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Monday,June22,2009
ABYTE OF LIFE
SAINA MAKES HISTORY
Wins Indonesian Open Super Series
FREE CIRCULATION
Vol. 3No. 115
08
Seniors turn netizens
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan takes computereducation to the seniors. And they areloving it. Deepa Venkatraman reports
»
PAGE 3
   P   H   O   T   O  :   S .   S .   K   U   M   A   R
 
 A 
ctor Kamal Hassan has suc-cessfully directed three fea-ture films (
Chachi 420 
,
Hey Ram
and
Virumaandi)
, butthat does not deter him from di-recting a short film. The film is onnamma Chennai and is his way toencourage youngsters into the in-dustry.The project is the outcome of the International Screenwriter’s workshop conducted by Hassanrecently in the city.Plans are on to direct 30 shortfilms on various aspects of Chen-nai, out of which one film wouldbe directed by the actor himself.Revealing this at a press meeton Friday at Prasad Labs, KamalHassan said that the project willbe funded by Prasad Labs.The scripts for the 30 shortfilms will be selected from theover 250 participants of the work-shop. They would be handpickedby actor Hassan and director of L.V. Prasad Film and TV Academy  V. Hariharan. Along with Kamal Hassan,some of the established directorsare also expected to direct thefilms. The project would belaunched next year.The project was flagged off by legendary French script writerJean-Claude Carrie`re, whopenned the script for Kamal Has-san’s
 Marudhanayagam
, an in-complete project.“The 30 short films will be atreasure about Chennai for thefuture generations,” actor KamalHassan said, adding that he gotthe inspiration from Carrie`re.
■
Ergo Correspondent 
Of the 30 short films on Chennai, one would be directed by the actor himself, while the rest would be directed by someof the established directors.
Kamal to directa short film
Taking inspiration: Actor Kamal Hassan and French scriptwriter Jean-Claude Carrie`re in Chennai.
PHOTO: S.S .KUMAR
ERGO
Monday,June22,2009
NAMMA CHENNAI
02
Pigs: Not our job
The police control room recently received acall mentioning that a number of pigs areroaming at a locality in Adyar. The cop onthe receiving end told the caller ‘it’s not the job of police to catch pigs’ and disconnectedthe call. In a few hours the cop got a‘big dose’ from his seniors as thecaller was the relative of a bigmoustache IPS officer.
Back to collectionmode
Some corrupt policemen in T.Nagar limit are a happy lot aftertheir deputy commissioner, knownfor his honest ways, was transferred lastweek. The
khakis
are back to ‘collectionmode’ in the pocket, which is well-known asa profitable area for cops.
 Tough senior, terrifiedjuniors
A senior police officer often addressed as theking of south Chennai police zone went outof control when his juniors under perform ordon’t obey orders. The officer’s style ofpunishment is to thrash the indisciplinedkhaki. There have been incidents where theofficers chased his subordinates to punishthem.
Behind the b’day bash
A leading Kollywood hero, whose birthday iscoming soon, is said to be ready to float anew political party and is only waiting forthe word from the ruling party. Reliablesources say there is plan to induct the actorinto the party. Reason: his presence wouldweaken a politically upcoming senior actor.
Music Day sale
Planet M is celebrating World Music Day (June 21) with a sale atall its stores. Shop three Sony CDs at Rs. 199, get 50 per centdiscount on select big DVDs and buy ‘2 and get 1 free’ on Virginmusic, movie CDs and VCDs. The sale is on till July 31. Planet Mstores are at Anna Nagar, Mylapore and Nungambakkam.
 
I
ndirani Sreenivasan (67) canlisten to online music and readnewspapers. T. Natarajan (75)can type out letters in MS wordand send emails to his grandchil-dren. Lalita Venugopal (61) canpay bills online.They come with their little notepads and computer manuals, starttheir class with a prayer and thenmove on to typing on the key-board. This sounds like a comput-er class but it is different in its ownkind. They are 60-year-old-plusindividuals who have a burning desire to be technically sound andcomputer literate.The Bharatiya Vidya BhavanGandhi Institute of ComputerEducation and Information Tech-nology located at T. Nagar andMylapore started a three-monthcomputer course for the senior ci-tizens for free in May.K.N. Ramaswamy, additional di-rector of BVB, Chennai comment-ing on the response says, “Thisproject is to commemorate ourgolden jubilee. We initially wantedto enrol only 50 senior citizens forthe first session but we got hun-dreds of applications. Hence werestricted the number to 156. Andthe rest of them are in the waiting list for the next batch.”
The basics
 As of now, there are three tim-ings—10 a.m., 12 p.m. and 2 p.m. –and the duration of the class is fortwo hours. One staff member su-pervises five students at a time for20 minutes and then they contin-ue to practice their lessons ontheir respective computers.“The three-month module high-lights basic computer fundamen-tals such as various parts of thecomputer, MS word, Excel func-tions, internet usage – generalsurfing, emailing and stock brok-ing, Microsoft photo editor, use of calculator in the computer, win-dows media player,” says PraveenKumar, course coordinator.One could see some curiousminds figuring out the keyboardslowly while a few others who were adept at typewriting seemedto be more at ease. But the onecommon string was that they wereall learning to use the computerfor the first time in their lives.
Knowledge, a click away
Mandavali resident, K. S. Jayara-man (71), a retired marketing pro-fessional, missed the opportunity to learn computer in his officedays. Jayaraman, who has investedin several shares in the stock mar-ket, says: “I am able to arrange allmy shares in excel and save it inthe hard disk at home. The com-puter manual is very useful andeasy to comprehend with eachfunction explained step by step insimple language.”Most of them said they had joined the course just to learn thenew-age internet applications.Seventy-one-year-old T. Gajaraj, adiploma holder in electrical engi-neering, is currently trying to cre-ate a design for electricalequipment revolving around kine-matics. He says, “I can surf a lot onkinematics online and get knowl-edge of various designs. This willhelp me a lot in my project.”There is a test conducted at theend of one month to gauge theirunderstanding of what was taught. All of them are all praise of thestaff members who teach them with lot of patience. Uma Mahesh- wari one of the teachers says, “It isa different experience – just liketeaching children. The senior citi-zens are very punctual and sincerecompared to college students. Inthe online objective test, they havefared very well.”
■
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan has started free computer classes for senior citizens
No age limit to learn: Senior citizens at the computer training centre in Mylapore.
PHOTO: S.S. KUMAR
Senior
citizens
become netizens
DEEPA VENKATRAMAN
deepav18@gmail.com
Monday,June22,2009
03
Go pamper yourself
Nature B, a beauty salon and spa, is offering around 65 per centdiscount on all its treatments and packages. The offer is on for thenext four days. The salon is at Velachery and Chinna Neelangarai. Fordetails call 2449 5553/ 22551668.
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