A Justin Bieber in the making?

She is supposed to be THE YouTube sensation of India. Shraddha Sharma is her name and, according to a story in Mint Lounge on September 17, her YouTube channel had more subscribers than John Abraham's.

SHRADDHA SHARMA STRUTTING HER STUFF.

In the profile, written by Anindita Ghose, we learn that Shraddha, "savvy songstress, YouTube phenomenon and Facebook celebrity", is a 15-year-old schoolgirl who lives in Dehradun and has never travelled beyond New Delhi.

How did Shraddha get her start?

A little before midnight on 30 April, Shraddha Sharma uploaded a YouTube video of her singing, with a guitar accompaniment, a teary song of separation dedicated to “a special friend who was leaving her forever”. It was recorded on her parents’ living room sofa. She sang Rahat Fateh Ali Khan’s Mein Tenu Samjhawan from the Punjabi movie Virsa.

Five videos and 16 weeks later, in the third week of August, Shraddha’s YouTube channel, Shraddharockin, became the highest subscribed channel in India.

Shades of Justin Bieber! Back in May last year, The Reading Room had published a post based on Time magazine's article on how the internet had turned a 16-year-old into a pop phenom. And now here's an Indian teen rocking the internet charts.

Read the Shraddha Sharma profile here and the Justin Bieber post here.

• Photo courtesy: Mint Lounge

The awe-inspiring story of India's first paraplegic major-general

Sixteen years ago he was part of a crack team in Kashmir sent to rescue women taken by the Lashkar-e-Toiba as sex slaves.

He recounts killing two terrorists. The third fell face up. “I thought he was dead, but he fired,” he says. “The shot went through my abdomen, my intestines spilled out and my spine broke. I knew I would never walk again. Yet, I shot him dead.” He refused to be evacuated till the encounter was over, sustaining himself on self-administered intravenous drips. He was later awarded the Kirti Chakra.

When we seem to be beset on all sides by stories of rampant corruption at the highest levels of politics and business, this saga in The Week of the unflappable Major-General S.K. Razdan is so awe-inspiring. It serves, perhaps, as a reminder of the triumph of the human spirit. It also reinforces our belief that "positive thinking" works; it's not just a concept.

COURAGE PERSONIFIED: Major-General S.K. Razdan

One year after he was shot, Razdan went back to work. Rekha Dixit, who met Razdan in New Delhi for this profile in The Week, writes:

The general has a demanding career, he often returns by 8:30 p.m. “Fortunately, the Army preferred to see the skills I have instead of the disability,” he says. He is now assistant chief of the Integrated Defence Staff.  His speciality is counterinsurgency.

At work, the biggest challenge is to perform like others; he hates sympathy. “I am lucky I have not received help I didn’t want,” he says. The Vishisht Seva Medal he received last year is testimony to his professionalism.

And take a look at his morning schedule:

Razdan’s day starts early; he does his ablutions without help, then exercises. The self-designed regime includes push-ups, stretches and a session on a self-made pulley-operated gym. In the sunny front yard, Razdan demonstrates his exercises, pulling off his sweatshirt to reveal enviable biceps.

The paragraph continues:

At this moment, his wife, Manju, steps out. “Arrey, what are you doing? Are you Salman Khan?” she says, taking in the scene. “Salman Khan, wow, let me have a glimpse, too,” giggles a neighbour from the balcony upstairs. Manju is in a hurry; she has to run several chores. Razdan reluctantly puts back his shirt. “I will take her to the bank and then we will continue,” he says. He wheels himself to the car shed and shifts without assistance from wheelchair to the driver’s seat. “It is important to know driving,” says Manju. “If I could, I wouldn’t be so dependent on him.”

This is a feel-good story like no other that I have read in recent times.

You can read the profile in full here: "Generally speaking".

PS: The magazine has some heart-warming pictures of Major-General S.K. Razdan that are not on the website.

• Photo courtesy: The Week

Why I admire Rajinikanth

I used to wonder: The Badshah of Bollywood and other stars of his ilk won't be caught dead without their toupee — they act in their movies bewigged and they come out in public bewigged. How come Rajinikanth is different?

Rajini is happy to play the glam hero in his films — but off-screen he seems to have no problem offering us his real persona, the wig be damned.

Again, my question: How come?

Baradwaj Rangan, the erudite film critic of The New Indian Express, provides the answer in an enlightening profile of the South's biggest star in a recent issue of Tehelka.

He agrees that Rajini’s off-screen appearances can be perplexing to the untrained eye, but he clarifies quickly: "...by untrained, I refer to the non-Tamil eye."

And he elaborates:

We Tamilians, after all, are used to the dichotomy of our heroes looking one way on screen and another in real life. Cinema is a manufactured medium, and it would stand to reason that the faces up there are manufactured too, made up with make-up. ... So we don’t really flinch when Rajinikanth comes to us bewigged on screen and bald off it. He is, after all, 60. Lesser men have been reduced to shiny domes at far younger ages. (Ask me. I should know.) So when, in an audio launch for Robot, Rajinikanth looks his age, looks like the grandfather that he is, it doesn’t frazzle us. He’s not acting now. He’s real. That’s all there is to it.

And then Baradwaj wonders if there is a lesson here for the aging heroes of Bollywood:

Perhaps Bollywood stars — especially the ones in their forties and upwards, some of whom apparently are staving off signs of aging with nips and tucks and hair weaves — can learn this lesson from Rajinikanth, that you can be yourself and your fans won’t stop loving you. On the contrary, they just may come to love you a little more.

And so I learnt two things here:

First, Rajini's attitude is worth emulating. Why should we pretend to be who or what we are not in real life?

Second, there is a difference in the mindsets of movie fans on either side of the Vindhyas.

Do you agree?