Green Salutes

The Green Issue

Vol. 1#3

2 The Green IssueEpigram Salutes

3The Green Issue Epigram Salutes

Contributors

1. Person - Sweta Vasu

2. Phenomenon - Srimanta Mitra

3. Band - Saahil Dama

4. Book - Priya Dabak

A Saahil Dama, Ishan Dabri, Krushna Dande production.



When we mention a diminutive man with a toothbrush moustache and dark hair, half of you scream Hitler, and the other half scream Chaplin. And no, you don’t necessarily have to be schizophrenic for that.

A child prodigy, Charles Spencer Chaplin, better known as Char-lie Chaplin, carved a niche for himself as a comedian in the hearts of millions of people throughout the world. The story of his life is worth a narration, for every bit of it is inspiring and motivating. It is the story of a man who rose to become one of the greatest enter-tainers ever in the history of mankind through his bold, yet a hu-morous take towards life.

Charlie Chaplin was born on April 16, 1889, to Charles Chaplin, Sr., and Hannah Hill who were both music hall entertainers. Abandoned by his father, a compulsive drunkard and caring for his mother who suffered from bouts of mental illness, Chaplin took to stage at a very young age to support his family. He replaced his mother on a show when he was just five years old, thus making his debut. He was a complete entertainer on stage, charming his audience with his timely humor. At the age of eight, he performed the "Eight Lan-cashire” act as a part of the clog dancing troupe, which became an instant hit with the audience. By the age of ten, Charlie Chaplin was a child superstar with his brother acting as his agent.

Belief can move mountains and it was true in the life of Charlie Chaplin, who firmly believed that he would be a famous person in the world. With just two years of formal education he rose to be-come a legend through sheer perseverance and hard work. He had a very clear vision of his goal, and even while working as printer, toymaker, newsvendor and doctor's boy, he never let his focus slip

Charlie Chaplin


from that of becoming an actor. His personal encounters in life often found space on screen too. During his stint at the barbershop where he worked to meet the ends, he learnt the tricks of the trade which were portrayed in his work, “The Great Dictator”, years later.

His first real taste of acting began in a production of Sherlock Holm-es, where he played the role of a pageboy. Later, he managed to mas-ter the art of miming during his association with a vaudeville outfit named Casey’s court Circus and Fred Karno’s pantomime troupe. This opened opportunities for him in the United States where his work impressed film producers who signed him for various contracts.

There was no looking back for Chaplin after his debut feature film, Making a Living. The world got a glimpse of the ‘Little Tramp’, a char-acter played by Chaplin in his movie ‘The Kid’ where he teamed up with Jackie Coogan. The movie, a medley of high emotion and com-edy was an enormous success. The little tramp made a mark for him-self through his body language and pantomime. Charlie Chaplin is remembered even today for his adorable role of the tramp - a man with a penguin-like walk, small moustache and a cane subtly signify-ing dignity.

Charlie Chaplin’s talent was not confined to acting and directing. He also had a multi-talented persona and tried his hand at writing and music. To quote the man himself, he was ‘a tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and ad-venture’. He wrote all his scripts and at least four books - “My Autobi-ography”, “A Comedian Sees the World”, “My Life in Pictures”, “My Trip Abroad”. He also composed music for his films and played multiple instruments. Some of his compositions include “Sing a Song”; “There’s Always One You Can’t Forget”; and “With You Dear in Bombay”. He composed the background score for some of his films, too. The enig-ma was not just an actor, but also a writer, director and music com-poser, all in one.


He's the man who popularised the hat and cane style, the man who proved that all you need to rise from rags to riches is a genuine tal-ent. He's the original success story.

“Some men are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” Chaplin was a man who achieved greatness. His humour was a service to mankind, especially dur-ing the troubled times of the World Wars. His parody of the second World War 'The Great Dictator" where Chaplin plays a double role as a Jewish barber and the Dictator Hynkel who are mistaken for each other was a bold movie considering it was released during the War. He brought a whole new perspective to the way people looked at things around them and added vibrancy to their lives through his comical takes. He put the troubles of his personal life in the back-burner and unleashed his creativity to the maximum extent possi-ble. He was a dedicated artist and a pure genius by all standards. If laughter is the best medicine, Charlie Chaplin undoubtedly put all the doctors in the world out of business. He was laid to rest on the Christmas Day of 1977, but his works continue to entertain us. “A day without laughter is a day wasted!”

Charlie Chaplin lives forever in our hearts through his evergreen works which never cease to invoke laughter. So one of these days do yourself a favour: pop in a Charlie Chaplin CD and lose yourself in the simple charms of the waistcoat clad buffoon before you.

-Swetha Vasu

Swetha is the author of http://www.apeironinfinity.blogspot.com/


http://www.apeironinfinity.blogspot.com/



"Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you."

Those were the first words ever spoken into a phone. On March 10 1876, the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, spoke these words into his experimental telephone, and down the hall his assistant Thomas Watson heard these words. I'd have preferred say-ing something like, "Holy crap! This shit works!" or maybe paraded naked down the street screaming Eureka!, but that's just me. There's more to the story behind the telephone, though.

After Bell got his patent issued, he and his partners went to the Western Union and offered to sell them the patent for $100,000. The president of the company refused, and stated that the telephone was nothing more than a toy. The dumb blokes didn't realize then that some toys were freaking awesome. And like every hero who's ever rejected a heroine, they had an epiphany, and two years later told the colleagues that he'd consider it a bargain if he got the pat-ent for $25 million.

And unlike every rejected heroine, Bell and his pals spat on the face of the hero, and said that they had no intentions of selling the pat-ent whatsoever. They created the Bell Telephone Company in 1877, and by 1886, over 150,000 people in the U.S. owned telephones. Thomas Alva Edison made further improvements which no longer made it mandatory to shout to be heard on the other end, which sadly, quite a few people still take time to resolve in.

Invention of the Telephone


For the last time, I do not want a free enema!

But, was Alexander Graham Bell the first person to invent the telephone?

In 1861, German teacher and physicist Johann Philipp Reis said into his invented telephone, "The horse does not eat cucumber salad." His reason for choosing such a queer sentence was to make sure that it would be understood word for word, without the listener guessing what the sentence meant. But in 1861, his invention was considered sheer lunacy. Maybe the folks back then just couldn't ac-cept the fact that there was a guy who could invent something that could transfer speech electrically. Or maybe they couldn’t because he said things like "The horse does not eat cucumber salad."

An Italian American named Antonio Meucci had engaged himself in the inventing something that would transfer speech electrically as early as 1857. He'd applied for a patent in 1871, but due to the lack of patronage and support, he couldn't afford to pay the $250 required for getting the patent. A legal battle ensued between


him and Bell, which declared, of course, that Bell owned the rights and the patent for the discovery of the telephone. Bell had admit-ted though, that Meucci was indeed the first man ever to transmit speech electrically.

Is there a lesson to be learnt? Yes. Before inventing something, get loaded on cash. And get an assistant, too.

All that being said, none of us can deny the fact that the telephone was one of those inventions that changed our lives drastically. Had it not been for the telephone, we wouldn't have been able to do things that we now take for granted. Can we imagine our lives today without telephones? No sir, we cannot.

He had once said,"I believe in the future wires will unite the head offices of telephone companies in different cities, and a man in one part of the country may communicate by word of mouth with an-other in a distant place."And this is a salute to the man that he was and the thing he made.

-Srimanta Mitra

Srimanta is the author of http://inside-of-outside.blogspot.com/


http://inside-of-outside.blogspot.com/



There are musicians and then there are squealing pigs.

The difference

It's good to be weird. It's good to be something different. It's good to be the fresh gust of wind in an industry that reeks of plagiarism. It's good to be the one-man army leading a revolution. It's good to be insane. It's good to stand up in what you believe, even if you are termed borderline retarded for it. It's good to stand apart from the crowd. It's good to be yourself. It's better to be Weird Al Yankovic.

The weirdness begins right from the name - Alfred Matthew "Weird Al" Yankovic. Who for the sake of Christ has a name that stretches nine syllables across? Wait till you here more.

Weird Al Yankovic is a musician, with a sense of much needed and appreciated humour. While the music industry lay rotting away in grunge, 'why-did-you-leave-me-now-let-me-die' songs, bands that

Weird Al Yankovic


sound like dogs howling, and disasters like Montana and Bieber, Weird Al became the redeemer - the redeemer of lost pride, esteem and of course, of the almighty, music.

Al's creations are sheer genius and this statement can be justified by multiple reasons. Simple, yet complex. Funny, yet not gross. Witty, yet for the common masses. While some bands scream… well, just scream something at the top of their lungs, others try to disguise their hideous voice in heavy techno-beats and some others brood over how hopeless their life, Weird Al makes you laugh and he does it well. His music is fresh, alive and proves that it’s good to be insane. You don’t need to drink or get loaded to go nuts. Try the Weird Al way.

He has a song on everything – Germs, Gandhi, horoscopes, 2000 inch televisions – absolutely everything. Weird Al’s songs can be classified into two types: original and parodies. His songs tell sto-ries better than most authors today. With titles like ‘The Night Santa Went Crazy’, ‘Attack of the Radioactive Hamsters from a Planet near Mars’, ‘Polkamon’, lyrics that do justice to the song names and music that fits wonderfully into the insanity, this shit can make a person standing on the edge of a cliff reconsider jumping to his death. Be-cause life is happy, that’s what Weird Al says. And the cliff doesn’t have a soft landing.

One has to be brilliantly daedal to create a masterpiece and even more so to replicate it so adroitly that it stands in the ranks of the original. Add to that Weird Al’s near demented persona, his imitation of the vocals and his buffoonish yet intelligent lyrics, and boy oh boy, we’re talking a big hit here. Make that hits. Weird Al renditioned the song that shot Eminem to glory ‘Lose Yourself’ to ‘Couch Potato’ where he raps about, well, a couch potato almost better than the rapper himself. He took Avril Lavigne’s ‘Complicated’ and metamor-phed it into ‘A Complicated Song’ about constipation, dating your sister and not standing on roller coasters. Don Mclean’s classic hit


‘American pie’ was made into ‘The Saga Begins,’ a story about Star Wars. He also made a more pleasing version of James Blunt’s I-stalk-pretty-girls song ‘You’re Beautiful’ into ‘You’re Pitiful’ which he was not allowed to release and hence put it up for free download on his website in a million different places. And that is just the tip of the awesome, musical and hilarious iceberg that Weird Al Yankovic is.

Listen to him not because of his music or lyrics, but when you are in despair or realize that you are a hopeless jerk after all, Weird Al will give you hope and happiness. He’ll make you want to sing, dance, laugh and stab people in the face. Craziness is permitted by law and it’s quite simple going wacky. Listen to Al, live life, go bonkers and let the world call you whatever they want to because weirdness will always prevail. And so will Weird Al.

- Saahil Dama

Saahil is the author of http://sadamned.blogspot.com/


http://sadamned.blogspot.com/



"No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and dear to his heart and eye the morning can be." -Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897)

A small law firm sends one of their agents, Jonathan Harker, some-where in the middle of nowhere to manage the finances of a certain Count Dracula. After a long and mysterious journey, Harker arrives at an enormous castle where he is warmly invited in by his host; a polite yet strangely eerie man. He stays suspicious of his host and his strange ways; and it soon becomes clear to a very terrified Jona-than, that he is living a nightmare, trapped in the castle with not only a vampire for a host, but the other demonic residents of the house as well. His only way out might just be death. Meanwhile, the Count sets off to England, a place where he plans to fulfill his dream of creating a race of vampires to replace humans on the top rung of the food chain, turning humans into mere animals; a world where vampires rule. It is now up to vampire expert, Professor Van Helsing, and a number of others to save the human race from this gruesome fate. It is a powerful journey, a fight between good and evil. And more importantly, it is worth reading about four hundred pages in tiny script to find out, that ultimately, good always wins!

It was in 1897 that Irish author Bram Stoker wrote this timeless classic. After over a century, the novel is read and loved by millions all over the world. The main antagonist, Count Dracula, is probably the most famous character in popular culture, with many future movies, books and television series featuring him. Bram Stoker is supposed to have taken the inspiration for this legendary character from the 15th Century Prince Vlad Drakulya (Vlad III the Impaler) of Wallachia.

Dracula


The Count is far different from the 'vampires' in today's literature; the mysteriously attractive ‘creatures of the night’, with ladies swooning over them left, right and center. In fact, it is actually im-plied time and again that Dracula might be gay. There is nothing remotely attractive about the Count; he is like a wild animal, he’s a monster. He is thin, with sharp ears, pointed teeth and hairy palms. He is also supposed to be strikingly cruel looking. "I saw... Count Dracula... with red light of triumph in his eyes, and with a smile that Judas in hell might be proud of”, writes Jonathan Harker, in his jour-nal. Dracula can shift shape into a number of animals, most famous-ly, a bat. Exposure to sunlight isn't fatal to him, but he is much less powerful during the day. And of course, like most 'vampires' he can-not enter a house unless invited. Dracula is a wonderful character, scary and fascinating at the same time. There are times in the book where you feel hypnotized by him, as if you were truly under the influence of his vampire like charms.

The novel is supposed to be a compilation of the journal entries of all the main protagonists and a bunch of letters and news clippings. This leaves a lot to the imagination and leaves many unfilled gaps; gaps that you have to fill in yourself, making the book very personal. You can identify with and experience the story from every charac-ter’s point of view, except Dracula, of course. The book is very emo-tional, even without any drama or dialogue about the emotions. Every character’s experience touches some place deep within you, and makes you put yourself in that position and wonder what you would do. At the same time, the writing is very eerie and exciting. While it is not like reading a horror book, there are times when you shiver with excitement or have chills down your spine.

The descriptions are detailed and often very gruesome. Each of the characters has a life outside of the story. The story doesn’t re-volve only around vampires, and how awesome and/scary they are, like most vampire literature. There is also a lot about the char-acters’ comparatively mundane, mortal lives. It makes you believe


that you’re actually reading people’s personal diaries. Every character is well defined and well described. What I like is how every person writes differently and the author has captured that defining style for everyone. Van Helsing seems exactly like the smart, slightly eccentric scientist-philosopher he is supposed to be, with that ironic sense of humour, and the iron nerve. The story also has many sub-plots, which may confuse you at times, but they ultimately bind the book together, with nothing that can be called unnecessary.

The story is full of symbolism, much deeper than the good versus evil plot. The book has tons of unwritten meanings and hidden implica-tions. A study of the book will lead you to many underlying themes such as sexual liberation or a protest against the Victorian society. It is about the dominance of men over women, and in turn about the need for freedom, for both women and other minorities. It is about having an open mind, exploring all possibilities and modernity, which is why the man who is the ‘vampire expert’ is a practical man, a sci-entist. The book has been analyzed more than thousands of times, over the years. And yet, what I love the most, is that it is none of those themes that kept me so involved in that book. The story, the plot and the writing leave you so spellbound, that all these could just be called ‘added advantages’!While it wasn’t Bram Stoker who first introduced vampires in litera-ture, let alone come up with the concept of ‘vampires’, it is still the name ‘Dracula’ that is synonymous with the word ‘vampire’ today. And no matter how much we have to suffer through the Cullens, we for-give Mr. Stoker, because this book is truly a work of genius.

- Priya DabakPriya is the author of http://peskypiksipesternomi.blogspot.com/


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Green Salutes