people-from-chennai

"I still can’t believe I am acting in films, it was like a breeze signing three films at the same time. I am aware every Friday, the fate of an actress changes, the graph changes with each film. I want people to value me as an actress and earn respect."

"I had recently gone for a magazine shoot to Antalya, Turkey. From there, I went on a holiday to Istanbul, and it’s the first time I had gone on a trip on my own. I see travelling as a great learning process and my biggest dream is to travel the world."

"Bengaluru is home for me. Being from Udupi, Karnataka, I have many relatives in Bengaluru. I used to come down for Bangalore Fashion Week. It was a lot of fun and I had made so many good friends."

"I can speak Telugu fluently and I do dub my own lines. As soon as I started doing Telugu films, I began learning the language in the hope that I can soon dub my own lines. I felt this was needed to honour my craft. To be able to connect with the Telugu audience, it was really imperative to speak the language."

"I love the South Industry and have a lot of respect for it. I started from there, they are very welcoming to outsiders and newcomers. It has been treating me really well. My fan base is increasing and more than anything I really enjoy shooting."

"I'm in a phase right now where I want to be part of great films and enjoy my time on set."

"I am done with the clichéd heroine roles. I can’t go to work without a challenge. I want to do films that drive me, films in which I am a part of the main plot. There are times when I’ve watched the final outcome of a film and wondered what was going on. I get tired of coming up with the same expressions. When I have to be sad, I tell myself ‘okay, time to use expression number 5’."

"You all know about the leaks controversy on social media. My character is very close to every girl in that video. It also gives a message to every person who circulated, opened, saw and laughed at those videos. I have acted in many films in full length roles. Though I have a short role in this film (Raju Gari Gadhi 2), the impact is high. It’s going to be one of the best ones."

"It’s an eight-year-long friendship. I married my best friend (Naga Chaitanya). I know I am Akkineni Samantha from now onwards and I have to live up to the family’s legacy and reputation."

"I have made my fair share of mistakes. In the beginning when you are trying to find your way, you end up doing stereotypical and cliche roles, I have done all of that. I am at a stage in regional cinema where I am looking to do roles that test and push me to my limit. In Hindi films, I don't have the energy to do the same thing again and get back to the point to where I want to do work that I want to do. In regional films, I am in a position to pick out-of-the-box roles but if I do Hindi films I won't get that opportunity."

"Realising just how hard it is to get a meaningful role for a heroine in the south. I haven’t signed as many films as I’d like to because there are no good roles. As disheartening as it is to say."

"The priests of St. Paul’s Church have been trying for the last fifty years to pull down the Vedapuri Iswaran temple; former Governors said that this was the country of the Tamils, that they would earn dishonour if they interfered with the temple, that the merchants would cease to come here, and that the town would decay; they even set aside the king’s order to demolish the temple; and their glory shone like the sun. ... Before M. Dupleix was made Governor, and when he was only a Councillor, all the Europeans and some Tamils used to say that if he became Governor, he would destroy the Iswaran temple. The saying has come to pass. ... [The Governor] has taken advantage of this time of war to accomplish his longstanding object and demolish the temple. ... I cannot describe the boundless joy of the St. Paul’s priests, the Tamil and pariha converts, Madame Dupleix and M. Dupleix. In their delight, they will surely enter the temple, and will not depart, without breaking and trampling under foot the idols and destroying all they can. ... Then Father Coeurdoux of Karikal came with a great hammer, kicked the lingam, broke it with his hammer, and ordered the Coffrees and the Europeans to break the images of Vishnu and the other gods. Madame went and told the priest that he might break the idols as he pleased. He answered that she had accomplished what had been impossible for fifty years, that she must be one of those Mahatmas who established this religion [Christianity] in old days, and that he would publish her fame throughout the world. ... I can neither write nor describe what abominations were done in the temple... All the Tamils think that the end of the world has come. ... The wise men will say that the glory of an image is as short-lived as human happiness. The temple was destined to remain glorious till now, but now has fallen."

"Ramanuja is first and last a Master of Vedic personality that is the vital breadth of Indian Society from its every birth."

"“From the very beginning of historical times, Tamilnadu was the land of Vedic traditions in every field of life. The Vedic concepts, gods, customs and manners ruled Tamil life : be it the kings, merchants, cultivators, brahmins, hunters, hill tribes, fishermen, chiefs and soldiers, cowherds, artists, musicians, dancers. They followed the Vedic ideology, worshipped Vedic Gods and propitiated their ancestors are shown abundantly in the data available”."

"There is no doubt that Sankara before him had set the wheel of inquiry by boldly declaring Advaita as the answers to all the questions posed by different Upanishads. He has tried to synthesize the approach and took up the Brahma sutras of Vyasa as the basic text for study .The Brahma sutras is an extraordinary text. Before Sage Vyasa a very great body of literature has accumulated mainly in the Upanishads, most of the time speaking in one voice about Brahama vidya and at the same time throwing in diverse suggestions It has grown up almost like a banyan tree with overgrown branches. Vyasa by reducing many of these concepts into short and crisp sutras has provided behind each sutra an ocean of knowledge. It is impossible to understand the whole body of knowledge in a unitary way. Sankara brought in a cohesion. He was close to the Vedic ideals in point of time ..."

"The site was attacked by iconoclasts in the 11th century, once around 1030 CE and again around 1080 CE; the idols suffered and disappeared. No icons have been left in the site except a mutilated sculpture called Divine Couple."

"Disability is not a hindrance to reach the sky"

"The world is equally ours cease all you can get from it"

"I envision a society without any physical or psychological barriers towards the blind – a barrier-free environment where the blind can walk freely, can travel, can work, think for themselves, and live proud and dignified lives like other citizens. Society thinks that we can only sing sweet songs, only become teachers and telephone operators in the bank. But we can do more. We can dance, we can fire juggle, we can do martial arts, we can become managers and directors of companies. But society is constantly interpreting what we can do and what we can’t. This has to change very soon."

"Treat us the way you wish to be treated"

"why don’t we root the positive in each and everyone’s life instead of searching the negatives in them”? Why don’t we love and accept others with their strengths and weakness?Why don’t we break the barriers and traditions that are followed blindly, which doesn’t help the community in which we are living? Why don’t we smile and acknowledge others at least for a second, which can cause a tremendous change in others lives?"

"What does it mean when people say I cannot walk by myself, I cannot travel by myself? I have a mouth to talk, I have a brain to think, I can walk, and I have a cane to find my way around. Then why can I not travel by myself? I was like a bird in a cage, not allowed to come out without an escort. But now my life has been transformed."

"Where were all these blind people? Why didn’t we see them walking on our roads? I decided I must be the one to make a difference."

"A reverse innovation is any innovation that is adopted first in the developing world."

"Innovation plans, by contrast, are loaded with assumptions. Sure, some hard facts are available, but more is unknown than known. The past is no longer precedent. Thus, the innovator's job cannot be to deliver a proven result; it must be to discover what is possible, that is, to learn, by converting assumptions into knowledge as quickly and inexpensively as possible."

"Inside a big experiment, there are little experiments."

"The more you hardwire a company on total quality management, [the more] it is going to hurt breakthrough innovation... The mindset that is needed, the capabilities that are needed, the metrics that are needed, the whole culture that is needed for discontinuous innovation, are fundamentally different."

"Of all possible resources that a firm might possess, its knowledge base has perhaps the greatest ability to serve as a source of sustainable differentiation and hence competitive advantage."

"Organizations are not designed for innovation. Quite the contrary, they are designed for ongoing operations."

"The innovation leader’s job is to execute a disciplined experiment."

"[moot issue is that ] we should talk about is not just lessons in leadership or what the leaders need to do today but what can India do to bring those leaders back to India, so India itself can become an even more powerful economy going forward."

"I am a mother first, then a CEO and then a wife."

"When you have to have kids you have to build your career. Just when you’re rising to middle management, your kids need you because they’re teenagers—they need you for the teenage years. And that’s the time your husband becomes a teenager too, so he needs you… Your parents need you because they’re aging. So we’re screwed, we have no hope, we cannot have it all. So you know what? Coping mechanisms. Train people at work. Train your family"

"You cannot deliver value unless you anchor the company's values. Values make an unsinkable ship." Code of conduct goes beyond legal compliance and every employee needs to be well versed with it."

"Do you remember campaigns like Keep America Beautiful? What about ‘buckle up’? I believe we need an approach like this to attack obesity. Let us be good industry that does 100% of what is possibly can-not grudgingly, but willingly."

"I don’t think women can have it all. I just don’t think so. We pretend we have it all. We pretend we can have it all. My husband and I have been married for 34 years and we have two daughters. Every day you have to make a decision of whether you’re going to be a wife or a mother—in fact many times a day during the day you have to make those decisions. And you have to co-opt a lot of people to help you. We co-opted our families to help us. We plan our lives meticulously so we can be decent parents. But if you ask our daughters, I’m not sure they will say that I’ve been a good mom"

"Have you done your homework"

"Nui is a different kind of CEO. He says her approach boils down to balancing the profit motive by making healthier snacks (in speech to the food industry, she pushed the group to tackle obesity), striving for a net zero impact on the environment and taking care of your workforce. She was one of the first executives to realize that the health and green movements were just not fads and she demanded true innovation."

"As a CEO, I am finding that I have to become a learning CEO. I have to go to school all the time because I am learning new skills that I need to run this company and I am realising that I am not equipped to just coast, I have to constantly renew my skills."

"Indra can drive as deep and hard as anyone I have ever met, but she can do it with a sense of heart and fun."

"Just because you are CEO, don't think you have landed. You must continually increase your learning, the way you think, and the way you approach the organization. I've never forgotten that."

"I'm very honest - brutally honest. I always look at things from their point of view as well as mine. And I know when to walk away."

"One such way was to do with her lifelong love of cricket. No one in this country (the US) followed the game, but they did follow baseball, another bat-and-ball sport. So she threw herself into baseball and into the local team, the New York Yankees, reading everything she could on the subject until she could comfortably talk about it."

"As someone who has always aspired to build a company committed to its people and to the world, I admire her determination to achieve sustainability at an established company like Pepsi Co. And I believe that all socially responsible companies could learn from Indra Nooyi’s style of leadership."

"It’s seamless parenting"

"I think there are at least five ways in which job description will change."

"Leadership is hard to define and good leadership even harder. But if you can get people to follow you to the ends of the earth, you are a great leader. As a leader I am tough on myself and I raise the standard for everybody; however I am very caring because I want people to excel at what they are doing so that they can aspire to be me in the future."

"To lead in an ever-changing world, leaders must adapt and stay nimble."

"There were many times that I felt like a fish out of water, times that I really said to myself, 'do I even fit in'."

"The CEO has to think long-term and needs to understand the way public and private sectors are coming together and work constructively within that framework. CEOs need to make the phrase "think global and act local" more than a cliche?"