Ravjiv sings his way to Arabian Center Radio Star 2009 award

Last night Rajiv Sapru was declared Arabian Center Radio Star 2009. The UAE-wide competition was organised by 89.1 FM radio and its finals were held in front of live audience at Arabian Center, Mirdiff. After warming-up with 'Sawariya', he sang 'Mitwa' to clinch the top honours. There was a tie between Rajiv and another participant for the final place, which was decided through a tie-breaker. Rajiv kept his cool in the tie-breaker, while singing another power-packed song ‘Main Jahan Rahoon’ and came out on tops.

Rajiv would like to thank all the Bhagnaris from UAE who voted for him during semi-finals and final.

Asked as to why he chose a difficult song like 'Mitwa', which has classical under-currents, Rajiv said "Once you know that the competition is top notch, you have to prove yourself to be better than the best and the selection of song plays a very important role". Rajiv entered the competition with the name of Rajiv Kusum - Kusum is his mother's name whom he considers as his lucky charm. He had earlier dedicated his semi-final song to his mother. The song for the final was dedicated to his Guru, Ustaad Ajmal Ali Khan Sahab of the Patiala Gharana, who is the first cousin of Shafqat Amanat Ali, the singer of Mitwa.

For those who don't know Rajiv, he is Soni and Kusum (Papo) Sapru's son. Most of us have heard his father Soni singing during get-togethers and now its Rajiv's turn to enthrall us with his singing. Rajiv says that his father is his best critic as on several occasions when he feels that he has sung well, Soni still manages to improve him.

Rajiv has also formed a rock band by the name of Dreamz. Many of us had the pleasure of dancing to its tunes during the Bhagnari Holi party this year.

Keep it up Rajiv; the community is proud of your achievement.

Aashna Nasta's Graduation Ceremony at Dhirubhai Ambani International School

In our series of young Bhagnari achievers we bring to you the proud moments of Aashna Nasta, who has narrated them in her own words.

20 months of projects, essays, presentations, portfolios, reports and exams ended at one glorious occasion – The Graduation Ceremony of the students of the batch of 2009 at Dhirubhai Ambani International School. It was a day marked to end each of our school lives, a day when our parents and grandparents could look upon us with proud smiles and overjoyed expressions, moreover, for us it was the day we graduated with our IB Diplomas.

The IB i.e. the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme is a 2 year programme where we learn to think beyond our text books. We question the existence of everything – right from Does God really exist? To How was the world formed? What is knowledge? Etc. Most of these questions don’t have hard core answers, which makes the discussion more exciting. The best part about the IB is that we don’t choose a specific stream of science, commerce or arts but choose a group of subjects from various field – 1)Language 1; 2) Language 2; 3)Social Studies; 4)Sciences; 5)Math; and 6)Visual Arts. Each of these subjects have 2 levels – higher and standard. We choose 3 higher level subjects and 3 standard level ones. Each subject has 7 points, thus, 42 is the maximum number of points we attain.

The IB Graduation Day on 29^th May 2009 was a power packed occasion with our chairperson Mrs. Nita Ambani and our chief guest Dr. Shashi Tharoor (ex under secretary general of the UN and current external affairs minister of India). His speech was ecstatic; never in my entire school life did I hear a speech where the entire audience was focused at the speaker. Supporting every claim of his with a short story, Dr. Tharoor made sure that we could relate to each phrase of his speech.

Receiving my diploma from Mrs.Ambani and Dr. Tharoor

As we threw our graduation hats in the air that day, we realised what we had accomplished – we had completed school and transformed into adults, ready to face the world, ready to take up every challenge, moreover we had our school motto imbibed within us – DARE TO DREAM; LEARN TO EXCEL!

With my mother and Mr and Mrs. Ambani

With my overjoyed grandmother, Mrs. Dhuru Nasta

Gobind Kataria recalls memories from Karachi

The Karachi Tramway of Yester-year
There was a time when citizens of Karachi were accustomed to seeing Trams running all over the City center. It was one of the most popular means of conveyance in the city. Today, only a handful of photos, a few landmarks and memories of Trams remain. Our elders will remember the following scenes from the city which was their abode before migrating to Mumbai.

In the following picture, notice Takandas H Kataria's advertisement on the tram:

The history of Karachi tramway spans 90 years (1885-1975). It owes it origin to the Municipal Secretary and Engineer, James Strachan who first conceived the idea for a Karachi Tramway. In 1881, Mr. Edward Mathews of London submitted the tender for building this tramway network. It took until 1883 to complete all the formalities and to get Government permission to use Steam as the locomotive power for the trams. Actual construction work started in October 1884. Track Gauge of Karachi Tramway was 4 feet.
On April 10, 1885 the first tram line in Karachi was opened for public traffic. The track extended from the present day Jinnah (then Napier Mole) bridge to Keamari.

The following picture shows a tram on Saddar route:























The Map below shows Karachi of 1893. The Red rectangle towards left shows the first tramway track that was inaugurated. Also note how Karachi landscape has changed since then. Keamari is now part of the mainland as sea has receded a lot as well as land reclamation that has happened in the last 100 years.























The following picture is circa 1900 and it shows a tram near Max Denso Hall on then Bandar (now M.A.Jinnah) Road:

















Following photo is circa 1900 and shows a glimpse of Karachi trams near Max Denso Hall:















The following photo shows a tram on Bandar Road (now M.A.Jinnah Road) in 1933:














Following photo shows Saddar area circa 1950s. Towards left, one can see atleast two trams. The signboard towards top right corner of the photo reads Nishat Hotel:

Kunal Jham develops application for iPhone

Kunal Jham, one of the promising Bhagnari youngsters has developed an application for iPhone and he and his family are very excited that it has been accepted by iPhone. Its a matter of great pride for the community that its youngsters are coming to the forefront of IT technology. Are we about to witness a Bhagnari Sabeer Bhatia, who created Hotmail.

The application is named DoGood. For more details and to download it on iPhones visit http://mobil33t.com/dogood/. 

We asked Kunal about the background and the inspiration for developing this application. His response was "Our story so far has been a pretty interesting one. It began with an experimental “Mobile Development for iPhone and Android” course at the University of Michigan. The class was a hit, producing many great apps and quickly acclimatising many students to Objective C. From this experience, we decided to try our hand at entrepreneurship. We formed an LLC and got invited into the TechArb, a business incubator for University of Michigan students.

That was only three weeks ago. And now we’re at Apple’s World Wide Developers’ Conference (WWDC) to launch our app and make it grow.

So, why did we choose DoGood? Well, while popular, the app store is quite saturated. Thus, we wanted to make something unique. An iPhone application that screams altruism; one that we hope stands out for its simplicity and ability to positively impact society."

A "DoGood" is a simple act of kindness - one that requires minimal amount of time for an individual who owns iPhone and is intended to become part of a bigger movement. Your decision to do something good today, reaches millions of iPhone users.

Here are some examples of DoGoods:

a) Show gratitude today - "Thank someone that works hard to make your day possible."
b) Save paper today - "Use your computer instead of paper. Together, we'll save a lot of trees."
c) Be positive today - "Think positive, speak positive. Show someone the brighter side of life!"


Let's DoGood together and encourage Kunal to bring more glory to Bhagnaris.

Sonam is holding Art and Dance classes for Bhagnaris in Dubai

...........these are some of our initiatives to bring Dubai Bhagnaris together.

Click Here for a peak into Sonam's work.