Latest news with #Kishen
Time of India
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
'Lived in 10X12 room, slept on top of each other': Ravi Kishen recalls living in 'disgusting' poverty as a child
Kishen's Fitness Tips If You Can't Afford Gym Run every day. Run at least 3-5 kilometre. Do 200 pushups daily. Soak chana or cottage cheese in water overnight and drink the water, and eat the chana the next morning. Wake up before sunrise and savour the beauty of the ascending sun. While today, he's the number one star in the Bhojpuri movie industry as well as a known face to Bollywood fans, life was not always a bed of roses for 'Laapata Ladies' star Ravi Kishen . In a podcast with Raj Shamani, the actor reminisced about coming from extreme poverty . He admitted that he had experienced the depravity of being penniless and was 'disgusted' by his childhood, the 'Luck' actor shared that he and his family lived in a room so tiny that they had to sleep on top of each other. He also revealed that they had to face humiliation for their poverty, and he was gradually fed up with their daily ordeal.'I have seen a lot of poverty. I saw so much poverty that I was disgusted by it. I grew up seeing as many as 12 people (his family) eating the same khichdi that contained only a little bit of rice and so much water. We all slept in a 10×12 room, sometimes even on top of each other. Even the toilet was situated outside the house. I was extremely poor and was fed up with poverty as well as the taunts. I did not want to hear my father being ridiculed anymore,' he told actor also shared fitness tips for those who find the gym too all fitness enthusiasts can afford a gym. The actor maintained you don't need a ton of money to lose weight and look your best. He advised fans toKishan is set to appear next in director Vijay Kumar Arora's Son of Sardaar 2 , where he takes on a prominent role alongside Ajay Devgn and Mrunal Thakur. The film, a spiritual successor to the 2012 action-comedy directed by Ashwni Dhir, features Kishan in a part that was initially intended for Sanjay Dutt.
Indian Express
25-06-2025
- General
- Indian Express
What solution does Delhi's Central Ridge have for restoration
'I shouldn't presume that you all know what ruttputty means. Some would use it to describe the ratatat of a car, for example, or a washing machine that's on its last legs. But it is a word I grew up with. When I looked it up on Google, it cited a dictionary saying that Salman Rushdie used the word in Midnight's Children, using it to describe something that is ramshackled, rundown, or dilapidated,' says filmmaker and environmentalist Pradip Kishen. Kishen was the guest speaker for the Living Landscapes series, initiated by architect, writer and photographer Anuj Srivastava, which was started in 2024. The previous talks by experts were themed on the Aravalli Biodiversity Park, the Mehrauli Archaeological Park, the Lodhi Gardens, the India International Centre gardens, as well as the monsoon gardens of Rajasthan. On June 18, complementing Kishen's talk was a panel discussion with architect and urban designer KT Ravindran, environment and forest analyst Chetan Agarwal, moderated by Srivastava. Kishen's association with the Ridge goes back four decades. At the start of his presentation was a blue 'ruttputty' car covered with green creepers which was a dystopian analogy of the Central Ridge (C Ridge). While most of Delhi's citizens would be familiar with this woodland, the purpose of the talk was to track the degeneration over the years and the recent rehabilitation of its native ecology. The Ridge covers about 850 hectares, with half of it controlled by Delhi's forest department. Kishan spoke of William P Mustoe, the Superintendent of Horticulture Operations as part of (Edwin) Lutyens' cabinet, who designed New Delhi. It was Mustoe who proposed the invasive Neltuma Juliflora (Vilaiti keekar), an alien but sturdy tree. At the time, the question of the hour was to decide the location of the Viceroy's House. Viceroy Hardinge settled on the construction of the present-day Rashtrapati Bhavan in a stretch of land (or here, a forest) which overlooks the entire city. By 1912, as Delhi was being planned, the Ridge came to be known as an 'amenity forest'. It was, at its core, meant to resemble the countryside the British were used to and make them feel at 'home'. It got the status of a reserved forest in August 1914 and an area of 450 hectares was marked for planting. A Punjab-based forester, Richard Parker, records the resilience of the native shrubs. Kishan held the opinion that restoration using natural regeneration could have worked instead of introducing new plants such as jamun and sheesham which require moisture and deeper soil, which the C Ridge was incapable of providing. Currently, the Ridge is rife with encroachments. Kishan, though, is hopeful of transforming as was done in the Mangarbani forest, in Haryana, with the dhau. A 'habitat specialist', it is capable of growing on steep slopes, can regenerate from its own stem, and grows sideways as well, forming green carpets along a rocky terrain. During the panel discussion, Ravindran spoke of the further degradation that came with the metro construction. It led to the never-ending debate upon the tradeoff between preserving natural ecology over development. Agarwal spoke of the importance of informed opinions for restoration and revival of the now lost natural vegetation. The experts collectively felt the only recourse was judicial and citizen action complemented by protection bodies that could work towards a masterplan for the C Ridge that would be a more solution-oriented way. Hia Mehra is an intern with the Indian Express
