Destiny

Freida Pinto and Woody Allen

Freida Pinto has leaped from Mumbai’s Local train to Limousine at Los Angeles. Her destiny has taken her to Hollywood from Bollywood. Her life changed overnight like a fairy tale and she turned to be an Hollywood sensation and fashion diva.

On 22nd. Feb 2009, Sunday night at the Kodak Theatre in LA, you saw her as part of the jubilant Slumdog Millionaire team that swept the Academy Awards with eight Oscars. After two days, Vogue India presented the new style sensation and red carpet darling Freida Pinto in a different avatar as its cover girl for VOGUE March issue. Vogue India editor Priya Tanna, who believes Freida’s red carpet debut was as impressive as her onscreen one, added, “In a matter of months, this young actor has become a Hollywood sensation and a fashion diva.”

Freida Pinto, the film’s luminous leading lady who has been wowing the world on the red carpet and across television interviews lining up to the Slumdog’s Oscar glory, has gone one better and signed up a film with director Woody Allen. This is not just massive news for the 24-year-old Mumbai girl, but a spectacular breakthrough for any Indian actress. Allen has created many women characters in his films and now it the turn of Freida Pinto of Bollywood to be characterized by him and who knows we may see her in the Kodak Theater again next year. As media reports, CAA brokered Pinto a fee of an estimated $3 million for the film.

Pride moment for India

AR Rahman with his two Oscars

A R Rahman has created history by becoming the first Indian music director to win Oscar for his composition in Slumdog Millionaire. ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ directed by Danny Boyle, swept eight Oscars, out of ten nominated at the 81 st Academy Awards including Best Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Sound Mixing, Film Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Best Direction and Motion Picture. Indian music maestro A R Rahman brings home two Oscars with his Jai Ho… composition. India’s Resul Pookutty won his Oscar for Best Sound Mixing.

The biggest success for India came with a double Oscar treat for Rahman for Best Original Music Score and Best Song (Jai Ho). Rahman was overwhelmed and interspersed his speech with Hindi as well as Tamil on receiving the coveted trophy. “There is a dialogue from an old Hindi film – “Mere paas ma hai” – which means I have nothing but a mother. My mother is here, I have her blessings. I am glad she could be here,” said Rahman. He ended the acceptance speech by saying “God is great” in Tamil, something he says after winning every award. He shared the second Oscar for best original song for the film’s theme number “Jai Ho” with noted Indian lyricist Gulzar. “All my life I had a choice between hate and love. I chose love and I am here,” said Rahman after receiving his second golden statuette.

The film opened its Oscar account by winning in the Best Adapted Screenplay category for Simon Beaufoy. After that, there was no looking back as the film went on a dream run to win awards in Film Editing for Chris Dickens, Best Cinematography for Anthony Dod Mantle and Best Sound mixing for India’s Resul Pookutty.

The film also won an Oscar for Best Motion Picture. The announcement for Best Picture saw a jubilant cast and crew of the film, celebrating together on the stage.

AR. Rahman with his multilayered score in Danny Boyle’s rags-to riches film has also pocketed a Golden Globe and BAFTA. (Source : ndtv.com)

The debate about the film SM whether its an Indian Film or a British film, will continue but we must not forget to appreciate and to be proud for our Gulzar saab, AR Rahman, Pookutty and all indian actors including child artists who have shown their talents in their respective filds. Talents and creativity of the Indians have been exposed to the world audiences through SM and for this, we must be thankful to the Director and producers of the movie. We all know that Rahman has composed much better songs (Roja, Bombay etc) before this. India was never poor in the field of music, literature or any cinematographic fields, only one opening and recognition was required and that came through Slumdog M.

WordPress Camp in India

Having been associated with WordPress for a quite sometime as a blogger, its give me immense pleasure to learn that first ever WordPress camp is being held in India on 21 and 22 Feb 2009. The IndiBlogger team announced that the Delhi Bloggers Bloc along with Blog Design Studio are organizing the first ever WordCamp in India for all WORD PRESS enthusiasts and for those who want to know more about WordPress! This event is being held on the occasion of the 5th anniversary of The Delhi Bloggers’ Bloc.

It may be known to you that WordPress is a platform for bloggers and it comes to us at free of cost. The blogging site is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. This blogging platform is so feature-rich and user friendly that it’s proving to be competition to full fledged content management systems.

Matt Mullenweg (Founder of the WordPress.com) and Om Malik of GigaOm would be joining the event. you can also meet Amit Agarwal of Digital Inspiration there.
Agenda:

A two-day conference which brings together stakeholders and audiences of social media and blogging, centered around WordPress.
Date & Place:
21st, 22nd Feb’09 (Saturday, Sunday), 9:00am – 6:00pm
Venue : I-1A, Sector 25A
Noida, U.P. 201301
India (Tel: +91 120 244 4711)

A Riverine Nirvana : Sundarbans

A post on Sundarbans, the word’s largest mangrove forest and world heritage site and home of Royal Bengal Tigers is posted at page “Incredible India”.

Sundarban (Near Dobanki Tiger Camp)

Stemless Garjan Tree at Sundarban

Sunset at Sundarbans (Gosaba)

To know more about Sundarbans , please visit the link above.

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