Mangaluru teen Munaz sings ‘Zaalima’ cover with singers across countries

Safoora Ali

June 22, 2017

It was her love for singing that encouraged Munaz Mariam, a 19-year-old from Mangaluru, to participate in an online initiative aimed towards creating bonds among youth from different backgrounds through music.

munazmangaluru

SAMAA - a band based in Chicago, USA - invited people to send cover versions of two popular Bollywood songs, in an effort to bring them together. When the initiative #singwithSAMAA was started initially, the band received responses not only from India, but also from Pakistan and other countries. It was then that SAMAA decided to select entries from singers of all nationalities.

munz 2 When Munaz decided to send her cover version of 'Zaalima' from the Bollywood movie 'Raees' to this initiative three months ago, little did she expect that she would be featured in the final video compilation. Along with Munaz, the video features covers of 'Zaalima' , 'Afreen' and 'Sajde Kiye Hain Lakhon' sung by other Indians and Pakistanis, and two singers from Qatar and USA.

This video was uploaded by SAMAA on Facebook and YouTube, and has gathered over 2.8 lakh Views and over six thousand Likes since then. A look at the musical video shows people from India, Pakistan, Qatar and USA with a real talent for singing.

A student of St Aloysius College in Mangaluru, Munaz came across this initiative through SAMAA's social outlets and decided to give it a try. "It was a spontaneous decision and I had not expected that my cover would be selected. Their response was immediate and I was elated at the selection," she said. Munaz was further excited after the release of the final video when she realised she was the only singer from Karnataka to be featured.

"I had submitted my cover song keeping in mind that I was an ordinary singer and I am really happy at being featured. Some of the other singers in the video are really good," said Munaz, who was also joyous at the positive comments she received in response to the video.

Other singers from India such as Anmol from New Delhi, Mahima and Vaibhavi from Mumbai, Sravya from Hyderabad, Chayanika from Golaghat and Vaidehi from Badlapur are featured in the compilation, while those from Pakistan include Ali from Sialkot, Dr Rabail from Hyderabad (Pak) and Mobeen from Islamabad. Vinutha from Doha, Qatar and Justin from New Jersey, USA have also been featured. Interestingly, another singer in the video, Romesa from Lahore, Pakistan, is only a little girl.

At a time of restlessness and animosity between sections of people in India and Pakistan, efforts such as #singwithSAMAA initiative come like a whiff of fresh air. It also goes on to show that music can indeed bring people together.

With her participation in the musical endeavour, Munaz has not only helped towards building bridges across borders, but has also formed new friendships in the process.

click here for the video

Comments

wow nice to hear! festival for ears.

Young Girl ! it would be better for you to recite your lord's word instead of film songs... God has given you a beautiful voice. please contemplate on reciting the word of God. Make a video of your lord's word so that many people who are unaware of their creator will know thru your beautiful voice.

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Indian companies need to train employees to ‘work from home’, expose them to technology

News Network

March 15,2020

While it makes perfect sense for IT employees to work from remote locations via video conferencing and collaboration tools seamlessly - especially in the case of tech giants like Google or Microsoft -- workers from the non-IT companies and small and medium enterprises (SMBs) are the worst-hit in India as most of them have little or no clue about how these messaging and collaboration tools work amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Small companies -- from corporate to education verticals -- are scrambling to get their act together as new coronavirus threat has reached their premises, prompting them to send employees home who have age-old laptops, poor network and connectivity with no UPS backups and little knowledge about how to handle group chat and collaboration software like Zoom, Google Hangouts Meet, Microsoft Teams and Flock etc.

Instead of halting operations, however, businesses can choose to shift towards remote working methods with teaching non-IT staff on how to use the latest digital software to connect and work, say industry experts.

The training will take some time and may hamper productivity in the short run but is a win-win situation for the non-tech companies in the long run, in case any such global emergency arises in the future.

According to a latest report by Gartner, 54 per cent of HR leaders have cited that poor technology and/or infrastructure for remote working is the biggest barrier to effective remote working.

Sandy Shen, Senior Director Analyst, Gartner, says that with COVID-19 disrupting the business landscape, CIOs should relook at the digital fulfillment of market demand.

"The value of digital channels, products and operations is immediately obvious to companies everywhere right now. This is a wake-up call for organisations that have placed too much focus on daily operational needs at the expense of investing in digital business and long-term resilience," warned Shen.

Businesses that can shift technology capacity and investments to digital platforms will mitigate the impact of the outbreak and keep their companies running smoothly now, and over the long term.

"Videoconferencing, messaging, collaboration tools and document sharing are just a few examples of technologies that facilitate remote work. Additional bandwidth and network capacity may also be needed, given the increasing number of users and volume of communications," informed Shen.

The IT industry's apex body Nasscom has asked the government to relax norms for a month to allow work-from-home for technology and back-office employees as a measure to deal with the spread of Covid-19 in India.

Networking giant Cisco said that it has seen "significant growth" in the usage of its web conferencing and video-conferencing service Webex in India.

According to Muneer Ahmad, Business Head, ViewSonic India, due to COVID-19 pandemic, the corporate and educational sector is severely getting affected in the country.

"ViewSonic IFP has a cloud-based software which help teachers and corporates to connect through video conferencing to multiple people at the same time and can split the screen into six screens. It can also connect with various tools like Skype, Cisco WebEx, Zoom, Google Hangouts and GoToMeeting," Ahmad told IANS.

Co-working sector has also taken a hit and the industry is looking at several measures to tackle it -- from ensuring supply of juices rich in Vitamin C to supply of disinfectants and giving work from home facilities.

"The scheduled visits of the clients at our co-working offices have been postponed. Few of our clients have cancelled their outstation meetings and have now started audio/video conferencing for virtual meetings," said Nakul Mathur, MD, Avanta India.

According to reports, India has approximately 1,000 co-working locations (as of September 2019) and is the second-largest market for the co-working industry after China.

As India's first licensed B2B Virtual Network Operator, CloudConnect Communications offers a collaborative platform that allows companies to overcome the COVID-19 threat while maintaining seamless business continuity and optimum employee productivity.

"We offer a secure, robust, reliable, scalable and trackable mobile-first unified communication infrastructure that aids remote teleworking so that businesses can continue operating even under any unforeseen circumstances," said Gokul Tandon, Executive Chairman, CloudConnect Communications.

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