One of the challenges most of my clients face at some point in their life is the challenge of trying to reignite their careers – especially when business is slow or they’re not getting auditions. When that happens, I take them through a Three-Step Jumpstart Process to get them back on the road to success.

If you feel like you need to stir up your own career, then here’s how to get started:

1. Get a Clear Vision
   The most important thing you can do, in jumpstarting your career, is to get a very clear vision of your end goal.When Barack Obama started working in politics, he created a very clear vision for himself, and his life, and he knew he wanted to accomplish something BIG.

   Eight years ago, however, his road to success was paved with complete and utter humiliation. With an empty bank account; his credit card rejected by the rental car company and no political clout (having just lost a congressional primary in his hometown of Chicago), Mr. Obama also failed to get a floor pass at the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles, and ended up watching the proceedings on a big screen TV in a car park, before flying home with his tail between his legs.

   Eight years later, in Denver, Colorado, Barack Obama WAS the Democratic Convention, and five months after that, Mr. Obama was elected to the highest office in this country: President of the United States.
   

2. Commit to Your Vision
   Once you have your vision, the next step on the road to success is to commit to it completely.Walt Disney loved animation and spent three years working on the movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

   Unfortunately, his $500,000 budget for the film was beyond comprehension at that time (1930’s). Additionally, during filming Mr. Disney ran way over budget and needed another $500,000 to finish the project, creating a final budget of $1,000,000 at a time when the budget for the average cartoon was $10,000.

   However, Walt Disney was completely committed to finishing Snow White, and in order to get the additional financing he needed, he ended up presenting his project (including acting out the entire story) to a tough-minded banker, and got his loan.

   The result of his commitment was a classic film, for people of all ages, which grossed $8,000,000 at a time when the price for going to the movies was 25 cents for adults and 10 cents for kids. And that was only the beginning.

3. Take Action on Your Vision
   The third step on your road to success is to take action on your vision, because a vision without action is only a dream.One of Britain’s most well known entrepreneurs is Sir Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin group of companies. His road to success started after he dropped out of school at age 15. Diagnosed with dyslexia, at age 16 Mr. Branson embarked upon his first entrepreneurial venture by publishing a student magazine, entitled Student.
   In December of 1999, Richard Branson became Sir Richard Branson when he was awarded a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II, in the Queen’s Millennium Honors List, for “services to entrepreneurship”.

   Since that time, Richard Branson has expanded the Virgin brand to now include more than 200 entertainment, media and travel companies, thereby creating one of the most recognizable companies around the world

For Whom Nobel’s Toll

Harold Pinter passed away on 24 December 2008. He was 78 and had been undergoing treatment for liver cancer. Like most Nobel prizes for Literature, the choice of the British playwright Harold Pinter has also had its share of detractors. There have been all kinds of murmurings against Pinter getting the big prize, ranging from doubts about his literary worth to snide remarks about extraneous considerations having played a role in the selection. The prize for the slyest reaction – assuming that it wasn’t the ghastly mistake it was made out to be – goes of course to the Sky Television newscaster who assumed that the breaking news about Pinter must have been to announce his demise (Pinter had taken a bad fall some days earlier) and therefore led off with an announcement that Pinter had died, before hesitating and then correcting herself to say that he had been awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature instead.

Well, to be honest, I’m not sure the word ‘instead’ was actually used, but given the bad grace with which his award has been received in some quarters, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was. It’s not difficult to figure out why Pinter’s selection has been met with churlishness. On the one hand, a body of mainstream taste has tended to deride Pinter’s theatre as just so much fluff. Pinter’s departures from staple theatrical modes have often been seen as a thinning out of the fundamentals of theatre, and even as evidence of his inability to get the basics right — much in the manner of the standard joke that Picasso’s cubism springs from his lack of talent at drawing like everyone else. Pinter’s technique of conjuring up dramatic tension and menace out of thin air, so to speak, has often provoked the incredulous suspicion that is bestowed upon all innovations and departures from the mainstream.

In recent years, Pinter’s political activism has provoked another kind of ire. The ill-tempered outburst of John Simon, an old Pinter baiter, on learning of Pinter’s Nobel prize, is interesting for the disarmingly guileless manner in which it reveals the prejudice that feeds its indignation. When Simon says, “I would have gladly accorded him the Nobel for Arrogance, the Nobel for Self-Promotion, or the Nobel for Hypocrisy – spewing venom at the United States while basking in our dollars – if such Nobels existed. But the Nobel for Literature? I think not”, he exposes the burr that’s actually prickling his behind.

Evidently, what has got Simon’s goat is not Pinter’s literary worthlessness, but the fact that the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to someone who has indefatigably campaigned against American and British adventurism in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq, and has therefore shown himself to be of the ‘enemy camp’. Evidently, Simon’s tirade typifies the brand of opinion which wants artists to confine themselves to their work and desist from engaging in any form of activism, especially that which pits them against the weight of majoritarian opinion. (Perhaps this is why Arundhati Roy continues to raise the hackles of professional dabblers in that hallowed literary form, the Letters to the Editor.) And, evidently, Simon believes that he who pays pipers has the moral, nay spiritual, sanction to call the shots along with the tunes.

Nah, I shouldn’t trash letters to editors. For, how else could I have gleaned that lovely nugget of information, contributed by a reader to the Guardian, concerning “the sullen, deafening silence from Downing Street about the new British Nobel Laureate, Harold Pinter?” The British government’s wariness in celebrating the achievement of a countryman simply because of his vocal (and forgivably intemperate) criticism of state policy is just the kind of silence that would be familiar to Pinter, given the evocative treatment of silence in his plays. Of a piece with such silencing is an article lauding Pinter’s Nobel achievement that has been carried in the latest issue of Britain Today, a news magazine produced by the British High Commission in India. Unsurprisingly, it makes absolutely no mention of Pinter’s outspoken criticism of British foreign policy, a criticism that he has stuck to despite constant mockery and ridicule. How else can one read the title of that article, “Master of Silence”, except as a desperate act of wish-fulfilment!

Is one over-emphasising Pinter’s political stance as a factor in his getting the award and in the reactions to it? I don’t think so – and not simply because others have commented that the Swedish Nobel committee may have been inclined to favour a writer who has voiced his anti-war sentiments in no uncertain terms (Pinter has famously denounced Bush as a “mass murderer” and dismissed Blair as “that deluded idiot”), given the fact that the Swedish people too were extremely vocal in their anti-Iraq war protests. If this sounds like a slur on the literary credentials of Harold Pinter, it is interesting to see him make the same connection, albeit in a less whining tone: “Why they’ve given me this prize I don’t know. … But I suspect that they must have taken my political activities into consideration since my political engagement is very much part of my work. It’s interwoven into many of my plays.” That this is a man speaking with a modesty characteristic of the greatest writers is par for the course. But, it is unusual to find a writer who values his political conscience as much if not more than his writing, especially as even readers are often uncomfortable with such privileging.

It’s not as if Pinter needed the sympathy of political fraction. His credentials as a writer are justification enough for the Nobel award. He isn’t the writer of whom no one’s heard, as some previous Nobel awardees have been. Not when his plays are widely translated and performed in other languages; not when they pop up regularly in drama syllabi of Literature Departments; and certainly not when ‘Pinteresque’ is now staple lit-crit jargon for a patented blend of mundane but oblique dialogue, brooding silences and ineffable unease, all floating gingerly on a bed of sudden incongruity. (Anyway, what does the label “unheard-of author” mean? Surely, nothing more than the writer’s works having not been translated (yet) into English, and therefore being unfamiliar to the international publishing scene….)

Pinter is now 75 years old, with a long writing and performance career of considerable range and distinction. He has acted on stage, film, television and radio. He has written nearly thirty plays since 1957, and has innumerable drama sketches, poems and prose published in several volumes. He has directed over 25 productions of his own and others’ plays, adapted novels for the stage (notably Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past) and for film (for instance, Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman and Kafka’s The Trial), adapted his plays for radio and television, written over 20 screenplays (The Servant and The Go-Between, both directed by Joseph Losey, being two delightful instances), and is now so immersed in speaking out on political matters that earlier this year he spoke of not writing any more plays in order to focus his energy on such issues.

Initially, things didn’t look promising; Pinter didn’t burst in on the scene in the manner of other path-breaking dramatists. The 1956 commercial and critical success of Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, notwithstanding its combative indecorum, had suggested that British audiences were tiring of conventional fare, but Pinter’s first plays in 1957-58 (The Room, The Dumb Waiter and The Birthday Party) were received with bewilderment and hostility. (That this could happen despite the praise showered on the English premiere of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot in 1955 is curious, given the several affinities that have subsequently been noted between Beckett’s and Pinter’s theatrical worlds.) It wasn’t until 1960 that Pinter had his first success with The Caretaker. From then on, plays such as The Homecoming (1964),Landscape and Silence (1967 & 1968), No Man’s Land (1974) and Betrayal (1978)established Pinter’s reputation as a unique voice in contemporary theatre. To such an extent that The Dumb Waiter, along with Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story, soon became an absolute must-do for budding thespians in college theatre societies.

Pinter’s plays revolve typically around contestations for territory. Conflicts, sparked off by intrusions into a closed space by an outside force, are conducted with a strange mix of ferocity and dulled detachment. His characters and their dialogues are rarely explicated through conventional excavations of motivation and memory, and often viciousness and pain lurk submerged beneath an evasive surface composed of guilt, uncertainty, everyday phrases and restless silences. The ‘facts’ on which these contestations are pegged are usually unreliable, for there is little that is either ‘true or false’ in Pinteresque space.

The unnamed tension of these plays are located in such a claustrophobic, inter-personal space that Pinter’s writing has been criticized for turning its back upon the political, an impression that was confirmed when Martin Esslin included Pinter in his seminal study, The Theatre of the Absurd. However, the later plays – such as One for the Road (1984), Mountain Language(1988) and Ashes to Ashes (1996) – are more distinctly political. But, here too authoritarian structures of repression and torture are evoked rather than articulated, and filter through spare exchanges between oppressor and victim, and the slippages of memory and knowledge. Perhaps, this phase of Pinter’s writing is less a ‘shift’ from his early work than an extension of earlier preoccupations into a wider territory.

Though the Nobel citation – Pinter’s plays “uncover the precipice under everyday prattle andforce entry into oppression’s closed rooms” (my italics) – celebrates the dramatist as much as it does the political activist, the writer himself draws sufficient distinction between his preoccupations as an artist and as a “political intelligence” to not let the achievements of one absolve him of the responsibility enjoined upon the other. He recently had this to say of the road he’s travelled: “In 1958, I wrote, ‘there are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal…. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.’ I believe that these assertions  . . . do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?”

In an interview some years ago, Pinter had rued the bane of British intellectual life being the mockery directed at artists who take a stand on political issues, and had warned, “Well, I don’t intend to simply go away and write my plays and be a good boy. I intend to remain an independent and political intelligence in my own right.” What lovelier spectacle can there be than this — of a dramatist, who goes on to win the Nobel Prize, acknowledging that conscientious citizenship is a more urgent cry than any artistic calling?

This article was published earlier in FIRST CITY (Dec 2006) after Pinter was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature

An electric performance of Kalaripayattu by Sree Narayana Guru Smaraka Vallabhatta Kalari Sangam (Chavakkad-Kerla, Bangalore and Brussels) initiated the celebration of a decade of Environment Support Group’s work advancing environmental and social justice initiatives. Soon this was to be followed by a scintillating recital of Odissi by danseuse Diya Sen. On a calm winter evening, when most of Bangalore was unusually quiet with most vehicles resting without fuel to run (given the week long fuel strike), folks who braved the skeletal public transport enthusiastically greeted the artistes’ repertoire with gusto.

The crisp, energetic, robust and daring movements of the Kalari troupe, interspersed with many organic body movements (including one that revealed the body can be massaged with a sword) demonstrated years of discipline and practice produces such extravagant martial arts – a fitting tribute, as it were, to the spirit of upholding the wider public interest. It was akin to the effort demanded for setting afire the imagination of people in advancing public interest – tireless effort and perseverance are uncontested ingredients.

Prof. B. K. Chandrashekar, former Chairman of the Karnataka Legislative Council graced the occasion to release the Decadal Report of Environment Support Group. His argument for regarding and supporting such work as ESG’s was involved in, was precise and persuasive. He narrated his experience in fighting for years to protect a public space in one of Bangalore’s neighbourhoods, against a variety of powerful interests. Despite all the influence he could muster, it took him years and a Public Interest Litigation in the High Court, to ensure that the public space will be a park and nothing less. Considering that scale of effort was involved in saving but one neighbourhood park, the work of ESG, in comparison, was quite remarkable he argued. He did wonder why perceptions were so negative against NGOs when, the work that was advanced was so clearly in the wider public interest. Divergence of opinion is but a healthy process – that should not be the basis for conflict, instead efforts must be in converging different view points and perceptions to advance public interest for the benefit of this generation and generations to come.

Diya Sen greeted this message with grace, fluidity and a temperament that was characteristic of Lord Krishna’s voyeurs pleasing his angry lover Radha. Purna Chandra Majhi vocalised the concern accompanied as he was ably by Gandhi Mallik on the Pakhawaj. The tempo was set, and the romance of the evening reached a crescendo with Sunil Kant Saxena on Sitar offering soulful companionship. Sujit with the lilting sounds of his flute lifted the human spirit to dimensions unconquerable in mere words

The Celebration of the human spirit was complete. Acknowledgements flowed in plenty, and the warm and supportive audience gathered to congratulate the performers and each one of the team members of Environment Support Group for advancing past a decade in work that was challenging and often shyed away from. Every day we engage with issues of conflict. Every day we look on the other side of development and worry for those who don’t get any of it. Every day we look for solutions to problems that are extremely complex – and more often than not considered not even problems. Simply because they cannot be factored in financially and economically and have a word now – externalities. In such a world where real issues are not issues, where financial scams galore crash the edifice, structure and innards of the capitalist world that has brought us teetering on the edge of climatic disaster, celebration of the deep and greater human spirit is in order.

ESG is 10 and we are happy to celebrate. We are grateful to our dear families and friends for being with us every step of the way and helping us go on and on…. There is plenty to be done still. With your help and support we can do much much more. Thank you for coming. Thank you for writing to us with your warmest good wishes. Thank you for calling us and rewarding us with your words of support. Thank you for contributing to our collective cause, financially. Thank you for volunteering. Thank you for buying our publications and films and calendars and helping us get stronger. There are many more reasons for us to thank you…… Once more, warmest wishes for the New Year.

Unattended Things

My heart missed its usual steps this morning
Dew drops were vanishing before
I could approach them with my unsure feet
And the rose petals fallen on the ground, perhaps late at night,
Looked so much like
What had been lying within me, unattended for some time,

My mind paced strangely this morning
The red and blue and even my favorite green of the rainy sky
changed colours I had not seen before
Earlier where there were words, there was only a patch
Of a confounding muttering silence
And all that was a void of some sort I knew almost well
Was now a ditch full of pinkish mud,
In place of clarity there was an uneasy compassion,
The neighbor’s cat that vexed me often
Was sitting in his balcony postured so meekly
That for once I thought it was such a sad way to be
Especially if it was drizzling and it was a Sunday morning

Sometimes this is how things are, even the mornings,
Or may be they look so
As this morning looked today
Or may be this is how I saw it showing itself to me
As some day those unattended things,
Lying within like the sad meek cats
Would show themselves
As they should be looked at.

Unbound

The wind was honing an idea
In a bird’s head
One that had just finished making its nest,
It had come to tell me too
That only time had produced me,
I was no one to think of my transcendence
Sadness that continuously drop within me from a tap,
Rusted and unstoppable
Is also an opening
To a creative melancholy.

By the end of the evening
The bird was well perched on its nest
Leaving me to wander
In the wide-open world
Unanchored
Unbound.

To Be With

I knew all the trees in the neighborhood
Those marked by the lovers,
Their names inscribed secretly on the trunks
And their leaves that shed tears for others

I knew innumerable squirrels jumping all over the place,
Birds that shared the lives of its silent inhabitants,
For there are legion: forlorn, courageous, handsome beings
Living without hope of ever witnessing a change

Curiously, I also knew when the rains would come,
When secret multicolored birds would flutter their wings
To alert the tactless and naive of rain water
Flooding their nests

Lately I have also come to know
That the prayers of the needy get entangled
With forces unknown in the lower zone of the stratosphere
Never reaching the highest ever,
And all good wishes for these people crumble
Before they surge from the hearts of well-wishers,
That way birds, squirrels and trees with tear-shedding leaves
Are still the best things for them to know
And to be with

Watching Sparrows Play

It was after a cold day
That the sun was out again
Heating my cheeks gently
As I sat in my study
People were out on the icy streets
Planning and plotting to conquer the day
Looking for the suitable love and hate
To sigh away some maturing pain within

It was after a cold day really
That the Saturday had come
When I spent my whole afternoon
Watching the mating of the birds
In the silence of a shadowy tree
Watching sparrows play and play

It was after a cold day
That the sun was out again.

Srinivas Sunderrajan receiving award from Aishwarya Rai

Dharmendra and Chief Guest Dev Anand

Mumbai, Mar 31: Veteran actor Dharmendra received the Lifetime Achievement award and Rishi Kapoorwas acclaimed for his significant contribution to cinema for over 35 years at the concluding ceremony of the 10th International Film Festival, Mumbai.

Acknowleding this recognition, Rishi said at the function last night, ”Usually, film industry personalities do not reveal their age but I want to say that I have not been working for 25 years I have been working for 35 years and I am proud of that.”

The First Global Lifetime Achievement award was given to Carlos Saura, a renowned spanish filmmaker, while lyricist-filmmaker Gulzar was conferred the award for outstanding contribution to Indian film music. ”Each artist needs this kind of reassurance to prove that whatever he has been doing is right” Gulzar said after receiving the award.

Speaking to newsmen Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image Festival Chairman Shyam Benegal expressed confidence that this festival had now come to stay in the metropolis and this edition had been better than the previous ones.

A total of 140 films from 45 countries were showcased in the Festival held from March six to thirteen. They included 92 films showcased in the Global Vision section. The foreign and Indian retrospectives were devoted to films by Andrej Wajda and Ritwik Ghatak respectively. The country in focus was Chinaand the filmmaker in focus was Carlos Saura.

The Chief Guest of the event, evergreen Bollywood star Dev Anand, senior filmmaker Yash Chopra,Aishwarya Rai, and Shyam Benegal gave away the awards.

The Kodak award for technical excellence in sound recording was presented to Hitendra Ghosh who has been in the industry for more than 25 years and has worked on about 1800 films including all of Benegal.

In a new concept called ‘Dimensions Mumbai’, five-minute films based on different aspects of Mumbaiwere showcased by aspiring filmmakers under 25 years of age. A total of 82 entries had been received for this section. ‘Vapsi’ by S Srinivasan on the hardships a young aspiring actor faces in Mumbai bagged the top prize while Aishwarya S got the second prize for Mumbai Half Marathon and Ganesh More bagged the third prize for a film on Life in Mumbai.

The awards carrying cash components of Rs 100,000, Rs 30,000 and Rs 20,000 were sponsored by Mrs. Jaya Bachchan and given away by her daughter-in-law Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. The special jury awards were given to ‘Handful of Sky’ by Neha Singh and ‘Patri’ by Akshara Prabhakar. Renowned filmmaker and cinematographer said digital technology had done away with the ‘caste system’ in filmmaking and anyone could now make films.

In the Indian feature Film Competition, Darsheel Safary was awarded for playing the dyslexic child Ishaan Awasthi in ‘Taare Zameen Par’, Swathee Sen for playing Janki in ‘Antardwand’ while both the Best Film and FIPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics) awards were bagged by the Marathi film ‘Tingya’ by Mangesh Hadawale on the delicate issue of farmers suicides. ‘Frozen’ which is the first full length feature film to be shot in Ladakh won the Special Jury Award for its director Shivaji Chandrabhushan.

Tina Ambani representing Reliance (Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group) which sponsored the Festival, MAMI Trustee Kiran Shantaram, Manmohan Shetty, Festival Artistic Director Sudhir Nandgaonkar, Yash Chopra, Ranbir Kapoor, and his mother Neetu Kapoor, Indian Documentary Producers Association President Jahnu Barua, Amit Khanna of Reliance Entertainment, filmmaker Vinod Pande, and several other celebrities were present on the occasion. The event was conducted by television star Gaurav Kapoor and singer Mansi Scott also performed at the function with English and Hindi songs.

I first saw Arunima dance before a TV camera in Lodhi Gardens. The effortles ease with which she glided through her steps almost simulated levitation. She is one of the India’s most versatile leading young Kuchipudi dancers.  The senior most disciple of the renowned dancing duo, Padamashree Guru JayaRama Rao and Vanasree Rao, she started learning Kuchipudi at the age of seven.

As a young girl of 9, Arunima acted in the ballet “Amrapali”. The Kuchipudi Dance Academy formally launched her in 1995 where she performed her ‘Arangetram’ at the Triveni Kala Sangam, New Delhi.  Since then there has been no stopping her as she pursued her art with relentless devotion to achieve soaring heights in the field of classical dance.

Her dance is different from the way most others perform. It is interactive. She assumes that her audience doesn’t necessarily understand the significance of bhavas and mudras. At a recent performance in the Malvia Durbar hall of Banaras Hindu University she endeared the audience not only with her performance but also with the way she conducted it like a lec-dem (Lecture Demonstration). She had been invited by the Sanskrit Akademi and she chose to perform the ‘Nala Damyanti’ story from the Mahabharata.

Nala was a valorous, handsome, and popular king. He heard about the beauty of Damayanthi – the princess of Kundinapuram in Vidarbha, and decided to make her his consort. It so happened that when Narada visited Nala he spoke glowingly of Damayanthi and  also told him that she would make an ideal match for our now besotted king .

The lovelorn King tries to distract himself by composing music and loitering in the royal garden. Suddenly one day he sees a beautiful, golden swan by the lake. Nala creeps upto the sleeping bird to capture the swan. The swan is released after persuading Nala that he will play cupid and win Damyanthi over for the King –

The cupid swan proceeds to Kundinam, and is amused to find that Damayanthi  was also pathetically lovelorn. Obviously she too had heard of Nala’s fame. He attracts her attention, lures her away from her companions- and eventually pretends to have come into her clasp – he teases her about her childishness. This scene was rendered in a charming fashion – the swan consoles Damayanthi, narrates Nala’s goodness and eligibility and promises to help them. One can easily gather that there was a lot of scope for abhinay and the dancer exploited the theme to perfection. As Arunima quips in her eloquent style; ”dancing is like dreaming with your feet”

Arunima has performed widely across the nation both as a solo artiste and as part of her gurus’ team at various dance festivals, prestigious venues and lecture demonstrations including the Andhra Day Celebrations in Hyderabad 1993, Hyderabad Arts Festival 1994, India International Centre, Andhra Bhawan, the India Habitat Centre, Ayappa Temple, Triveni Kala Sangam, Trade Fair 1999, 2002, 2003, 2006 SOPAN festival by Sahitya Kala Parishad, Delhi Tourism Festival at Santushti 2003, the Bharat Yatra Festival in Lucknow 2001, Shringaramani Festival in Mumbai 2001, Kuchipudi dance festival in Kuchipudi Village, Chitrangada Ballet – National Choreography Festival at Habitat Centre 2003, Qutab Festival in 2003,  Young Dancers Festival at Kolkata sponsored by Sangeet Natak Academy in 2004, Legends of India Festival in 2004, 2007, Kalidasa Festival at Nagpur in 2004, Habitat World in September 2005, Virasat Festival at Dehradun in 2005, the Mardol Classical Dance Festival at Goa, the Goa International Centre in 2006, Nehru Center in Mumbai in 2006, Biotech Conference in Hyderabad in 2006, Ugaadi (AP Bhawan) Celebrations in 2006, Jhansi Mahotsav in 2006 and Chamba festival in 2006, Mahabalipuram festival in Chennai in 2007, Jugalbandi with Kathak, choreographed by Pdt. Birju Maharaj at Holi Ke Rang Mahotsav (sponsored by Kalashram) at Habitat Centre in March 2007, Budh Mahotsav in Patna, May 2007 (where she performed the dance balletVasavadatta on Rabindra Sangeet Choreographed by her gurus), Jaya Smriti in Mumbai in June 2007 organised by Hema Malini, Radha Asthami in Barsana, September 2007, Indo-European Conference organized by ICCR, September 2007, Fusion concert with Band Advaita, September 2007, Sahitya Kala Parishad young dancer’s Festival, September 2007, Neemrana Fort Palace in Oct 2007, SAARC Band festival November 2007, JNU Delhi November 2007 , HCL Concert Series at Habitat Center December 2007, Haridas Sammelan in Mumbai December 2008, Delhi International Arts Festival December 2007, Brahma Gana Sabha in Chennai January 2008, Nungambakkam Cultural Academy in Chennai , January 2008,  Bhavbhuti Festival – Gwalior,  February 2008., Ustad Allauddin Khan Samaoroh – Maihar, Gwalior February 2008.

She was also invited to perform for the Honorable President of India at Rashtrapati Bhawan in June 2006.

Arunima has displayed her art in prestigious international dance festivals – EXPO 1998, Lisbon, Portugal, India’s 50^th year of Independence held in Bonn, Germany, EXPO 2000 in Hanover, Germany, IC.C.R. tour in 2003, Ministry of External Affairs of India, in prestigious venues in Australia, including Canberra Festival, Sydney Opera House, Melbourne, Brisbane, Fiji, Thailand, Malaysia & Indonesia, India Week Celebrations at Buremburg and Frankfurt, Tagore International Center in Berlin in 2005, Nehru Centre in London, 2005,  Asian Arts Festival in Manila , Philippines 2007.

Recognition has also come to Arunima in the form of the State Government of India Sahitya Kala Parishad Scholarship for Dance in 998 and the Shringarmani title by Sur Shringar Samsad. Besides being empanelled as an Established artiste at the I.C.C.R.,  Arunima is also an A grade artiste of the All India Radio and Doordarshan. Her appreciative reviews and dynamic profile have been featured in all leading television and radio channels (Doordarshan, Sony, Aaj Tak, Star News etc) and newspapers including Hindustan Times, Times of India, Indian Express, Business Standard, India Today etc., She also featured in the London School of Economics Newsletter for her outstanding performance. In en endeavor to share the joy of being closely involved with India’s rich cultural heritage, she has also worked for SPIC MACAY, a voluntary cultural organization as its Planning and Finance coordinator. She is also a member of a GATI, a young dancers’ art forum.

Besides Dance, Arunima has also excelled in academics. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from India’s prestigious St. Stephen’s College and then studied MSc in Accounting and Finance from the London School of Economics.  Her outstanding performance led her to teach at the LSE summer school in 2002.   After completing her teaching assignment, she returned to India to continue with her dance. Until recently, she was managing a career in management consulting at a leading US based firm. She is now focusing to build her own arts foundation to promote performing arts across the globe. Arunima has also successfully ventured into dance choreography and research to explore different creative aspects of the performing arts

She is also a keen Pistol shooter and has won several medals in State and National Championships, including a Gold Medal in national Championship in 1999.  She was also, the Captain of the Rifle Shooting Club in her college and received College Colors for her outstanding performance in Shooting.  She is also the recipient of theGovernment of India Sports Talent Search Scholarship (1991-1992). She is also keenly interested in dramaticsand has performed in several radio and TV programs (Yog Yatra on Star news etc), music videos and commercials.

However Kuchipudi continues to be her abiding passion, which she pursues with relentless devotion.

Endowed with “a pair of large eyes, a mobile visage and attractive stage presence”. Arunima is a devoted dancer with a promising career ahead…..

Contact:

ARUNIMA KUMAR

Email: arunimakumar@hotmail.com

or www.artindia.net/arunima

The project ”Half Widows” is a three year media  project. Which began in 2006.  The project is a partnership between International Association of Women in Radio and Television(IAWRT), a forum for personal contact and professional development among women broadcasters worldwide  and the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) Kashmir. APDP is an association of the relatives of the victims of Enforced Disappearances, campaigning collectively to seek justice and to get information on the whereabouts of the missing members of their families. The project conceived and executed by Iffat Fatima is supported by FOKUS, a Norwegian based organisation which by supporting project based cooperation between Nowegian and their partner organisations in the south, aims to contribute to the improvement of economic, social and political status of women world wide.

The  project is about the struggle of the  family members of the disappeared persons in Kashmir.who have spent vast sums of money, time, resources and energy in a legal system that  has systematically failed to provide justice to the victims. Enforced disappearance is not recognized as a crime under Indian law. Specifically the project is about women whose husbands have disappeared and are missing  in the more than decade old violence in Kashmir. These women known as half widows in Kashmir, are  living in a state of limbo, suspended in a space where they lead a life of uncertainity and anxiety. There is no closure for them to pick up the threads of their lives and move on. Being young and vulnerable they are under the pressure of their family and society to stay within the framework of marriage and conform to a marital status, while as the reality is that they are without husbands. Their lives are torn apart and their status undefined, subject to Islamic legal procedures which are ambiguous and determined by local interpretations.

 APDP was founded in 1994 by Parveena Ahangar whose 17-year-old son was abducted and never heard of again In 1994. Parveena filed a habeas corpus petition in the Srinagar High Court. With the help of human rights activists and lawyers more and more petitions continued to be filed. More and more family members got together, went to court together, held demonstrations together. Thus began a movement, a collective struggle formalized as APDP. The testimonies of the members of APDP and the documentation of cases of disappeared persons in Kashmir indicate that the practice of enforced disappearance is widespread and systematic. Almost 8000 people are thought to have disappeared, some as young as 13 or 14 years old. A large number of disappearance cases remain undocumented for various reasons, including fear of reprisal allegedly by the security forces.

Media Documentation

The media project seeks to document the personal experiences of these women and the stories which emerge from these experiences through the production of a documentary film. The documentary film will explore issues of memory , violence and healing and be a space for women whose voice is buried in the larger political and militaristic discourse to narrate  their experiences with violence from their own perspectives. Besides a video documentary the project also includes 3 to 4 short video magazines which highlight immediate concerns and problems confronted by women as theystruggle to get legal assistance and information about their family members who are missing.

 However the larger objective of the project is to assist and support the APDP effort to launch a long term self sustaining information and advocacy campaign against “Disappearances”  and to build awareness about  its impact on women  Community level participation and networking is an important component of the  campaign. The process of documentation,  dissemination and distribution is being undertaken through a consultative process with APDP members, a network of organisations, activists, academics and practitioners. Through workshops, and conferences APDP members are trained to acquire long term organisational and media skills to be able to carry on the advocacy campaign independently.   The project raises  important issues of human rights, peace and justice  confronting other countries as well. It will generate material that has international resonance as well as relevance and  will urge policy makers and those who wield power to address the concerns of human rights , democracy and justice.

 Source: IAWRT, Iffat Fatima

In Mahatma Gandhi’s lap – Bhupek Khakkar as seen by Ram Rehman

When does one become a tourist of reality? Can photography explain man to man? It was a famous photographer who once said; “A photograph is a secret about a secret…the more it tells you the less you know”. These thoughts came to mind while visiting Ram Rahman’s recent photo exhibition called Bioscope, held at the Rabindra Bhawan Gallery in New Delhi recently. From the wonderfully intimate collage mounted at the beginning of the exhibition; featuring Ram’s famous parents, dancer Indrani Rahman and architect father Habib Rahman, it felt like an instantaneous view of the entire trajectory of Ram’s life from infancy onwards.

The exhibition consists mostly of black and white photographs, with compelling images and portraits of both the well-known and not- so –well- known, taken at various periods in this extraordinarily gifted and socially committed designer and photographer. Ram’s forte is in the capturing of the moment and freezing it in time. The overhead view of Safdar Hashmis funeral, for instance expresses the horror and sense of solidarity at this most ghastly slaughter of an amazing life.

 Also, Ram revels in the relationship between foreground and subject and there is generally an extraordinarily fraught tension between the two as can be seen in the accompanying picture of painter Bhupen Khaker in the lap of Gandhi.

Whether Ram has taken pictures of left- liberal friends and SAHMAT colleagues, or pictures of Rajeev Sethi and other “culture-czars “ and “czarinas” or of wrestlers or of inanimate figures, dummies, posters and graffiti, everything is touched with a faintly self-mocking irony. Finally, these pictures at the exhibition, tell us more about the photographer himself, his concerns and ultimately his “ethics of seeing”.

Scene from Shikha Jhingan’s ‘Born to Sing’

Let us examine the contemporary popular Hindi film songs and their circulation through the convergence of new media technologies. How has the emergence of global television and digital music changed the aesthetics, the cultural codes and the formal structure of the Hindi film song by mobilizing new circuits for the consumption of popular music? In fact, the use of repetition and heightened codes of visuality have perhaps given new forms of identity to a large number of young girls on ‘realty shows’ based on popular film music.

In recent times, one big change in the structure of the song has been the use of a ‘hook line’ as a repetitive structure. This clever use of the hook line allows the song as a musical category to evoke a discernible response from the body. Popular songs like Nach Baliye (Bunty Aur Babli), Dhoom Machale Dhoom (Dhoom), Mauja hi Mauja (Jab We Met) rely on the repetition of words or cluster of words and rhythmic patterns that is described as the hook line of the song. This metonymical formulation completely undermines the conventional structure of the film song thus opening up the song for an ‘afterlife’ for its circulation in the global circuits of value and exchange. The repetitive use of the hook line through television promos and trailers, reality shows, award nights, ring tones and advertisements of mobile phones and telecom service providers, leads to obfuscation of the original song and its emotional appeal. In this new formulation the film song not only gets unhinged from the narrative of the film but is primarily meant to evoke a response from a dancing body.

In analysing Reality Television and talent shows based on music, one would like to draw attention to the democratisation where it is possible to have greater access to these technologies not just as consumers but in recreation of the musical mode. What is interesting here is that the accent here is not just on being a good singer but a great performer. The mobilization of a unique voice along with a great performance, an energetic dancing body, go into this new form of dispersal. The creation of a certain persona, with the help of props, dress, hats, belts, gestures and other visual signs create the uniqueness of each singer.  So music is providing a basis for the creation of an identity. The emphasis is on showcasing ‘your own voice’ in sharp contrast to the earlier phase of remixes and cover versions which relied entirely on imitation or the recreation of an ‘affect’. What is even more interesting is that there is a blurring of boundaries between music and dance, between the singer and the listener, between rehearsal and performance between sound and music and between voice and sound.

Shikha Jhingan, an IAWRT member, is a Professor in Media at Lady Sri Ram College, New Delhi

Triveni: No Meeings – Just Eat Pay n Go!

‘Khud’ A Former Rehearsal Space

Locked out – no short cut to NSD

We live in a world that has become increasingly paranoid about security. Terror is, however, also a ruse by which public space is being taken away from the public. The private security guard, underpaid and overworked, now monitors our entry into public spaces. Unknowingly he has become an agent of a new surveillance. He is trained to recognize the insider from the outsider. The identity card has become the new passport. A number of public spaces have slowly become off limits. The porous boundaries of spaces have now ceased to exist. Gates have closed citing security risks where earlier they were open.

The gate that divides the two largest post graduate women’s hostels in Delhi University was closed citing thefts. The gate was earlier open from 9pm at night till 6 am in the morning allowing personal and cultural interaction between students. Often it is the very materiality of newly renovated spaces which has made the congregation of people impossible. The garden around the Vivekanand Statue, in the Arts Faculty, Delhi University is one such example. In the past this garden embodied dissent, it was a place where people congregated, sat and discussed while the imposing statue of Vivekanand looked on. When the garden was replaced by concrete, the same space has become a barren landscape, too hot to spend time in, perhaps adding new meanings to the taciturnity of the statue that looks on. Where concrete didn’t work a garden did. The Shaheed Bhagat Singh Park, near ITO, has been enclosed. The park’s proximity to all the major newspaper houses is probably one reason.

The aesthetic of new spaces is the nature that the metropolis now boasts of. Like the serenity of nature that reinforces that all is right with the world, we now look to our sanitized worlds to reinforce our new prosperity. The swish, hip interiors of public spaces, along with new gadgets for scrutinizing who enters, have a way of enforcing etiquette of social congregation. We  congregate in cafes with music too loud to carry on any conversation and the old places of community warn us that meetings are no longer permissible

(For old frequenters of the Triveni Canteen, which was the hub for cultural groups to meet and discuss, the notice banning meetings and discussions comes as some surprise. It has become increasingly difficult to find places to perform and rehearse for free. Inside Bahawalpur House precincts of The National School of Drama, the popular depression known as the  ‘Khud’  has been filled up and perhaps by accident, or more likely by design, is now a dump for malba)

The writing on the wall both literally and metaphorically, in Delhi, is clear that someone wants its walls to speak the language that endorses the new world. Wall writing has become impossible. Within a night the walls are sanitized with a fresh coat of paint. For example, in Delhi University, there are now select places for putting up posters. Ironically they are called “Walls of Democracy”. Our public walls speak to us. Who decides what gets said through them? A blank red brick wall tells us there are no stories to tell. An “ugly” wall talks to us, offends us, appeals to us and asks us to take positions.

The new public spaces are built on a new exclusivity. As soon as the old dhaba is replaced by a swanky new café, the prices on the menu go up. Renovation and up gradation in every public facility like a library or a hostel has necessarily meant beefing up security and exclusivity. Often enough, our demands for privacy or unhindered access to what we pay for has ensured that those less fortunate cannot access the same space. We are now spending less time with those whose ugliness might offend us. We don’t need to see them anymore. The polished, glass surfaces of the new spaces are our new futures. Futures with no memory of the past, of community and of dissent.

Joya John is a lecturer in the English department, Gargi College.