Michael Jackson- The true king of pop

Now on Interview, with your very own host Rohit Menon, one of the most iconic interviews of the greatest entertainer ever to set foot on earth. The moment you have all been waiting for, give it up for the man who shaped the 80's music, the king of pop, Michael Jackson.

Rohit: We are very pleased to have you here at our show!

Michael: Its a pleasure and thank you for giving me the opportunity.

Rohit: How is it going for you? You are famous, you have your own album now which is a big hit! What could possibly be bad for you at the moment?

Michael: Yeah... well I did want to do better though. I don't have that feeling of satisfaction yet. Being famous has deprived me of my childhood and its not easy watching other people play while you work. So, yeah..

Rohit: Did you like performing as a child even though you had been deprived of what normal kids do?

Michael: I really loved singing and dancing. It was like when I hit the stage it was my home and whenever I got off it I was sad. I used to cry every time as I never wanted to get off stage, but yes, I did sacrifice my childhood for this but you  know not everyone gets this opportunity at that age.

Rohit: There have been rumors spreading around that you, Michael, act as a child because of a mental problem which forces you to act like that. How do you respond to this?

Michael: I love children, I can't help it! I do everything in my power to help children who do not get education, treatment of diseases and basic childhood fun. As I see them happy, I cry, because I see myself as those kids as I had to pay a heavy price for the fame I had at the age of 8.

Rohit: I have always wanted to ask you this question, where did the moonwalk come from? How did it originate? And people say this ridiculous thing about you having problems with your crotch and that's why you grab it when you dance...

Michael: I know right..... I don't even know where that came from. Like my hand just goes down there when this specific beat comes which is common to most of my songs. I am slave to music and rhythm. Whenever a beat comes I cannot resist myself from dancing. And moonwalk,,,,, Well the credit goes to 3 black kids in the ghetto area who I saw doing this. They were all just amazing, dancing with such grace and flow. I just took the moonwalk from them and improved on it and it has always been my passion to dance and to learn new steps and to incorporate that into my songs that I choreograph myself.

Rohit: Interesting...... Now Michael, you do know that there have been statements that you hate your color and that's why you bleached yourself and turned yourself white.... how much of this is true?

Michael: That is so stupid! Why would I hate my color?!?! I love my color and culture and where I come from and I have no doubt in my mind about it. Who even bleaches themselves? That is so appalling! People making statements like this really hurt me and they don't know the truth. What I want to say is don't believe someone's statement about someone else until and unless you have had a face to face, 1 on 1 discussion with that person.

Rohit: So what is the real reason for your color change then?

Michael: What most people don't know is that I have a disease called Vitiligo, where the skin pigmentation cells are destroyed in my body, which results in true color being lost to just colorless. It is true that I put a lot of make up and eat lots of painkillers but this is only to even out the uneven skin and also to relieve me from the pain.

Rohit: Obviously you had a plastic surgery on your nose.... where else did you have it.

Michael: That's it! That is all I had ever done. I haven't done my cheek bones, my lips, nor my eyes like people say.

Rohit: Michael lets come back to the topic... Well the release of 'Thriller', has now got you far above your colleagues in the music industry..... How does it feel?

Michael: I feel happy, very happy indeed that my hard work has paid off. I put my heart into thriller and I think that is why it has been successful.

Rohit: Do you think your brothers might be jealous of you?

Michael: No way! They are happy for me, we are a really close family and we love each other so much. I wouldn't like to think they were jealous of me.... No, they are not at all jealous.

Rohit: As a man who thinks ahead of the time, any new groundbreaking songs in mind? When could we see the next hot release.

Michael: There are some projects in mind, but you will get to know it soon enough... hehehehe (giggle)

Rohit: You have inspired so many people with your you music and your break dance. How do you feel about being the central point of attention of the world and what would you tell your fans and the young aspiring crowd?

Michael: Thanks Rohit, I appreciate you saying that to me. That was so nice. Yeah there is a lot of pressure to be at the top of the game but what I want to say really is thank you fans! You are the only ones that have helped me be who I am today in my career! As for the young people of America and the world there's only one thing to say! Be original, and be who you are!

Rohit: Thank you Michael for this wonderful interview. I have no doubt that you are far beyond what we call you the king of pop.

Michael Jackson: Thank you so much! I really do appreciate it and its was my pleasure being here and opening my mind.

Rohit: Before you go off Michael, lets listen to thriller!

Michael: hahahhaha

Thriller:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOnqjkJTMaA

Until next time, This is Rohit Menon from interview, the only place you can see such inspiring and rare interviews.......

 

Insane Stereotyping!

Its not very easy to be a bilingual speaker. I know because I have had many experiences in the past, where I was left out of conversations as the people around me except my parents couldn't care less about what I had to say. They thought I didn't know my mother tongue at all. In fact, It was a delay in processing the language in my brain.  You could say I was not fluent. Because I had to think and then speak.  Now as I have grown up, I can handle both the languages quite easily. Its a natural thing to me, i.e. no need to think Stereotyping has been an insanely wide spread idea for a while now and is a main cause of misunderstanding between people. Indians, as a whole are subject to a lot of stereotyping- They all have a funny English accent, they all smell, they are bad drivers, all of them are doctors and engineers, and they don't eat beef!

The first thing everyone should understand when talking to someone from a diverse country like India should always remember not to make generalizations. Of course that is what stereotyping basically is right? Anyway, coming back to the topic of stereotyping of non-native speakers, people often believe that whether you speak English well or not, determines how much you know about the language. This isn't true as one of my experiences proves.

My grandmother speaks English. I was amazed that she was able to communicate in English but she wasn't talking in the right way to me. So I had thought that her knowledge of English was poor and she didn't know as much as me. And then one day I saw an essay that she had written and I was amazed that her use of words, articles, adjectives, pronouns and punctuations were all correct. There were also words I didn't know about. I didn't think in this way then but now I realize that her knowledge had nothing to do with how she had spoken. The  same experience happened to me with my English teacher in Grade 3 when I was in India. I'm not saying stereotyping should stop, it is sometimes funny when people talk about your country without knowing anything, but what I believe is that it is not fair to generalize a whole country or a specific group f people.

Just saying, I have lived in Kerala for 7 years and this is my 8th year in Saudi Arabia and UAE combined. This has given me a best of both world's experience which has helped me relate a lot of experiences I have had here to the very inspirational experiences I have had in India. Thinking about it, it is great to be a bilingual person!

Check this out- Have you heard of Russell Peters? If you haven't you should really watch him. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2W8aGgmn1A&feature=player_embedded

And check this out too. It is one famous Indian stereotype. Do Indians eat beef? Why are you eating beef when you are Hindu? Isn't that a sin?
Get all your answers in this article.
http://www.ibtimes.com/wheres-beef-india-believe-it-or-not-1258469

Hello!

I'm Rohit Menon and I'm a grade 11 student studying the International Baccalaureate in Abu Dhabi. I am 16 years old and was born on the 1st of September, 1998 in "God's own Country", Kerala. India, well, lets just say that it is a land of diversity. Different people with cultures, religions, castes and ethnicities come together in a lovely place we call 'Bharath Matha', or Mother India in English. There are no words with which I can describe the deep rooted love for my country. From a young age I was always interested in India's achievements as a nation and how the unity has developed through time and communication. If you go back in time, India had a diverse population who spoke about 780 languages! Out of this, about 220 languages have been lost and through time another 200 could vanish because people die and the new generation fail to learn their mother tongues. Sad but true...... :'( :((

As I come from such a diverse country, it was a rather surprising experience to be introduced to more cultures around the world when I first came to Raha International School but everyone was friendly. I guess we all shared the international mindedness bit. This school truly gave me an international outlook in life and I started learning about new cultures rather than India alone. Now I have friends from Venezuela, USA, England, Ireland, Middle East, Egypt, South Africa, Netherlands, Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea and Australia (George) of course! ;) ... and that basically covers all the continents except for Antarctica, of course. Do people even live there? Leave it in the comments below.  Yeah, but it's quite awesome meeting all these people.        Ok, I'll stop...... :P

Now coming to my interests, I am very interested in racket sports, although I haven't gotten the opportunity to learn it yet, I still like it! I like helping others, learning Economics and knowing about my culture and other ones as well. Back in India, even though Hockey is our national game, Indians don't quite care about it :P. All they care about though is cricket and sometimes football. Weird? Not quite... because at the time when the British ruled India, cricket became a very popular game and Indians started playing it too. This is also when Indians got insight into the western society and found  it pretty amusing. So people started migrating to the west(although the population didn't seem to decrease), and many languages were lost due to that. India is currently becoming extremely 'westernized' and is rapidly modernizing. Due to this, people have started to forget the importance of their 'mother tongues'.

My aim now is to do a Hotel Management degree at Ecole Hotelier du Lausanne in Switzerland and then hopefully get an MBA after some work experience. If I was to be in India my fate might have been different. Back there and in some Indian families across the world like their sons and daughters to be engineers or doctors. No offense but that's kind of what happens right now.... not the case for me as I am pretty lucky that my parents allowed me to go for a career with international relevance, where I can use the international mindedness I learn from RIS. I am grateful to my parents for allowing me to follow my passion.

My language has connections to my Culture, the media and Literature and it has an important role in everyone's daily life. Just like English, we have, in my state the language used in different ways in radio stations, holy books and Malayalam Literature. As I am a person who can speak 2 languages fluently, English and Malayalam(language of Kerala), I have to drastically change how I speak to my elders in both the languages. In Malayalam, "Adheham" is a respectful way to say or "he/she" or "thaangal" to respectfully say "you". In English you just use "you" but take on different tones when you speak. So, as you can see My language and English have nothing in common and I have to transform myself once I get back home to a studious, well-mannered and respectful kid. (I am already one, but you get the point.)

I see culture as a way of life, a lifestyle. It consists of beliefs, laws, traditions and customs. I have realized that culture greatly influences the way we think and act. I identify myself with the South Indian culture as I still hold the beliefs, follow daily practices and adhere to laws and traditions. As my parents have always stressed on the importance of knowing my culture and past, I have grown up learning it and English together and I have no problem to speak in both Malayalam and English and I know how to and when to talk, in both the different cultures across a wide variety of topics.

This is starting to get interesting, right guys?? :/

This best represents me as what you see in the photo is not just a normal goat or deer. It's a Nilgiri Tahr! It's a mountain goat and there are only 1500 of them left in the world, both in the wild and in sanctuary's. I was fortunate enough to get a good photograph of it as it is pretty rare. So what I am trying to say is  I am a person that is hard to come across. I am rare, unique and I just wanted to show off my photography skills. :P Nah, I'm just kidding.

More posts coming up on Language and Me! Thank you for reading my blog! Leave your comments as it is always a pleasure to receive feedback from you! :)))))