Mathures Paul

On returning to India, Ferena Wazeir has landed several big projects in the Hindi film industry and one with Oscar-winning director Danis Tanovic. She discusses with Mathures Paul the difference in work culture in India and Scotland After Deepka Padukone, a number of young talented actresses are all set to face the spotlight. Besides Shruti Seth and Shruti Haasan, another contender for a leading spot in the industry is Ferena Wazeir, whose family has strong ties with Kashmir but she was brought up in Scotland. Once she returned to India, it was only a matter of time before she landed important roles in films directed by the Hindi film industry’s leading directors. Wazeir will soon be seen in Ketan Mehta’s period epic Rang Rasiya ~ produced by Deepa Sahi ~ which is based on Raja Ravi Varma’s life. She essays the role of a journalist and the “third love” in the painter’s life. Wazeir has also landed a three-movie deal with a major studio in Bollywood. Adding to her kitty is Sadiyaan, a R...

Dance Routes’ choreographic works include pieces meant for performance as well as films By Mathures Paul Rekha Tandon, one of the foremost exponents of the Odissi, established Dance Routes in 1997 with help from Michael Weston, a musician and film-maker, for experimentation, research and education in Indian classical dance. She was initially under the guidance of SN Jena, and subsequently under Shrimati Madhavi Mudgal, Guru Trinath Maharana and Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra. Tandon was part of Madhavi Mudgal’s dance company between 1985 and 1992. Dance Routes’ choreographic works have included pieces created for both performance and film, using multicultural literary and musical resources, which retain the criteria of dance being used as a means of dialogue with divinity. Educational initiatives have included workshops both in the UK and India that explore the relationship between dance, yoga and the cultural environments that nurtured these classical traditions. Dhara, one of her recent p...

Dundee is known for jam, journalism and jute. For a better understanding of the jute industry, which has almost disappeared from Dundee, Hopscotch Films crew was in India. John Archer shares his thoughts on the subject with Mathures Paul The old jute mills that once dotted Calcutta are fast disappearing, only to be replaced by concrete jungles. The importance of the raw material, needless to say, will be understood not before it’s too late. Glasgow-based production company Hopscotch Films set out to make a documentary on a subject that binds Dundee to Calcutta. John Archer was in Calcutta with his large team to film Brian Cox’s Jute Journey, a subject close to the heart of actor Brian Cox. John Archer of Hopscotch Films speaks to The Statesman. What prompted Hopscotch Films to take on a documentary on jute trade? In Scotland, Dundee is renowned as being the city of the three Js ~ jam, jute and journalism. This is such an old cliche that we will not be mentioning it in our documentary! ...

Kiran Ahluwalia’s ghazals have a lot of Western influence, including a harmonic structure based on jazz and Western classical music, writes Mathures Paul Born in India and brought up in Toronto, Kiran Ahluwalia is a musician who doesn’t resist Western music from influencing her vocal style. A trained exponent of the ghazal, she finds inspiration in the poetry of Indian and Pakistani poets living in Canada. After giving us albums like Kashish: Attraction and Wanderlust, she is once again in the studio recording her next effort. In an exclusive interview to The Statesman. As a student of Vithal Rao in what ways do you implement his lessons in your projects? I learned ghazal gaayaki from him ~ basically how to sing a ghazal. Vithal Rao is a maestro and so he doesn’t really have a method of teaching. He simply sings for you and it is up to you to ask and learn what you can. I also learned many things about composition but I am not able to articulate these in words ~ they are more intrinsic...

Photograph from the Internet To type in Bengali, Hindi or Nepali, you don’t need to be a scholar By Mathures Paul In a few years time, you don’t need to know English to be on the web. Every major IT company is spending large amounts to develop interfaces in various languages. Using artificial intelligence structure most of these interfaces are being developed. A leader in the area is Tachyon Technologies and its Quillpad. You don’t need to know how to write Bengali or Hindi or Nepali or Punjabi to use Quillpad. On www.quillpad.in simply choose a language you want the text matter to be in and start typing in English. To be more specific, users spell out words of local languages phonetically in Roman letters, and Quillpad’s predictive engine converts them into other scripts. If you are unsure of the pronunciation of a word, simply right click and a list of alternatives is provided. Launched in 2000, it took KS Sreeram and Ram Prakash almost four years of planning and visualizing various ...