Welfare state’s concept was never so clear to the students undergoing a course in democracy on the Panjab University and college campuses across the city. Closely studying the process of exercising options not just for electing the best, but also for accepting the finest, they know for sure social democracy’s definition has changed over the years even at the classroom-level.

The system of “representative administration” is nothing less than a farce now. For, democracy here-a-days is all about governance of the people willing to dole out freebies, by the people with enough resources, and for the people ready to accept gifts, and ‘things’ as they exist without raising their arms in complain.

The enlightenment dawned upon the students during the run-up to the Student Council polls scheduled to be held this Friday. Ask Dinesh Kumar of Sector 11 Government College for Men. He will tell you all about it. “Just over a month ago, I would have confidently told you that the concept of `counting on money for votes’ is limited just to parliamentary and civic body elections in some constituencies. It has nothing to do with so many students walking with eyes fixed before their feet. For, elections on the campuses are ‘clean’ and it is personal rapport that makes all the difference.”

The run-up to students’ body elections has never been so lack-lustrous on the Panjab University grounds. If there was some poll fever ever afflicting the students, it has undoubtedly been cured.

True, political parties fielding their own candidates have been grabbing the hands, and attention, of so many voters for taking them out not just for Bollywood blockbusters, but also to discotheques for jiving all the way to victory.

Ah guys! The hooting and howling supporters have also been indulging in the uphill task of taking the students for a ride to the lofty mountains standing much above the mundane issues of defeat and victory.

Oh, yes! They have been paying the hostel mess and the canteen bills too, along with presenting the youngsters with nice little tees. The ones with names of the candidates printed across in bold letters.

But somehow the parties have failed to introduce the glamour angle to the whole affair. Right, pretty girls have been hovering over the university campus. But the political parties have just not been able to ground their flight for making them land in their tents pitched outside the boys’ hostels.

Fellows! That’s exactly what’s making the elections so different in the summers of late 2006. You have damsels having their visages painted with more than just blush-on. They have names of the presidential candidates written with markers. But that’s it.

Drive down the academic environs of the campus and you will hardly see girls with jeans rolled up to the knees wearing chic pink glasses, casting a spell over the voters. “Until last year, you could see winning damsels in low-rise denims teamed with alluring tees, holding placards and banners in fair translucent hands,” says final-year post graduation student Neeraj Sharma. “And the reason behind their participation in the campaigning was not hard to see. Here at university, it was democracy of the young, for the young and by the young”.

Elaborating, he says, “If political parties could field actors and actresses at the national level during the Lok Sabha elections, why couldn’t the students request pretty dames to muster support for them during the poll?”

Vidya Tikari is all set to open her Beauty Studio and Spa in the city, reports Nirupama Dutt

The face is her canvas and she paints it with subtle yet sure strokes. She is young Vidya Tikari who as a schoolgirl was practicing make-up on herself and her friends. Her parents were taken aback when she told them, “All I like doing is make-up and that’s what I want to do.” The folks relented seeing her determination and so after school in Papua New Guinea, where her father was a tea planter, off she was to Australia to do a two-year course in beauty therapy.

Back to New Delhi, where her parents settled down, she went around looking for work. “I went to Shehnaz and I was offered the job of toe massaging and then I told myself that I better start something of my own,” says this lovely blue-blooded girl descending from Bihar royalty. She did start first as a freelance and then opened a tiny barsati studio in Delhi’s GK-I and there was no looking back and little did one know that this petite artist would be offering competition to the formidable Shenaz Hussain.

From the barsati it was on to hiring a first floor and then buying the house next doors. Today she is an internationally renowned make-up artist who has worked with who’s who of the glamour world: Aishwarya Rai, Sushmita Sen, Madhuri Dixit, Priyanka Chopra, Lara Dutta and many others. “What makes Chandigarh the choice for setting up her beauty stop? Vidya says: “ I drove through Chandigarh the first time while going to Kasauli and was surprised to see these very smart women in western wear an coloured hair buzzing all over town. Then I visited the city for some bridal assignments and now I have come for the final fine processing and before the year is out, I will have my outlet in town.” As far as make-up goes, she specialised from casual to the corporate; from party-time to bridal look. Vidya indeed promises the works.

As the students and teachers celebrated Dr Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan’s birthday throughout the country, a city school musical band, released their maiden musical album with the help of their band manager, Michelangelo Francis.

The band consists of 11 students with Ishpreet S. Anand of Class VII being the youngest in the troop. He is a guitarist. Karan, Atish and Vibhav of Class IX on the keyboard, while Akash again a guitarist. Sehajbir and Anish play drums and Shantanu Gagat on the bass.

Vipul Joshi of Class IX has lent his voice to most of the songs. Samdish Suri of Class X has written, composed and sung the number The Eaglet. This song is his experience growing up as kids to a young lad in the school. Another popular track Maaeri is an indipop with its lyrics in Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi. Gurneet S. Anand, an ex student, helped in designing the cover and digital sound mixing of the album.

The album named The Soaring Eagles was released by St John’s School band also called the Soaring Eagles. The band was founded by Michelangelo Francis, in 2001 and has won many laurels for the school. This is the 4th generation of boys in the band in the school.

The album is for school students only and the proceeds will go towards the economically weaker section program in the school. The album, which took almost two month to prepare, came as a surprise for the rest of the teachers. The album consists of 15 tracks and the school anthem. In all 25 songs were recorded and the best 16 were chosen for this album. The album has indipop, indifolk jazz and rock tracks.

The entire process of composing, singing and finally releasing your own album was a never forgetting experience. Lessons learned from teachers remain with their students throughout life.  Teachers that break down barriers and reach into the souls of the students are remembered for the rest of our lives,” said Samdish Suri. 

The Chandigarh Film Society in association with the Hungarian Information and Cultural Centre is bringing in a rare cinematic treat for Chandigarh. The four-day film festival beginning today is showcasing acclaimed works of Hungarian directors at the Government Polytechnic for Women, Sector 10. Cultural Counselor, Embassy of Hungary, Dr Imre Lazar, will inaugurate the film festival. The Director Tourism, Chandigarh Administration, will be the chief guest on the occasion.

The festival will showcase four films from Hungary and the list includes Guarded Secrets, A Long weekend in Pest and Buda, Jadviga’s Pillow and Romani Kris-Gypsy Law. The shows will be held 6:30 pm onwards at the venue.

Guarded Secrets directed by Boszomenyi Zsuzsa is journey of and abandoned girl child to discover her roots. The pain of not belonging leads the protagonist to more mystery and secrets about her roots. She is left to come to terms with the fact that everything she thought she was in her 18 years of existence was not true.

Come Saturday ‘A Long Weekend in Pest and Buda’ directed by Mark Karoly, is a human drama of how a man deals with the decisions he made about the three women in his past is lined up. Retracing his life forty years back to see his love the main character discovers new chapters in his life past, present and future. Director of the film Makk, known for his portrayal of women has created a rich tapestry of intimate moments and human frailty. The film also deals with the struggle East European countries are undergoing even today in trying to deal with power struggle, past betrayals, beliefs and ideals.

The sheer madness of a life in a constant flux is the theme of the movie Jadviga’s Pillow to be screened on Sunday.

The festival will close with the Monday screening of ‘Romani Kris-Gypsy Law’ directed by Gyongyossy Bence. Set in the backdrop of beautiful Hungarian scenery the film follows the path of a proud father and a master storyteller who turns his life into an immortal tale and how his life is uprooted when the authorities want to move the gypsies.

Act 2: Estranged brother Walter makes an impressive entry to see his younger brother Victor after 16 long years. The backdrop is an auction of family heirlooms. The course of conversation varies from emotional to satirical to plain funny. The funny bit comes mainly from the 90-year-old dealer Solomon with a pronounced Yiddish accent.

Well, do not go by the Yankee names or foreign accents. For the stage is very much homegrown. In fact it is the backyard of Rana Nayar’s university residence where four members of Abhinet, one of the city’s pioneer amateur theatre outfits, are busy giving shape to the characters of Arthur Miller’s The Price.

But then is not what Arthur Miller’s plays are all about? Of universal appeal, even though the plot and the story belong to another era, another country? Asks Harish Bhatia, one of the founder member of Abhinet and director of the play. If one has a little time to spare and a little patience with the merry making mosquitoes to watch the group rehearse, it is easy to comprehend what Bhatia says. Set in the background of the economic crisis in the USA in 50s, the play has it all—break down of human relationship or rather turning them into a commodity, depleting value system or ‘people’s refusal to own up responsibility at an individual level,’ to quote Nayar.

A fine specimen of Doppel Ganger drama, which we come to know from Nayar as an impressionistic play showing two faces of the same man, in this case pragmatic Waltar and sentimental Victor, the play will present Nayar as Waltar, Vineet Puri as Victor, Aradhika Sharma as Esther and Vijay Kapoor as Solomon.

Harish Bhatia who has acted in 25 plays and directed about 30 plays ever since Abhinet came into being in 1974, prefers to stay behind the curtains this time. “I always dreamt of doing an Arthur Miller play and now that we are finally doing it, I want to give my best shot,” he says, he snatches a little time for a chit-chat before his cast takes their position.

After the mega success of Who Is Afraid of Virginia Wolf last year, The Price is expected to add another chapter of glory to Abhinet with one road show in Jaipur on September 20, two shows in Chandigarh on September 23 and 24 and two more in Delhi on October 16 and 17.

So does it signify that Abhinet, which was basically for the promotion of Hindi theatre, is now ready for a change? “Abhinet did start as a Hindi theatre outfit, but we have been staging English plays from time to time,” says Bhatia. The first English play was Antigony in 1986, which was directed by M.C. Thakur and Aditya Prakash, both core members of Abhinet and later Harish Bhatia directed Sammuel Backett’s Catastrophy and Ohio Impromptu in 1998.

Like other Harish Bhatia productions, The Price too will have minimalist set designs. “I prefer using my actors to convey the story directly to the audience rather than focusing on an elaborate set.” Bhatia, who started his foray into serious theatre back in 1974 as Kalidasa in Mohan Rakesh’s Ashadh Ka Ek Din, says as an actor his role as George in Who is Afraid of Virginia Wolf has been closest to the heart and as a director, it was Mitti Ka Gadi, an Hindi translation of Sudraka’s Mrichhakatikam staged in 1993, has been the most challenging one.

Now that Abhinet is getting its due recognition not just in the city but also at the national level, what comes next? “I am toying on starting my next project based on Lee Blessing’s latest play A Body of Water and also Mohan Rakesh’s Adhe Adhure,” says Bhatia.

With Bhatia willing to don the robe of both an actor and director, we wait for another winner from Abhinet.

Memory is, ’tis said, is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose. And it was memory that rained supreme at the opening of a mammoth art exhibition that opened on Wednesday evening at the Panjab University museum with some 300 works of 168 old and new students crowding it like never before.

One did not bother if one work was posted too close to another or that one was so big that it had to be placed on a chair or that the senior ‘artists’, who consider themselves a cut above the others, had given their much-seen old works. It did not even matter that the works of some of the younger ones were far too naive. It also did not matter that eighty per cent of the alumni were non-practicing artists or not artists at all even though they had studied art.

What mattered was the mood of bonhomie and the joy of sharing old acquaintance. Friends met after a long time and many old teachers met their students who now have silver in their hair. It was an arty flashback of sorts when suddenly one found oneself face to face with Rajesh Behl, the student with a heavy necklace around his neck and colourful clothes in the Eighties, now just a wee bit subdued but he did have a lighter necklace around his neck. He went around clicking pictures for these were moments not to be lost.

Vinay Malik clicked like never before and Sanjeev Soni, one of the fine painters of the city who moved onto the video, was busy making his film to take back to Raj Kumar, whose work was there but who could not make it. Viren Tanwar fondly recalled his teaching days as he saw one of the lively students of his time, Sanjeev Kaushal. “You know he came to see us off at the city railway station for he was in third year and could not join the trip of the fourth year students. With great difficulty we sent him back from Khajurao.” Diwan Manna, the star photographer, had more colourful tales to tell of his pal Sanjeev, off the record. For at such times it is literally: Tum yaad aaye aur tumhare saath zamane yaad aaye.

What was most touching was that the dim light of the rain-washed evening faded into darkness, the museum closed and the tea tables cleared, but the old and new students still hung around because they were relishing the ecstasy of old acquaintance.

— Nirupama Dutt

Had it not been for Kala Maitri’s pursuits, the students of Government College of Art would never have been able to meet 83-year-old Jeet Singh. Perhaps the oldest Art College alumnus living in Chandigarh, Jeet Singh was the cynosure of all eyes at Fine Arts Museum where Kala Maitri’s volumonous art exhibition opened on Wednesday evening.

The oldest art college student present in the huge gathering of hundreds, Jeet Singh was proud to be part of the moment made special by the presence of several old and new students. In the backdrop of art, it was a lovely reunion – one which the old students had been waiting for, for ages.

“Never has such an event taken place in the history of Indian art. The Alumni association of Government Art College has achieved a lot in bringing together the scattered creations of artists. Where else will we find the works of Bhawani Katoch, HS Purewal, Avtarjit Dhanjal, Prem Singh, Jodh Singh and Shiv Singh at the same platform?” asked Jeet Singh, a master lacquer artst, who picked up the art from Mayo School. Later he went on to teach craft at the Shimla College of Art before settling down in Chandigarh. A master craftsman, he is perhaps the only one promoting lacquer art in Punjab. The art, as a discipline, is no longer taught in college – something Jeet Singh laments.

But on the whole he was upbeat, like hundreds of assembled students. Present in the gallery when Panjab University V-C Prof R.C. Sobti inaugurated the show which comprises works of 168 old and new students, were veterans like Jodh Singh, Shiv Singh, R.D. Lohtia, Malkit Singh, Prem Singh, Asha Sharma, Ishwar Dyal, and Jagdish Ahuja among others. And then there was the younger lot that made the show a success today. This included Vinay Malik, Diwan Manna, Surajmukhi Sharma, Bheem Malhotra, Alka Jain and Anita Gupta.

The works span decades of artistic pursuit. They have been sourced from the repertoire of students belonging to batches as old as 1940 and as new as 2006. All 13 galleries of the PU Fine Arts Museum are shining with life experiences captured in myriad forms of art –paintings, graphic, photographs, sculptures, applied art and much more. Another impressive ensemble is that of lacquer work pots, crafted by Jeet Singh.

Besides, there are iconic works that bring the artists alive. In this league fall Bheem Malhotra, Satwant Singh, Shiv Singh, Jodh Singh, H.S. Purewal, Diwan Manna, and some others.