CELEBRATING COLOUR: Pradipta K Mohapatra, Past Chairman and CII, Southern Region and Chairman and Co-founder at Coaching Foundation India (CFI). Karl Pechatscheck, Director, Goethe Institute, actor Gouthami, Sanjay Tulsyan, convenor, Art Chennai, and Vivek Harinarain, President, Rotary Club of Madras, at the press briefing to announce the 3rd Edition of Art Chennai, South India’s Premier Contemporary Art Festival, at a function, in Chennai on Wednesday. / Photo: R. Ravindran / The Hindu
Art Chennai returns for its third edition with auctions, installations and photofests on environment and heritage
The third edition of Art Chennai promises to be bigger than before, with over 75 artists and 35 events spread over nine days. The festival will have exhibitions, workshops, installations, conferences and public art. Art Chennai 2014 is in collaboration with Stella Maris College and IIT, Madras and will focus on environment, conservation and heritage this year.
“The growth of a society is reflected by the growth of art. This year, we will have the first ever photo fest, an auction, large installations at multiple public locales in order to target a large and diverse audience. That makes this festival the only exclusive and inclusive art fest,” said Sanjay Tulsyan, convener, Art Chennai, at a press conference about the event.
Girish Shahane, the art director pointed out the highlights of the show and said, “This year it is about history and environment. It’s not just built heritage but everything connected with the history of the city — cultural, economic and so on. And this in a city known for its tradition and culture. Since performance art is also an important form of art we will have many events focussing on that as well.”
Some of the highlights of the festival, which will take place between February 8 to February 16, are:
February 8
The Trees and The Skies, which will be a collaborative project between three artists, students from Stella Maris college and artists from Ability Foundation. This project will go on till February 16 at Stella Maris College.
Auction Preview of Modern and Contemporary Indian Art will take place at Hyatt Regency between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. The proceeds from the sale will go to charities supported by the Rotary Club of Madras.
February 9
Raghu Rai’s India, a photo exhibition will be held at Gallery Veda on OMR. This will be on for three months.
At 12 p.m., Couriouser and Couriouser by The Karuppu Art Collective will take place at the Cholamandal Artist’s Village. The registration for the auction begins at 6.30 p.m. and the auction begins at 7.30 p.m. at Hyatt Regency.
Febuary 10
Reflections on Grace: International Photo Fest, in collaboration with Delhi Photo Festival 2013 will be on till February 23 at IIT, Madras
Parvathi Nayar’s show ‘The Ambiguity of Landscapes’ is on till March 12 at Gallery Veda.
February 11
Signals. Signposts. Voyages 4 from the Madras Movement. Artists Nandagopal, Muralidharan, C. Douglas and Palaniappan will participate in this event. It will be on till February 28 at Sarala’s Art Centre.
February 12
Vintage Vignettes, a retrospective exhibition on Chennai curated by Girish Shaane, will be on at Marina Beach till February 16.
February 13
Installation – Shop Lifting by Mithu Sen at Express Avenue. This will be on till February 26.
Bright Noise is curated by Girish Shahane. Participating artists are Anita Dubem, Asim Waqif, Charmi Gada Shah, Jitish Kallat, Madhuban Mitra, Manas Bhattacharya, Manish Nai, Nandan Ghiya, Navin Thomas, Prajakta Potnis, Rashid Rana, Rohini Devasher, Sahej Rahal, Vibha Galhotra and Vivan Sundaram. This will be on till March 8 at Lalit Kala Akademi.
February 14
Art Assemblage, an exhibition of visiting galleries by Akar Prakar, Ashvita, Exhibit 320, Gallery Art and Soul, Gallery Open Eyed Dreams, The Guild, Project 88 and Galerie 88.
February 15
Deep (skin) Skin Deep: A proposition in Art, Textiles and Fashion curated by Mayank Mansingh Kaul and Bootlegger’s Addendum by Sahej Rahal at Park Hyatt from 5.30 p.m. onwards.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus> Events / by Anusha Parthasarthy / Chennai – January 27th, 2014
Action and words: Theatre director, G. Channakeshava, directs students of PSG CAS at the 10-day theatre workshop / Photo: M. Periasamy / The Hindu
A theatre workshop in the city gathers steam as it prepares to stage Bertolt Brecht’s The Three Penny Opera
“I want you to express yourself!” The PSG CAS auditorium rings with the resonating voice of theatre director and teacher, G. Channakeshava. Fifty students on stage, rehearse their lines. And Channakeshava gestures to the choir and music team. The drums pound and the singers belt out a song. And The Three Penny Opera, a play by Bertolt Brecht, begins.
More about energy
“I chose this play because it is a musical. The students will have a whale of a time singing and dancing. It suits their spirit and energy better than a dialogue-centred play,” says the Bangalore-based theatre director and designer.
It is rehearsal time at the 10-day workshop, organised by the Drama Club of PSG College of Arts and Science and Coimbatore Book Club Theatre Group. Channakeshava, who is a guest faculty at Ninasam Theatre Institute, Karnataka conducts the workshop, which will end with a production.
They enact a scene where a man breaks into a colony of prostitutes. The girls are supposed to scream when he jumps onto the stage. Channakeshava instructs the boy to make his gestures loud. He urges the girls to improvise and use the space around them. “It is a play with multiple perspectives. There is a story within a story. The students can be spontaneous and creative.”
Says Channakeshava, “I do not want them to just mouth dialogues from the script. I want them to use their body. I have employed different styles, including melodrama. We have used folk music since Brecht himself was influenced by the Eastern culture. We have also tried to add a contemporary twist by featuring mobile phones.”
A theatre director and an artist by profession, Channakeshava says the artist in him makes him pay a lot of importance to stage design. “What matters to me is how the audience views my stage,” he says.
Besides acting, the workshop also introduced the students to props, costume designing and stage setting.
A sense of drama
“Channakeshava has divided us into smaller teams to manage the production. Now we have a better sense of the play and the characters,” says student Sundaragandhi.
Action and words: Theatre director, G. Channakeshava / The Hindu
The event manager of the play, Amritha Suryakumar, says it has been an intensive, hands-on-experience. “I realise my strengths and weaknesses as a team leader. Also, being an English literature student, it is amazing to see the texts I learnt within my classroom come alive on stage.”
The PSG Drama Club, founded in 2009, has brought out a production every month. “This is our first production, open to public. We are keeping our fingers crossed,” says another student Radheswar.
Kalpana Karthi, the founder of the club and a professor in the English department, says how the club has developed from a small team to an enthusiastic bunch of 200 theatre aspirants.
“I sensed there was so much unexpressed energy and talent in the students and they needed a space to vent them .” The students manage to squeeze their the rehearsal sessions in between a busy exam schedule. Even Kalpana stays back after her college. “I enjoy it. It is a pleasure to be with them. Their energy makes you younger, every day.”
(The Three Penny Opera will be staged at PSG CAS Auditorium on February 1 at 7 p.m. The passes are available at On The Go, Race Course, That’s Y Food, R.S. Puram and Poojak, R.S. Puram)
Ninasam Theatre institute, Heggodu
Founded in 1949, Ninasam took birth as an amateur cultural troupe that put up theatre productions and debated on social issues, under the initiative of theatre person, K.V. Subbanna. Soon, it developed into a theatre and cultural centre that offered one-year diploma in theatre arts. Ninasam’s seven-day culture camp, started in 2000, invites eminent scholars from all over the world. Ninasam’s itinerant theatre troupe, Tirugata, comes up with an annual production, which tours the villages and cities around the state.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus> Events / by Parshathy J. Nath / Coimbatore – January 24th, 2014
Sparkling white tiles, gleaming metal counters, spotlessly clean knives and the soft humming of refrigerators… This could be the sight that greets you when you walk into a run-of-the-mill meat shop on the streets of Chennai. Not in a few years or even a few months, but right now.
The Meat Sciences Department of the Tamil Nadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences University (TANUVAS), has been providing meat retailers free designs and consulting services to convert their shops into places where hygiene is the priority – and they have been doing it for the past five years.
“We have been giving out designs and consultation to any entrepreneur who wishes to start up or modernise his business,” says Robinson Abraham, Head of theMeat Services Department. “All they have to do is approach us.” Consulting at a private firm would be prohibitively expensive to the small businesses that most meat shops were, he pointed out.
But when asked about what these five years of free consulting has engendered, he points to just one operating shop in Chennai. The BatchaBai meat shop in Kilpauk stands as a silent testimony to what a few well-thought out improvements in slaughter house design can do.
There are counters made of stainless steel, teflon cutting boards, rounded edges to prevent wiping hands on tables and white tiles to make any spattered blood visible. Compared to the ill-lit, ill-washed rooms that most meat shops offer, the sight is almost unreal in its cleanliness. “These are very small but necessary design elements,” points out R Narendrababu, one of the three professors in the department. “They improve the hygiene of the shop tremendously.”
The reason why hygiene comes in a sad second in the owners’ list of priorities, he adds, is because consumers themselves have been desensitised to the dangers of bad hygiene. “Unless people refuse to buy meat from shops that don’t adhere to basic hygiene norms, retailers will never feel the need to implement these practices,” he says.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Chennai / by Jonahan Ananda – Chennai / January 29th, 2014
Tailoring trainees displaying miniature models of their creations in Tiruchi on Monday. / Photo: R.M. Rajarathinam / The Hindu
A total of 58 women received certificates at the valediction of the training programme organised by ROTECH Institute, a project started by Rotary Club in 1997 for providing tailoring and embroidery training to women of low income groups, at St.Mary’s Middle School, Mannarpuram, here on Monday.
The women had undergone six-month-long free training in embroidery and tailoring under trainer P.Amutha. “The institute aims at making poor women economically self sufficient,” said K.Natarajan, president, Rotary Club of Tiruchi.
“Every year, we target a different area so that we can ensure that a larger number of persons are benefitted form the initiative. Till date, over 2,000 persons have been trained by ROTECH,” he added.
The trainees displayed miniature models of their creations for everyone to witness the various patterns and techniques of design that they had learnt during the course. G.Selvanayagi, district employment officer, distributed certificates to the women and advised them to make best use of the skills acquired through the programme.
Two tailoring machines worth Rs.4,000 were given to two women from very poor families. “I need a livelihood to help me survive and support my two daughters, after the death of my husband two years ago. This training has proved to be very useful and the machine will help me earn a livelihood,” said A.Fathima, one of the recipients of the tailoring machine.
K.Sureshkumar, chairman, ROTECH Institute, Arockia Mary, correspondent, St. Mary’s Middle School, family members of the trainees and members of Rotary club were present.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Tiruchirapalli / by Staff Reporter / Tiruchi – January 28th, 2014
Last year, a team of Corporation officials involved in the construction of Mint flyover decided to give a fresh look to the clock tower./ Photo: K. Pichumani / The Hindu
60-ft-tall structure became defunct decades ago
A century ago, British officers at Fort St. George used to fire cannonballs at 8 p.m. every day, it is said.
The practice stopped after the first standalone clock tower was built at Doveton junction in the early 1900s.
One such clock tower, at Mint Junction, that had been defunct for decades, got a lifeline on Friday when it was run on a trial basis following repairs.
The 60-feet-tall clock tower was revived by the Chennai Corporation and P. Orr & Sons. Each aluminium dial on the clock is four feet in diameter.
“Most of the mechanical iron equipment was rusted and jammed as lubricants had dried over the years. We repaired the clock completely free of cost,” said S. Vel Mani, senior manager, P. Orr & Sons.
At present, the city has only four standalone clock towers — at Mint, Royapettah, Doveton and Pulianthope.
It was last year, when a team of Corporation officials was involved in the construction of Mint flyover, they decided to give a fresh look to the clock tower and roped in experts from P. Orr & Sons.
Run on weight-driven mechanism, the clock has a pendulum, a swinging weight, as its time-keeping element.
Six iron plates have been tied to a metal rope and connected to a chain of wheels.
When the wheels rotate, the iron plates go down and the brass pointer on the dial of the clock moves.
Once the plates hit the floor, the clock stops working. Once a week, maintenance staff in charge of the clock will key it by lifting the plates to run the clock.
A classic example of art-deco architecture, the features of the clock tower include high use of cement concrete, linear model, thin lines, rich usage of colours and fewer floral engravings.
“The architectural style of the clock towers and cinema theatres built in the city in the 1900s were influenced by the industrial and French revolutions,” said historian Sriram V.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Chennai / by D. Madhavan / Chennai – January 19th, 2014
The small Sri Mangalambiga Vilas eatery could be easily missed as a non-descript joint in this temple-cum-business town but for a board reading “Since 1914” kept outside amidst the bustle on the lane leading to the Adi Kumbeswarar Temple.
It is not easy to remain in the restaurant business for over 100 years serving traditional South Indian dishes like idly, dosa and others. All the more in Kumbakonam, where almost every eatery serves tasty food and the famed degree coffee.
The success of Sri Mangalambiga Vilas becomes evident when one starts eating the sponge-like soft steaming idly or the crispy dosa (rice or rava) with sambar and coconut chutney.
A little girl who was troubling her mother by refusing to eat the idly on her banana leaf started gulping it down fast after the first bite.
The South Indian coffee – a mix of milk, coffee decoction and sugar – tasted great.
There was a Non-Resident Indian (NRI) family from the US enjoying their meal at the cramped eatery without making any fuss. The staff treated them like any other guests, a pointer that NRI guests are regulars there.
The lunch (rice, sambar, rasam, curd/buttermilk, vegetables) is also good – light on the purse and the stomach. It is a pleasant surprise to hear the staff enquiring from the guests if they wabt second or third helpings of vegetable curries, whereas in such places, you will only get a single small cup.
“The hotel must have been functioning even prior to 1914. But I do not have any record. Based on my father’s age at the time of his death and his age when he came to Kumbakonam I arrived at the year 1914. That is why I have used the words “Since 1914” and not “Established 1914,” proprietor H. Rajagopal told IANS.
He said his father V.G. Harihara Iyer came to Kumbakonam when he was 14 to work in the eatery, then owned by a named Thayu Patti.
“My father died in 1955 when he was 52 years old. By that time, he had bought the hotel from Thayu Patti, who decided to quit the business due to her old age,” Rajagopal said.
In those days the eatery was also called Sannadhi Kadai or Koil Kadai.
While there are outlets in Chennai proclaiming to sell Kumbakonam Degree Coffee, strangely no such boards were visible in Kumbakonam itself.
According to Rajagopal, coffee which is prepared with the first decoction and freshly boiled, pure cow’s milk, is called degree coffee.
“Coffee decoction is made pouring boiling water on coffee powder kept in a filter. The filtered decoction will be strong. It is called first decoction and coffee made with this is called degree coffee,” he said.
Rajagopal said another round of decoction can be obtained from the same coffee powder but it will be lighter.
“Degree coffee made with cow’s milk would taste better than the one made with buffalo milk. We used to roast coffee beans ourselves. The more the beans are roasted the decoction yield will be lower but the coffee would taste better,” he pointed out.
“Today, rich people come here. But the hotel is not for the rich class. People from all walks of lives frequent the hotel,” Rajagopal, also known as Ramani, remarked.
According to K. Hariharan, who manages the eatery, Tamil and Telugu movie actors have visited the place.
Rajagopal’s cousin Ambi Iyer has acted in Tamil movie “Nanban” made by director S. Shankar.
“Shankar, in his younger days, had bought tiffin from our hotel. At that time he had seen Ambi Iyer. And in “Nanban”, he had a role suitable for Ambi Iyer,” Hariharan told IANS.
However, business establishments too have to change with times and Sri Mangalambiga Vilas is no exception. In 2010 the 30-cover eatery was renovated and another round of renovation and expansion is in the offing.
“We are planning to expand by soon opening an air-conditioned dining hall which would increase the number of covers,” Hariharan said.
According to Rajagopal, there are several traditional South Indian dishes like sevvai and others that can be added to the menu so that the offering is not limited to items like idly, dosa, upma and pongal, among others.
Rajagopal does not have any plans of branching out on his own or on franchising the model.
“My elder daughter in the US wants to open an outlet there,” Rajagopal said.
On his plans for celebrating the centenary or say naming a dish with 100 as the suffix, Rajagopal said he had not thought about that.
(Venkatachari Jagannathan can be contacted at v.jagannathan@ians.in
source: http://ww.business-standard.com / Business Standard / Home> News-IANS> Features / IANS / Kumbakonam (TamilNadu) / January 21st, 2014
Maxwell Jude Anthony in action./ Photo: G. Krishnaswamy / The Hindu
Maxwell Jude Anthony teaches women easy defence techniques at his Shorinji Kempo classes. Vipasha Sinha reports
There is no need to kick and punch to escape assailants, all you need to do is to put little bit of pressure at the right spot. Maxwell Jude Anthony says this feature makes Shorinji Kempo one of the best self-defence arts for women.
“There is now a lot of talk about self-defence for women. They are being encouraged to learn physically demanding defence techniques. This approach may not be practical as assailants are well-prepared and attack after observing the victim. Often they work in pairs. Even if you hit them in the groin and put them down, they may return with more accomplices,” says Maxwell, who considers Shorinji Kempo effective in immobilisingthe attacker.
“All you have to do is apply pressure on certain points in the body and the recipient automatically reacts to it and loses the grip. For instance, there are around 180 points in the wrist, which can be worked upon to desensitise the attacker. It is a camouflage technique, where the attacker is caught off guard and before he comes to his senses, you have enough time to escape, ” he says.
Maxwell has been practising this art for 23 years. “Back in 1990, I saw a poster saying Shorinji Kempo, martial arts classes by Kirtie Kumar Futnani. Shorenji in Tamil means scratching, which piqued my curiosity and I went to the class. He invited me for a demonstration, where he was teaching kids. As past of the session, he asked me to grab his hand and the next thing I knew, I was flying mid-air to the other side of the room and the kids were clapping. I did know what had happened. The science of it got me intrigued and I practiced it regularly under my guru. I went on to be his successor and began practising as well as training,” says Maxwell, who also trains the visually impaired in foot reflexology.
Founded by Doshin So, Shorinji Kempo, translated as Fist Way of Shaolin Temple, was used as a healing technique in Japan post World War to help people in distress. It was used to cure people through acupuncture by activating various pressure points. Later it was developed into a self defence-technique, especially for women and children.
Maxwell organises Shorinji Kempo workshops on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 6 a.m. to 6.45 a.m. and 7 a.m. to 7.45 a.m. Venue: Russian Culture Centre, 27, Kasturi Ranga Road, Alwarpet, Kasthuri Ranga Rd, Parthasarathypuram, Teynampet.
For details, call 4352 9970, 90251 40051.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Chennai> DownTown / by Vipasha Sinha / Chennai – January 18, 2014
Malaysian Hindu devotee Karthi Gan grimaces while tapping his feet to the beat of ritual drums as two men plunge dozens of sharp hooks into his chest and back.
The painful ritual is Karthi’s way of giving thanks to the Hindu deity Muruga as part of the country’s colourful annual Thaipusam festival, one of the world’s most extreme displays of religious devotion.
Celebrated also in India and other areas with significant Tamil communities, the three-day festival that kicked off yesterday is marked with particular zest among Malaysian Indians.
Hordes of Hindus flock to temples across the country with offerings, many showing their fervour via extensive piercing or by bearing the elaborately decorated burdens called “kavadi” that are carried to religious sites.
“I got what I asked from Lord Muruga,” said Karthi, a 31-year-old engineer, who prayed during last year’s festival for “a good life”.
“I got a new-born baby. I got a new home,” he said late last night, when he and thousands of others began the slow and painful process of affixing their kavadi in the northern state of Penang.
His styrofoam kavadi structure — a frame attached to his hips and crowned by a peacock-eye design — was relatively light.
The piercing, however, had him feeling “a little nervous” ahead of the ritual just outside a Hindu temple, but he soon joined dozens of others who submitted to the ordeal.
Installing the kavadi, however, is merely the beginning.
In Penang, devotees then paraded barefoot for hours today through the streets of the state capital Georgetown, carrying kavadi that can weigh as much as 100 kilogrammes.
Participants swayed trance-like to drumbeats that had throbbed since yesterday.
Cheered on by friends and family who danced and chanted, the processions culminated in an 800-step climb to a hilltop temple for prayers.
Thaipusam commemorates the day when, according to Hindu mythology, the goddess Pavarthi gave her son Lord Muruga a lance to slay evil demons.
More than two million of racially diverse Malaysia’s 28 million people are ethnic Indian, mostly descendants of labourers brought in under British colonial rule. Most are Hindu.
source: http://www.business-standard.com / Business Standard / Home> PTI Stories> National> News / AFP / Georgetown (Malaysia) / January 17th, 2014
The event by Center for Tamil Culture is to be held from January 20 to 22
The Center for Tamil Culture will organise a three-day meeting of eminent Tamil writers and scholars across the globe in the city from January 20 to 22.
Titled ‘Thayagam Kadantha Tamil’, the international conference will see the participation of 35 experts from all over the world, said Nalla G. Palaniswami, founder-chairman of the Center, here on Friday.
The experts include R. Karthickesu from Malaysia, Cheran and A. Muthulingam from Canada, Nagarathnam Krishna from France, S. Ponnudurai from Australia, Shanmuga Siva and Muthu Nedumaran from Malaysia, Ulriche Nicholas from Germany, Kalaimagal from China, Seethalakshmi and Azhagiya Pandian from Singapore – all experts in their field, said senior journalist Maalan, who is the convener of the international conference.
Seven sessions
There would be seven sessions which will focus on literature, media, technology and education, for the four were important to take Tamil to the next generation.
Sirpi Balasubramaniam, one of the trustees of the Centre, said that there were writers, scholars and experts from 12 countries to talk about their experience.
They will elaborate on their understanding of language, how they viewed the Tamil publishing world, how technology had helped bridge the divide among Tamil writers and many more interesting topics.
This was not the first programme. The Centre for Tamil Culture had conducted such an event, he said. It had also organised events focussing on Tamil writers from the Kongu region and honouring writers, he added.
Improving quality
Later talking to The Hindu Mr. Maalan said that the main aim of involving writers from outside Tamil Nadu will help improve quality of works published here. In other words the participants would surely bring in variety and experience that would enhance quality to whatever was available locally.
It would also bring in new sections to Tamil literature just as there was American literature, African literature. He also hoped that in addition there would also be dialogue and synergy among the writers.
He said that it was wrong to say that the Tamil diaspora literature was dominated by those from Sri Lanka, though it was true that there were many from the island nation, who shared their experience of being away from homeland and the struggle they went through.
The Tamil diaspora literature included publications from people from Australia, Switzerland, Canada, the U.S., Malaysia and Singapore. And their experiences and works were as varied as any other. At the conference one could find feminist literature, post-modern literature and much more.
Mr. Maalan said that a concerted effort was needed to take the works of writers outside Tamil Nadu to readers across the world and suggested that e-publishing could be a way out.
e-publishing
Though a few publications in Tamil Nadu encouraged writers from abroad, the best way forward was e-publishing. But it was not uploading content that was converted into the printable document format.
It had to be e-publishing in the real sense, he said and added that efforts were also being made to take the works to the mobile platform. He also welcomed the government support to such endeavours.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Coimbatore / by Karthik Madhavan / Coimbatore – January 18th, 2014
Insights into bringing a story alive on stage, the power of imagination and words, reinventing mythology and the eternal intensity of compelling photographs mark Anusha Parthasarathy’s account of the Fest
Aravind Adiga /. Photo: R. Ragu / The Hindu
Aravind Adiga
The evolution of a writer who was born in a hospital near Poonamallee High Road and grew up in a house nearby into a Man Booker prize-winning author is the story of Aravind Adiga. In his conversation with David Godwin at The Hindu Lit For Life 2014, Adiga talked much about the city of his childhood and the good memories of the train journeys from Mangalore to Chennai. “But my childhood was dominated by the Udupi hotels of Madras,” he said. “Especially Woodlands and Dasaprakash. For a long time, I looked for a Dasaprakash hotel wherever I went.
When David brought up The White Tiger and the story behind it, Aravind recollected seeing a magazine a driver of his colleague was reading in New Delhi once. “It was called Murder and this pulp fiction was a rage among the drivers of New Delhi. It had a collection of stories where the driver kills his owner,” he explained. “In India, the middle-class takes a lot for granted. The domestic help is privy to a lot of personal information. I wanted to ask the question, why is India safe? The core of the novel, of course, is about how a man becomes free.”
Aravind’s first novel was set in New Delhi and the second in Mumbai (Last Man In Tower). He is working on his third. “The Madras I grew up in is gone, and for a long time, I was looking for my childhood. I understand now that I must look at the future. I have now decided to learn Tamil,” he said. When asked if the function of literature was not to recover the past, he said, “In the book The Leopard, there is a line that goes ‘Everything must change so that everything can stay the same’, and I think Chennai has done just that. You don’t always have to write about a place you enjoy,” he said.
Nikhila Kesavan conducting a workshop / Photo: R. Ragu / The Hindu
From Page To Stage
Everyone sat in a huddle, eyes flitting between the screen and the speaker at the From Page To Stage: Bringing A Story Alive, a workshop by Nikhila Kesavan. The actor-director spoke in length about adapting short stories and works of fiction into stage productions or feature films.
The workshop dealt with two novels; one that had many characters and the other that was a monologue. “A novel rarely lends itself to stage. And there are so many places, a hostel, cafe or a terrace. How do you show so many things for a stage production? This is where the director decides which actors are most important and who can be avoided,” she said. And on the subject of the play or movie being compared to the book, she said, “There will always be comparisons when you have an adaption. But it’s best not to be too aware of it. I just evaluate the whole play as a piece of theatre.”
There is no one formula to successfully adapt a novel or a story, and everyone has to find their own way, the actor pointed out. “Sometimes, a book has so many incidents that if you take out even one, the story will fall apart. In other books, there is a lot of talking and only two or three incredibly dramatic scenes, but they are so good that you want to adapt the story. There are different ways of treating the stories — you have monologues or you could divide the passages among many voices so it’s not boring.”
Nikhila also added that it was easy to point out from the first reading if a play was meant for theatre. Sometimes, a play might make a great film but fail on stage. “There are many challenges to tackle in theatre. If you are making a movie, you think as a director, actor and writer, which is different from a playwright writing a script.” And on perspective in an adaptation, she said, “Many people have seen different versions of The Ramayan, but what do you see in the text? It’s how you portray and design the story. Your characters can be very radical and different from the original or it could be a good retelling,” she explained.
Kumar Shahani with Sadanand Menon (left) / Photo: R. Ragu / The Hindu
Evolution Of The Imaginary
From the multiplicity of perspective to the loss of poetry and handling of colours on screen, noted filmmaker Kumar Shahani explained the concepts of the imaginary through his experiments in films, conversations with intellectuals all over the world and his views on the changing state of imagination in India and overseas. He was introduced by arts editor Sadanand Menon.
The session began with a frame that inspired a scene in his film Khayal Gaatha, which looked at the history of Khayal singing. He talked about the different perspectives that can be captured on one frame. “I worked with the idea of multiple duration — being present simultaneously and how the place around it gets changed. And how the resonance around an area changes,” he said. The painting was of a woman peeping out of the window, looking at a lover. At the far end, another conversation takes place.
Shahani spoke of the perils of fitting into a category. “When I presented this painting in Sydney, many didn’t understand what I had done with it. They have blocked out all other kinds of enunciation because they are so influenced by the revolutionary thinking of Da Vinci or other thinkers,” he said.
The filmmaker also spoke about the importance of colour, how to handle it and the role technology has played in changing perspectives. “I’m appalled by the attention span of the breaking-news genre or Hollywood, where you can’t really look at anything,” he explained. “I see a future where the less opportunities we are given to create, the more we use other people’s creations (which they created for their own purpose).” Sadanand added that image is a form of consciousness. “When you can imagine an image, it’s a whole new consciousness that is emerging depending on how the creator re-imagines it. The imaginary is not fiction, but a world in the process of becoming real.”
Making Waves
With two MBA graduates-turned-authors and a literary fiction writer on the panel, the discussion Making Waves: How To Create An Impact As A Writer dealt with many interesting issues such as how important marketing is to make a book sell in today’s scenario, how different is it for different genres of books, and how one views literary fiction or commercial fiction today. The lively discussion among Anita Nair, Ashwin Sanghi and Ravi Subramanian was moderated by Naresh Fernandes.
“It’s difficult to construct a Chinese wall between the two lives I lead — I use business tools in writing. The amount of time and energy one would devote to a business plan, I would dedicate to a plot,” said Ashwin Sanghi, known for best sellers such as Chanakya’s Chant and The Krishna Key. He believes the author’s work does not stop with writing.
Banker-author Ravi Subramanian agreed. “When you write a book, there are enough people to read it. But how do you reach the right audience? So I send out my manuscripts to a few trusted people I’ve interacted with. They are people with no connection to banking. I do this so that I can change the script in case there are parts of the book they don’t understand. It also helps improve the story.”
Anita Nair’s rule is to write books that she likes to read. “They seem to endure,” she added. “Writing, to me, is an intense and personal exercise. I don’t see the reader in my mind. I don’t believe marketing is important. The book has to be good, only then will it endure. You needn’t be aggressive. A book is not a product.” Ravi explained the need for an author to become the CEO of his book. “A lot of good books don’t make it because readers don’t know they exist. An author must take charge of everything from writing to marketing the book to make sure the reader sees it.”
Reinventing Mythology
Are mythological retellings relevant? How does inventing mythological texts help us contend with the present and the future? These important questions and more were discussed in Revinventing Mythology: The Art Of Rewriting Religious Narratives. The panel had Paul Zacharia, Veenapani Chawla and A.R. Venkatachalapathy, and was moderated by K. Satchidanandan.
The moderator began the session by pointing out that every field was in some way impacted by mythology and that they had become a part of everyday life. “Now Ekalavya is being seen as a big protagonist in Dalit literature. Shambuka is another figure who is gaining prominence; Rama is being questioned on killing him and Vaali. Rama is being questioned on ousting Sita from the kingdom. This is because myths are polyphonic and can be interpreted in many ways and contexts,” he said.
Paul, a short story writer and columnist, talked about confronting one’s religious beliefs through reinvention. “It was an attempt to reinvent myself spiritually so that I could enjoy inner freedom,” he said. Veena, an actor, director, choreographer and composer has done extensive work with mythology and talked about the importance of three characters in epics — Ardhanarishwar, Sabyasachi and Brihanalla. “They are concepts, ways of viewing humanity. Ardhanarishwar brings together two polarities in gender. Sabyasachi brings together the capacities for knowing in different ways. The middle ground or the third side to these two characters is Brihanalla, which not just combines two different genders but also the capacities.”
A.R. Venkatachalapathy brought up the issue of myths helping one contend with the past, present and future. “When a society is modernised, contending with myths is considered as a way of being modern,” he said. “There have been retellings with Ravana as the hero of the epic or with Hiranya Kashipu. Here the retellings don’t reject the myth, but rather rewrite it in a different way.”
Pablo Bartholomew./ Photo: R. Ragu / The Hindu
Remembering Bhopal
It has been 30 years, and yet, the images that Pablo Bartholomew shows on the screen continue to hurt as much as they did when they were first taken in 1984. Introduced by Rahul Pandita, the award-winning photographer narrated his experiences in Bhopal during the time of the gas tragedy through his unforgettable images.
Pablo began his photo presentation with pictures of himself as a child and a young man, talking about his father who introduced him to photography. He then showed snapshots from his early work, recording the hippy culture of students at that time. “Many of them are parents now and their children are unable to accept how hip their parents were back then,” he laughs. In the collection was a picture of the Rock Fest in St. Stephen’s College in 1974. There were also pictures of Satyajit Ray on the sets of Shatranj Ke Ki Khilari.
In 1983-1984, Pablo took to news photography and shot many images of Operation Blue Star and the riots that followed. When the Bhopal gas tragedy took place, he rushed there and landed three days later. The images of J.P. Nagar, men wearing scarves around their noses and mouths, people sporting glasses to shield their eyes, are haunting. There are more and more pictures of hospitals, doctors checking patients, dead livestock, mass burials and so on. The most haunting image, which won him the World Press Photo of the Year, is of an infant being buried and a hand reaching out to caress. Pablo visited Bhopal many times afterward, on the first, ninth, 10th and 20th anniversary to document whatever changes have happened. “Memorials have been erected for those who died and more people are agitated and getting on the streets,” he said. He promised to visit Bhopal again soon.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus / by Anusha Parthasarathy / Chennai – January 15th, 2014
