ART & CULTURE
Classical dance — a reawakening
Suparna Saraswati
IT is not as simple as eating an omelette” says a Mohiniattam exponent, Mandakini, also a faculty member of “Sabrang” (a mobile university promoting demystification of classical arts_ about understanding and appreciating Indian classical dance. Conducting the first of a three-day module on classical arts — Indian and Western — Mandakini of the firm belief that classical arts is not a part of our daily life, hence, its gradual disappearance from the Indian cultural scene.

Javed’s message to women
LYRICIST Javed Akhtar feels that women who have finally been able to come out in the open to express their anguish should take full advantage of the facilities provided by modern communication technologies.

AUDIOSCAN
Et tu, Jagjit ! 
ASC
TAREEF US KHUDA KI (Tips): A new album from Jagjit Singh is eagerly awaited, more so when he has wife Chitra Singh with him. This is true even when he is putting aside ghazals for once and singing nazms and naats in honour of the Prophet. But this enthusiasm gets subdued when you find that the tunes of several of these are based on popular film songs. For instance, “Zara chehre se kamli ko hata do ya Rasulalllah …” is a faithful copy of “Mujhe teri mohabbat ka sahara mil gaya hota …”. Similarly, “Madeene ko jaayen yeh dil chahta hai …” is very much similar to “Muhabbat ki jhooti kahani pe roye …”.

Wonderful naval pageantry
Amita Malik
WHEN we were tiny tots in school, for some strange reason we were made to sing a song which began as follows:

Small-town boy with big dreams
Mohit Goswami

BEGINNING from Faridkot, Harrysharan has made his mark in theatre and serials in less than 10 years. Doing his masters in Indian theatre from Panjab University in Chandigarh, this 25-year-old has worked with stalwarts like Shatrughan Sinha, Raj Babbar and Gurdas Mann in films.

This small town boy was not itching since childhood to prove his mettle as an actor. It was only a chance visit to the green room of an amateur theatre group in Faridkot in 1992 that made him realise what his mission in life was. When he saw the artistes removing their make-up, he instantly decided on his career.

He has not looked back since. His family has been extremely supportive and has helped him pursue his dream. His break was as the lead in the play “Chhavian Di Rut” in his hometown itself. After that, he has acted in about 15 plays in Faridkot, playing three or four characters in each play. He has also assisted in costumes, make-up and lighting.

Most of these plays, though on a small scale, gave Harrysharan exposure and confidence. Notable among these were “Bhagat Singh Di Vapsi”, “Desh Di Khatir”, “Mirza Sahiban”, “Heer Ranjha”, “Mitti Da Bawa” and “Zafarnama”. He has learnt a lot from his seniors like Sudarshan Maini, with whom he has worked for about five years, and Gurkirtan.

Harrysharan has also acted in a number of serials and telefilms on Jalandhar Doordarshan. Prominent among these were “Viragan”, “Khed Naseeban Da”, “Aaj Di Smasya”, “Ishq Nimana”, “Anchahe”, “Lishkara”, “Vichhora and Sanjh”. He also has a role in “Daldal”, a telefilm telecast on DD-I.

After shifting to Chandigarh, he has done serials like “Chandigarh Campus” on Lashkara and “Navi Museebat Aayi” and “Sarhad” on Alpha Punjabi. He also has a major role in “Punjab Kaur”. He also has two music videos to his credit.

It was not long before he decided to plunge into movies. He has starred in “Sarpanch”, “Jahli Passport”, “Ek Ma Do Dil” and “Shaheed Udham Singh”. He has also worked as assistant director for “Shamlatt”, “Aakhri Saboot”, “Bishno Jatti” and “Zaildaar”.

Not satisfied with his achievements, Harrysharan aims to make it big in Bollywood. Though he likes emotional roles, he wants to be a complete actor and don characters close to life and depict different shades. It will not be long before talent scouts from filmdom spot his talent.

ART & CULTURE
Classical dance — a reawakening
Suparna Saraswati

IT is not as simple as eating an omelette” says a Mohiniattam exponent, Mandakini, also a faculty member of “Sabrang” (a mobile university promoting demystification of classical arts_ about understanding and appreciating Indian classical dance. Conducting the first of a three-day module on classical arts — Indian and Western — Mandakini of the firm belief that classical arts is not a part of our daily life, hence, its gradual disappearance from the Indian cultural scene.

Held at the Chandigarh College of Architecture on February 9, this workshop by Mandakini attempted to correlate as well as sensitise technical students of the college about Indian classical dance and architecture. These two have the similarity of being arts representatives in their respective ways.

Having experienced a spiritual communication with her mentor, Mandakini’s commitment towards such modules and workshops is a conseuquence of her yogic self-discipline coupled with the realisation that Indian classical dance needs to be seen and enjoyed by its true “rassiks”, who along with these arts are also disappearing. She skilfully conjugates the relevance and eternal appeal of the classical art forms especially in the context of Indian classical dance.

Her workshop begins with an invocation to Ganapati in Mohiniattam style sung to Raga Arbhi and set to adi taal “All gods are positive powers of your own consciousness,” explains Mandakini regarding the initiation of any Indian activity, and in this case, the beginning of a classical performance must be with a Shri Ganesha so as to bless the artiste in his/her performance.

In keeping with the purpose of the Sabrang experience, the module structured and chiselled the interaction between two mediums of expression namely, dance and architecture. The key to comprehend either lies in grasping and understanding the language of each of these art forms.

Mandakin’s friendly and informal dealing with the young audience brought about the dissimilarities and characteristic traits between the performing arts and plastic arts. She explains the inner dynamics of this the field by stating: “Plastic arts aspires to become a performing art; it is the cosmic play of Shiva and Shakti.

Indian classical dance is built like a language with its alphabet being the movable and visible organs of he human body; its vocabulary and grammar that is absolute, mathematical and rigid.”

With this broad framework to her module, Mandakini consumes the intellect with a brush of Indian philosophy that is intricately woven into Indian classical dance forms. As “dance is a conscious art”, its worldview must be visible only through the cosmic diagrammatic of a “bindu” spiralled with time cornered in a square possessing the “tri-gunnas”. She states that within this worldview is the design (geometry of a structure), the technique of movement leading to the grammar of the dance. She elaborates by going into the two broad aspects of Indian dance i.e. pure dance and expressive dance which is the former coupled with “abhinaya.”

Mandakini kept her audience alive with interspersed pieces from Indian classical dance making her module a true lecture-cum-demonstration experience. She closed her presentation with a university identifiable expression of dance, choreographed beautifully and extremely delicately only around four lines of Sanskrit text. It is an ordinary “roothna-mannana” situation of a couple that is easily related to by everyone. This concluding item reiterated the fact that “classicism reflects communication and expression” as said by Mandakini in the beginning of her module.

Javed’s message to women

LYRICIST Javed Akhtar feels that women who have finally been able to come out in the open to express their anguish should take full advantage of the facilities provided by modern communication technologies.

Releasing “Hastakshar”, an audio cassette of poems written and rendered by Mrs Kusum Ansal, Akhtar agreed with his wife and actress Shabana Azmi, who had spoken earlier, that women should work hard to maintain the voice they now have in society.

He said it was unfortunate that most people had become so materialistic that they often trod on other people’s rights and showed little feeling for them.

Shabana Azmi said emancipated women should awaken people about the problems still being faced by other women in most parts of the country.

This is the first audio album by Mrs Ansal, who recited some of her poetry at the function at Music World in New Delhi. She has already published a large number of novels, plays, short stories, books of poems, travelogues and even an autobiography. The film “Panchvati” was based on her book “Ek Aur Panchvati”. “Titliyan”, “Isi Bahane” and “Indradhanush” have been produced for television. UNI 

AUDIOSCAN
Et tu, Jagjit ! 
ASC

TAREEF US KHUDA KI (Tips): A new album from Jagjit Singh is eagerly awaited, more so when he has wife Chitra Singh with him. This is true even when he is putting aside ghazals for once and singing nazms and naats in honour of the Prophet. But this enthusiasm gets subdued when you find that the tunes of several of these are based on popular film songs. For instance, “Zara chehre se kamli ko hata do ya Rasulalllah …” is a faithful copy of “Mujhe teri mohabbat ka sahara mil gaya hota …”. Similarly, “Madeene ko jaayen yeh dil chahta hai …” is very much similar to “Muhabbat ki jhooti kahani pe roye …”.

Kuldeep Manak is a name to reckon with in Punjabi singing. Here he teams up with composer duo Jassi and Hardy (UK). Tunes are expectedly jazzy, but the lyrics are traditional. The trouble is that Kuldip just does not have the voice to go with pop singing.

One of the songs borrows snatches from the music of Chalo ishq ladayen … number from a Govinda film. 

SIGHT & SOUND
Wonderful naval pageantry
Amita Malik

WHEN we were tiny tots in school, for some strange reason we were made to sing a song which began as follows:

“We joined the navy, to see the world

And what did we see? We saw the sea."

Luckily, modern navies see a good deal of the world, and one of the occasions was the International Fleet Review, held under the competent auspices of the Indian Navy in Mumbai last week. No less than 19 nations and 59 ships took part and the event was custom-made for television. Most of us, this columnist included, have not only great admiration, but also warm feelings for our men and women of the armed services. They were certainly on show last week before the whole world, and came through with flying colours. The Navy is usually known as the silent service. On this occasion it was visually brilliant and its voice was loud and clear.

In this column, what concerns us is how Doordarshan, which had the monopoly to cover the event in full, came through this rigorous test. First the camerawork. It was first-rate and did not, literally miss a shot. I am not sure that the camerapersons were only from Doordarshan, because our armed forces have very fine camera teams in every service, notably the air force. Be that as it may, for the first time they used laser microwave camera positions, which are ideal, particularly for sensitive long-distance photography and fast-moving objects, which led to wonderful shots of the ships at sea as the President took their salutes, not to forget the spectacular feats of the pilots. The Coast Guard also took part and we saw some amazing rescues as well as blowing up of enemy and other positions with dare-devil-split second precision. But cameras are only as good as the persons using them and in this case, it needed intelligence and professional judgement on when and where to focus-VIPs or ships, feats of valour or speeding aircraft. I repeat, full marks to the producers and camerapersons, who were of international standards.

And now we come to DD’s weakest department, running commentaries. A reminder that DD needs to train and build up a staff team of good running commentators for special outdoor and ceremonial occasions. This occasion was a slight, but only very slight improvement on occasions such as the Republic Day, where the Hindi commentators usually clutter up immediate descriptions with long-winded statements on ancient history, patriotism and the like. There are hardly one or two reasonably experienced commentators in English and unfortunately sometimes the armed forces themselves provide commentators with defence expertise but pompous and dull and lacking in eloquence beyond tanks and regiments. In Mumbai, only two commentators passed the test. I mention Anupama Sethi because she was the only passable one amongst a surfeit of dismal women commentators, the worst being a woman on Sunday, with a shrill immature voice who should not have got past any audition as regards voice and enunciation. It was the navy itself which provided the only commentator of professional class. This was Shekhar (his surname was never mentioned) and the credits, which went very fast, listed him as a Cmdr (or perhaps it was Cmdre, Navy please forgive me.) He had the right combination of technical expertise and descriptive power, he used simple language and spoke with natural ease. Well done, Shekhar and we hope to hear you again. I am only surprised that in a place like Mumbai, which is teeming with Souzas and de Souzas, you should have mispronounced the name of the composer of Stars and Stripes Fojever as Sao-za.

Which makes me conclude with the music on the occasion. Six bands, including one from Bangladesh, played for the Beating Retreat ceremony. The Russians were the most impressive, with their typical Russian ditties, one ending with, loud ho-ho-ho’s. The Sri Lankans, after their naval band had led the way, included barefoot ancient warriors in traditional costumes. It was thrilling moment when all the bands played in unison. And amusing to find the American Seventh Fleet playing a very different tune to that during the Bangladesh war. But the most moving moment, as usual, was when they played Mahatma Gandhi’s favourite hymn, Abide With Me. As usual, it brought a lump to one’s throat.