Kartar Singh Duggal advocates the need to make cultural centres functional.

AT one time, Punjab could boast of the Patiala ang of gayaki whose proponents were Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan and Amir Khan. Renowned artistes such as Rasoolan Bai, Sidheshwari Devi and Krishna Rao Shankar Pandit of Gwalior presented the Punjabi tappa with distinction. The image of the state today, as projected in the media, is that of a nouveau riche one. Punjab has no classical musician to name, no classical dancer to talk of, hardly a painter who lives and works in the state. All noted Punjabi artists—Satish Gujral, Krishen Khanna, Manmohan Bawa, Arpana Cour—do not live in the Punjab), no dramatist, and almost all leading Punjabi writers, be it Amrita Pritam or Ajeet Cour, live in Delhi.

Punjab has produced talented artists like Prithviraj Kapur, Raj Kapoor, Sahir Ludhianvi, Rajinder Singh Bedi but never have we known a Punjabi film to write home about. The state has not been able to build any theatrical tradition and there are no theatres throughout the length and breadth of the state. The Punjabis, as revealed in repeated surveys, have poor reading habits. Also, as far as dance goes, they have ended with bhangra, which is at best clever muscle flexing. There is no classical dancer, not one classical vocalist or instrumentalist. It is an utterly dismal picture, to say the least.

It was with a view to remedy this pathetic state of affairs that an effort was made to create a chain of cultural centres called Virsa Vihars. This project was initiated by Inder Kumar Gujaral, former Prime Minister. At Amritsar, Jalandhar, Kapurthala, Ludhiana, Patiala and Chandigarh, cultural centres were set up at a cost of approximately Rs 1.5 crore for each centre. The funds for these centres were allocated under Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme.

Every Virsa Vihar has the provision for an auditorium, an art gallery, a library, regional museum, children’s corner and facilities for training in performing as well as plastic arts. there is also a provision for computer training and computer games for children as well as Internet facilities for adults. A room each for reading, listening, viewing and an area for conferences and seminars was also visualised and planned.

As of today, centrally located buildings at Amritsar, Jalandhar and Kapurthala are ready for occupation. Patiala and Chandigarh buildings are almost complete, while the one at Ludhiana is under construction.

These centres now await concerted action by the Punjab Government towards creating requisite infrastructure for the functioning of the chain of Virsa Vihars as visualised. Hopefully, with the six Virsa Vihars coming into their own, the cultural face of Punjab will change.

Music is her bridge across the border
Subhra Mazumdar

Aliya Rasheed, dhrupad singer and performer, has given music lovers a lot to mull over. Despite there being a rich tradition of music in her home country, Pakistan, Rasheed chose to cross the border and learn dhrupad - the most demanding of Indian classical vocal music forms, in India rather than her native Pakistan. Not only that, she followed the traditional guru-shishya parampara(tradition) which requires the disciple to take up residence in the home of the guru or teacher. This involved a four-year stay at a vegetarian gurukul in Bhopal at a time when Indo-Pakistan relations were at their most strained. Last but not least, Rasheed is visually challenged.

The daughter of Abdul Rasheed and Bushra Rasheed, Aliya was born in Dubai and spent a very happy childhood. "You should ask my mother about all the mischief I got up to during my childhood. I was known for being the naughty one among my brothers and sisters," she says, her charming looks, beaming smile and lilting voice instantly winning over people..to learning music. Rasheed became a student of the Sanjana Institute in Lahore, her hometown. The timbre of her voice and her extraordinary capacity to pick up nuances and reproduce them led her teachers and well-wishers to believe that Rasheed’s talents needed to be nurtured with care. Her training at an institution patronised by the city’s music aficionados was, at best, a gathering place for aspiring talent and serious listeners. What Rasheed needed was an atmosphere of higher training and exposure to a demanding and well-defined art form.

Despite the geographical closeness of the two countries, Rasheed’s entry into dhrupad and India did not follow a direct route. India’s famed dhrupad practitioners, the Gundecha brothers (Umakant and Ramakant Gundecha), were on one their tours of the United States when a music-loving acquaintance there strongly recommended that they take one Aliya Rasheed, a talented singer from Pakistan, under their wing. The Gundecha brothers’ gurukul, Dhrupad Sansthan, in Bhopal, their hometown,has long been a notable address on the dhrupad learners’ directory worldwide.

The Gundechas agreed to include Rasheed among their disciples who, at that time, were from Australia, Spain and Japan. Rasheed’s challenge, and one she willingly accepted, was a four-year training period (which started in 2001) to learn the art of dhrupad singing up to a standard that one could perform it on a prestigious platform. "It was the time when the Kargil war had just ended," recounts Rasheed, about her first days in India. "The atmosphere was quite different then. Maine achha buraa sab sunaa... (I had to take flak sometimes)" she recalls. But she was undeterred. There were, ofcourse, fleeting moments of doubt about her being able to stay in India and continue her training; but those moments became fewer and then disappeared altogether. The one thing Rasheed was sure about during those four years was that she had nothing to fear in India and that gave her the courage and the will to make the most of her stay at the gurukul.

For her gurus and the other family members too, there were a few initialhiccups. "But before long, she could find her way around the wholehouse and never needed any help at home. Even our food habits were not anissue with her. We are Jains and Aliya never uttered a single word ofprotest about the vegetarian food," says Mrs Gundecha.

On their part, the Gundechas made Rasheed feel at home. "She kept roza fasts during Ramzan; and on Id, I made sure that we all had a feast of sevian and other traditional delicacies." The highlight of theirfamily togetherness was Aliya’s 27th birthday (in 2005), which the family celebrated in Bhopal. "There was a birthday party for her and Aliyaloved the custard that was served!" says Mrs Gundecha. Food and family were important but it was music that was the core focusof Rasheed’s four-year stay. Here gurus’ assessment was that she had alimited understanding of classical music at the start of her training.Listening to her performance now, after the completion of her trainingunder the Gundecha brothers, music critics have marvelled at her masteryof the dhrupad style’s intricate details. Her creative play of musical ideas by means of a precise and accurate sub-division of the beat are anattractive element of her individual style.

Her choice of compositions, ranging from references both Islamic andiconic, are proof of Rasheed’s universality of thought. Her finale, with verses dedicated to the Hindu God, Shiva, were sung with care andconformity. Rasheed stresses that dhrupad is ‘ibadati sangeet’(devotional music). Having flown back to Pakistan after her training in May, Rasheed has ambitious plans for the future.

On the eve of her departure for Pakistan, she had her future course mapped out with dhrupad-likeprecision. It will be performances at Sanjana Institute, of course. Then Al Hamrah and wherever there is an opportunity for it. "This musiccannot stop; it has to grow. I will perform, I will teach," she says passionately. "This is what I am contributing to the peace process(between India and Pakistan)."

When a diet bears fruit
Steve Connor

Scientists have worked out a way to to bulk up diets with fruit and vegetables, says Barbara Rolls, a nutritionist at Penn State University in Philadelphia. The researchers studied 24 women aged 19 to 35 and monitored their reaction to eating food that was less "energy dense".

"We lowered the meals' energy density, or calories per gram, by incorporating more vegetables and fruit in recipes and by using food products reduced in fat and sugar," Rolls says. "The subjects found the smaller, lower energy-density meals just as palatable, filling and satisfying - and they didn't compensate for lowered intake on the first day by eating more on the second day of the study."

The scientists found that a 30 per cent reduction in energy density led to a 23 per cent decrease in daily calorie intake, with no significant impact on hunger. They also found they could cut the size of a meal by 25 per cent, which led to a 12 per cent cut in calories. The research was presented in Las Vegas to the North American Association for the Study of Obesity.

Not the way to go girl

A new survey has shown that girls in all girls schools are much more likely to study science and maths than girls in co-ed schools where they often get intimidated by what come to be known as 'male' subjects.

According to a number of school teachers, who were questioned during the survey, boys often dominate science and maths lessons and make exaggerated claims about their ability which drives girls away from these subjects, reports the Telegraph.

Researchers found that nearly twice as many girls in girl's schools study physics and chemistry A-level than nationally, 80 per cent more study a modern foreign language and 70 per cent more do maths.

They say that this is because if girls sense that boys think they are incapable of a particular subject and dominate the apparatus and ask all the questions they quickly pick up the message that it is not something which is their area.

They also said at a conference that was presented at the annual Girl's Schools conference at Alton Towers, Staffs, that girls are less likely to clear their doubts and ask questions in class in the presence of their male counterparts. (ANI)

Remember those colloquialisms you use in everyday banter? To get them in the world’s favourite Oxford dictionary, write to Sally Wehmeier and the expression may just make it to the revered English lexicon.

And Indians are the most enthusiastic in learning and inventing words, according to Wehmeier, editor and publishing manager of the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (OALD). "Of all people who write to me, Indians are the most enthusiastic and most interested in words," according to Wehmeier, who talked amid a buzz about the seventh edition of the OALD that embraces 2,000 new words reflecting the language of the "noughties,"or what the first years of the 21st century are now known.

It is a long drawn out process to pick out new words and certify them by their inclusion in the Oxford. Over a 100 people are involved in reading books, magazines, newspapers, watching TV and assimilating new words from there. They forward a word along with quotations, after which lexicographers decide its fate.

She receives countless pleas from across the world to add new modifications and inventions in the ever-expanding English language, but the former teacher is extremely selective.

At present, she is resisting a campaign for recognising the word "bouncebackability" used in football parlance as the ability of a team that has been consistently down for some time to win a match. "The word has to be used independently in different publications in order to be accepted," Wehmeier says sceptically. "You cannot get in a word by campaigning for it... maybe eventually, considering everything, we may just include bouncebackability also." In fact, British bookies have offered odds of five to one that bouncebackability will gain entry into the revered dictionary.

Wehmeier has worked in the English Language Teaching Division of Oxford University Press since 1987. She was the first editor of the Oxford Wordpower Dictionary before moving on to the revision of the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary that is primarily for non-English speakers.

Surrounded by words and phrases, Wehmeier is always ready for that brain-tingling conflict over innovations, especially with the prolific younger generations, more specifically her own children. "The younger generations tend to produce words to form a clique and exclude others with their own secret means of communication. Many words are born that way... I am all for including these words." The recent trend of including more and more Hindi words is no accident.

India, she says, is a very important market for the Oxford dictionary. "It sells best of all in India and we want to acknowledge that English is not just a property of the British and Americans. It is not corrupting but enriching the language, specific to the geographical context." So Indian English words like babu (person who works in an office), chacha (uncle), charge-sheet (formal charges), countrymade (not made by a professional), jungli (wild) and undertrial (accused but awaiting trial) may not be used by an English person even though they are in the dictionary.

It is American English that has had the most impact on the language, she says. "Indeed, there has been an increasing domination of American English on British English, on account of Hollywood films." Wehmeier and her team researched for four years to come up with a list of 3,000 most useful words in English. "If you know these words, then you will get by in a lifetime." Yet, she points out that the most used word may not necessarily be the most useful - like "the." — IANS