OFF THE RECORD review on some of today’s headlines….
1. Hoardings all across Western Suburbs
I stay near Santacruz garden and travel to town everyday. Since last 15 days or so, starting from Sea-link to Juhu where very few Maharashtrians’s stay, the hoardings in these areas are dominated with Marathi language. Now this WESTERN side of Mumbai having plush residences of actors & other big-wigs who are not marathi language speakers. Their maid’s or staff’s are also talking in Hindi or Hinglish (Hindi+English). Marathi Manoos has been thrown away to Diva & Dombivali, let alone be Dadar & Parel, once a bastion of Marathi manoos. So my dear Political parties, none of the sophisticated, rich, semi-rich, who are Gujju’s Sindhi’s, Marwari’s, Punjabi’s Muslims don’t understand your Marathi language hoardings. Whilst taking a walk on Juhu beach one morning, one of the best looking women on the beach was talking to her friend , “Hey that man on the hoarding has passed away right? How come he is on the hoarding? & What is it written? These political hoardings nah…I’ll tell u…sometime back there was gym advert…I so wanted to join that…By the way, I remember this man as I had to miss my kitty which was scheduled at Tanmak Thai and the roads were leading there were blocked due to his funeral” Even she was surprised to see late Balasaheb Thackrey’s photo on a hoarding STILL promoting Sena, at Juhu in Marathi. Who are advising these parties ?
2. Yadu Joshi’s patronage with CM Fadnavis.
When CM Devendra Fadnavis completed 2 years as the CM of our state, Yadu(Kaka) Joshi had written a very emotional article on how our CM’s mother use to feed Yadukaka breakfast as my grandmother, had passed away when all these Joshi siblings were very young. I could not digest this story of Yadukaka coming in Lokmat. It was purely out of the “LOUUUU” for CM, I guess. Now another bombarding story today. Just day before Shivsena cable operator mafia cum MLC Anil Parab had exposed a scam in Nagpur Municipal Corporation when our CM was Mayor there. Immediately, yesterday our ‘hurt’ Yadukaka went ahead and called his friend Nandlal and asked him to give a “clean-chit” over telephone only so that the story appears today. Nandlal is the same person who was the committee head, appointed by late CM Vilasrao Dehmukh to probe the matter of Nagpur Corporation. Nandlal now resides in Varanasi and has over phone, has cleared Devendra’s name of the scam that took place in Nagpur. Wah! Jio Yadukaka!! We youngsters should take a cue from such friendships.
3. International Schools begin to make big shift to onscreen exams
IB schools in Mumbai are taking education to another level. They don’t want the child to use their brain for calculation of numbers or learning tables by-heart. They prefer using calculators. They don’t want children to mug up their answers and vomit it in the exam papers for the sake of it. They want your child to answer questions papers which have multiple choices as answers. Now they don’t want children to write lengthy answers and pass with “managing the professors”. The IB board is thinking of making your child as practical as possible and making them “understand” studies and enjoying it rather than forced method. The only problem with this is the IB board is that they are charging anything between Rs. 7 lakhs to Rs. 14 lakhs per annum per child. Anyone interested ?
4. Amit’s popularity train steams ahead of Aaditya Thackrey
Mid-day has published a story today on popularity of 2 cousins on Social Media. Apparently Amit Raj Thackrey has 45000 likes & some 46,000 followers on his FB page; whereas Aditya Uddhav Thackrey has 28000 likes and some 28000 followers. I decided to know the real reason behind this. Some of Shivsainiks are saying that Aaditya is more of a ground worker. So he does not have much time to log on to social media whereas supporters of the MNS are saying that in looks department Amit is far more better (like his father Raj) than Aaditya and hence enjoys more fan following amongst youngsters than Aaditya! During all those years when Shivsena was growing, Raj always had an upper hand and enjoyed more popularity than Uddhav. But now with the figures on hand Uddhav has way passed his cousin. Raj enjoyed company of Marathi and Bollywood actresses due to his firebrand image and super orator skills. Ditto seems with Amit. More of a looker but less of a performer, or let’s put it this way for Amit– these likes and followers are just because of daddy dearest. But Amit reminds me so much of actor Anil Kapoor’s son Harshvarshan….What say?
