My Closed-eye Outpouring!

Today is the day i would begin, if chance was given, the journey to the bliss of world. Today is the day i would ride, if chance was given, the horse of time. Today is the day i would, if silence would consider, experience the mirth of silence. In the deep revelation of love, the world would shine and be the most merciful of all . Yet when flowers bloom and than the sky open the only desire that flows is that of love, compassion,  joy and bliss.

Give me this day a chance to tell you that what i experience is the truth that mankind had been seeking for ages. The numbing sensation is the silence that heart can feel. let me not be deluded to think that it is me who writes this and does this. indeed, the dooer, enjoer and player is the inner consciousness, the light of spirit, the generator of this smile in me....you would call it God, I would call it the silence of existence itself...the consciousness which is the representative of universal cosmos. I can see the wide horizon that lies beyond the sixth dimension of senses and mind, and the vision that i see today is of coming hallow that is going to englolf mankind with actualization of dreams that had long been their desire to see - the dream of love, and the dream of nothingness and silence. 

Good example of audio slide show!

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/photography/la-population-package,0,7767099.htmlstory#/A_body_larger_than_life

'Idyllic' Bhutanese nature........Says the Presenter!!

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/03/25/bhutan.refugees/index.html#cnnSTCVideo

I was going through some research on trying to find out about the resettlement of the Bhutanese refugees to the third countries and I came across this news programme of CNN of the day the country had staged its first democratic election. It is indeed a matter of joy how the outside world sees Bhutanese  nature as an exemplary to the rest of the world.

In a period of time when the world has witnessed one of the largest collective reprisal against tyranny and repressive leaders and governments in what has been widely called the 'Arab Spring' its almost imaginable that the King of Bhutan could have clearly foreseen what was to come. Perhaps it was clearly predictable that everyone will fight for freedom one day. What is interesting is that a transition was passed inside a nation unasked and unsought, while, in fact, people were still strongly attached to monarchy.

What struck the most to me in the above video was the stress the presenter puts in the word 'idyllic' while describing what has happened in Bhutan. It was a gesture of the most peaceful and exemplary way of giving people what they actually need. Much before the Arab Spring started, we could have perhaps never imagined that a tiny country located in remote Himalayas will set an example of a peaceful transition. Imagine if all the countries in which we have seen these 'awakening', had done just what Bhutan did, we would had none of those accounts of bloodshed and atrocities in the daily headlines.

It is still surprising for the presenter here, and the rest of the world, how an ideological system of Gross National Happiness can be even measured? What is the yardstick? Perhaps what matters is the fact that people are happy.

I couldn't help take deeper notice of the mention of the 'ONLY WRINKLE' that Bhutan suffers from in the otherwise 'idyllic' impression of the outside world. One hundred thousand Nepali-Bhutanese, in early 1990's were somehow made to leave the country in the ever growing tension of the cultural and religious friction between the Aboriginal Bhutanse and these ethnic minorities who share roots to Nepal. Why did this happen????

Its indeed dead and gone.  Those refugees are now resettled in a western country amid never-before-known comforts. But lets face it, this incident alone is going to be a serious dent on the image of this otherwise 'idyllic' exemplary and beautiful country. What was the need for this fight? Why couldn't the aboriginal Bhutanese and the Nepali-ethnic minority compromise and in fact celebrate the difference they had? Why did  the Government of Bhutan fail to understand that this difference is what makes them a society defined by diversity and unity?

It was always a pressing need for Bhutan that the development should be seen in terms of the 'happiness' of the citizens. These Hundred Thousand people, at least at that time, were citizens too. Was 'conserving' the cultural heritage so important, that Bhutan could not compromise with a slight digression? Why did these people have to flee from the country they quite 'happily' called their own?

Its interesting to note that perhaps 'happiness' has its own way of coming round. I have spoken to few people among the first 100 Bhutanse refugees resettled here in the UK. And you know what??? They say they are HAPPY! In other words, every one even slightly associated to the citizenship of this nation is happy. This is what the country is all about!

Plan to Produce a 4 to 7 min long Radio- Photo-Slide-Show Package on ‘Bhutanese Refugees in the UK – resettlement or displacement?’

Weeks	Plan of action	Outcome
4th March – 11th march	Research (library and online) on the topic	Pages of research documents
12th march – 18th march	Further research, Find different past researches (videos, articles etc). Post some facts in the blog	Research Findings, blog posts
19th March -25th March	Researching on potential interviewees for my feature. Contacting them and asking them for interviews	Contributors sorted
26th March- 1st April	Preparation for Manchester Visit, logistics, Voice recorder, camera, questions to be asked	Preparation done
2nd April – 8th April	Manchester Visit, Recording, Taking pictures	Unedited version ready
9th April – 15th April	Scripting, Sound edit and production of the Radio package	Radio package ready
16th April – 22nd April	Editing the package with the photo slide-show. Preparing the poster	The final product ready. The poster ready
23th April – 29th April	Writing the final evaluation of 2000-2500 words. Accumulating all the works for the final submission	Project complete

Commemorating the Pearl Harbour

This was a TV feature I produced as a part of my assessment for the first Semester. It was supposed to be handed in on 8th December and i was getting increasingly tensed not knowing what to do. It was by a pure chance that 7th of December ( a day earlier) happened to be the date in which Pearl Harbour was attacked by the Japenese in 1941 which invited the USA into World War II and changed the course of history. It was also an igniting event that eventually led the devastating atomic-bomb attack on two cities of Japan that silenced the fury of WAR - once and for all. So the Pearl Harbour is historically important and I thought I should do a small feature on that. 

Dyslexia report

Another one of my projects, I and my friend thought on investigating the status of Dyslexia in the UK. This is my version of the report. 

Report on a plant disease

One of my experiments with my reporting stints. A report on a plant disease called 'Pythopthora Ramorum'.

Project Initiation Document

Summary

I would like to make a Radio package (feature) on a social issue and would like to experiment the addition of visual aspect to the feature by putting photo slide show.  The issue will be on a group of ethnic minority Nepali-speaking people who were, in early 1990's, driven off the foothills of Bhutan by its government forces in a wild ambition of what has been referred to as 'ethnic cleansing'.  This ethnic-minority Nepali-Bhutanese took refuge in Nepal for almost twenty years until they were finally rehabilitated by the UN to third countries including UK.

Context

My work will be to produce a radio feature with photo slideshow. Creating an additional visual feature to radio has been in discussion in the media in recent years and to try and experiment with one such project would be relevant to broadcast journalism. The issue itself, having a social importance, will reflect a journalistic approach in judging news worthiness.

These refugees still claim to be loyal to Bhutan and if given a chance would rather return to their country. Even when they stayed in Nepal as refugees there were accounts of many attempts they made to return to 'their' country - but with no avail. Objectives: ·         to produce a radio package that explores the potential of radio as a visual medium ·         To produce a radio package on the issue of relocation of Bhutanese refugees in UK ·         To know how the refugees feel about their relocation and everything that happened to them Approach: I know many of those people who have been rehabilitated to the United Kingdom (in Manchester). 110 people were rehabilitated two years ago and another 100 or so would be brought here shortly. I would like to know their position on how they feel now that they have been resettled in a place thousands of miles away from the country they had once called their own! My radio feature will centralize along these lines. I will get interviews from diverse representatives from this group of people including head of the community, woman, young people etc. I will also try to get interviews from representatives from UN. I will take photographs for the slide show wherever it is possible and look for other photos from reliable resources. My task will therefore involve: 1.      Research and contacts: finding out what exactly had happened historically and their causes looking at the fact files and archives. Collecting photographs and requesting people for interviews 2.      Visit: to Manchester where these people are largely relocated and spending some time with them while recording interviews and taking photos 3.      Producing: the final product using software such as Burli and Avid. Partnership Except for a few sporadic helps from my friends that I may possibly avail, this project will largely be my own experiment Risks: 1.      My part-time job may cause disturbance to the endeavour although I will try my best to manage time. 2.      Traveling to Manchester might incur some expenditure of time and money while I will try to limit my cost to the minimum 3.      Getting hold of interviewees might prove to be difficult 4.      My feature might be perceived to be biased by the audience since it would include only the accounts of the refugees and not the government of Bhutan. Yet a thorough research will be done and effort will be made to produce a fair and impartial feature 5.      Since this is the first time I am making a photo slide show experimenting with the feature of ‘audio-visual’, it might be difficult to acquire new skills

Project

Quite a few posts that follows this one will now be on a project that i am planning to undergo as a part of my 'Production Lab' module, 2nd semester. Every development, every research that i carry out, all observations, opinions, difficulties and any element that i come by during my pursuance of this project will be reflected. It is part of the module, but I would like to experiment with the idea of blogging every aspect of the 'process of production' during my task.

Thanks.