Calling Names

Living up to a name can be a hard task and more so if one happens to be named after legends,
says Parbina Rashid

NAME GAME: Azalea Liberty Singh poses pretty in her designer gear. — Photo by Parvesh Chauhan

When Shakespeare had commented ‘What’s in a name?’ he clearly had no idea how was it to live with names like Michelangelo or Nefertiti in a place where more than 70 per cent names are the result of the permutation and combination of a fixed number of prefixes and suffixes (try Param, Inder and Jas for prefixes and Meet, Preet and Jeet for suffixes and voila, you know the names of a major chunk of the Punjabi community). Or how much a name moulds one’s personality, for that matter.

So to prove him wrong, we do a little research and find out how this new breed is doing in the city of beautiful.

Here is Michelangelo Francis, an artist, musician and teacher, above all a brave soul, who had to say ‘yes sir’ or ‘yes madam’ during his school and college days even before the teacher could read out his full name. “Stammering starts right after the ‘Michel’ part and since none of them could pronounce my name at one go, I, with dignity, would surrender myself at the time of the roll call,” he says.

It was sheer destiny, which he gave him his name. “My parents were trying to find a name for me for I was without one even after I made my entry to this world. My father was reading the profile of Michelangelo in the Sun magazine and that’s how the idea came of his mind.”

Its must be an enormous responsibility to live with such a legendary name, especially when Michael too has chosen the same field!

“I had an opportunity to see the great artist’s paintings and sculptures when I visited the Vatican and it was simply awesome,” he says. Impressed and inspired though he is, Michel in no way is living under the shadow of the master sculptor. “One thing he is too big to emulate and but most of all I would love to do my own thing.” says our young artist. But apart from the name they do share one more thing. Like Michelangelo the original, our Chandigarhian lad too does extensive artwork for the church (his artwork appears in the cover pages of Yuva Spandan, a national youth magazine regularly).

And he knows what he is talking about. For this St. John’s teacher has already carved a niche for himself in the creative world. Michel does not only paint his dreams on canvas, but he is also an accomplished musician who had written, composed and sung two songs for an album called Vibrations and has been the guiding force behind the St. John’s music band called ‘Soaring Eagles’ which has just cut their debut album.

That was the story of Michelangelo. On the other side we have Azalea Liberty Singh who has been facing the similar kind of treatment from the people here. Born on the July 4 in New York, the name ‘Liberty’ was the automatic choice for her mother.

To start with, her name was Liberty Singh, pure and simple. But her mother had the foresight to see what was coming her daughter’s way so she added the name Azalea, pushing ‘Liberty’ to the middle.

But her foresight was not good enough to protect her daughter. People’s reaction to the unusual and Azalea’s wilful nature to assert her middle name with equal emphasis, gets her in sticky situations many a time.

“So many times people happen to ask me if I am the owner of Liberty shoes?” she says. “Nobody has ever raised an eyebrow abroad, but here my name is considered an oddity,” says the fiercely liberated girl who understands that with liberty comes responsibility and she is willing to own up to all her actions, including the reaction her name evokes.

However, not everyone is as brave as Michael and Azalea. One such story is about one city girl who was christened as Nefertiti, the Egyptian queen, but bowing to the pressure, she soon renamed herself as Taniya and now enjoying the oblivion in some remote corner in Delhi.

So next time you ask yourself ‘what’s in a name’, you know the answer—everything !

Landscape that evokes emotion

Just as you wouldn’t expect to find sushi on the menu of an authentic Italian restaurant, a gargoyle waterspout in Oriental landscape designs would stick out like a sore thumb too. Not that such anomalies do not happen to our landscapes.

Look around and you might find landscape designs that look like a hodge-podge of disjointed features put together without much thought. Confused landscapes are generally the result of a lack of theme in landscape designs.

Creating landscape designs that revolve around a theme helps weave a thread of unity among the various elements, plants, and structures of a landscape. Focusing on a theme engenders consistency and harmony in landscaping designs. Furthermore, themes make the task of choosing hardscapes and softscapes easier because they give you a set of ground rules to follow.

Themes set the scenery for the landscape and can either make or break your landscape designs. The most common themes in landscape designs are those that celebrate a season, suggest a mood, and stimulate activity. Your landscape’s intended purpose will guide you to the appropriate theme for your landscape designs.

Generally, the garden is where the seasonal theme is most prominent in landscaping designs. Landscaping designs are often crafted to make plants and trees look their best during a certain time of the year. Because of its association with bloom, hope, and renewal, spring is easily one of the popular themes for landscape designs. Spring-themed landscape designs come alive with the vibrant colors of early-blooming perennials and bulbs.

Summer landscaping designs evoke a feeling of meditation and quietude because of the austere atmosphere summoned by lack of flowering colours and the sheer amount of heat. The changing color of trees and foliage intensifies the drama of fall in autumn landscaping designs. Autumn calls for plenty of landscape maintenance, and landscape designs should accommodate many behind-the-scenes garden activities such as composting, mulching, and leaf-raking. Winter is another favorite theme for landscaping designs. Winter-blooming flowers shrubs and annuals explode in all colors of nature’s palette in summer-themed landscaping designs.

Some landscape designs highlight the inextricable bond between landscapes and emotions. Landscape designs induce a feeling or emotion through details that range from the choice of blooms to the presence of unique garden ornaments. In landscaping designs, a beautiful rose garden may provoke a viewer to entertain notions of romance, while a tranquil Zen rock garden may put one in a contemplative mood. Color in landscape designs also influences the viewer’s mood.

Landscaping designs should never concentrate on one color or hue. Flowers of different colors can blend harmoniously in landscape designs and evoke congruous emotions. In landscaping designs, green is believed to have a healing effect, red and orange rouse excitement and energy, and blue relaxes and refreshes. Lines in landscape designs also affect the viewer’s state of mind. Straight lines in landscape designs may suggest formality and structure, while curved lines are perceived as natural, relaxing, and even playful.

Aside from aesthetically pleasing, practical and livable are the other characteristics of good landscaping designs. Landscapes should not only make one’s surroundings beautiful; they should serve a meaningful or pragmatic purpose as well. Landscape designs that encourage activity are the best examples of theme following purpose in landscape planning. Generally, properties owned by families with children employ activity-themed landscaping designs that allow for plenty of play and recreation. An outdoor dining area, a swimming pool, and a small playground are just some of the ways families implement activity-themed landscaping designs.

Landscape designs centered on a hobby are also popular. People who love to cook might want a vegetable garden included in landscaping designs, while bird-watchers would do well to create landscape designs that nurture a bird-friendly habitat. Activity-themed landscaping designs encourage homeowners to spend more time outdoors and make optimal use of their landscapes.

Regardless of the size of your garden, there’s no getting away from creating a harmonious theme, which suits your lifestyle and meets the requirements of all the family members.

Courtsey: A.P. Singh Besten & Co

The Art Shop
Parbina Rashid

TREASURE HUNT: The ongoing exhibition at Art Folio offers a large variety of paintings for art lovers. — Photo by Manoj Mahajan

If you are looking for signature art then Art Folio is not the place to visit these days. But yes; if its variety, both in terms of artwork and price range that interests you then a visit to this Sector 9 gallery won’t go waste. For the Art Treasure is here once again collecting paintings from all over the country and presenting under single roof.

Buoyed by their success the previous year, the Art Treasure has brought as many as 140 works by different artists. “Like before, this year too, we had given themes to our artists like nature, still life and old forts and building, and they have come up with what we have in front of us,” explains Simran Gill, the co-partner of the Art Treasure. Natasha Gill, the brain behind the organization, is absent from the scene this year.

However, this year we see plenty of abstract works besides colourful, vibrant landscapes and flowers mostly in oil on canvas framed beautifully in pure wood and also in glass and cloth framing. Like previous years this year too the duo brings a few good copies of Van Gogh replicas. “This is what basically people want, more of striking and eye catching beauties to decorate the drawing room walls rather than pure art,” explains Simran. For this city-based NIFD trained interior decorator knows the local pulse here.

“And no we do not even disclose the names of the artists to our buyers. The Art Treasure gives patronage to both budding and established artists but above all it is a commercial venture, to create awareness about art and cater it for a profit,” adds Simran.

So if you looking to buy a piece of happiness without burning a big hole in your pocket, rush to the Art Folio.

The exhibition is on till October 8 at Art Folio in Sector 9.

Diwan’s destination
Gayatri Rajwade

Diwan Manna is off on a journey again. Only, this time he is slice of the road too! Diwan, himself, may have many things to say on this for this photographer-artist believes that every voyage, even the process, is the path to discovery and that is precisely what his latest assignment is all about.

Off to Lille in France for a special fiesta showcasing the historic, cultural and modern marvel that is India, Diwan’s photographs on Chandigarh will also occupy pride of place.

Lille 3000 is an inventive ‘celebration’ that takes place every two years and is a platform for modernity and cultures to reach out to artists, inhabitants and visitors where traditions and innovations are at the heart of the event. This year Lille 3000 transports the city on a voyage to India in 2006 so ‘Destination India’ it is!

With traditionalism meeting contemporary, avant-garde intertwined with the colourful facets of India, originality and technology blended together in a fine whole, what better example to offer in this carnival of installations, exhibitions, cinema, performances, flavours and feelings from all over India, than Chandigarh.

CORRIDOR OF POWER: Diwana Manna and one of his works.

Albeit ‘Chandigarh at Lille 3000’ is a part of the entire festivity on display, yet this is an integral exhibition being hosted by exquisite Musee Des Beaux-Art de Tourcoing (Museum of Fine Arts) in Lille and will feature a photo exhibition comprising of Diwan’s photographs of the city, eminent French photographer Lucien Herve’s ‘documentation’ of the construction of Chandigarh from 1951 to 1962 and a fresh modern perspective of the city by renowned specialist in architectural photography, Stephane Couturier (who incidentally has clicked the roundabouts of the city along with its traffic!) The exhibition also includes a 15-minute documentary on Chandigarh by Regis Servan on the multiple facets of Corbusier’s work.

Diwan’s work, ‘one of an artist and not a documentary photographer’ is washed with his impression of the city he has lived long in and loves dearly and that is what will be evident in the two series of 10 photographs each that have been selected for this showing.

‘Alienation New’ is a series ‘directed’ by him in 1980 when he was a student at the College of Art, Sector 10, and chanced upon a group of fellow students sitting on a bench, bodies pressed close, but each lost in his own world. “In those days Chandigarh was a comparatively new city, a new concept of architecture with new materials in an ancient civilization and in this new city, people were sensing a growing alienation from each other, trying to find new identities by hiding their own.” It is what Diwan refers to as ‘not feeling at home despite being home’ that he attempted to capture.

These photographs though taken then were not developed till this year when the selection for the exhibition was being done. So in a sense, they have never seen the light of day till now and what is ironic is that the sense of alienation is still evident today, with greater poignancy.

The other is ‘Corridors of Power’, mostly ramps of the Civil Secretariat when the building stands awe-inspiring for the first time visitor. “Walking down the ramp, with its huge, high corridors and light streaming in from both sides, is visually overwhelming,” he smiles.

However, at the end of the day, Diwan’s passion for what he does takes over completely and as one detangles the threads of his eloquence for his craft, one hopes that spectators to the exhibition will feel the intensity that he brings to all his photographs.

HOPSCOTCH
Feminine Fables

The source of all creative attempts is a sense of wonder. My dream conclave encompasses elements of nature in their vivid new avtars. They are at one with the universe and seek to relate to the human experience, “ so says young and ebullient Kavita Singh, who retells feminine fables in a charming show that opened in the city today.

The female image is most celebrated in visual arts. As far as the world of contemporary painting goes, it was only the past century that showed up the woman artist. In India there was a brief and glorious period of Amrita Sher-Gil that ended abruptly with her death in 1941. Then there was a long gap till the Seventies when women artists arrived on the scene with a bang, equipped with degrees and a professional attitude, as they did in other fields. There has been no looking g back since then.

Kavita Singh, a Chandigarh-born-and-bred-artist, who has emerged in the field, essentially dominated by the males of the artistic species, with a talent to reckon with.

As far as the region goes, it is after the evocative graphics by Anupam Sud in the Eighties: here comes another young woman excelling in graphics and paintings. Her present exhibition showcases her mixed-media paintings and throws her up as an artist of the new century re-imaging and re-inventing the feminine fables on the basis of her own experience and sensibility.

The images that strike the eye are of that paper boat of childhood a la Jagjit Singh’s kagaz ki kishti, the lotus pond, the nostalgic view from the window of grandparents’ home in Shimla town or the fearsome crows of the city. The mood of Kavita’s paintings is bold and playful as she lights up the canvas in heady mix of reality and fantasy. The viewer is lured as though in a fairy tale to relate to the fables told in form and colour. Kavita says, “The element of drama provides me with a mystic and soulful experience and I relish being a pixie myself sitting on the edge of a lonely mythical lotus pond, pondering over the rhymes and reasons of life and existence.”

Viewers can watch Kavita playing pixie with aplomb at the show that will remain open at Punjab Kala Bhawan, Sector 16-B, From October 6 to 11, daily between 10 am to 6 pm. — Nirupama Dutt

CAMPUS CAFE
Skirting conventions

Cool lingo is just not enough. For displaying futuristic outlook towards life, so many younglings living life on the Panjab University campus and college grounds across the city are now donning gracious skirts, ruthlessly and indiscriminately.

If some of them look awkward and gauche in the fashionable process, they are just not bothered about it. In fact, they do not even “give a damn” if you call them BTMCs or behanjis-turned- mod currently. After all, bahenjis do not wear sarongs. They move about in Punjabi suits, and even trousers.

Only daring-do girls with ‘I-am-just-not-bothered” attitude make a star out of themselves by twinkling on the new-found horizons of freedom in glittery skirts. Folks, their names should actually be recommended for bravery and modernity award. They deserve it.

Just in case you haven’t seen them displaying wee bit of ever-expanding attitude in shrinking kilts, hop into your car and drive down the road winding its way through the campuses. You will find flappers of the world — studying more than just modern approach to English Literature and customs — trotting down the narrow corridors of existence in skirts rising up to the occasion, not-so-elegantly, yet glamorously.

Right guys, there is no skirting the issue. Gone are the days when liberal mindedness, depth of thought and contemporary stance on once controversial issues like public display of affection was enough for people to christen you “modern”.

“Those were the times when you could actually look up-to-the-minute even in a salwaar-kameej with a chunni enshrouding you in conventionality,” says Panjab and Haryana High Court advocate-cum-former varsity student Raman Sharma. “For modernism had nothing to do with clothes! It was all about attitude. But now things have badly changed for good”.

“Fellows, if you now wish to enroll yourself as the member of the mod brigade, you have to pass the practical test of glamour by exhibiting progressive thoughts stitched in the seams of skirts,” says Ekta Sharma, pursuing graduation in Economics from a local college.

Flashing abroad smile, she adds: “You may find it hard to believe if you are behind the times, but the size of the skirt is directly proportional to your modish stand in life. The shorter the skirt, the more forward-looking you are.”

Well, more than a few skirt propagators are from the interior of Punjab, even Haryana, and have always believed in covering their heads with nice soft dupattas before adventuring out in the open environs of Chandigarh. But that’s another story. 

Here, everywhere you look there are gals giving a leg up to fashion in chic cotton printed short skirts with prominent borderlines. Teamed with halter knit and double-shaded spaghetti tops, they actually keeping it short for increasing their cooling capacities. No wonder, there is more of less all around you.

Preened & Polished

After the success of Flying Cats, the air-hostess academy, city whiz kid Priyanka Khosla has taken on herself the task of providing the city and other small towns all over the country with a finishing grooming school that will preen and polish the local people who could then well compete with the smarter folk of metros both home and abroad.

Polished Cats is the new brand name launched simultaneously in Chandigarh, Ludhiana and Jalandhar. Speaking at a press conference, Priyanka said: “Polished cats is the first-ever chain of finishing schools in India. Although inspired by the famous Swiss finishing schools that can be accessed only by the rich and the famous, our grooming programme is very much adapted to local and regional needs and is, of course affordable.”

The entire syllabus for this exclusive concept has been designed and developed by top celebrities aand grooming gurus of the country. Each student at Polished Cats would be taught A to Z of persona enhancement, which would assist them not only in their careers but also their personal lives.

The announcement was made at a very interesting fashion show that showed a polished kid, a polished executive, a polished bride and groom, polished parents, polished teacher and so on. Different courses are in six-week slots and the beginning is to be made in November. — TNS

Pollywood upsurge
Anuradha Shukla

The wait was over for the media persons and reporters for the cast of Mannat to arrive at the Reliance Web World Sector 35, except for star Jimmy Shergil, who decided to keep everyone waiting till the end. Meanwhile, the director and cast of the Punjabi film shared their excitement about the film. However, petite leading lady of the film, Kulraj Randhawa, hopped in dot on time and the dimpled beauty was ready with her spirited presentation about the movie. Director Gurbir Grewal said that the movie was inspired from real-life story of an Army officer falling in love with a village girl. The story was given cinematic treatment to make it palatable for the audiences.

The story was real and also real is “the upsurge that the Punjabi film industry is witnessing”, Gurbir said. The surge began with the stories being woven around the Punjabi sensibilities and the response the Punjabi films began getting with the film Jee Ayan Nu abroad.

The films look better and the sounds are akin to any well-made Hindi movie all thanks to the corporate money flowing in the director said. B.A.G the producers of the film are keeping the idea of dubbing the movie into Hindi open, informs the director but this would be possible only after the film has run in Punjabi. Unaffected by a number of Punjabi films releasing together, Gurbir said the films depict different stories.

Deep-throated Deep Dhillon was truly happy to be part of his ‘own movie’ after having done everything from serials to Mumbai flicks and it was homecoming for him with the family entertainer. A committee to examine the merits of Punjabi films must be constituted to sort out matters like waving off of taxes, which to him were rendered small issues in face of big production houses taking up the making of these films.

Man of few words, Manav Vij appearing in his third film, was happy with the duration of his role, which was crucial to the plot, he said with his smile lighting up his face. “The crew even went to have lunch in the jail in Patiala as a mark of good luck for the film” said Kulraj who swore by its ‘awesome story’.