Category Archives: Arts, Culture & Entertainment

A glass act

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Business & Economy

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Anjali Srinivasan was recently selected as one of the ‘Swarovski Designers of the Future’. The glass-smith from Chennai talks about art as an invitation to dialogue, sustainable design and her vision for future living

To Anjali Srinivasan, the kiln is where the art is. It is where the familiar meets the imagined, where strength courts fragility and where physical forms signal ephemeral experiences. The idea of working with red-hot molten material, and learning to control it as it transformed from solid to liquid and back to solid, unfolded when she visited Firozabad, India’s glass hub, during her student days at the National Institute of Fashion Technology.

Anjali’s sense of inquiry about the medium took her to Alfred University in New York and the Rhode Island School of Design, where she invoked new ways of working with glass. ‘Puffy Glass’, one of her many inventive departures, was the outcome of “intensive research in particle activism”.

Back in India in 2010, she worked with traditional glass artisans in Firozabad, Purdilnagar and Papanaidupet, before setting up a studio in SIDCO Women’s Industrial Park near Pallavaram in 2011. With ‘Depths of Field’, where she showcased a wearable glass sculpture and an installation that sprayed turmeric and coffee into the gallery when a participant pulled at its strings, and ‘Of Shifting Natures’, the highlight of which were digital prints on flat glass and a mirror-painting diptych encrusted with tiny convex mirrors that turned the viewer’s movement in front of it into its subject matter, Anjali subverted preconceptions of her medium. After many solo shows and honours, she moved to Dubai last year “as a random life experiment”, and set up ChoChoMa Studios, where she provides customised solutions in hand-crafted glass and conceptualises themes for art shows. It was during a showing at the Dubai Design Week last year that ‘Untitled’, an 11-ft high archway with web-like glass filaments co-constructed with visitors, caught the attention of the Swarovski-Design Miami/Basel team scouting for convention-challenging talents.

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In an e-mail interaction, the artist talks about the honour and the less-trodden paths her work is leading her to. What you cannot ignore is the fact that to this artist, the glass is only half full — always!

What did the Swarovski selection panel find unique about your work?

They informed me that I had been selected through a nomination process. The curator felt that my approach was worthy of recognition, as it showed a new way forward for creative process and its engagement with people.

Since it’s a Swarovski honour, would the assignment involve working with crystals?

The award comes with a commission, and so yes, I will be working with Swarovski to create something new for Design Basel in June 2016. Who knows what the future holds past that, but since I am interested in optical phenomena, and crystals epitomise optics, I hope to continue using crystals.

The optical behaviour of crystal is quite different from glass…

For me, the task of working across media lies in being able to speak in the voice of each material, and bring out a conversation or collaboration between them. I see harmony as just one theme in design. Sometimes, the communication of diversity, tension or even conflict between media helps in the effectiveness of a work.

Going by your repertoire, it’s apparent that art is part of the dialogue in any interior space you create…

I am foremost an artist; it is about how I see the world and relate to my existence. My design practice feeds into building that overall philosophy, and I am fortunate to be able to interpret interior spaces in that sense.

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You’ve used spices, dough, coffee powder at shows… What are your latest experiments?

I’m working on transitioning from a crusty, rock-like glass entity to a sublimated, light-infused crystal body, all in the same object. I hope this investigation can be used in the Swarovski project. Simultaneously, I am looking at expanding the material language of glass bangle-making. I want to build a new vocabulary that sustains the craft tradition across its current boundaries.

What drew you to Dubai?

I realised that living and working in my home country was not conducive to my practice. Also, I had outgrown the job market in the U.S., from where I had relocated to India. I looked for some place in-between India and the U.S. My gallerist was showing works at Art Dubai with significant success. It was a random life experiment to see what it is like to set up a creative enterprise in Dubai.

What led you to launch ChoChoMa? In what way has the studio pushed the frontiers of glass and nurtured craftsmanship?

ChoChoMa Studios is named after my grandmother. It was started originally as a fair-trade umbrella for glass artisans I was working with in Delhi in 2005. The goal was to upgrade technology, offer design inputs and guide artisans to sell directly to consumers. I wanted the handicraft glass sector in India to have a voice in creative activity. But, since then, its role has changed, according to what I responded to most. We showcased contemporary art collaboration with traditional artisans during Art Chennai in 2014. Today, we are a start-up in West Asia, working on design projects, teaching students about glassmaking and making impossible ideas happen through art.

Yes, it has been an important concern of the Studio. We just created tableware for a restaurant, by splicing old water bottles. We are working on large wall panels that use bottle glass, for a city-wide recycle centre initiative of the Dubai Municipality. Each panel saves 50 kg of consumer glass from landfills — a heartening application of sustainable design.

What is your vision of future living? Where do you see your medium going?

My vision is less dissonance between humans, and humans and their objects. Creative glass exploration, with recent developments of 3D printing and lathe-working, is heading towards breaking traditional boundaries with technology, as well as being a medium of performance, time and phenomenon-based interfaces.

Three names were announced by Swarovski (including a two-member design team). In what way do you think your work will be different?

I’d like to believe that each of our works will be special, based on our vastly different backgrounds. I am the only artist in the lot. So, my approach will be more conceptual and I will explore the philosophies I am invested in. I was told that I am the first Indian designer, and also the first glass-maker chosen for the honour. I have been encouraged to use my own glass in collaboration with crystal, so I imagine that will define the project as being unique. My sensibilities are Indian, my skill-base is American, and I am working out of West Asia and imagining with Swarovski crystals! Surely that adds up to something significant, right?

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus> Society / by  T. Krithika Reddy / March 22nd, 2016

Writing a Life Beyond Death

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Inspiration/ Positive News and Features, Nri's / Pio's, Science & Technologies, World Opinion

BookCF20mar2016This disturbing book, which almost wrings the life breath out of you, is this year’s best non-fiction so far. Searing, unapologetically noire, inhabiting the cusp of life and death, second generation American doctor Paul Kalanithi’s account of his young life and his progress towards death takes us to the brink of our own lives. Writing till a few weeks before he died of lung cancer, with the concluding description of the days leading to this death written by his wife Lucy, it is a story of life, death, science, the meaning of life, and the various existential queries it throws up as we traipse through life as if we are born not to die.

Paul Kalanithi
Paul Kalanithi

Kalanithi was the brightest young neurosurgeon that the US medical system produced in recent years. Wooed by all universities, offered jobs that anyone would, well, die for, Kalanithi was consumed by lung cancer despite the best medical treatment available and despite the fact that the victim himself knew how to keep away death.

Kalanithi was the third son of a Tamil Christian father and his Hindu wife who eloped to get married. In the US, his father became a well-known surgeon. After New York, his father moved the family to the far outreaches of Arizona where “spaces stretched on, then fell away into the distance”.

Out of there emerged this brilliant writer-doctor on who the US medical system too had pinned great hopes. But science hadn’t accounted for nature’s dark humour.

In When Breath Becomes Air, the young surgeon deals deeply with issues which confront all of us. First was his passion for literature and philosophy, and he imbibed the larger glories of Eliot, Whitman etc. He found Eliot’s metaphors “leaking into his own language”. And then “throughout college, my monastic, scholarly study of human meaning would conflict with my urge to forge and strengthen the human relationships that formed that meaning”. Kalanithi resolved his inner conflict by finally choosing medical science where the “moral mission of medicine” lent his med school days a “severe gravity”. Here he explored the relationship between the meaning of life and death.

In his short life Kalanithi achieved greatness in both showing an academic life few can surpass—MA in English literature and BA in human biology from Stanford, MPhil in history and philosophy of science and medicine from Cambridge, graduated cum laude from Yale School of Medicine, inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha National Medical Honour Society, postdoctoral fellowship in neuroscience and the American Academy of Neurological surgery’s highest award for research. He was just 36.

In his death, two of his greatest passions converge—medicine and literature. Even as he groped, incised, cauterised, sutured and brought people back from the jaws of death, he himself was being eaten away by cancer. Often there was hope that the first defence against his lung cancer, Tarceva, “that little white pill” would do the trick. For six months, it seemed the cancer was in retreat. Kalanithi started work, fighting against tiredness and nausea. Then in one of the routing scans appeared a moon-shaped tumour. He couldn’t avoid chemo any longer. He fell back on literature during this difficult phase looking for meanings of death and life. “Everywhere I turned, the shadows of death obscured the meaning of any action.”

This young doctor on the threshold of death fought bravely. But there is little science can do about determined nature. Detaching himself brilliantly from impending death, Kalanithi takes us through his final weeks of turmoil. Most tearful is the last operation he would ever do as he decides to give up surgery, and go home and wait for death. He watches the soap suds drip off his hands after his last surgery. He saved one more life but his was nearing the end.

Here there is no redemption. Death is the winner from page one. It is only literature, this book, that outlived him. He has left back a poignant memoir of life and death that many will  find succour in life as well as when they near death.

source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> LifeStyle> Books / by Binoo K. John / March 19th, 2016

Velu Nachiyar, Jhansi Rani of Tamil Nadu

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Historical Links, Pre-Independence, Leaders, Records, All

Asked to name warrior queens from the country, few would go beyond the Rani Laxmibai of Jhansi, and probably none would be able to name women from south India. Though history may make it seem that the first revolution of Independence in 1857 was an orchestration of north Indian rulers, Lucknow-based researcher Kirti Narain is bringing to the fore contribution of the forgotten heroes.

Narain says the popularly held belief that the revolution of 1857 was concentrated to north and central India was not true. “Southern India also responded to the first movement for Independence.Some of these southern rulers were women,” says Narain who was in the city recently with her assistant Amina Hasan to delve into the Tamil Nadu government archives. Narain is engaged in a study , on participation of women in the 1857 uprising under the aegis of the Indian Council of Social Science Research and the Giri Institute of Development Studies, Aliganj in Lucknow.

Instead of going by British records, Narain’s study has unearthed forgotten Indian writings. Backing her findings, Narain cites examples of powerful women like the 18th century Sivaganga queen Rani Velu Nachiyar, besides Belawadi Mallamma and Kittur Rani Chennamma of Karnataka.

“Rani Velu Nachiyar was the first queen of Tamil origin to fight against the British in India. She formed an army and fought and won against the British in 1780, with military assistance from Hyder Ali,” says Narain, head of Giri Institute of Development Studies. Nachiyar, the princess of Ramanathapuram, was married to the king of Sivaganga, Muthuvaduganatha Periyaudaiyathevar. She was drawn into battle after her husband was killed by the British. Living under the protection of Hyder Ali of Mysore near Dindigul, Nachiyar was said to have come up with idea of a human bomb. She also formed a women’s army and was one of the few rulers who regained her kingdom and ruled for 10 more years.

Inspiring women in the south was another queen from Karnataka Kittur Rani Chennamma. Born in 1791, she was best known for leading an armed rebellion against the East India Company in 1824. The resistance ended with her arrest and she was imprisoned for life.Adept at horse riding, sword fighting and archery from her youth, Channamma called for a war when the British refused to accept her adopted son as ruler. “Kittur Rani Chennamma was the first woman activist who fought a lonely , but courageous battle against the British. She did not succeed in driving them away , but she inspired many women,” says Narain.

Prior to these women, Belawadi Mallamma was a popular warrior queen from Bailhongal, in Belgaum district of Karnataka. She was the first woman to form a women’s army to fight against the British and the Marathas in the 17th century. “Belawadi Mallamma fought with the Maratha king, Shivaji, while defending her husband’s kingdom. She was defeated and taken to Shivaji, who was quite impressed by her valour and decided to return the kingdom.”

During the turbulence of revolt, there were many women who participated in their own way. While many gave away their jewellery to finance the revolution, some requested their masters to train them in warfare. “Our study also looks at unknown women and tribal women who have no identity. These women played a significant role in the revolt,” says Narain.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Chennai / TNN / by CDS Mani / TNN / March 17th, 2016

A reunion after 50 years at Thiagarajar College of Engineering

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Education

Madurai:

Walking into their alma mater after 50 years on Sunday was a joyful experience for the 1960-1965 batch of students of the Thiagarajar College of Engineering.

The batch comprised the creamy layer of students who entered the premium institution that was founded in 1957. Correspondent of TCE Karumuttu T Kannan presided over the function and listened to the elderly alumni narrating their experiences as carefree students in this institution. He said the alumni would be an inspiration to the present day students.

They had gone on to become chief engineers of PWD, defence, electricity board, steel plants, harbours, while some of them contributed to the various space projects in their capacity as research scientists at ISRO. Forty of them attended the event along with their families.

The old students re-lived their days in the institution and visited various departments. “This is a place that brings us immense joy that cannot be replaced by any other,” they said sharing their experiences with the students of today who were eager to listen to them.

V Sathappan, president, 1965 batch alumni reunion committee, welcomed the gathering, N Shanmugam, secretary explained the objectives of the reunion.

 Karumuttu T. Kannan presided over the function. Former principal M Maria Louis and C. Kothandaraman addressed the gathering and greeted the alumni. V Abhaikumar, principal, made a presentation about the progress of the college over the years.
M Vettrivelswamy proposed a vote of thanks.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Madurai / TNN / March 14th, 2016

Driving down Kollywood’s memory lane

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Nri's / Pio's, World Opinion

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An Indo-Canadian trio has put together a video timeline featuring 20 of Tamil cinema’s eternal favourite songs

Nothing is better than listening to the classics; some hits are immortal, even as pop, rock and hip hop continue to top the charts. It’s the same when it comes to Tamil film songs. No matter what the latest composers dish out, it’s the oldies that bring us together.

In an effort to pay homage to their roots, Thakshikah Sritharan, Kavistuthy Thavanesan and Saikavin Sritharan, an Indo-Canadian trio, has put together a nostalgic six-minute video called Tamil Mime Express, tracing the history of film music.

Thakshikah, a classical dancer, talks of the inspiration behind the video, saying, “We were fascinated by a video called Mime Through Time by SketchShe; so we decided to do the same with Kollywood, trying to make it as appealing and innovative as possible. We thought that a timeline of Tamil songs shown through dance would be a fun way for everyone to remember and enjoy some of the songs they grew up listening to.”

Throughout the video, which is shot entirely in a car, the three of them sport various outfits with élan — shirts with rolled-up sleeves, popped collars, saris, lehengas — which is what has caught the fancy of many viewers. “We invested a lot to acquire the perfect costumes to match each song,” they say.

Starting from ‘Naan Aanaiyitaal’ from Enga Veettu Pillai, all the way through ‘Chikku Bukku Rayile’ from Gentleman to ‘My name is Billa’ from Billa, the video concludes with the latest ‘Thara Local’ fromMaari.

“We initially listed about 150 songs, but narrowed down to just 20 spanning all genres,” says Thakshikah. The trio credits their parents, as well as G Design Labs and Yashtra for their support in the video’s production.

Thakshikah and Kavin have only been to India four times, but concur that, “The food is absolutely amazing. The best trip was our visit to Agra and the Taj Mahal.”

They’re currently working on a couple of projects but are keeping them under wraps. A timeline of Bollywood music, perhaps?

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus / by Justin Dominic / Chennai – March 12th, 2016

A housewife who found her calling at 60 to be a writer

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Inspiration/ Positive News and Features

Coimbatore:

V Vedavalli, who was leading the life of an orthodox housewife from a middle class family that was reluctant even to let her work, responded to a bigger calling at the age of 60 and started writing books. Her first book was released at the age of 64. Now at 70, she has completed the draft of three books – one on Indira Gandhi, one on Buddha and the other on Velunaichiyar, the valiant queen who fought the British.

She says at the age of 59 when she looked back at her life, she realized that she hadn’t achieved anything. All she could see was that she had been a daughter, a wife, a mother and a home maker. “I wanted to leave my mark and do something that would remain long after I am gone,” she says. Interested in history, social science, politics and spiritual studies, she wrote her first book on Mahabharatam at the age of 60.

Vedhavalli belonged to a very orthodox family and was not even allowed to work after marriage. “Only when we faced a financial crisis, was I allowed to work as an accountant in a company. After the company shut down, I indulged in some handicraft. But I always loved reading and writing,” she said.

But when she decided to write a book, everyone including her family mocked at her. “Everyone laughed and asked me if this was necessary at this age. As I came from humble backgrounds, nobody took me seriously as well,” she said. Not one to be discouraged she started reading voraciously and after reading over 100 books and travelling to various universities to get help from professors, she completed her first book ‘Vedhavalliyin Mahabharatham’. With little knowledge of computers and internet, she said her main aim was to ensure that her book was error free. She was even felicitated for her book by the Tamil Sangam. “When my first book was published, I was on top of the world. I felt I had achieved something and that is when my family also started taking my work seriously,” she said.

She has also written three other books and has travelled extensively for those. She is working towards getting these books published. “I got very little support from my family and so I struggled a lot in my research work. I would get up at 4 and write till 6.30 am. Then after completing my household chores, I would visit libraries at 4 pm and return by 6 pm. Again I would start writing at 11 pm and work till 12.30 am on my book,” she said. When she had to stay for 14 days in Madurai alone to research for her book on Velunaichiyar, she said she was very scared. “I had never lived alone before. That was a challenge and I am glad I have overcome it successfully,” she said. Her book is available at the government libraries. “The other three books will also be published by April and will be available at government libraries,” she said.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Coimbatore / by Komal Gautham / TNN / March 08th, 2016

The Beats Manufacturer of Mylapore

Arts, Culture & Entertainment
Photo  Martin Louis
Photo  Martin Louis

A small shop is tucked away at the shaded turning across the Vivekandanda College road in Mylapore. In this space that doubles as a warehouse, at least a hundred different mridangams sit set for the fingers — 22-inch ones for women and 24-inch ones for the male singers, as the artisan and the owner points out.

“The smaller ones come in the sruthi ranges of 4, 5 and 6 which suit the women voices better, and their slightly larger cousins produce sound that match the lower sruthis of 1 and 2 to suit a male vocalist’s voice,” says Arogyam A, sitting down for a chat. A fifth-generation mridangam maker, he says there is a certain dignity the instrument commands from anyone who lays a finger on it.

Hailing from Thanjavur, where his forefathers also hand-crafted the instrument for ages, he keeps alive the art today, with his helpers working on different parts of the instrument — polishing the body of the hollow mridangam, stitching the three layers of skin on either side — which Arogyam informs, is made of cow hide. “We can modify the sruthi based on the thickness of these layers of skin,” he says. And finally, looping the holder-strings tightly, criss-crossing the body of the instrument. The process takes over seven days if done leisurely.

“But during months like December, or when a stream of orders comes in, we have  to sit the extra hours and finish each piece in 4 to 5 days,” he says as he points to a newly crafted piece. There are also several antique mridangams, that carry yesteryear shades of wood — all made of jackfruit tree wood from Panruti — they all sit gathering dust, many here for repair.

When asked if today’s young musicians are dwindling, the answer jumps from his lips. “Not at all!”  He explains that not only are younger players aplenty, there are also 4-5 women who come by regularly.

“There are also customers from London, Geneva and Canada who place orders, though we don’t advertise. The tradition still gets around, and people are genuinely interested. It is a satisfying trade and art,” smiles Arogyam

source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Chennai / by Amrutha Varshinii / March 10th, 2016

The house of groaning shelves

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Records, All

They were once hallowed spaces of knowledge. Today derelict and with aging collections of books, libraries in the city still hold secrets within their cavernous halls.

 

There’s pin-drop silence. The gentle whirr of a fan, the rustle of paper, and the thud of a dropped book often cracks it. Unlike in school libraries, there are no ‘shushers’. There isn’t need for one; there aren’t many visitors to shush. A few of the city’s grand old libraries, for most part of the day, are left with just the aging books. Pick one from the shelf, amidst a cloud of dust, and you’ll see tiny silver fish play hide and seek. Many of them, difficult to maintain, have been brutally shredded in the past, says Uma Maheshwari, librarian at Madras Literary Society (MLS) — the oldest in the city. But not anymore. People are now adopting books — paying all it takes to get them back in form. These sit on a separate shelf, newly-bound and way past their lifespan. “We have given them a grace life of 200 years for now,” says Uma, drumming her fingers on the remaining 45, which await adoption.

 

Braving vertigo

Madras Literary Society

“Books can be taken from there, but then most do not, because of the dust,” shouts Uma Maheshwari from below, as I carefully climb the metal ladder leading up to a set of shelves. “We should probably install a chair lift…” she says, before turning away to attend to an elderly visitor, who wants a certain book about writings by (Jawaharlal) Nehru. The search begins. The books are not classified; catalogues not set in order. After the renovation of the 203-year-old red-brick structure a few years ago, the wiring has been detached, and the books moved from their places. Founded in 1812, the Society was part of the College of Fort St. George, started by the then collector of Madras Francis Whyte Ellis. In 1830, the Society became an auxiliary of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain, and functioned out of Connemara Public Library, before moving to its current location on College Road, inside the Directorate of Public Instruction complex, in 1905. “We need volunteers to dust, classify and set them all (around 80,000) up again,” says Uma, leaning on an antique rosewood chair. Clutching the shaky railing, I take another flight of steps. From here, the thick layer of dust on the fan and on the cupboards is visible.

So are the brick-and-lime mortar walls and tall windows with Rajasthani accents. Looking down through the grill gets me a little dizzy. “So when is the lift due?” I ask.

Home to: Arretolis Opera Omania QVAE Extant Graece and Latine (1619), Travels in India by John Baptista (1680) and Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton (1740)

Coffee with Captain G.A. Mustafa

Mohammeddan library

From inside a glass cubicle, an elderly man asks for my business card and tells me to write my address and contact number in a visitor’s register. Retired Air India commander Captain G.A. Mustafa’s family, starting with his great grandfather, has been taking care of the library ever since it was established in 1850. According to the book Madras Rediscovered by chronicler S. Muthiah, ‘the library was started as Madras Muslim Public Library by Surgeon Edward Green Balfour, head of the Museum, and his sponsor, Nawab Ghulam Mohammad Ghouse Khan of Arcot.’ Mustafa was there during the critical period between 1939 and 1945, when the library lost much of its collection; and when the building, which boasted Islamic architecture, was pulled down in 1996, and reconstructed in 2005. “There are over 15,000 books and manuscripts, many gifted by the kings of Egypt, Turkey and Jeddah in the 1850s. They cannot be found anywhere else in the world,” chips in librarian Tameemur Rahman.

It’s around 5.30 p.m., almost closing time. Hot cups of coffee are brought in. An 1852 edition of a yellowing astronomy Persian book in one hand and a freshly-bound book in another, Tameemur gets technical about photo encapsulation — a technique to document manuscripts using specially processed polyester film coated with glue — which he claims was kickstarted in the library.

On my way out, Mustafa stops me and says, “Saba Mustafa is my wife.” There is a long pause. “She was the one instrumental in getting the library back in shape. Will you please mention that?”

Home to: H.D. Love’s Vestiges of Old Madras (100 years old), The Lancet magazine (July 1883),Ramayana written in Persian, and the Bible of Barnabas

Walking in the dark

Connemara Library

On the first floor of Egmore Museum Library, at the far end of the room, a faded poster reads: ‘Way to the old building’. The narrow path leads into a bright circular room with desks and tables, and a staff member who takes your reference requests — just like in a departmental store. That is the closest you can get to the Connemara Library (established in 1890 by Bobby Robert Bourke Connemara) — unless you have special permission to visit.

It’s 15 minutes to 5 p.m. — closing time. I walk down the red-carpeted floor to a mammoth structure with an array of teak wood shelves. To my right is a glass case with important books like Thambiran Vanakkam by Henriques (the original copy of which rests in London); bang in the middle is a Gandhi statue by Roy Chowdhury; and on the floor are old maps of the Tamil Nadu villages, laid out like tiny step mats. I open one to see a dark sketch of Kulavoipatti village in Pudukottai district. To my left is a counter with a small window, from where the librarian used to issue books back in the day. A narrow wooden staircase leads to a long wide hall spread with books that have been left to dry on the floor. The other end includes large circular reading desks. Connecting both is a small space with shelves that house records of Lok Sabha debates. As I pick up a book, the lights snap. It’s spooky, but only for a while. The colourful Burmese windows let in soft shades of light, just enough for me to see the truncated semi-circle roof and the ornamental acanthus leaves and flowers adorning the pillars, marble-floors, and the exit.

Home to: Omnes Quae Extant by D. Hieronymi Strido (1553) and Opera Quae Exlast Ominia (Greek Latin) by Plato (1578) are part of the nearly eight lakh books.

Smelling lemongrass

Oriental Manuscripts Library

Librarian R. Chandramohan carefully unlocks a glass panel inside a room with double doors to take out a lingam-shaped structure. “This is the original text of the Thiruvasagam written by Manikavasagar,” he says. The over-350-year-old palm manuscript was showcased at the World Manuscripts exhibition in Frankfurt, Germany, a few years ago, he says. Next, he takes a set of palm leaves which have the famousThirumurugatrupadai by Nakkeeran inscribed on them. Right next to it is The New Testament in Hebrew, Soolini Manthiram, Mahabharata drawings on handmade paper, and an ivory manuscript case. “There is more,” he says, opening the door to rows of wooden shelves with compartments filled with over 70,000 manuscripts in Tamil, Sanskrit, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Urdu, Arabic and Persian; and air thick with the smell of lemongrass. A few palm leaves, freshly anointed with the oil, are spread on the floor. Most of these are personal collections of Colonel Colin Mackenzie (who came to India in 1783 as a Cadet of Engineers on the Madras Establishment of the East India Company), linguist and traveller Dr. Leyden, who was in India between 1803 and 1811, and C.P. Brown who was part of the Indian Civil Service in the 1830s, Chandramohan reads out from a presentation. The library, which is controlled by the Department of Archaeology, Government of Tamil Nadu, was established in 1869 with the collection which was first housed in Presidency College, before moving to Madras University. Locking the door behind him, he says, “Even if you go out of this room, the memory of the smell will linger.” Ten minutes later, I realise he was right.

Home to: Tolkappiyam, Manimegalai, Silapathikaram

Meeting the grandfather of Tamil

U Ve Swaminatha Iyer Library

The security at the Kalakshetra Colony gate says “Go right ahead”, and sure enough, hidden behind the trees, is a white building. A statue of U Ve Swaminatha Iyer, the grandfather of Tamil, welcomes visitors. Only, there are none inside. Just staff members, who are on their lunch break. The library, which was established in 1943, includes Tamil literature collected by UVS, who is known to have spent his life searching for palm leaf manuscripts and transcribing them into books. This content has now been converted into microfilms (462 in total) by Indira Gandhi National Arts Centre; and these have in turn been converted into DVDs. The library in itself is being computerised with research facilities; it clearly seems to know the road ahead.

Home to: 69 of the 96 palm-leaf manuscripts of Sangam literature; 32 of the surviving 120Tolkappiyam palm-leaf manuscripts.

In pursuit of art

DakshinaChitra Library

After catching a show at the Kadambari art gallery, I head to what is probably DakshinaChitra’s best-kept secret. Serpentine queues of children walk in and out of the heritage houses, and a significant crowd waits to get their hands messy at the ceramic art centre. But the library seems withdrawn from the buzz. The library started at Madras Craft Foundation office in 1984 with around 200 books, now has over 9,000, apart from the 5,000 volumes that are National Folklore Support Centre’s collections. With out-of-print art books and journals like Indian Magazine, Lalit Kala, Indian textile history and Marg, and around 1,50,000 photographs, the place seems like an extension of the gallery.

Home to: Traditional Indian theatre, UMI’s dissertation on Therukoothu, Theyyam and Tolubommalata, Sargam; Thurston’s volumes on Castes and Tribes of Southern India

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus / by Naveena Vijayan / Chennai – March 11th, 2016

Google doodle pays tribute to Rukmini Devi Arundale

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Records, All, World Opinion

A screenshot of the doodle.
A screenshot of the doodle.

The founder of ‘Kalakshetra’ was honoured with numerous national, international and state awards.

Search engine giant Google on Monday celebrated the 112ndbirth anniversary of Rukmini Devi Arundale, a pioneering dancer of the 1930s, and a visionary institution-builder who built a public cultural and educational centre known as Kalakshetra.

The doodle features a depiction of Rukmani Devi in traditional dance attire with flowers in her hair holding up a mudra amidst trademark lettering of the search giant in trailing pink.

Rukmini-Devi-Arundale established the International Academy for the Arts in 1936, renamed as Kalakshetra in 1938 (kala refers to the arts, and kshetra to a field or sanctuary).

One of the eight children of Nilakanta Sastri and Seshammal, Rukmini was born on February 29, 1904, in Madurai. Brought up in the traditional set up, Rukmini Devi was trained in Indian music by some great musicians. But dance in which field she was to make her mark later was absolutely forbidden to young Rukmini. The only women permitted to dance at that time were the ritually dedicated women known as devadasis in South India.

Rukmini’s father, who was a Sanskrit scholar and an ardent Theosophist, enlarged the intellectual dimensions of his orthodox family by exposing them to the humanist ideals of Theosophy. In one of the Theosophical Society parties, young Rukmini met George Arundale, close associate of Dr. Annie-Besant. Arundale fell in love with young Rukmini who was then barely 16 years of age. He proposed marriage. They were married in 1920.

Love for animals

Rukmini’s love for animals and birds is well known. A Rajya Sabha MP in 1952 and 1956, she introduced the Bill for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which was passed in 1960. She was Chairman of the Animal Welfare Board from 1962, till her demise.

Rukmini Devi was honoured with numerous national, international and state awards, including the Padma Bhushan (1956), Sangeet Natak Akademi (1957), Desikothama (1972), Kalidasa Samman (1984) and many others. She served as a Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha) for two terms.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Entertainment / by Internet Desk / February 29th, 2016

Madras Miscellany

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Historical Links, Pre-Independence, Records, All

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The Bransons of Madras

“Shame on you, Muthu, not remembering Branson Bagh,” said Karthik Narayanan, a former President of the Madras Club, referring to my history of the Club, The Ace of Clubs, wherein it was recorded that the Club had established its second avatar in Branson Bagh after moving from its first, what became Express Estate and now mall. So chided, another penny dropped; I’d heard of a Spring Branson too, who, in his time, was a well-known Madras lawyer. But it was my chronicling colleague Sriram V who linked up the dots in a long mail to me.

Spring Branson of Branson Garden, Branson Garden Road, Kilpauk, may or may not have been related to the fellow-lawyer who was the occupant of Branson Bagh, but it was the latter, Reddy Branson, who was connected to the Richard Branson of my item on February 15th. And Sriram proceeds to bring us up-to-date with those Branson roots.

He begins his story in the 1820s with a Harry Wilkins Branson who — given the date when he was a Managing Partner of Pharoah & Co, Printers and Publishers — was likely to be the second great grandfather. And it was he who in 1832, marrying for a third time, wed Eliza Caroline Wilson Wellington Reddy, with a George Wellington as witness. Somewhere in those Wilson, Wellington, Reddy lines there was a Telugu maternal connection or, possibly, even a potential paternal one.

To Harry and Eliza Branson was born Frederick George Reddy Branson, who studied law and became a solicitor, setting up a firm called Branson & Branson. Sir P S Sivaswami Aiyer once recalled that the firm had the largest amount of business with Indian clients in Madras in the 1880s. The reason for this, states Sir Sivaswami Aiyer, was “due to Mr Branson being a linguist. He could speak Tamil, Telugu and Hindustani better than any native could.”

It was Reddy Branson who lived in Branson Bagh. After his time, the house was acquired by the Rajah of Bobbili, who lived there till at least the 1930s. After World War II, the property passed into the hands of the Madras Club, which, moving from Club House Road, settled into a purpose-built facility that replaced the old house. The property later became the site of government offices, of the Sapphire Theatre complex and Khivraj Motors, and is today part of a multi-storey commercial block after being with a political party for a time.

According to a High Court of Madras record, Branson & Branson existed till 1907 by when R Branson, W Branson and their manager had died. Who W Branson was awaits unearthing. But whether they were kin of Spring Branson is not known; James Henry Spring Branson was the son of James William Branson, who, as a barrister, practised in Madras in the 1830s. Spring Branson was Advocate-General of Madras in 1887 and a Member of the Legislature from 1886.

Sriram concludes. “It is a pity that a book titled The Branson Family of Madras: 1756 to 1863 is no longer available.”

Tailpiece: N.S. Yogananda Rao, referring to my item on Richard Branson, says ‘Reddy’ is a caste name, not a surname. I am aware of that, but I also know that most Reddys use it today as a surname.

*****

The Museum Tower

It was a tower (Miscellany, February 15) that existed for no more than a year, writes my fellow-chronicler Sriram V, who says he had seen brief mentions of it in a centenary volume the Madras Museum had brought out in 1951, and in Prema Kasturi and Chithra Madhavan’s South India Heritage, “but the picture was a pleasant surprise.”

Designed by Henry Irwin, the tower was meant to be very much part of what was called the Connemara Victoria Public Library & Museum Section. A traveller of the time, Eustace Alfred Reynolds-Ball, says it was inspired by the Palazzo Vecchio of Florence. Jan Morris, the journalist, said it was “unsuitably phallic”, but I still think it was just Irwin trying to do something one better than Chisholm’s Chepauk tower.

A year before the tower was completed in 1897, Irwin retired to Mount Abu and, as in the case of the High Court of Madras, J H Stephen, Chief Engineer, PWD, Madras Presidency completed the work. Whereupon Governor Sir Arthur Havelock inaugurated it in the presence of G S T Harris who had succeeded Irwin as Consulting Architect, Government of Madras. No one knows why, but, shortly afterwards, Harris began instigating a whole heap of rumours that the tower was not stable. He also persuaded the Governor that the library-museum complex would be better off without the tower. Stephen tried his best to keep the building in place, but the Governor had meanwhile heard stories that Irwin had also done less-than-par work in Simla. Havelock, thereupon, decided the tower should be pulled down, though there was much public opposition to it.

When Harris lost no time in getting the earth around the tower loosened and the bricks and stones at the top knocked down, there was much public protest, but it was ignored. And, sometime in 1898 the tower ceased to exist, according to Indian Engineering by Patrick Doyle, which was published in Calcutta.

Tailpiece: I’ve discovered who Geoffrey Burkhart, who sent me the Museum Tower picture, is. Dr.M.A Kalam, former head of the Madras University’s Department of Anthropology, tells me that Dr Burkhart was a regular visitor to the Department from the 1960s, when he started his research for his doctorate, till recent years when he was working on several projects. A frequent visitor to Madras, Burkhart is Anthropologist (Emeritus) with the American University, Washington D.C. Dr.Burkhart’s research from 1983 focussing on an Arcot Lutheran Church congregation, led him to the churches in George Town and an interest in colonial Madras. This resulted in a plan he put together for a study group (of retired people) at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute of American University, the subject being “Telling Lives in Colonial Madras”. He organised it based on personal narrative: letters, diaries, biographies, autobiographies, etc.

Kalam also sends me today’s picture of a warning sign somewhere in or near Madras taken in the 1940s. The photograph was accessed and sent to him by Burkhart. I wonder whether any reader recognises it or knows anything about it.

*****

A Gurkha thambi

Not only did he rise from jawan to battalion commander but he, a Gurkha from Pokhara, Nepal, became a Madras thambi in the process. The story is told in a letter from Col. B Nasir to his friend, Om Prakash Narayan, who forwarded it to me. Col.Um Bahadur Gurung of 19 Madras is, however, a man grieved today. It was his ‘little brothers’ who died in Siachen, including Lance Naik Hanamanthappa Koppad, the search for whom Gurung kept going, staying put at around 20,000 feet all the time as he supervised rescue operations on the spot, keeping his men going in relays.

Gurung joined the Gurkha Rifles as a sepoy and, in tough competition, was chosen to join the Army Cadet College, Delhi, which trains other ranks to be commissioned as officers. He then did a stint in the Indian Military Academy and was commissioned into the Intelligence Corps. But when he was sent to 19 Madras on attachment, his superiors found his ability exceptional that a special request was made – and pursued – to keep him with the battalion. A former commander of his says, “He was a Gurkha but he was received very well by the Madrasis, especially after they had seen him in action at the Line of Control.” Adds Maj.Gen Virendra Kumar (Rtd), “I had left a report with my successor that we should try to retain him, especially for his conduct in small team operations. It is not easy to make the transition from jawan to officer, but Gurung made it through the written tests and interviews. Look what he has delivered today. Bodies have taken six to eight months to be found in the Glacier.” But Gurung had faith; he always had a never-say-die attitude, writes Col. Nasir.

*****

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> Metroplus / by S. Muthiah / Chennai – February 27th, 2016