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The Hindu :

Delhi Public School (Bangalore North) hosted the all India quiz on Germany and Mental Maths recently. Dhruva Chandramouli and Arjun Saxena of Vidya Shilp Academy won the first place and received a cash prize of Rs. 12,000.

Rohit. C and Mithun. C of Presidency School, Nandini Layout were the first runners up.

Sabyasachi and Aditya Garg of the host school along with the team from Vidya Shilp were declared joint winners in the German quiz. The event was conducted by DPS Society in association with Max Mueller Bhavan. Ramesh Kauta, Chief Information Officer, General Electric, was the chief guest. Mansoor Ali Khan, board member DPS (Bangalore North) gave away the prizes . Principal Sneh Preet Sial was present.

(INPUTS FROM SUDHINDR A.B)

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The Hindu :

Lasya. R., and Vishnu. M., both students of Bethel International Public School, Ramanagaram performed rangapravesham at Ravindra Kalakshetra recently. Lasya is a Std VI student ,while Vishnu is studying in Std. VII. Both have been learning bharatanatyam for the past five years at Kalpashree Performing Arts.

Both have given over 50 performances. These young talents have brought many laurels to the institution.

The rangapravesham was special as their guru M. C. Sujendra Babu, parents and well-known personalities of Ramanagaram were present at the programme.

(INPUTS FROM SUDHINDR A.B)

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The Hindu : SHILPA SEBASTIAN R

Eleven-year-old Sukhdev pushes the limits as he cycles a phenomenal distance.

Best mode of transportation: Enjoying the ride

He is 11 years old and the youngest member of the ’Tour Of Nilgiris,’ a trip organised recently by the RideACycle Foundation. Meet Sukhdev, a Std VI student of the Cambridge Public School, Bangalore, who has a passion for cycling.Not a race

Sukhdev lives in Owner’s Court in Kasavanahalli, close to Sarjahpur Road. He often cycles around the colony with Ravi Ranjan, managing trustee of the RideACycle foundation. “It was during one of our cycling trips that he told me about this trip and I volunteered,” says Sukhdev. “Every weekend we, along with a couple of neighbourhood boys, go on cycling trips. And once we did a 21 km. trip,” says Sukhdev.

All this he did on his Hercules bicycle. It was only one day before the trip to Nilgiris that he was sponsored a seven-geared 21 speed cycle.

Though he was a part of the 52-member team that did a seven-day trip, he was allowed to cycle 190 km., that is, from Bangalore to Mysore and back.

How was his experience? “The traffic is scary. They should open a separate lane for cyclists. It was very hot . But I stopped whenever I felt tired. There was no stress and it was not a race,” says the youngster, who then goes on to thank his sponsors—Navdeep Singh and Arun.

Sukhdev is happy that he was part of the team and says that parents should encourage their children to cycle as it is the best mode of transportation. “This trip taught me the meaning of will power,” he says. Ask him about his future plans, and he says he wants to enter the Olympics as a cyclist.

He received the Young Achiever’s Award from a cycling group in Sangli on January 12.

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The Hindu : y>

Second season Hole in the Wall

Pogo is ready to woo children with new programmes and specials with a fresh line up of Pogo original productions and a Republic Day special. ‘Hole in the Wall – Season II’; the seven time winner of the best children’s show ‘M.A.D. — Big Picture Special’ will be aired at 6 p.m. from Monday to Friday. Watch ‘Rob’ in the new episodes of the show that blends fascinating information and interesting educational elements along with a dose of entertainment every Sunday at 10.30 a.m. along with a special block ‘Kabhi Crash, Kabhi Splash’ with game shows ‘Hole in the Wall’ and ‘Takeshi’s Castle’ every Friday at 12.30 p.m. Celebrating India’s Republic Day, Pogo, takes kids back in time with the greatest epic of India in the special programming block, Republic Day Salute, which continues with favourite shows like ‘Chhota Bheem’, ‘Hagemaru’, ‘Mr. Bean the Animated Series’ and ‘Mr. Bean’, throughout the day on Republic Day. Watch the premiere of the animation ‘Ramayana — Legend of Prince Rama’ at noon also on this day.

Start your Friday mornings with ‘Oswald Marathon’, a friendly eight-legged blue octopus Oswald, who can talk and sing every Friday, 8 a.m. only on POGO. Also catch a splash of big blockbusters one after the other throughout the month on ‘Cat, Mouse & Pogo’, ‘Lights Camera Pogo!’ and ‘Groovy Movies’ every Saturday with ‘Batman Begins’ on January 24 and ‘Scooby Doo’ on January 31.

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The Hindu : y>

The office cab makes its way through the morning traffic racing against the 9 a.m. deadline. Spotting a gap in the incoming traffic, the driver attempts a right turn, only to suddenly slam hard on the brakes as a man comes in the way of the cab whilecrossing the road. The man is rustic looking and workman clothed. The driver, mad at missing the opportunity and having to wait another few minutes, vents his anger on the poor chap. The man smiles sheepishly and says apologetically: “Gothaglilla” (“I didn’t realise”). I feel like telling him you do not need to apologise. It is we who have to — the ones who could not give a safe way for you to cross the road.

Everyday I see the same thing play out — girls on their way to work keep looking over their shoulders as they negotiate traffic on one side and the gutter on the other; kids walking to school cling to each other looking to make a quick dash across the road; a scared elderly lady looking for help to cross the busy main road; the boy with cups of tea thinks just darting across the road without looking both ways is the best way to cross; a mother with one child on the waist and another tightly gripping her hand waiting anxiously at the edge of a road …

What does it take to build a decent footpath and mark zebra crossings for pedestrians? We can build swanky roads, but not usable footpaths and zebra crossings along them? We talk about “walk to work” and making walking fashionable. There is an entire generation of people who have always walked.We are now telling them vehicles are more important thanhumans.

We need to re-discover the joys of the most eco-friendly and non-polluting transport system in the world. Bangalore would then be the real Green…More

The Hindu :

Nigel Richards, one of the best Scrabble players in the world, insists the game is more mathematics and very little word play

PHOTO: K. GOPINATHANCOUNT ME A LETTER It’s all about the best play, says Nigel Richards

He reveals himself, little by little, quite like a tile at a time on the Scrabble board, like a mysterious and seemingly nonsensical word spun out gradually — a man of many contradictions.

Nigel Richards, one of the world’s best players of the word game Scrabble, and the only one to simultaneously hold the titles of World Champ and US National Champ, is a man of very few words.

In Bangalore for the Fifth iGate International Scrabble Tournament 2009 at Whitefield, Nigel was among the 60 players from over 12 countries gathered at this tournament.He’s just wound up round 3, making words ranging from ‘kat’, ‘dog’ and ‘qua’ to ‘cardan’. (Yes, I came back to look up a dictionary). I’m a bit disappointed when he asks: “Why interview me?”. Not out of modesty, but with genuine surprise. He insists he’s just been lucky with the game.

And how! For a man who’s been playing only for the last 10 years (he is considered the ‘Tiger Woods’ of Scrabble for his record), Richards won the 2008 US National Scrabble Championship, and the 2007 World Scrabble Championship. Since beginning his competitive career in 1997, he has won about 75 per cent of his games. He is an eight-time winner of the King’s Cup in Bangkok, the biggest Scrabble competition in the world.

Scrabble celebrated 60 years of its existence on December 16, 2008, exactly one month before I met him. “In general most people still think of it as a kid’s game. It is still not taken seriously,” says Nigel. Ask him how the game has evolved and pat comes the answer: “I don’t know what it was like back…More

The Hindu :

This fortnight at indiaplaza.in

The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)

Cast: Matt Damon, Julia Styles, Joan Allen

Director: Paul Greengrass

DVD, Rs. 599

Robert Ludlum wrote “The Bourne Identity” in 1980 about a man fished out of the Mediterranean sea with bullets in his back. He has no memory of who he is. The doctor treating him finds a Swiss bank account number embedded in his hip. Theman goes to Zurich, accesses his account and finds out his name is Jason Bourne. Several heart-stopping encounters later, Bourne discovers, he is part of a CIA operation to eliminate the fearsome international assassin, Carlos.

Reading the book in the present day, is like looking at some far-off time when the CIA were the good guys. Post Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, it would be pretty difficult to accept the Agency as the upholders of freedom and democracy.

While the 1988 mini-series based on Ludlum’s bestseller (it has been voted the second-best spy novel of all time behind John le Carré’s “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold”) starring Richard Chamberlain was fairly close to the original, the 2002 movie version was a radical departure.

The film, directed by Doug Liman and starring Matt Damon as the amnesiac assassin takes the bare bones of Ludlum’s plot and built a timelier story around it. The shadowy operation Treadstone becomes a CIA operation to convert agents to highly-trained assassins.

Apart from the intelligent story line, the film was a success thanks to the adrenalin-charged pace and the exotic locations. The sequel “The Bourne Supremacy” directed by British director Paul Greengrass followed in 2004. Greengrass used a grittier palate with hand-held camera work.

“The Bourne Ultimatum” faithfully follows the template and delivers heart-stopping entertainment. The movie takes off ten minutes after “Supremacy” ends with Bourne wounded and on the run as usual in Moscow.

A British journalist with The Guardian, Simon Ross, writes an article on…More

The Hindu : y>

The All India Craftworkers and Artisans Association (AIACA) is organising a craft exhibition from today. The event will display crafts like Eastend Handicrafts from Manipur, Khamir Craft Resource Centre and Sahaj from Gujarat, and MURA Collective from Delhi. There will be a range of basketry, tie-dye, lacquer, silver and leatherwork, bead embroidery, Shibori textiles and bamboo work to name a few.

Craftmark is a certification initiative of the All India Artisans and Craftworkers Welfare Association (AIACA) and is meant to differentiate between genuine Indian crafts in the market. Craftmark helps Indian handicrafts to become more competitive in the market by enabling the consumer to distinguish the genuine article from machine made ones, thereby developing an instantly recognisable Pan Indian brand.

The exhibition is on till January 24 at Serenity, 8/1, 5th Main, Jayamahal Extension, from 10.30 a.m. to 7.30 p.m. Phone: 41279127.

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The Hindu :

Priyadarshan’s moving Kanchivaram discusses the flawed nature of ideologies

AUTHENTIC This compelling yarn about exploited silk weavers is also rich in detailing the times

Priyadarshan’s striking film “Kanchivaram” is not merely a story that takes you through the master weaver Vengadam’s dream. The film, which subtitles as “The Communist’s Confession” is also the dream of an ideology (in this case Communism) to exist in its Utopian state. This film about a community of silk weavers poignantly captures how dreams, like philosophies transform, alter and fail when they touch base with reality.

Set between 1942-57, the narrative captures issues of caste, the life of the weaving community, capitalism, the rise of communism, setting up of trade unions and more. While the film deals specifically with the community of silk weavers in Kanchivaram, the politics that fuel the film works on a broader basis. The film that opens with the assassination of Gandhiji exposes you to the growing Communist movement in India and its vulnerable underbelly, alongside the main narrative.

The frustrations of being an underdog, Priyadarshan suggests, was one of the main reasons of the emergence of communism in India and in the film, the protagonist Vengadam represents the core of this exasperation. And hence the film which works in the stream of consciousness mode has the appearance of being apolitical. But you realise that the mention of Gandhiji’s assassination in the very beginning is not a mere passing reference. The tragic story of Vengadam does form the foreground, but throughout, the film has heavy political overtones.

This compelling yarn about exploited silk weavers is also rich in detailing the times and the unbending social and traditional structures of the times. What the film does with remarkable poignancy and subtlety is to trace the failure of an ideology, with individual aspirations conflictingly pitted against larger truths. As Priyadarshan himself said in an interview: “In this movie,…More

The Hindu :

Shadafarin Ghadirian’s photographs speak of women’s liberation and oppression around the world

STARK The series captures the duplicities of women’s lives;

Juxtaposing curtailing domestic appliances with a chador-clad woman, women posing in printed clothes with their ‘exposed’ neck, back, stomach, arms and legs brushed over in strokes of black, features of women in colourful hijabs blurred by sand, modern-day Iranian women set against century-old sepia-tinted background props and striking black digitised images of a woman as how the world has controlled them. Shadi or Shadafarin Ghadirian’s photographs picture the duplicities of a woman’s life in seven series, not only in her country of Iran, but the rest of the modern world as well.

Curator Ruchira Gupta writes: “Born in 1975, five years before the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Shadi Ghadirian was six-years-old when the veil was imposed as a precondition of women’s presence in Iranian public spaces. She was 14 when the war ended. Women were presented as grieving, supporting martyrs or brave soldiers in the Iran-Iraq war or guerrilla fighters and revolutionaries against the Shah.”

The seven series — “Qajar”, “Out of Focus”, “West by East”, “Like Everyday”, “My Press Photo”, “Be Colourful” and “Ctrl+Alt+Del” question “the role of women in society and explores ideas of censorship, religion, modernity and the status of women”. Ruchira continues: “Many of the art administrators patronised by the Shah had left the country; a lot of galleries had closed down. Some artists stopped work, others migrated and some changed style or content to adapt to the revolutionary ideals of the time… Many young artists who believed that the Revolution had opened up new possibilities for them… questioned many of the restrictions too. They were also privy to the geo-political stereotyping of Iran and Islam after 9/11.”

“Out of Focus” is a visual expression that blurs and blotches the physical freedom of the woman’s body. In…More