EDUCATION

Decision on short-term courses for allopathic graduates flayed

New Delhi, March 18
The Indian Homoeopathic Medical Association (IHMA) has opposed the move of Union Government to start Homoeopathic short course of one year for the Allopathic graduates. The president of the IHMA, Dr P S Ranu, who is presently the chairman of Punjab Homoeopathic Council and also an elected member of the Central Council of Homoeopathy, has condemned the proposal of the Union Government. He has called upon all the Homoeopathic Organization in the country to come forward on one platform against this issue and gherao the Central Council of Homoeopathy at Janakpuri, New Delhi, on March 20.

Dr V. K. Dhawan, senior vice- president of the IHMA and member of Central Council from Haryana, stated that when Homoeopathic graduates, who study modern medicine and surgery, are not allowed to even use the intravenous fluids, then how can allopaths be allowed to use Homoeopathic medicines. He said that short-term courses are sweet poison to kill a system of medicine. Dr Ranu said that if CCH has to start such courses for allopaths, then MCI should give permission to register MTP centers of Homoeopathic practitioners, and even postgraduate surgical courses should be started in Homoeopathy.

Dr Ranu said that there are various judgments of consumer courts in this regard that a person qualified in one system of medicine cannot practice the other system of medicine. TNS

CULTURE

ARTSCAPE
Modernism with a feminine touch
Ravi Bhatia

Lotus pond - An oil on canvas by Eleena Bamik.

Eleena Banik had her first solo exhibition six years back with a series of abstract expressionistic paintings that invited viewers to contemplate mainstream modernism in a feminist light. According to critics, her medium and large canvases have a strong looming presence. She creates expansive, richly coloured washes and strange combinations of hues to give shadows and highlights to her expressionistic markers providing the installation with a pleasing overall unity.

However, according to Manak Ganguly, a well-known art critic, the titles thwarted any strictly formalist reading of the paintings, psychological and narrative overtones kept impinging. The iconography invokes the notion of mental angst both as a blessing (escape into fantasy) and a curse (limitless mental torment), while echoing the individual presence in all its complexity - the implicitly feminist inspiration about the sociology of women as well as the maddening suppression of female experience and expression in orthodox modernism. Her psycho-feminist spin on 60s’- style modernism projecting through their own formal, material and imagistic dimensions project an urgent meaning and discourse.

She works primarily in an additive manner (as with the paintings) or in a subtractive manner (as with the drawings). She deems her work complete when she arrives at a point that feels congruent with the original moment of inspiration, so as to successfully attain an epic presence, addressing taboo subject matter almost always referring to a belief in the fragility of life. It is obsessive in its search for an edge, where confrontation between our conscious and subconscious selves must take place, where the veneer of protection built up to an anesthetize, is stripped away. Her work’s dark obsessions operate internally in the viewer, playing on their psyche, their own doubts, fears and prejudice.

The exhibition is on at Lalit Kala Akademi Rabindra Bhavan, Gallery No 11, New Delhi, from March 19 to 25.

Magic in Metal

Ikebana International New Delhi Chapter is organising an Ikebana exhibition Alchemy-Magic in Metal at The Regency Ball Room, Hyatt Regency. The exhibition will showcase intriguing arrangements reflecting the harmony in contrast between fresh flowers and greens and various metals in different shapes and forms. The exhibition will be inaugurated by renowned danseuse Shovana Narayan.

Ms Divya Ansal is the exhibition chairperson, and Mrs Joan Kalra is the president of Ikebana International New Delhi Chapter. The exhibition is on at the Hyatt Regency on March 21.

Ikebana involves the traditional use of three branches, flowers or other objects in some styles of Ikebana to symbolise heaven, earth and man, thus encompassing the whole universe. Modem Ikebana, which began about a hundred years ago, allows for more spontaneity. A skilled Ikebana arranger can create compositions of utmost simplicity through the use of flowers along with branches, leaves and dried materials. The emphasis is on creating beautiful, symmetrical lines and harmony of colour, combining them with a container appropriate to the material used and the style of the arrangement. An Ikebana arrangement strives to achieve a perfect balance between various materials used to give the viewer the pleasure of enjoying it from all angles.

Traditional Ikebana, an ancient Japanese art form of flower arrangement, perfected through centuries is extremely formalised according to set rules.

Drops of life

Is this India's future? Men, machines, but no water. (Below) Hope in hell! Marigolds bloom amidst the squalid Yamuna water. The workmanship of Pallava Bagla.

‘Drops of Life’ is the photographic expression of an anguished cry for the conservation of a precious everyday resource without which life as we know it would not exist on planet earth. The India of today with over a billion people that make up 16 per cent of the world’s population possesses merely four per cent of the world’s fresh water resource. The disparities are only growing. Currently every Indian has access to less than a fourth of what is the world average. Can this divide between the water-starved and the water-rich be bridged by alternatives such as catching the rain where it falls or by putting in place giant civil engineering solutions like the ‘Interlinking of Rivers’ project?

Pallava Bagla (41), for whom documenting the celebration, politics and use of water has been a passion for the last two decades, is an award winning photojournalist with Corbis images, one of the world’s largest photo agencies, his pictures have appeared in top publications like National Geographic, Time, Newsweek, Elle, The Economist, Stern, The Indian Express, The Boston Globe, Financial Times, Frontline, India Today and Outlook. He is the author of pictorial books like `Trees of India’, and ‘Buddhism’.

His early initiation on the developmental realities related to water, came about in 1984, when as part of a larger group of young environmentalists, he trekked the entire length of the River Narmada, jointly producing a landmark report titled ‘Death of a River’.

The photo exhibition will be on at the Convention Lobby, Indian Habitat Centre, (Entry Gate No 3) New Delhi, from March 22 – 25.

PLAY TIME
Eternal quest for moksha

The Salora Group and Friends of Tribals Society got together for a worthy cause to collect funds for downtrodden and poor children of the tribal community of India. A multimedia dance drama, ‘Maya’s Eternal Quest for Moksha’, under the aegis of Muzaffar Ali had been conceptualised to compliment the evening. A keen spiritual aspirant, Vandana Khaitan, writer and director of the dance drama, is a devotee of Sri Paramhansa Yogananda, author of autobiography of a yogi.

Friends of Tribals Society, a non-government voluntary organisation is committed to the uplift of tribals of India, by providing basic education to their children, since 1989. It believes that literacy is the key to progress. FTS with its associates has set a target to reach 50,000 villages covering more than 15 lakh children by the year 2005.