CHANDIGARH INDEX



Let the boys play with
 their toys…
Saurabh Malik
Bikes with high-tech features may come and go, but youngsters are still targetting the Bullet
 His heart thumping with excitement races faster than the bike as the fretting and fuming engine trembles tumultuously before exhaling deep short and infrequent sighs. As it pounds against his chest in sync with the deep thumping resonance of the bike’s inner conscience booming out of the silencers, thrill surges through his veins.

Treasure Trove
 Living with history
“We wish to preserve our heritage for posterity,” tell the Sekhons. And, just one look at their Sector 2 home and one knows that the couple’s hobby of collecting antiques is much more than a passion and love for things of the past. “It is our mission to safeguard the past for the future generations,” they assert.

youth speak
 Shweta Chopra
 Give cricket time and space to bloom 
Cricket is a game that is enjoyed, played and watched by one and all. Talk about cricket and everybody goes Ga....Ga over it. I think cricket has two aspects - stress and uncanny. Incidents like match fixing, disrespect of coaches and the latest being the death of the Pakistani coach Bob Woolmer have proved the stress factor . The coaches are also like one of us, who have expectations in return of their hard work. And, anyone who puts in extravagant efforts, feels more responsible for the loss.

New Releases
 Triple treat
Shivaji Productions, the production banner founded by Sivaji Ganeshan returns to Hindi cinema with Jimmy Shergill and Neha Dhupia starrer ‘Delhi Heights’. Rohit Roy, Simone Singh, Om Puri, Vivek Shauq and Kamini Khanna support the lead stars. Rabbi Shergill makes his debut as a music composer and a lyric writer in the film.

Mane Man
Indian American teenage singer Sanjaya Malakar moved a step closer to becoming the “American Idol”, literally locking his position among the top nine in the contest with his hair and not his voice. One blogger “J” is on hunger strike to see him out of the show and judge Simon Cowell has vowed to quit if he indeed becomes the idol, but Sanjaya backers again voted on Wednesday to let Malakar, 17, son of an Indian father and an Italian mother, to keep singing his own tune. Malakar’s hair playing a ponyhawk — seven ponytails in a row to look like a faux-hawk — totally upstaged idol guest Gwen Stefani on Tuesday night to become the talk of the town if not the toast of the town with everyone going gaga over the “Idol’s Mane Man”.

Solar power
If the last exhibition of Naresh Pandit had acquainted us with the changing face of the Pahari paintings, then his forthcoming Mountain Mantra at Government Museum and Art Gallery, Sector 10, will teach us more about it. For Naresh, the zeal to promote Pahari art continues, so is his obsession with mountains. Like his previous works, the sun continues to dominate the mountain-scape and face of the hill women have also metamorphosed from a docile pretty one to a woman of substance. If you are looking for the tale-tell signs of Pahari paintings than you will be disappointed. For there is none, except for that the artist has just retained two dimensional forms and the purity of colours, all bright and with a range that touches both ends of the spectrum. That is exactly what the artist is trying to achieve—to break the stagnation point that had set in the Pahari School of Painting by giving them a contemporary feel. And he has achieved that by mixing a few traits of miniatures with modern themes.

SIDELANES 
 Simplicity was his USP
“They shot Gandy! I just heard it on the radio.” An ashen-faced clerk by the name of Martin walked into our home in Ludhiana and whispered the dreadful words to my father. His wife was a doctor at the CMC. There was stunned silence. We sisters, toddlers at the time, did not understand what had happened. Ma cried but my father was stoic. Martin added, “He was Christ without a cross… they have given him his cross now!” The late 1940s fell prey to the Gandhian charisma. He strode through India like a colossus. Ugly, dark, bald, half-naked, with thin, praying-mantis legs, he walked so fast, others had to run to catch up. He was a man in a hurry with many missions to fulfill. He harried the Brits, gathered huge crowds around him and argued about policy with our great Indian leaders.

Statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Union Square Park, New York City.

FILM & FASHION
 Rakhi goes the Shilpa way
After Shilpa Shetty and Yana Gupta, it is now the turn of Bollywood’s item girl Rakhi Sawant to join a PETA campaign against cruelty to animals. Sawant appeared in the make up of a tigress in a cage to spread the message to stop cruelty on animals at circuses. “The governments should pay attention towards the misery of animals and do more to protect their rights,” said Sawant.

Romancing the RAGINIS
Painting and music are complimentary to each other but if traits of both are combined and brought alive in one compositional piece of miniature painting, it is nothing short of a charisma.

Bonded in ART
More and more established and budding artists are sharing space in group shows, as Parbina Rashid finds out
 It’s not that the city never had group shows earlier, but these shows now come with a fancy logic — art curators are bringing established artists and budding ones on a common platform.

Fight for rights
Born at Buland Shehar in India and educated in Lahore, Kishwar Naheed has emerged as a proponent crusader of women empowerment on the international literary scene. In the city, to participate in the Indo-Pak mushiara, the former bureaucrat, CSP (Civil Services of Pakistan) gave up a lucrative post of additional secretary in the Pakistan government in 1998, to fight for the rights of the woman.

Brad-Angelina worried over son’s security
The actor couple, Brad Pitt and his partner Angelina Jolie beefed up security arrangements near their house after claims of a plan by a notorious gang to kidnap their newly adopted son Pax Thien. Guards heard of a credible and meticulously planned attempt to kidnap Pax as he was flown to the US from Vietnam. The gang ordered their LA members to devise a plan to kidnap Pax, before demanding a ransom of 50million pounds.