RIP Dara Singh

Posted on by Roshan 2 Comments

Veteran Indian wrestler-turned-actor Dara Singh passed away today due to a cardiac arrest. He was 83 years old.

Dara Singh was born as Deedar Singh Randhawa in a Sikh Jat family on 19 November 1928 in Dharmuchak village (now falls under Amritsar district) in British Punjab. He started to get into pehlwani an Indian style of wrestling and performed internationally. Singh went to Singapore in 1947 and became the Champion of Malaysia (Indian style wrestling) by defeating Tarlok Singh in Kuala Lumpur. He has toured almost all far-east countries as a professional wrestler. Dara Singh returned to India in 1952, became the Indian Champion and won the title Rustam-E-Hind in 1954.

He made his film debut in 1952 with Sangdil and was successful as action hero in the 1960-69 in Hindi Films and is believed to have started the trend of hero taking the shirt off. He appeared in 119 Hindi feature films and in 21 Punjabi films. Of the 140 films he did, 58 had him play the main lead. He also did 6 TV serials. One of his notable friends was the actress Mumtaz with whom he had performed in 16 Hindi films and had 10 of them as box office hits. His famous Hindi films in sixties were Awara Abdulla , Rustom-E-Baghdad and with Mumtaz films like Faulad, Veer Bhimsen, Tarzan Comes to Delhi. He then went on to television in the 1980s and 1990s where he played the role of Hanuman in the television adaptation of the Hindu epic Ramayan. He also played in the super hit Mard as Amitabh Bachchan.

From his first marriage, he has a son Parduman Singh Randhawa and from his second marriage he has five children: two sons and three daughters including TV and film actor Vindu Dara Singh.

Dara Singh (19 November 1928 – 12 July 2012)

Are You Good At Reading Maps?

Posted on by Roshan Leave a comment

Actually no I am terrible in reading maps. I’m very bad in sorting directions. I get confused very easily. I guess my internal compass is outta wack. Needs more alcohol!

Like I’ll be in a building that I am familiar with yet will point to the wrong directions for guiding people and it will take me a minute to get it right. If I were to get my directions in order I guess I will become better in reading maps. I just have a ready made confusion when it comes to my north, south, east & west. The same also affects me in directing a vehicle to a particular place. I make a lot of mistakes and get confused easily unless I use the same route many times before. My apartment building is the perfect example – with 4-6 routes to get to it and a bloody junction right in front of it – when I come in a car/auto from a route that I am not familiar with it takes me a while to tell them where the building is.

Whenever I go to a new place, like my new office which is in an area that I never visited till last week, I always look for landmarks that I can use easily. It takes me a couple of days but I do nail it eventually and am able to trust that I won’t get lost or end up staying in the bus a few stops down the road. So for the first few days of last week, I was looking to my left memorizing all the shops, buildings & landmarks so I know when & where to get down. And the next 3 to 4 days I memorized shops, buildings & landmarks on the right side of the road :)

A couple of days we were on Google Maps as I tried hard to find our building & area on it. It was a struggle and I had to give up. A few minutes later I tried again and was successful. Whew! That was tough!