Blogs by Sangram Keshari Senapati

Saturday 2 May 2020

For a Massive Hit, all We need is a story and the effort in making

Sangram Keshari Senapati May 02, 2020 0
For a Massive Hit, all We need is a story and the effort in making

In March 2020, the Ramayan cast members Arun Govil, Dipika Chikhlia, and Sunil Lahri with Prem Sagar came to The Kapil Sharma's Show to celebrate 30 years of Ramayana by late director Ramananda Sagar.

By that time, the CoronaVirus pandemic started in India and after the Janta Carfue on 22nd March, we all are at home for the LockDown to break the chain of coronavirus. So, Doordarshan planned to re-telecast the old mythological serials again on DD National and DD Bharati.

In my +2 English textbook, we read the autobiography of Ramananda Sagar on Ramayan Serial making and the reactions he got during that time. There, he mentioned how people came to visit his house to watch Ramayan on TV, who didn't have any idea about the creator of the show. Then when I saw that episode of The Kapil Sharma Show, telecasted on Sony TV, it feels really proud.

In that show, Prem Sagar had narrated how they planned to make the Ramayan and how they face problems during the shooting period and how they created the animation in those days, where there were no such advanced techniques to create the high standard VFX.

I heard some people who crack jokes on such series with no VFX and the 2D animation used for a 3D visualization. But, a few days back when we saw the news that Ramayan broke all the records of the visitor worldwide, that moment I realize the facts for a massive hit.

All we know the story of Ramayan, but still we all watch this series. Most of our people had watched it before on TV and also on YouTube, but they still watch it on TV.

Ramanand Sagar had dreamed to make this series with all those types of equipment they had and he did that with his team. Later we saw lots of Ramayan and Hanuman series with huge graphics work and VFX as well as some newly added stories.

Nowadays, the mythological serials are made up of the stories written by the marketing team. So, they are making it to make more money while Ramanand Sagar had skipped lots of things just for lack of references. Now we are watching time travel and lots of bullshit with the original scripts.

Ramanand Sagar had shown the exact Ramayan with proper characterization and finished the 7 parts of Ramayan in just 78 episodes, whereas the recent Ramayan series may take 78 episodes up to the born of Lord Rama.

Today, we watched the final episode of Uttar Ramayan or the whole Ramayan, where I saw my parents' eyes full of tears. I bet you, if you watched it properly then you must have been cried at least once when Bharat said bye to his brother at the beginning of the Banabas and the end song performed by Lav and Kush at the court of Lord Ramachandra in Ayodhya.

Ramanand Sagar is no more to see this great success again, but we love you, sir, for making this masterpiece. Thanks to the Doordarshan for retelecasting this one and giving us a chance to live in that era of Rama.

Ramanand Sir noted in his story which we read in college that, they were staying in a jungle, where all were calling themselves with the character names and now, we were staying within that campus.

Thursday 30 April 2020

We lose Another Kapoor - Rishi Kapoor

Sangram Keshari Senapati April 30, 2020 0
We lose Another Kapoor - Rishi Kapoor

There was a time when he was the Romantic Star of the country with a star face holding a guitar with muffler within his neck. The actor who got the Filmfare for his debut, but before that he got the national film award as a child artist for the film Mera Naam Joker.

From a romantic hero to a villain, comedian, and experimenting with all types of characters, he was excellent in every role. Yesterday, we lose Irrfan Khan, one of the finest actor from the Indian film Industry who show his notable work in the cinemas of the world. Today, we lose another KAPOOR from India and from the Indian film Industry.


Though I haven't watched more of his films, I saw Pehla Pehla Pyar with Tabu, at that time, I realized the power of that actor. Then, I started watching lots of his films and saw some of his interviews. He told some of his life stories on the Coffee with Karan show and then he came to Kapil Sharma's show, where we saw his humor and the comic character within him.

He performed his own role for his Biography. He read his book in front of the people, which all couldn't do in a great way. He named his book a Khullam Khulla, where he shared some of his life stories.

Today, while I was watching news on TV, I came to know about an oldest incident of him. When Raj Kapoor was planning for the movie "Mera Naam Joker", at that time he was searching for a small kid, who could play the role of a Joker.

Raj Kapoor was discussing this with his wife and purposed for Chintu, the nickname of Rishi Kapoor. At that time, Rishi Kapoor heard this discussion and at that age, he started practicing to give the autograph to his fans.


He was passionate about his film career, for which he always cared about his roles as various characters. Even he refused to do some good and superhit movies, just not to hamper that image from the audience.

In the last days, he used the twitter platform and some other social media and spread lots of love and also created some controversies also, but all his things always give happiness to his audience.

Everyone loves different roles, but for me, your best role is 104 Not Out and that film shows us the value of life and the fear to live for long.

Wednesday 29 April 2020

Irrfan Sir, We Love You More

Sangram Keshari Senapati April 29, 2020 0
Irrfan Sir, We Love You More

We know, the best persons always leave early and you are among them, but we still can’t believe that you went down from the bus about which you mentioned before from the hospitals of the United Kingdom.

We can’t say or request you to come back, but we could love you more. We couldn’t forget your works in the Jurassic World, Paan Singh Tomar, The Amazing Spiderman, Hindi Medium, Knock out, and other best roles.

We lose Irrfan Khan, one of the finest actors in the Indian film Industry. You have played various roles in different languages from India to Bangladesh, British and also in American Movies. You played all the roles, from a hero to villain, from a police officer to a terrorist. You proved yourself in every role. We saw Paan Singh Tomar in you and we saw that father, lover, a friend in various roles from all your movies.

That day, you had written the story of the bus conductor who was saying that your station is coming, but you are the person who fought against the disease and did Angregi Medium for us.

Today, at this time of Lockdown, we lose you from this world, but before that, you made a better place for you in the heart of people. Yes, we miss you a little bit, we miss that smile and that way of talking. But sir, we love you more and would love you till the end.

Tuesday 14 April 2020

Lucifer - an awesome series on Netflix

Sangram Keshari Senapati April 14, 2020 0
Lucifer - an awesome series on Netflix

Lucifer is an American TV series originally premiered on Fox, but later owned by Netflix and now available as a web series on Netflix. This series is based on a DC Comics character from the comic book series The Sandman.

On 15h April 2020 when our Government had declared a lockdown for CoronaVirus, I took the subscription of Netflix. Actually, I took the subscription to watch the Little Things series which was originally made by Dice Media and premiered on YouTube, but later Netflix owned it and now available on Netflix series.

When I took the subscription, I had shared it on Twitter complaining about the high data consumption for the videos. From all those comments, I found a comment by Dillip Parida who suggested me to watch this series.


Though I love movies, but not a fan of series. Yes, I use to watch some on YouTube, for which I took this subscription to complete the Little Things Season 1 and Season 2. After these 2 seasons, I have watched some movies there.

In my Engineering days, I have watched just 3 seasons of Vampire Diaries and the TV series of Kungfu Panda also but never thought to watch any series with such curiosity. Due to my English problem, I couldn't watch all episodes of Sherlock Holmes though I love some of its stories, so I checked that which is also available on Netflix, but unfortunately that is available in English only.

There are not many movies which I could watch with love because I've watched most of those. So, I checked for the Lucifer Series. Fortunately, it's available in Hindi, so I started watching the 1st episode.

After the 1st episode, I thought to watch the 2nd and you won't believe it within those days, I haven't watched any movies. Whenever I got some, I started watching it.

Lucifer Morningstar, a Devil from Hell came to Earth and loved to stay at Los Angeles. He was an angel who was thrown out from heaven for betrayal and sent to Hell and became the King there. But he was bored with his life in Hell, abandons his throne and becomes a civilian consultant for the Los Angeles Police Department while running his own high-end nightclub called "Lux". This character is played by the actor Tom Ellis.

The female lead of this series is Detective Chloe Decker who is a homicide detective. Lucifer love to find the guilty people to punish and she solves crimes with Lucifer. The other characters in this series are really awesome. The expression of Dr. Linda Martin, the forensic scientist Ella Lopez of LAPD and the demon Mazikeen.

I love the way Lucifer addresses Chloe Decker as "Detective", that is so cute. Since I was watching the whole series in Hindi, I love the dialogues, which may not be the exact translated versions of the original dialogues, but that sounds really crazy.

I would definitely suggest to watch this series and yes since Lux is a high-end nightclub, you may find some adult things there and all are 16+ and 18+ rated.

Tuesday 7 April 2020

Mission #1000wikidays Accomplished Successfully

Sangram Keshari Senapati April 07, 2020 0
Mission #1000wikidays Accomplished Successfully

When I started editing on Wikipedia, I never thought to write more than 10 articles, but now the count is increasing every day. From the past 1000 days, I was writing at least one article every day and finally, the mission for #1000wikidays completed today.

On 8th March 2017, when I started writing 100 women articles in 100 days, that was quite difficult because of traveling and the internet shutdown at my place for the communal violence. But when it was completed, that day I was too excited and with that excitement, I hadn't continued that, but form 13th July 2017 again I started writing with an aim to complete the #1WikiYear challenge and yes completed that by writing articles related to Odia Film Industry. But the sad part is from those 365 articles 24 articles have been deleted and one article recovered.

But, when I completed the 1st Wikiyear, I aimed for #500Wikidays which were completed by Pranay Raj Bangari and Nitesh Gill before and that too completed and today another 500 days completed. These 1000 days and the previous 100 days went just like a few days, but those were not so easy.

In those 1000 days, I got calls from friends as well as from fellow Wikimedians to quit; some suggested there are lots of time, but you have to prove yourself with a well-paid salary; some suggested not to waste time with such things when a work of at least 4 hours deleted within a few seconds. But these 1000 days taught me lots of things; Now I have good knowledge about our own film industry, I know lots of people from this industry, I learned lots of things about the political history of my state, and the hidden thing is some political things which you may face everywhere in life.

I was afraid of failure; if someday I couldn't write; if I met some accident for which I couldn't write, but thanks to that hidden support I see this day without any failure. On the wedding day of my sister, I was also writing article on my mobile next to the marriage mandap. In that communal violence, I went to the nearby district just to get the internet to write the article for that day. Yes, those days helped to complete this thing.

I wasn't sure to continue, but there are lots of political articles left, which I should read to know about the political history of Odisha and this may help me to achieve easily. I don't know up to when I could continue this, but I would aim for #2000wikidays. At this present scenario of the world, anything may happen at any time, but I wish I could write to the end of that. And if I survive, then the future may be different.

- Sangram (user: Ssgapu22)

Friday 20 March 2020

72 Hours - 2nd Series on Tarang Plus

Sangram Keshari Senapati March 20, 2020 0
72 Hours - 2nd Series on Tarang Plus

A father from a middle-class family could do anything for his children. Akash, a middle-class employee played by Manoj Mishra who recently bought a new house for his small family including his daughter Kuhu and his wife Anu, played by Anu Choudhury.

72 Hours, the 2nd web series on TarangPlus app which means the story is all about 72 hours or 3 days.

On her birthday, Kuhu fall sick and when she was admitted to the hospital her parents came to know about her disease and how she is suffering from that. The doctor asked Akash to arrange more and more money for the operation of her daughter.

Since the operation costs around 55 lacs, he tried his best to arrange money. He tried to lend from friends, sell his house, his wife sold her ornaments just to arrange 15 lacs, the initial amount for the operation process.

As the suggestion of their neighbor Dipti, they initiated crowdfunding, through which someone forced Akash to commit a murder. And I've mentioned above, "a middle-class father could do anything for the sake of his children."

So, the story is all about that struggle and the operation. But in the end there is a big twist, which is really big and enforces you to watch the 2nd season. Yes, I'm waiting for season 2 to know the truth of that, whether the end part is true or the whole season was true.

Manoj Mishra, Anu Choudhury, and Mihir Das did a fabulous role in this series, where you could see Mihir Das in his favorite Kaka style character. I could love the storyline, but there is a will to know what will happen at the end and the twist at the end again headed to season 2.

Friday 6 March 2020

Everyone Has a Story

Sangram Keshari Senapati March 06, 2020 0
Everyone Has a Story

Everyone Has a Story is the 1st novel written by Miss Savi Sharma released in August 2015. This novel is based on an inspirational Story of Dreams, Friendship, Love & Life. As a debut writer she published this novel by herself and quickly became popular and bestselling.

As you all know, during the struggle period, nobody cares for you and after success, everybody started following you. In that rule, Westland publisher collaborated with her and publishing her books now. By February 2017 more than 1,00,000 copies of the book were sold.

In 2018, when I was in Bangalore, I bought a couple of books there seeing the reviews on Amazon, which includes This is Not Your Story and when I opened that book, I came to know about the author and her story too. Then I stopped reading that thought to read the 1st novel at first and then the 2nd one.

Once Tapas Bhai, my co-editor for Shubhapallaba had given this book and almost after 1 and half years just a few days back when I returned from Delhi after the 6th PRABASI BHASHA SAMMAN-2020 I started reading this one. 

According to the story of this novel, there are four main characters; Meera, a fledgling writer who is in search of a story that can touch millions of lives. Vivan, an assistant branch manager at Citibank who dreams of traveling the world. Kabir, a cafe manager who desires something of his own. Nisha, the despondent cafe customer who keeps her secrets of her own. And everyone has their own stories with own struggles.

When I started reading the book, I was curious to know about the writer Meera, how she wished to write a book without a story? But when I started reading further and turn pages, their stories stick my attention to read and complete as quickly as possible.

Everyone's story has some unique thing, but when the story came to an end, I really didn't expect such things. But after all, I love the very last part. While giving a review of any books, I really appreciate the hard work of the author. Here she did a fabulous job, that's why this book got the best seller from the Indian readers.

If you want to read this novel for free, then It's available on Kindle unlimited and you could listen to it on Audible for free too. 


Saturday 15 February 2020

Chumbak: 1st Series on TarangPlus

Sangram Keshari Senapati February 15, 2020 0
Chumbak: 1st Series on TarangPlus

When the TarangPlus app was launched by Odisha Television Network, we expected some new digital movies and web series and that happened on this Valentine's Day.

On the 14th of February in 2020, the 1st web series on TarangPlus Chumbak started streaming. So, today I started watching. The 1st episode is free for all and the other 6 episodes are premium. Though I haven't taken the subscription but I can watch all premium movies and series.

The story started with a simple girl, Sikha played by Divya Mohany from Paradeep who met Manya, a modern girl played by Tammana Vyas at Bhubaneswar at a intercollege festival. Then they became friends, best friends.

When Sikha left after the fest, Manya felt bad, so she changed her college to Sikha's, then the friendship came to another point, where everybody questioned them. It's a college life friendship love story, which our people see in a different way.

I love the whole concept and the way of presentation, but in some scenes, some unnecessary slags are used. Yes, some people are saying such things in public, but we could avoid that, without those, the storyline would be the same.

There are two major characters, Shikha and Manya and apart from them, others are not well prepared for their role. the 1st episode was quite boring, some characters playing the role forcefully and seem they aren't saying the dialogues, they are reading from some promotor.

I'm waiting for the next season. Hopefully, next time the creators may focus on such issues. They may give their character more time to practice properly.

Tuesday 4 February 2020

Failure is Necessary to get Success

Sangram Keshari Senapati February 04, 2020 0
Failure is Necessary to get Success

The journey started from a beautiful place, where every day you could feel the beauty of nature directly through your eyes. Rose is beautiful, but it hurts when you can't hold it properly; like that way the beautiful place and the beautiful town started giving me pain when I can't control myself in all my studies. Because I was afraid to fail and that failure came every single time through my results, sometimes through my friends.

But life is all about LEARNING and those failures taught me lots of things and those 4 years taught me the most important lessons of life. Yes, still I'm learning lots of things, but the 1st learning process started from there when I got 4.5 SGPA in my 3rd-semester results. Someone had said to me, "you are going to read in the same semester again, because the if are going to secure less than 4.5, it's a year-back." And he also said I would definitely score less than this in my next semester, but luckily I never happen.

If you get success, everyone would come and ask for your success story, but here it's all about the story of failure. Because when you fail people would advise you the best things in life. Of course, at that time, you would get irritated from those silly pieces of advice. But you can't listen to everybody so just listen to yourself and think the exact point of your failure. In my case, my fear was that thing and then I started keeping a distance from all my family and friends who used to give me such advice.

But to change the track is not so easy, so I started reading and wring anything. I was poor in English and my voice is low, for that reason once I was scrolled by Priya mam in my 2nd semester. Obviously, from that day, I stopped asking and answering to the teachers. Due to poor English knowledge, I couldn't write in English, so started writing in Odia. In those days, my Odia writing was very poor and English writing was worst. So, I started learning both the languages, since Odia is my mother tongue, I learned that quickly rather than English. But still, I was not happy with my writings, I was looking to publish them somewhere, but such platforms were not available in those days. Typing in Odia Unicode was the 1st challenge to me.

Once I came to know about Odia Wikipedia and I was using that to type in Odia. And then I had created some random articles and the 1st one got deleted. So started learning more about the articles to write, so others could improve that and I could check my Odia writing skills. And that thing happened and my writing skills started improving day by day as well as I had learned how to write the answers on my Answer sheet in the semesters. This thing worked with me, but the internal fear was still there. The new teachers also helped, so I had started asking and answering to them since they are young and just a few years elder than us.

I was afraid to check my 5th-semester results, but I was surprised when I saw the results. For the 1st time in my engineering life, I passed all those papers. The success brings confidence and that confidence reflects in my case too. The internal fear started fading away gradually and by that time, with the period of one year, I had learned how to face that fear and how to improve my self.

My learning process was going on and I had learned how to manage life and how to appear two exams on a single day and to clear both the papers. In the same time, I was writing on Odia Wikipedia and Odia Wikisource regularly, which helped me to keep me busy with the same learning process. By that time, I had also started both my English and Odia blogs on Blogger. In my 3rd year, my 1st ever article was published on our college magazine and the editor had asked for one more story in Odia. His question for the 2nd story for the same magazine helped me to decide for next year magazine. I was the editor for the Odia section in 2016 and for the 1st time, we had published the e-magazine since we are promoting e-education and digital India.

That day I was standing on the stage with Principal sir and Priya mam, and thinking those words which she said in 2013. In that time those words had hurt me, but that word, "LOOSER" pushed me to improve me for something. To complete that magazine we had faced some problems, but later those problems helped me to start and finish my own publishing magazine within just 11 days.

In 2016, I had completed my engineering degree in Computer Science and the fear for the year-back was not there, but some new fear added to the queue. Still, I couldn't get a good job, but I was stick with that thing which helped me to improve myself. So, I was writing on Odia Wikipedia and Wikisource often. But in March 2017, I came to know about #100WikiDays, one challenge started from Bulgaria where you have to write 100 articles on a particular wiki platform for a period of 100 days. 

From 8th March 2017 on World Women's Day, I had started creating women biographies on Odia Wikipedia. Those 100 days were really memorable since, in April, there was communal violence in Bhadrak, as a result, the internet was down for 48 hours. I had to keep writing and the Internet of the district was not working, I was about to fail again, but they called off the curfew for four hours and within that time, I took my father's bike and went up to the tower of Balasore district. There I parked the bike and wrote the article for the day and returned back. On 15th June 2017, I had completed my 1st #100wikidays successfully.

As I had mentioned previously a small success in life leads you towards a big and I had targeted for the WikiYear and started writing for that on 13th July 2017 and successfully completed the journey on 12th July in 2018. In those 365 days, I had written 365 articles related to Odia film industry and more than 100 other articles.

But after that, the journey wasn't so easy. Around 25 articles which I had written in those days had deleted. For a biography, I had taken an average of 4 hours which results "404 The Article Not Found". That day again the same failure came to my life. For some time, I had thought to give up and some people also forced me to do that. But those failure days had taught me to listen to me only and I had ignored them again. Again all those words pushed me to go forward.

On 12th July 2018, I had completed 2 WikiYears. I'm the 3rd person in India as well as in the world to achieve this. Recently Orissa Post had covered a story on this topic. Till today, I had written more than 1050 articles on Odia Wikipedia with 23500+ edits and also completed the 1st wikiyear on Odia Wikisource. In 2019, I got 3rd position in India and 6th position in the world in a photography competition by Wikimedia Commons named as "Wiki Loves Love". Apart from this, I'm the founder and editor of one Odia e-Magazine, Shubhapallaba. Recently we had extended the magazine to English, Bangla, Hindi, and Sanskrit just to give an opportunity to the new writers to support them morally.

I would conclude this one with this line which I had written for the title, "Failure is necessary to get Success in Life" because the failure teaches us.

Sunday 27 October 2019

TarangPlus: 1st Entertainment App in Odia Language

Sangram Keshari Senapati October 27, 2019 0
TarangPlus: 1st Entertainment App in Odia Language

TarangPlus App is Odisha's first online video streaming app by Odisha Television Network launched today on 27th November 2019 on the occasion of Diwali.

Previously, the era was known for the Television Industry and later it changed to Internet World. All channels started uploading their shows on YouTube, but due to copyright issues there, some videos blocked, some sounds muted. To avoid this, some media houses like Start, Sony, Colors, Zee made their own apps HotStar, SonyLiv, Voot, Zee5 respectively and many other apps like ATL Balaji, Viu, NetFlix, MX Player, Amazon Prime, etc launched in India and other countries also for easy video streaming.

But, in Odia language, the Odisha Television Network launched its own app to steam the shows of its channel OTV, Tarang, Tarang Music, Prarthana, Alankar as well as some extra shows and new songs only for the App.

The price rate for the app is 1 Rupee per day, but you have to take at least a one-year subscription, which is 365/- per year. But there is an offer for the new users now.

Hopefully, we could see the older series and talk shows on that App. The talk shows may help me to know more information about our Odia celebrities to write about them on Odia Wikipedia.