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An online invitation to grow offline

On Saturday morning, 120 Mumbaikars, most of them internet junkies, gave the city a green Christmas gift. They had been invited online by techies Satish Vijaykumar and Ranjeet Walunj to adopt an Ashoka or Neem sapling. The saplings were given free of cost with a condition: They should have an online profile with updates, photos and videos for the next two years.

Participants were encouraged to use the #sapling tag on networking sites like Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, del.icio.us and Technorati. An award awaits the participant whose sapling grows the tallest at the fastest rate. The group plans to plant 10,000 saplings to the city by 2010.

The citizens’ initiative has been called The Sapling Project (www.thesaplingproject.com) and was started because the organizers felt that most tree plantation drives were carried out at the National Park or Aarey Milk colony, while colonies and buildings that actually need more trees were being ignored. ”Living is a different thing, we’re just about managing to stay alive,’’ says Vijaykumar, a Borivali-resident, avid tweeter and blogger at bombaylives.com.

Weeks before the drive, online invitations to visit Shivaji Park and adopt a sapling were sent out using Twitter, Facebook and blogs. His friend Walunj wants to tie up with the BMC. “A lot of places in the city can be designated sapling zones where trees are needed. So people who do not find place can come here and plant them’’.

Online networking with tweeters in Chennai, Bangalore and Delhi has enthused locals to carry out similar plantation drives as part of the project. The next drive in Mumbai will take place in January and the organizers will visit areas like Dadar, Bandra, Andheri and Borivali with saplings in a van for distribution.

In the past, several sapling-planting initiatives have been launched in the city. In a move to restore the degraded periphery areas of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, GAIA Conservation Foundation is working with the Bombay Natural History Society to get citizens to plant saplings.

Over 10,000 saplings of indigenous trees like Red Silk Cotton, teak, Shivaji’s Sword, Khair, Shivan, Ziziphus and Flame of Forest have been planted by hundreds of people at the Goregaon site. NGO I Love Mumbai has been carrying out planting distribution drives in the city too.

But environmentalist Rishi Aggarwal says drives like these need support from experts who understand the ecology of each tree. ”You can’t plant a tree that will grow to have a 30-foot canopy on a narrow road. Plantation has to be an informed exercise,’’ says Aggarwal who wants the tree authority to have a separate website giving details of where saplings can be planted in the city using GPS coordinate. ”Location is the key criteria and the BMC seems to have failed in facilitating the good intentions of citizens in this area’’.

Carry on doctor

At 65, Dr K Chaudhry, a retired medical practitioner spends 17 hours in front of his computer screen. Over 1400 videos old, 2.2 million views famous and a fan base of hundreds of subscribers from Pakistan, USA, Canada and the UK within 18 months, this bespectacled grandfather of four is India’s YouTube singing sensation. In August, this year, he was missed after he pulled a Houdini and deleted his account, but he’s back, Karaoke system in place and mike in hand singing Justin Timberlake, Cliff Richards and Madonna for his fans. His repertoire is as wide as a violin’s pitch and even consists of Hindi versions of songs, most popular being Michael Jackson’s Beat It sung as Peeto Peeto.

Peeto Peeto by Dr K Chaudhry

It all started a few years ago, when the male nightingale from Paschim Vihar started uploading his videos in cyber space as a “humming non-singer’’.  The response was extraordinary. On one hand obscene abuses cluttered his inbox and would have sufficed to break the spirit of any novice singer. On the contrary Chaudhry felt elated that people had made time to post comments because real-time responses from around the world proved to him that he was a singer, good or bad and people were not ignoring him. Some said he sounded like a braying donkey while others said he deserved a music ratna from the government. “Praises please me, abuses amuse me. I feel indebted to every one of you for time spent by you in assessing me as good or bad,’’ he writes in order to allay his fans, some of whom have gone to the extent of forming fan clubs and theme evenings in honour of him and his special talent. They call themselves devotees of the man and currently there are seven fan clubs spread across the world including two in the US with medical doctors for members and an all-pilot group from Singapore. Imitating the video legend, his fans pay tribute at dinner parties and sing James Blunt’s ‘You’re beautiful’ Chaudhry style. He describes his relationship with his USA fan club with 310-strong members as, “This is a carry forward relationship from some past lives. I remained away from you for 63 years. Now we shall remain together until we live together,’’ he writes in response to a video.

But closest to his heart are his fans from Pakistan who first admired his talent. “We Pakistanis are in shock. We used to pride ourselves that we had Ghulam Ali Mehdi Hassan, Noor Jehan, Reshman, and Nusrat Fateh Ali but now we are dumb and speechless,’’ reads a comment on Youtube from across the border. “With the advent of Dr Chaudhry, you Indians have left? us, far behind. We will never catch up, we stand defeated.” But offers to appear for live concerts in Lahore have been dismissed. “I cannot perform without lyrics and a computer screen,’’ he says.

At first glance, one would think, that here is another bathroom singer nodding away but his eyes are wide open behind spectacles that reflect the bright computer screen as he swivels in his chair. An almost ethereal experience grips the viewer as he elegantly pulls off a spoof of Avril Lavigne’s Skater Boy, his personal chartbuster. “I prefer singing songs by female artists,’’ says the Bryan Adams and Mohammed Rafi fan. His grandchildren perch themselves on their silver-haired prodigy, singing along blissfully unaware of the world watching them. They just enjoy the moment.

Fate can do strange things when people’s actions are not governed by financial constraints. An epitome of self-proclaimed “genius’’, this dotard continues to zoom higher up the popularity snorkel. Today, his Internet biodata boasts not only of 30 years of medical practice but also credits him with the creation of a horoscope software, laboratory equipment, a billion webpages and the title of a work addict. Carry on doctor.

Liberia Live: The Twitter minister’s external affairs

(This was written for The Times of India)

He’s been hailed as the minister who tweets ‘diplomacy for dummies’. Shashi Tharoor’s tweet-by-tweet account of his recent visit to Liberia created great interest about India’s relations with the African country. In 140 characters or less, the minister of state for external affairs started posting updates soon after he touched down in Liberian capital Monrovia. ‘Greetings from Monrovia,’ he wrote, followed by a mention that this was ‘the 1st Indian ministerial visit here in 38 yrs’.

Staying true to Twitter that asks users to post in response to, ‘What are you doing?’ Tharoor updated his ‘followers’ with details about the 200 Malayalees in Liberia, his meeting with the Indian female police unit there and ‘breakfast with President Sirleaf at her rice farm.’ In an email interview with TOI, Tharoor wrote about his admiration for, ‘the first democratically elected woman Head of State in Africa,’ who discussed issues ranging from UN Security Council reforms to combating international terrorism with him. A review of bilateral bonding was followed by a tweet: ‘India offers help in capacitybldg, training, trade, investment & IT. Donated 25 buses and 2 holein-the-wall computer educn centres.’

U n d e r s t a n d ably, Liberia’s bloggers had a thing or two to say about the minister’s visit and Indo-Liberian relations. “When I heard about the Indian minister’s visit, I thought it was about time,’’ writes blogger Emmanuel Liu. The 26-year-old resident of Monrovia thinks that though there is a large Indian community in Liberia that plays an important part in its post-war development, they are yet to “take advantage of the huge mineral resource that Liberia has in abundance’’. Liu points out that the Chinese have beaten India at this.

Quite opposite to Liu’s stance was an editorial in Liberian newspaper Daily Observer that talked about how all the diplomatic talk was doing no good to the country: “Currently, we see India just as we see the Lebanese or other traders. They sell us substandard goods and take away our money.’’ Tharoor clarifies that Liberia has welcomed the Indian private sector’s participation in farming—particularly for cultivation of rice, the lack of which once led to rice riots. Civil servant and senior student at the University of Liberia, 33-year-old Denna Gibson explains how the poor are forced to replace life-long habits of eating rice, which is their staple diet, with cassava, wheat, gari and corn meal.

Keen to augment the public transportation facilities for the Monrovia Transit Authority, India’s move to donate 25 buses “will be of immense help because there’s a serious transport problem especially in Monrovia,’’ writes Nat Bayjay, a 29-year-old blogger from Bushrod Island. Tharoor says the ministry will soon float open tenders in leading newspapers and invite bids from manufacturers. “The whole process should be completed within a couple of months. But the buses will need spares, tool kits and training for the mechanics to maintain them.’’

The suave Tharoor was delighted to meet a 125-member strong Female Formed Police Unit (FFPU), the first ever women’s contingent in the history of UN peacekeeping. He tweeted, ‘After a war in which so many women suffered, a female police unit shows women as sources of strength & security, not only victims. Inspiring.’ Tharoor recalls his interaction with FFPU members: “They miss their families but surprisingly manage to find time after their duty hours to connect with them on the internet. Some of them, I understand, are also able to help their children in completing their home work.’’