to give an interview today.I am saying a lot of things which I shouldn’t be and inevitably I will wake up tomorrow morning and cry out ‘Oh! My god. What I have done’,” NCP candidate Agatha Sangma says, with a tinge of mischief as she finally makes some time to call us back one early morning.
Our repeated efforts to reach her earlier throughout the week had fall flat, and we had almost given up all hopes to catch the youngest member of the 14th Lok Sabha.
Her brief stint at the Lok Sabha has been a memorable one and Agatha says: “The whole process of campaigning for the last election and even this time round is like extended socialising for me.
My constituency has a very intimate feel, giving you the chance for more one-on-one interaction with the people. It has been a great journey for me so far.”
Her first day at office is still imprinted on her memory and Agatha recalls: “Wearing our traditional dress, dakmanda, I took my oath in Hindi. It was my own way of silently supporting Indian integration. And the whole house thumped in applause. My dad was present in the gallery and later he told me that he had never seen such a scene in the parliament and it was the proudest day of his life. The remark made me grow a few inches taller.”
Agatha’s gesture takes a greater dimension as the 27-year-old environmental lawyer is well aware of the friction between the Indian state and its North-Eastern subsidiaries. “”It’s very obvious for the people of my region to feel alienated because of both physical and cultural differences.
The North-East is also economically far behind the rest of the country and that adds to the resentment,” she says. “There should be a wholehearted capacity building programme to uplift the economy in the region. That will solve a lot of these problems including insurgency. We have been ignored enough.”
Educated, intelligent like many other young politicians in the fray, Agatha has set herself certain goals. “Vision is a very big word and I can’t describe in a sentence. But I want India to follow a path of sustainable development. Countries like the U.S. have exploited the nature to the hilt to fulfil short term goals. We shouldn’t fall prey to that,” she says about her broader vision for the country.
“We should concentrate on renewable energy and try building small-scale industries based on community development. It’s a competitive world but I don’t think India should opt for mass based production system like China.”
Laying stress on education, she adds: “Education does and should play a big role in everybody’s life. And politicians are no different. Leaders should have a wholesome knowledge of national, international and local issues.”
Agatha has won over a few friends in her short stint and wants to hit back to Delhi soon to continue her work. “I attended only 20 days of the Assembly and didn’t get many opportunities to interact with other members. But I have developed a close bond with the likes of Milind Deora, Dipendra Hooda and also Suresh Prabhu.
Suresh has immense knowledge about renewable energy and environmental issues and that common ground sort of helped us to forge good understanding,” she says. “I hope to renew these rapports once I go back and build more bridges. I have always been called the kid of the House and thankfully everybody gave me that extra concession and kept me out of all the so-called dirty politics. I had a very pleasant experience and that makes me more hungry to go back there and make a difference this time round.”
Bond or Superstar?
August 11, 2009
Priyanka Chopra was fashionably late for her Tag Heuer event held here recently . But the fans were not complaining one bit. They got a photo session with the actor. The former Miss World and current Bollywood hottie, whose bikini avatar in ‘Dostana’ continues to vapourise hundreds of drooling fans at the theatres, was at the Park Sheraton Hotel to launch the Grand Carrera Calibre collection of Tag Heuer.
Ms.Chopra was quick to apologise to the waiting media and fans and lost time in waxing eloquent about watches. A perfect brand ambassador, she also spoke about Tag Heuer’s guest appearances in both Fashion and Dostana. “I have quiet a lot of Tags and as a brand I can relate myself to the watch. They are trendy and can easily blend with both Western and Indian wear.”
When asked if she would get back to Tamil cinema if she got an offer – the disastrous Vijay-starrer ‘Tamizhan’ was her first movie in fact – she replied: ” I love cinema, be it Tamil, Hindi or Punjabi. I had started my career in movies with Tamil cinema and will love to get back to it. If a good script comes my way, I would definitely go for it.”
Priyanaka also lost not opportunity in endearing herself to Tamil audiences. When asked whom she would pick, if she had a choice – Superstar Ranjinikanth or the angry Bond Daniel Craig, she said: “Daniel Craig is a great actor but acting with Rajinikanth is an opportunity in itself that no actor would want to miss.”
Priyanka was accompanied by Manish Sanwal, General Manager, LVMH Watch India Pvt Ltd and Ashok Doshi, Helvetica Swiss Watch Boutique. She distributed Special prizes were given to the lucky draw winners by Priyanka herself. As promised by Sanwal, the evening was made memorable for the Priyanka Chopra fans by opening the stage for photo sessions with her.
Grand Carrera Calibre costs Rs. 3.92 lacs with 68 diamonds studded in it and is inspired by the GT race cars.
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