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Get Real!
AT 20, Geetanjali Bedi has the world at her feet. She drove her first car at the age of 16. She still drives her car to college, for company she has a mobile phone which her parents consider mandatory for the kind of hours she keeps. Geetanjali is on her
way to the University of Michigan where she intends doing her computer science post-grad.
She is one of the fresh young faces of affluent Indians — well fed, well bred and well dressed off-spring of parents born post-Independence, living in executive flats or farm houses in or around Delhi or any other metro for that matter. Theirs is the
generation of youth, characterised by enormous spending power — they spend all the time they can afford at the Bowling Alley, jive at Ghungroo or My Kind of Place, wear designer labels, listen to Hard Metal, read American magazines and surf the Net. For
them image is everything. These young Indian trendies love to sport the latest as they strut the streets, workplace or colleges.
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The Little Prince
What does bubblegum have to do with personality development?” asks an exasperated Ritu Arora. She refers to a bubblegum advertisement campaign that shows kids getting the upper hand of a bully by blowing extra large bubbles from a particular bubblegum.
Ritu diligently points out to her children that blowing a bigger bubblegum doesn’t help you take care of bullies in real life. But advertisers have a knack of getting to kids when their moms are not around for a reality check. “As a mom I think some of the
advertising is very unethical,” she fumes.
But it is very effective. Young Samir’s parents dread taking him out to the market. He is very young, and doesn’t have much room for reason or economics. Precocious, spoilt and stubborn, Samir is amazingly brand conscious. He is a typical example of what
some focused marketing can achieve.
But the companies seem to offer more.
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Tribal Magic
Having grown up in a household that was very active in the freedom struggle, it was only natural that when Pranavi Kapur turned to designing, the one fabric she thought of was Khadi.Her latest collection ‘Khadi and the Desert Chadar’ bears ample testimony
to this.
Pranavi is the first designer to introduce the concept of chadars in the world of high fashion. Bigger than the traditional dupattas or odhnas, these chadars can be mixed and matched with various ensembles like a patang salwar suit, an Aligarhi suit, a
bandgala , a Maulana jora or even a lehnga.
The chadar is used as a protective cover in the desert. A mother can cover her kids with it at night, a young girl can cover herself against the prying eyes of other men, men use it in the biting cold of the outdoors. And all this in vibrant colours and
beautiful stitches.
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In tune with the season
The first hint of that dreaded word – whisper it, so very quietly. FASHION. There, that’s done. The word is upon us again. Come the first few shards of an autumn light and out come the frock makers of this city. Ramps will be lit, faces will be dunked in
maquillage, talons polished, bodies buffed and out will roll the annual follies. Fashion groupies rejoice! This is truly the season. Had the courtly, stately Tarun Tahilliani, been in the foreign service, he’d be permanent Foreign Secretary – globe
trotting, diplomatic, well turned out, spiffy public school background and cut glass accent. Tahilliani pulled an easy first by hosting his winter collection at the Taj Palace.
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Pandora's Tube
If the remote control has replaced all the world’s toys for your child and the couch is where he’d rather spend most of his waking hours–then it’s about time your TV was shown the window. A less painful option, however, would be to take your kid to see
Angelina. A play no child or grown-up should miss, or so says its director Rakesh Batra.
Angelina is a musical allegory of a quintessential family spread over three generations. Don’t be surprised if the story conjures up the goings-on of your own drawing room. In fact, that’s Batra’s whole idea. To place you on an introspective hot seat and
hold a mirror to your changing values in the Electronic Age.
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A Tribute to creativity
One does not generally associate West Patel Nagar with art activity. But it has come alive in the form of a private museum dedicated to Ishwar Singh Bedi, artist and poet, known also as Ishwar Chitrakar.
As an artist he has had many honours done to him. Jawaharlal Nehru visited his first show at AIFACS and signed the catalogue. I. K. Gujral opened his posthumous show there in 1971, after which many of the works that had been sent from England, where he
died in 1968, by his son Tarun, also a gifted artist now living in Rome, disappeared somewhere in the tree-lined avenues of Delhi and the green-fields of the Punjab.
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A Lotus in full bloom
Comings and goings. Goings and comings. The ICCR's share of this to and fro movement of creative people is heavy at the best of times. In this India 50 anniversary year, it promises to reach gargantuan proportions with more than 150 troups travelling to
all parts of the globe in the coming months. From the initial exercise of selecting artists to matching them to appropriate destinations and special events to the awesome logistics of sending a group to sometime as many as 12 countries at one time (Sonal
Mansingh’s current tour of Latin America and other countries) is a task that keeps the midnight lamps burning at Azad Bhavan these days.
The new Director General, Mr Himachal Som, is also aware of the familiar rumblings in the artistic community concerning biases, and though a lot of it is often traceable to the normal hyper mindset of many artists themselves, he has promised and is already
ensuring a more stringent set of checks and balances. Meanwhile, the new in-house initiative, Horizon, is, for the first time, offering a platform at Tagore Hall to a lot of dancers and musicians who are languishing on the ICCR’s panel but are still
awaiting their turn to show their art abroad.
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Heights of Leisure
At 2,000m above sea level, Genting High-lands is a sumptuous feast for all the senses that resonate with a string of awe, adventure and joy. This modern hill resort on Gunung Ulu kali mountain range is 50 km from Kuala Lumpur and is a popular destination
packed to the fill round the year. Especially so on weekends. People from the lowlands prefer to beat the heat by getting to Genting where the temperature is reasonably cool amid the abundance of lush greenery coloured with specks of
invading white clouds.
Genting Highlands sells as a city of entertainment. It is Malaysia’s Disneyland, the living fantasia, the phantasmagoric realisation of every fairytale ever dreamed of–thrilling, amazing, enchanting!
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Everest at base value
Mount Everest still remains the ultimate ambition for every mountaineer but for beginners the Everest Base Camp trek is just as good. The mountain trek offers a challenge and thrill to all those who would like to enjoy nature the tough way.
In May last, the Delhi Mountaineering Association organised an exploratory trek to the Base Camp as a prelude to a year-long Everest Yatra (1997-98) for school and college students. The trek started from Lukla, where the 10-member team flew in from
Kathmandu. Nepal Airlines operates concessional flights between Kathmandu–Lukla twice a week, especially for trekkers and mountaineers going to the Base Camp.
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