Royal Dasara Celebration at Mysore

The feeling of being a part of lakhs of enthusiasts from around the world is amazing. My visit to Mysore, a city in Karnataka, India, had given me a chance to witness Dasara (Dusshera) festival celebrated in a Royal way. Crowd of around a million visitors and local residents gathered inside and outside the Mysore Palace to witness the traditional Dasara procession. 

Mysore Palace - Que moving towards the procession area 

Following the que of 1500 people to enter the Palace

The main attraction was the idol of Goddess Chamundeshwari placed in a golden pavilion on top of a decorated Elephant followed by Cultural representations from different parts of Karnataka, Vibrant performances by Dance groups, music bands, marching horses and decorated elephants. The procession starts from Mysore palace and culminates at Bannimantapa, where the banni (Prosopis Spicigera) tree is worshipped by the king himself.

As Dasara is one of the most popular event in South India, all the passes were sold out, but we managed to spot people who were selling passes in black. Standing behind the que of around 1500 people to enter the palace is worth the wait. The first step inside the palace campus and I was stunned to see more than 3 lakh heads already seated, The enthusiasm that made me and my friend Shwetha travel all the way from Bangalore to Mysore pushed me to squeeze in and pass the crowd to reach the front of the ground, towards the procession area. 

Around 4 Lakh people seated in the Mysore Palace premises

Factors like heat, sweat, hunger and tiredness were all forgotten all I remember is, I want some good shots.

As all the seats were already occupied, I folded my legs and sat down in the floor with Shwetha, under the open sky waiting for the procession to begin. After an hour, hon’ble Chief Minister of Karnataka, Shri Jagadish Shivappa Shettar came in as Chief Guest.

JUMBO entry

Excitement began, on my feet, camera ready. I heard people saying, here comes Jumbo, wondering what it is, then saw beautifully decorated elephants with their Mahouts walked in the ramp (Jumbo called by localites). They stopped near the CM and raised their trunks to bless, its an indication to start the event. 

The procession begins with vivid tableaux from around Karnataka, artists performed their best to representing their culture. It’s a wonderful experience to witness such diverse cultures. The sound of the huge leather tambourine, drums, horns and the 4 Lakh cheering crowd was amazing. The smartly dressed officers in their horses marched in complete sync. The royal music band seated on an elephant played their tunes to mark this day. The crowd was overjoyed with the performances and cheers echoed as it continued.

Drummers playing their cultural beat

Dancing with idols of Goddesses in their head

CM and other members showing flowers on the idol
of Goddess Chamundeswari

As the performances were coming to an end, the Idol of Goddess Chamundeshwari placed in a Golden pavilion came on a royal Elephant decorated to look the best and halted near the hon’ble Chief minister, he climbed up the stage and showered flowers on the Idol, concluding the procession inside the palace.

Idol  of Goddess Chamundeswari in the
Golden pavilion

Crowd witnessing the procession

The procession marched out from the palace towards Bannimantapa passing the streets of Mysore where almost 6 lakh people were eagerly waiting to witness the procession. While the people outside the palace finally got to see the procession, the palace premises suddenly turned so deserted, felt like the crowd just disappeared. 

With the joy of such a wonderful experience, me and Shweta walked towards the exit gate. The setting sun gave a beautiful silhouette to the palace and here I get my concluding shot.

 

WHY GO SOCIAL?

It’s incredible that Internet has become one of the most dominant decision-making medium. We research online for reviews and brand popularity before opting for any product or services. With the advent of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other such social mediums, information travels around the world within fraction of seconds.

Considering this fact that three quarter customers come from online marketing, brands are making more investment in digital marketing campaign than traditional marketing.

Many business owners are still not sure about making investments in digital marketing. Following are couple of points that will help you understand; Why Digital Marketing is Important in Building a Brand?

A digital marketing campaign gives credibility and visibility to a brand. A search engine definitely gives a brand good visibility but being present in social media channels, like Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc, builds credibility. Popularity and availability of online information of a product/service boost up the chances of sales and business. It is also very important for a brand to show up in the top positive results when a user searches for a product / service online. 

Social media helps to enhance search. People don’t just use Search Engines but extend their search to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Slideshare, Youtube and Flickr search. Search engines like Google and Bing have confirmed that links shared through Twitter and Facebook have a direct impact on search engine rankings of a website or blog. 

Communication is the most important thing that a brand should focus on to elevate its business. Social media is extensively used for customer service.  Customers want that their voice is heard regardless of positive or negative. Airtel, FlyKingfisher, Cafe Coffee Day in India immensely uses Twitter to address customer queries and avail them quick feedback. 

Another very important thing in business is instant dissemination. The target audience should be aware of what’s up with your brand as fast as possible. The content disseminated via Social Media just does not create awareness, but also makes it conversable and go viral. Popular brands such as Subway, Coke, Dell, Ford, are some of the examples who use Social Media in order to generate awareness in fraction of seconds. 

Social media is an inexpensive way of building brands, as the reach of this medium is very vast but let’s not forget that it’s not a very quick process. It is a strategic process and has tremendous potential to develop a business. Overwhelming results can be seen eventually. 

Whether you are there or not, people will still talk about you! It is better to be in the social space and get the feedback sorted rather than not being there and not knowing where the problem area is and hence losing customers trust.

VLOGGING a Visual Way of Expressing

VLOGGING… when I first heard this term, thought I heard it wrong, my colleague must have said Blogging, but no I heard it right she said “Vlogging” a term used for Video Blogging. For people who find writing a tough job, now instead of trying to write a blog and at times fail to make others feel the emotions of your article, you can come onscreen and spread your message in the wide Web World through a Vlog.

A Videoblog or “Vlog” unlike a Blog uses video as its primary media source rather than text or audio. You can use any kind of camera, be it your cell phone, digital camera or an inexpensive video camera to acquire the raw material for a video blog. Vlogs are usually accompanied by text or still images. As a Vlog contains movement, audio, stills and text, it automatically offers a richer Web experience as compared to text blogs.

Vloggers are the people who don’t want to limit their lexis by writing text but are fascinated by the richness and capability of vlogging. Vlogging is attracting the whole lot of techie and creative people who want to share their views and stories with the web world. They found that videos allow them to express themselves more naturally and with greater facility than static, text-based sites.

Creating a Vlog is not very difficult, just capture a video using any video capturing equipment and you can simple post the raw material or if you wish, edit the footage in an inexpensive or free video editing software to enhance the capture. Few of the free editing software that you can use as a beginner are Microsoft Movie Maker, Avid Free DV, Wax, Zwei-Stein and Virtual Dub. Apart from these, some of the online tools for editing, mixing and making your video more fanciful are Jumpcut, Eyespot, Motion Box, Cuts and StashSpace. Due to storage and bandwidth limitations, try to make the clip of around 1-3 minutes in length. Some places may demand specific video formats to get uploaded to their site so you can make use of Zamzar, Vixy, Flvix, Any Video Converter and Media Converter and get your video converted to the required video format in no time. Now your Video is ready to go online. Top places for Vlogging are: From the Desk of Mike Steward, Freevlog, Vlog Blog and Izzy Video. Add a short description to your video and give an appropriate title and there it goes online for the Web crowd to view your video and comment on your Vlog.