The Tribune, Chandigarh, India - Chandigarh Stories

EDUCATION

MAAC incentives for outstanding students
Our Correspondent

Chandigarh, June 14
Maya Academy of Advanced Cinematics (MAAC) has announced Rs 5 lakh in awards to the best students from their different training centres in the country, informed Mr Rajesh Turakhia, Vice-President of Maya Entertainment Limited, Mumbai, here today.

Informing that Maya Entertainment Limited, the special effects and digital animation producers for the entertainment industry of Bollywood, has decided to institute awards worth of Rs 5 lakh, Mr Turakhia said the amount would be contributed by both MAAC and IKON, a Delhi-based TV production company, in equal footing. The awards will be given to the best animation project produced by MAAC students of 3 D animation after the end of their six months’ term.

Mr Turakhia said there was a growing demand for animators and graphic designers in the entertainment industry owing to extensive use of digital effects in cine and television products. Maya Entertainment Limited (MEL) in Mumbai employs more than 100 special effect experts, he informed.

The six months programme of 3 D animation includes a one week hands on experience at the MEL studios in Mumbai and the students enrolled for this course after April 1, 2002 are eligible to participate in this contest. Each student at the end of his / her term can submit a 30-second animation project for evaluation by a team of experts from Maya Entertainment limited and Ikon Pictures for the selection of the best works for the awards.

The first prize is of Rs 1 lakh, while second and third winners shall receive Rs 50,000 each. besides these three students, seven others will win paid internship for three months with Ikon Pictures and three months with Maya Entertainment which is worth of Rs 2 lakh.

Mr Turakhia also informed that MAAC has tied up with Discreet of US which shall be certifying all its centres as authorised training partners ensuring quality software for the students and Discreet approved faculty to deliver the international quality training to them. He also informed that MAAC is introducing two-year Advance Diploma in Digital Design for plus two and under graduate students from this session onwards, to pursue a lucrative and employment-oriented career in digital animation and designing simultaneously with their studies.

MAAC is already offering hands on experience on live projects to its students and have recently completed an interactive website for Government Museum and art gallery which will be launched soon. The master franchise of MAAC for northern India, Mr Naveen Gupta, also informed that top five students from this region will be given a three-day holiday in Banjara camps in Sangla valley.

Mr Ripu Taxali, Director, Marketing and Sales and Mr M.M. Jinoy, the support specialist of RGB Systems and Support Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai, representing Discreet, presented a wide spectrum of digital animation work done by the leading production houses abroad, as well as in India using the digital design.

Aditi combines good looks with intelligence
Parbina Rashid

Chandigarh, June 14
Mrs World 2001, Dr Aditi Govitrikar, is not just another pretty face in the tinsel town. With the amount of sternness she asserted herself in front of the media persons at the National Institute of Fashion Designing, this former Gladrags mega model-turned cine star proved herself to be quite a volatile force to reckon with.

The furore started when Aditi who was here to launch the three-year degree courses in fashion design, textile design and interior design at NIFD, refused to get photographed in solo. “I am here for a cause and hence will be photographed only in this connection rather than posing for solo pictures,” she said, stating that she had no qualms about getting pictured with the students.

Though she somewhat relaxed afterwards, continuing her tete-a tete with the reporters, she never let her guard down during the entire ordeal. As someone shot a question at her whether she has any plan for contesting in any beauty pageant, she replied: “When they organise a ‘Mrs grandmother’ pageant I will definitely take part.”

Aditi’s venture into the modelling would started after she was coaxed to take part in the Gladrags Mega Model contest in 1996 by her then boyfriend-turned-husband Muffazal Lakdawala, who is a surgeon by profession. A third year student of MBBS from Mumbai, Aditi had never dreamt of becoming a model before. But the contest had changed the course of her life.

“This profession has made me a much stronger person giving me a strength to tackle difficult situations on my own,” she said. “Besides the glamour, it also gave me an opportunity to visit about 16-17 countries which as a doctor I would have never accomplished,” she added.

However, medicine still remains first love in Aditi’s life. “I wanted to be a gyne specialist but I had to abandon my MD when modelling happened,” she said. But she is going to make amends by taking up cosmetic medicine once the bright arclights starts to fizzle out, which ofcourse is going to take some time, looking at the way she is getting involved with the movie scene.

Aditi was signed up for an negative role in “Soch”, a suspense movie has been doing similar ones like “16th December” (which was incidently released before Soch) and Dhun, another thriller. “I am specialising in thriller roles,” she joked. But her dream project would be any film starring Shahrukh Khan and herself.

Talking about the acceptibility of a married person by the film industry, she said that a change has come and now it is not unheard of married women portraying romantic roles in films. Does having a child affect her career? “None at all” came the reply . “Infact after my daughter Kiara was born, I bagged more work, both in modelling and films”, she added.

Aditi who has made herself a familiar face through prestigious assignments like the Coke ad with Hrithik Roshan, Ponds, Rexona and Margo. She has featured in Adnam Sami and Asha Bhonsle’s super hit album “Kabhi to Nazar Milao” among others.

Meanwhile, the National Institute of Fashion Design, Sector 8, in collaboration with Rajasthan Vidyapeeth University today launched the three year B Sc. degree courses in fashion design, textile design and interior design by admitting the first student to the course. The courses were launched by Aditi Govitrikar.

While addressing the aspiring students, Govitrikar said that by launching the degree courses NIFD has provided a unique opportunity to the students to pursue a full-fledged design course. The admission is open to the students of any stream after passing their 10+2 examination.

The courses have been specially designed to meet the demand of the industry, following university academic guidelines at the same time giving exposure to fashion shows, exhibitions, seminars, market survey and interaction with celebrities.

The entire course will be divided into six semesters with equal emphasis on theory and practicals. Besides the selected courses the students will be taught basic English, computers, statistics, accounts and management skills. There are 60 seats for fashion design, 20 seats for textile design and 20 seats for interior design.

Informatics opens first campus in town
Tribune News Service

SAS Nagar, June 14
Informatics, a Singapore-based multi-national company providing education in the field of Information Technology (IT), has collaborated with the University of Cambridge to provide foreign university degree programmes in the country.

As part of its programme to establish 10 regional campuses across the country, the Managing Director of Informatics, Mr P.K. Tripathi, inaugurated its first regional campus in the country on the ICAI campus in Phase 7 here yesterday.

Talking to mediapersons, Mr Tripathi said the courses were being introduced under the distance learning programme of the Local Examination Syndicate programmes of Cambridge University. He said the programme would enable students to obtain degree from about 50 universities from the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia and some countries of the South-East Asia. In the first phase, a student after undergoing a two-year programme would have the option of completing the foreign university degree in India or abroad.

Mr Tripathi said the two-year programme was aimed at preparing the students to achieve high standards of academic excellence. A batch of 60 students would be taken in first academic year beginning from August. The programme offered courses in programming, multimedia, Internet, knowledge, management and networking, he said.

COURTS

Lahore bus allowed to ply
Our Correspondent

Chandigarh, June 14“Lahore bus” in which the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee, had visited Lahore in 1999 was once again allowed to ply between Delhi and Chandigarh today by a local court. Earlier, the court had passed the attachment order of the bus in order to recover the compensation due to the claimant, Shanti Devi, in the accident claim case, who had alleged that her husband had died due to negligent driving by DTC bus driver, Dina Nath.

Shanti Devi, today issued a statement in the court that the DTC authorities had deposited Rs 50, 4375. Therefore she had no objection if the bus be released. After recording the claimant’s statement the UT Additional Sessions Judge, Mr J.S Klar, today passed an order that attachment of the bus (DL-1-PA-3711) be withdrawn as the amount had been deposited by the DTC authorities and also warrant of attachment order against the bus be recalled.

The DTC authorities had claimed in the application moved before the court that due to some mistake the bus was attached to recover the compensation amount which the DTC had to pay to Shanti Devi. The authorities stated that the said amount had been deposited with Nazir of the court on May 4, 2002.

Sources said the Ministry of Transport, Government of India, had sought an explanation from the Chairman and Managing Director of the DTC in New Delhi in this regard.

Shanti Devi had filed a case against DTC bus driver Dina Nath, and an insurance company. She had stated in the accident claim case that on April 24, 1999, her husband, Gulshan Kumar, was returning home in Sector-37-C from Sector-23-D on his scooter as soon as her husband reached near Sector-36- 37 dividing road, he was hit by the DTC bus, driven in a rash and negligent manner. It hit her husband from the front. As a result, her husband sustained multiple injuries and died on the spot. Later he was taken to the PGI, Chandigarh. She had alleged that the driver of the bus fled from the scene.

Mr Godara, had passed the order in favour of Shanti Devi and her two minor sons and directed the DTC and others to pay a compensation of Rs 3, 75, 000 to them with interest at the rate of 12 per cent per annum from the date of institution of the case till its realisation.

CULTURE

Neelam Mansingh’s ‘Kitchen Katha’ comes on stage
Parbina Rashid

Chandigarh, June 14
Neelam Mansingh and her team members are still basking in the glory they achieved through the success of “Kitchen Katha”, a play which Neelam took to various places in Japan under the banner of “The Company”. The play not only gave the Japanese audience a glimpse of Indian theatre but also gave them the savour of Indian food, thus weaving a relation between the two countries.

“The play drew such an overwhelming response that we had to stage seven shows instead of five, which were originally scheduled”, says Neelam Mansingh, who along with her troupe returned back from Japan only two days back after performing in Tokyo and Kyoto. “In both the places, the number of seats had to be increased to accommodate a larger number of audience,” she adds.

However the number was not the only parameter to measure the success of the play. What made the trip unforgettable for the artistes was that the entire audience, after every show, waited to sample Indian dishes made by the troupe members.

“The backdrop of the play was a large community kitchen that had provisions to cook and serve the audience during a few scenes which of course could not serve the entire audience,” says Neelam. Noticing the disappointment of those who could not sample the “pakoras” and rice they cooked on stage, the team members conjured up the idea to cook for the entire audience at the end of each show.

Kitchen Katha, a play based on the theme of relationship of a woman and food, had been selected by the Japan Foundation of Art, Tokyo, and the University of Art, Kyoto, to be staged there.

Though the selection of the play was done by the hosts themselves, the storyline was sound enough to give a glimpse of Indian culture to the people of Japan. “The role of food in our life is as important as any other ritual,” says Neelam. Based on a story written by Surjit Pattar, the storyline of “Kitchen Katha” bears an international flavour with two international books — “Water for Chocolate” and “Acidity” — supplying the source material.

Apart from the significance of the theme, what makes the play unique is the presence of food and cooking. “My long association with community kitchen has made me very close to the sounds of kneading, chopping and cooking,” says Neelam. So much is her fascination with the kitchen activities is that even now Neelam finds shopping for vegetables much more relaxing than shopping for dresses or jewellery.

The success story of “Kitchen Katha” however does not stop here. Deepa Mehta, who had seen one of the performances, showed keen interest in making it in the form of a docu-drama. The shooting will commence in October. The troupe is also taking “Kitchen Katha” to Germany for the Kampugnel Festival to be held in Hamberg.

The members of the troupe that accompanied Neelam Mansingh to Japan were Ramanjit Kaur, Payal Choudhry, Sanjeev Kumar, Bahadur Chand, Prem Chand, Mehar Chand, Puran Chand, Mundri Lal, Amarjeet, Des Raj, Somesh, Pamela Singh, Anil Kumar Sharma, Sumant Jayakrishan, Kabir Singh Chowdhry, Angad Singh Chowdhry and Pushvinder Singh Chowdhry.