Feb 01, 2007 11:08 PM
62501 Views
(Updated Mar 07, 2009 05:45 AM)
Knowledge is Power.
But How does one get this power?
->Most
probably Books?
By Lifting Books or Reading Books?
-> Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.Reading Books
Which Books?
->For God’s sake;-(, read my revu. We will talk about ’which books’ later.
As a kid, would do some weird things. Why when a kid(what a usage of English!)? Even now I do them. I know most of you do too. Kya.?. Nahin?. Come on. Maan Bhi Jaavo. accept it. Weird things as they seem now, not then though. Thats the beauty of doing what you feel when you want to although without going over board. Did I say weird? Don’t worry. MS is a decent forum. I will try to maintain the sanctity.
Coming back, the Weird things used to be like recording my own voice while singing into a tape and then listening to it again. Trying ’n’ number of times to get closest to KL Saigal’s voice in
Do Naiiina Matwaareyy. Tihaare. Hum Par Zulum Karey yae yee yae yae. I can still remember my sisters laughing at my Naino Mein Rahe Tho Sudh Budh Khoye. Chupe Tho. Chupe Tho Chain Harey yae yae yae yae yae . Do Naiiinaa Tihaare. Poor fellas they didn’t know that they had a star brother. Somewhere you have to show off. Right? There were some other audio cassettes like the Preety Sagar types to keep me engaged with the nursery rhymes and then some shlokas going on and on every morning. Dunno know if they really helped me in any way. Somewhere I feel they did, not without learning the meanings by reading some other books and interacting with powerful(knowledgeable) people, not just listening.
Have you ever listened to Radio news readers or commentators or hosts of yesteryears talking in a pretty serious .Ummm. not so serious and sometimes way too funny accent? That was another inspiration to imitate them by reading some paragraphs from the Newspaper and listening to how I sounded by recording them onto Tape. Try it and you will find that you are much better and lively than Shammi Narang or Salma Sultan and JV Raman(although he was related to me;-) on Doordarshan. Does anybody remember them? Especially Salma and Raman. what expression-less news readers? Aaj Ke samachaar samaapta Huve. Namashkaaar!
; Those were my initial audio learnings and realisation of my own capacity. Then came the TOEFL days with ready made cassettes and listening to the pronunciations in the struggle to get through that privileged 550(out of 677) in those days(its sounds like ages). Again, it was fun. But not worthwhile enough as those cassettes helped just the one listening section where I did not do that well as coming from South Indian Family, needed words to be spoken as clearly as Inderjit(Vijay Arora?) in Ramayana serial. And had to compensate by scoring out of out in the written section.(this is how we non-english medium guys used to speak when scoring 1o out of 10 in unit tests). Kindly bear with my English, am running for the next elections from Aam Aadmi’s Bangalore.
Moving on. during the initial work days in a company of 40 employees with 14 directors, we had all the privilege to browse and browse and browse and also chat all day along, with no restrictions whatsoever. Oh. wish we have ’Boom 2’ like the one in 2000.;-).
Interestingly, boom time proved to be one of the best periods of Realization of Ideas from technology point of view. I say realization because, internet opened so many avenues to achiece the same. Remember Unimobile, quite a nice product by another Bangalore based Bhatia clone. It was my favourite software during my early work days and used extensively to talk to US the way we use Skype and Gtalk, etc. Being new to the Internet(not so new as I chatted using ’lynx’ browser well before), was quite interested in trying whatever came my way. That gave me an opputunity to explore the world of audio teachings more widely available on the Net. But there was always something lacking in those listenings compared to the joy and gain from the readings.
A teacher either in the form of Books or a true Guru(hey not Dhiru) in the real sense is difficult to be replaced by any other medium. Not technology, not audio casettes, not webcats, podcasts and not even audio books. Thats what I feel. I have patiently(patient ki tarah) experimented with all the above.
Coming to AUdio Books, its like the readymade packed MTR or GITS gulab jamun or pongal.(Sry. can’t resist to bring in food in whatever topic I am writing on.;-) They may serve well per your convenience but the taste or the satisfaction is unlike the freshly cooked pongal or Gulab Jamun made of pure faresh Khawa. The Paper book on the other hand has immense capability to create your own imagination. For those who read my Revu on Radios, I mentioned that listening songs on Radios are better than TV or Video beacuse one can create one’s own imagination to visualise the picturisation. Going one step ahead, Paper books make you ponder after reading something, analyse and then move forward.
One other shortcoming with the audio books is technology itself. The control over when to start and when to stop. Although the PAUSE button is provided, thinking practically, one cannot press the PAUSE the moment he feels an idea clicked in his mind just after listening to the sentence from the AUDIO whereas with a Paper book, one has the liberty to simply gaze at the book or elsewhere and still wander into your thoughts, store the ideas arising out of the reading in memory and start back where you left. Audio Books in this highly non-standard technology phase, we would have keep it updated by converting to the newer ones. Last few weeks, I have been struggling to convert all my ld audio cassettes to digital and subsequently to MP3. With the rapid changing technology, we will be sure to see lot of different formats and platforms in which Audio Books might be available and subsequently a lot more job for us to do.
CNTD. in COMMENTS .:-)
