NEW DELHI: Realising the reach of electronic social media, the tourism ministry has uploaded two sound and light shows on YouTube, the first ministry in the world to do so.
The light and sound shows at Red Fort and Purana Qila are now just a click away with the tourism ministry making the events available for free viewing on social networking site YouTube.
The sound and light show at Red Fort was mounted in 1968 and was written by the legendary writers Ali Sardar Jafri, Kaifi Azmi and Khushwant Singh, and directed by the renowned film director Chetan Anand. Its Hindi version has the voices of cinestars Meena Kumari and Amrish Puri, the latter then a relative newcomer. The English version has the voices of Kabir Bedi and Pratap Sharma.
The sound and light show at Purana Quila which went live in December 2010 has the voices of Naseeruddin Shah, Mukesh Khanna (Hindi) and Himanshu Sabharwal (English) and the show is visualised scripted and narrated by Himanshu Sabharwal.
By uploading the entire audio tracks of 58-minute and 54-minute shows respectively the ministry has become the first tourism authority in the world to upload its entire feature-length sound and light shows on the internet. Tourism Minister K Chiranjeevi had last month directed that audio tracks of all 23 sound and light shows funded by the ministry should be uploaded for free viewing throughout the world. The main objective behind the initiative is to spread knowledge about rich Indian heritage.
The first two sound and light shows, both being operated directly by the India Tourism Development Corporation (ITDC) have thus been uploaded. Since YouTube is mainly a visual channel, reference images of both sound and light shows accompany the audio track.
As a search of the word ‘sound and light show’ on YouTube will reveal, all shows presently available on the said website are excerpts of between one and nine minutes length and are not from the original soundtrack and have probably been uploaded by spectators.
Because the two Delhi shows have been uploaded from the original 5.1 (5 speaker) sound track, the ministry has ensured crisp stereophonic sound on YouTube. When YouTube becomes ready to host 5.1 (5 speaker) sound, its users will be able to hear the Indian sound and light shows in their full glory.