New sitcom on Alpha Marathi from next month
Alpha Marathi is doing its best to show Programmes different from the regular run of the mill.
New sitcom on Alpha Marathi from next month
Alpha Marathi is doing its best to show Programmes different from the regular run of the mill. Gentle satire forms the core of ‘Shriyud Gangadhar Tipre‘, a programme the channel is launching on 2 November.
It is a serial reminiscent of the celebrated cartoonist RK Laxman‘s strips in "The Times of India" which dealt with the common man and the way in which humour can be found in even the most mundane situation. The sitcom, which has been directed by Kedar Shindhe - a well known playwright - offers numerous insights into what affects the the lives of the "commoners", an Alpha Marathi spokesperson says.
Dilip Prabhavalkar, who has scripted the sitcom, based it on a weekly column he wrote in the "Loksatta" newspaper. He also wrote a book "Anudini" which was a compilation of the columns. The rib tickling sitcom targets the family audience because everybody‘s point of view is included, according to the spokesperson. Prabhavalkar has culled his own experiences of living in a middle class neighbourhood which longs to rise above the ordinary.
Prabhavalar enacts the role of a male patriarch of a family in the series. Co-stars include Shubangi Gokhale and Rajan Bhise.
The spokesperson was noncommittal on the number of episodes the programme would have or whether any advertisers had come on board. Also, the channel has not yet fixed a time slot for the half-hour sitcom, which will be shown once a week.
The Indian Space research Organisation (ISRO) today successfully conducted the sixth flight of its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, PSLV-C3, launching three satellites - Technology Experiment Satellite (TES) of ISRO, BIRD of Germany and PROBA of Belgium. 
The TES, weighing 1108 kg, is an experimental satellite to demonstrate and validate, in orbit, technologies that could be used in the future satellites of ISRO. Some of the technologies that are planned to be demonstrated in TES are altitude and orbit control system, high torque reaction wheels, new reaction control system with optimised thrusters and a single propellant tank, light weight spacecraft structure, solid state recorder, X-band phased array antenna, improved satellite positioning system, miniaturised TTC and power system and, two-mirror-on-axis camera optics. TES will also carry a panchromatic camera for remote sensing experiments. 
PROBA of Verhaert, Belgium, is a small satellite weighing 94 kg. The payloads in the satellite include high resolution camera with 115 mm diameter aperture and wide angle camera having aperture of 60 mm. 
BIRD of the German Space agency, DLR, is a small satellite weighing 92 kg, intended for testing small satellite technologies and a new generation of infrared sensors for the detection of hot spots like forest fires and volcanoes from space.
