Equal Street In the Suburbs of Mumbai

Since November 2014, Equal Street became alive every Sunday morning with kids and their parents in free expression of art, music and song.

It was the early morning event where traffic was diverted to other routes to give the street back to the public.

In the present scenario, there is really no room to walk, with traffic blaring its loud beeps and footpath with broken slabs. The society compound, too have no room to play like we had during our growing up days. Children spent their major part of their time on computer games or attending private classes. Come summer, and summer camps mushroom all over the city, giving children less time to think independently and be engrossed in more organized games in their peer groups.

I remember, my childhood was spent in building compound playing all kinds of games. We invented our own games, we had our own rules, Everyday there was a new game and the choice was endless. Remember, the hopscotch? We drew blocks on the ground and played with pebbles. It didn’t cost us much to play group games with friends. When we got tired playing in the hot sun, we came indoors to play Carom, Chess, Monopoly and other board games.

‘Equal Street’ had created such opportunity to revive our childhood and introduce this games culture to our children. With traffic out of way, the streets converted into large compound with ample space to spread our creativity. Children learnt many street games like hop on blocks, seven tiles. There were no rules to follow when they played badminton, or cricket or football. Also indoor games like Carom and Chess were brought out on #EqualStreet to encourage people and arouse interest.

Then there were many who walked or cycle down the lane. It was interesting to see youngster bring out their fancy bikes and do some stunts. Many of the children have even learnt to cycle during this summer.

For those who did not want to run or jog behind their children, they preferred to teach their kids for some joys of art. The road became a free canvas where creativity found an outlet. The children helped themselves with colored chalks and created amazing art.

Then some formed groups and performed dance while other preferred to do Yoga, Tai chi and other forms of exercises. At different junction we saw different set of people involved in different kind of activity. There was room for every age to find his medium of entertainment.

With traffic out of way, the smooth tar road was pleasure to play...

Summer comes to end so does the activities on suburbs roads from #Bandra to #Santacruz..

Like I had mentioned in my earlier post at my other Blog Post on Mumbai that

In an attempt to help reclaim streets for people, EMBARQ India has initiated “Equal Streets – A Citizens’ Movement” with the help of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) and Mumbai Traffic Police, and with support from the Times of India Group.

It was fun while it lasted...and everybody had their share of fun
...

Social Media Week In Mumbai

Social Media Week was held in Mumbai on 22nd-26th September. I was invited by Blogadda to attend the events on day two. With almost 1000 events taking place in 11 cities and 9 countries and with around 3000 speakers confirmed, Social Media 2014 was the world’s most culturally diverse and geographically distributed conference of its kind.

I was able to attend only three sessions on the day two of the social Media week and the most interesting of them all were the sessions on Food blogging and Pinterest.

Pinterest is the photo-sharing medium widely used to create engagement with the reader by the impressions you make. Pinterest does not link boards to other social platforms unless it is mentioned with targeted key words, phrases. To improve the traffic to the business, a great variety of boards can be created using tags/titles. Linking the business account with the impression makes a huge difference.

Pinterest is most popular social networking website because it is used more by women.

A small film was shown during this session in which women were shown pursuing their interest in painting and handicraft. The hobby projects are very inspiring to women and it helps connect people with the retailers through attractive images. Women get inspired to share their activity on social media, interact and improve their performance.

Everybody wants to know the stories behind the trends, Pinterest allows you to show your interest in images, you could benefit better if the proper research is done to understand the market and use it to your best advantage. Use hash tags that make sense. It could work best by promoting photo contest and maintaining interaction. You could solve problems for people by offering consultation.

It is better to use your own images to present your own idea instead of picking others images. You can pin the images you like to broaden your theme of interest.

Personally speaking, Social media has played a very important role in helping me sell my book. I created a board on Pinterest with the hash tag and it has reached a wider audience.

The other day, I met a face Book friend at Durgamata pandal, and she congratulated me on my recent published cookbook on Sindhi Cuisine.

My #SindhiCuisine was published two months ago. Neither did I have a formal book launch with popular food chefs as chief guest, nor any live cooking demonstration in front of audience. I just used social media to promote my book and it was an instant success.

U-tube is the personal visual channel and this plays an important role in spreading your idea. One must learn to use it productively.

Not just images, the content is also important to convey your idea. The session on food blogging was focused on how to be a good blogger. “Food blogging gives a thrill of instant connect with readers when you get feedback” said Rushina Munshaw, who conducted the session on food blogging.

Bloggers are becoming powerful because they are the media who promote brand with honesty and sincerity. The key to writing a blog is to create interaction. Blogging can also lead to some issues in negative manner. Handling of sensitive issues is important because people forget and move on to trending issues. Lots of things will change in future, people will pay for performance and if you are not able to be sincere and honest, you could lose your audience.

Rushina Munshaw’s session was more focused on how to be a successful blogger. Food blogging should be original and true to the heart, she said. People come to your blog to read your story and your thoughts. Your blog should reflect your originality and personality. It does not serve the purpose if you plagiarize other people’s content. Blogging is the conversation you have with your readers; you can add anecdotes, summary and surprising statements to keep the readers interested.

Another session on ’14 Social Trends’ discussed the rich informative journalism. It falls under 3T: Tools, Talent and Context. Content is the king and context is definitively the queen. TV and print media is still going strong in spite of twitter, Face Book and other social media but there will be revenue generation on line too. It is important to stay connected with social hanger that is based on real time insight driven by cognitive computing which is basically talking to web. All social media are interconnected through social data and sensors from roads, cars and other transport that give real time graphic data. 

Social trends are all about delivering right content at right time.

 We are the media. We have a voice. We can learn to use it to our best advantage.  

Conducted a workshop for teachers on “Creative Teaching for Special Children’

It's been such a long time since I last taught the classroom of kids, so when the principal of ‘Swami Brahmanand Pratishthan’ suggested that I hold a workshop for her teachers on ‘Creative Teaching for Special Children’, I was hesitant in taking up such a task, fearful that I would make a fool of moi…but refusing this request would also make me a fool, so I opted to go ahead and plunge into this challenge.


The research was necessary to brush up my knowledge and study the latest trends, times have changed and the methods of teaching that were used during my days (15 years ago) are now outdated. I prepared a lesson plan, made some print-outs of the latest trends in teaching and on the day of the workshop, I faced the group of 12 teachers, highly charged to share my wee bit of knowledge.

On the topic of ‘Day of Christmas’ I involved the teachers from first sentence itself, asking them what ideas came to their mind when they thought of Christmas, how they would exploit it and how they would put across their message to the kids who had limited understanding and may not be able to grasp the point, like every other normal child.

The mental age of the student and their capacity to function physically and mentally are very important while planning activities for such children. Every idea has to be explained clearly and in details, nothing should be taken for granted. The lesson plan always follow the procedure from known to unknown as KWL (K-what I know, W-what I want to know, L-What I learnt). Each idea has to be explained from different angles, to arrive at the same point. If possible, all the sense organs should be used to send across your message. Recap is important to understand the grasping power of the child. Your lesson plan is a success, if he answers your query, three times in a row, correctly. Planning the activities related to the lesson is also very important and it enhances your lesson plan.

Next, I divided twelve teachers into four groups and gave them two hours to prepare a lesson plan giving them one object each. Group one had a large ‘toy truck’; group two had a ‘telephone’; group three had an ‘apple’ and group four had a set of ‘pant and shirt’.

Two hours later, we met again, teachers armed with a new lesson plan.

I was pleasantly surprised with the ideas they came up with. We had lots of discussion and debates on their lesson plan, suggesting pros and cons of the methods used and everybody was willing to share their experience.

The group with ‘toy truck’ made a lesson plan on an action word called ‘Push’ using toy truck to push. In her activities, she would include children (asking them to push) to send across her message.

The group two decided to teach the children to dial the correct number. They made a teaching aid with the help of sponge and big- numbers on the cardboard and would teach the children to press the collect number.

Group three wanted to cut the apple and make the children eat and then give them the activities of coloring or matching the different fruits and how they differ from apple.

Group four would teach the children how to fold the clothes.

Although all of them came back with bright ideas, I was surprised that none of them had thought of using computer as a teaching medium. Computer is such an important teaching medium in these times and its capacity of sight, sound and action can be used to show so many things. The last session of the workshop was spent in showing them how computers can be used as the medium of instruction even for the children with mental handicap.

It was day well spend and my greatest reward was when one of the teachers came silently to me and shook my hand, thanking me and asked if I could conduct such workshops more often.