President Obama makes a toast in honor of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh

President Obama makes a toast in honor of India Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. If you watch the you tube video here, it appears he actually said “Prime Minister Mohammad Singh”.  He welcomed all in hindi, “aapka suagut hai.“

This is President Obama’s first state dinner also. A mix of Indian/ American Indian and American dignitaries from Hollywood and Washington were invited.  Particularly noticed were Governor Bobby Jindal, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Director Shyamalan,  Deepak Chopra, AR Rahman,  Director Steven Speilberg, Katie Curic amongst the guest list of 338.

President Obama Hosts State Dinner in Honor of Prime Minister of India

Traditional evening gowns vied with saris of vibrant colors Tuesday night at the high-glitz dinner in honor of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. There were turbans and bindis as well as diamonds and brocades. Dinner guests were treated to an eye-catching scheme of green and purple, from the green curry surrounding the prawns to the purple floral arrangements paying homage to the peacock, India’s national bird. Dinner menu was predominantly vegetarian as Indian Prime Minister is vegetarian.

President Barack Obama, in his dinner toast, said the setting conjured images of India, where special events are “often celebrated under the cover of a beautiful tent.”

For the dinner, Mrs. Obama wore a sleeveless, gold and cream colored sheath dress with an overlay of silver and matching shawl by Indian-born designer Naeem Khan. At the State Dining Room event earlier in the day, the first lady wore a skirt by Rachel Roy, who is Indian.

Mont Blanc's $24,763 Mahatma Gandhi Pen on Gandhi Jayanti

Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday celebration has reduced to  mere efforts to monetize . Mont Blanc has launched 241 limited edition 18k gold plated $24,763/ each  pens. The pen is engraved with Gandhi’s image and tricked out with a saffron-colored mandarin garnet on the clip and a rhodium-plated nib. A billboard put up this week over Mumbai’s teeming slums shows a gaunt Gandhi next to an image of the swanky pen, with golden threads woven around it to represent Gandhi’s spinning wheel. This one is oozing with irony! Gandhi who lived and preached life of minimalism, his name, today, is being used as a sales gimmick for the opulent and  could-not-care-less types. Mont Blanc got it all wrong.

Traffic moves past a billboard displaying a portrait of Mohandas Gandhi, the ascetic father of India's independence, besides an image of a Montblanc pen in India.

Internet search giant Google paid tribute to Mahatma Gandhi on Friday on the 140th anniversary of his birth, replacing the ‘G’ in its colorful logo with a picture of the Indian independence hero.  Nice gesture.

The eastern state OF India, a region famous for its traditional weaves, hosted a fashion show last Saturday night to promote homespun fabrics, or khadi, made famous by Mahatma Gandhi in the 1930s.

A popular Mumbai boutique, Bombay Electric is launching a clothing collection by an Indian non-profit organization, Women Weave, made entirely of organic khadi, the hand-spun fabric  that Gandhi popularized during India’s struggle for independence.

Today on his 140th birthday, Gandhi’s words, thoughts, and philosophy has been reduced to logos, brand promotion, film stories, and sales gimmicks. All that was profound has lost its relevance.

Mohandas Gandhi Quotes: IPhone App

Well, Mahatma Gandhi now has an Iphone app of his own.

Get all your favorite Mohandas Gandhi quotes all in one place. Pay homage to Gandhi’s intuition with the Mohandas Gandhi Quotes application.

Every time you want to take a peek at one of Gandhi’s quotes, just shake your cell phone or tap the screen with two fingers. This app also gives you a chance to favorite the ones you like.

Just wondering, if only Mahatma Gandhi knew of this viral technology, would he have said more or different.

Bunker Roy, Founder Barefoot College

Our job is to show how it is possible to take an illiterate woman and make her into an engineer in six months and show that she can solar-electrify a village.- Bunker Roy, Founder Barefoot College (Tilonia, Rajasthan).

The students are mostly women. Some are grandmothers. Hundreds have come through here from villages across India and a dozen other countries to learn how to install and maintain solar energy in rural areas. Even though it’s sophisticated coursework, the only pre-requisite for admission to the Barefoot College is that there are no pre-requisites, not even to speak the language.

Bunker Roy founded the Barefoot College in 1972. Projects have always compromised of basic underlying principle of sustainability or self reliance in all aspects of life. Bunker Roy believes,’Any technology that brings in dependency on anybody on the outside is not a technology that will work.’

Over the years Barefoot College has addressed problems of drinking water, girl education, health & sanitation, rural unemployment, income generation, electricity and power, as well as social awareness and the conservation of ecological systems in rural communities. The campus spreads over 80,000 square feet area and consists of residences, a guest house, a library, dining room, meeting halls, an open air theatre, an administrative block, a ten-bed referral base hospital, pathological laboratory, teacher’s training unit, water testing laboratory, a Post Office, STD/ISD call booth, a Craft Shop and Development Centre, an Internet dhaba (cafe), a puppet workshop, an audio visual unit, a screen printing press, a dormitory for residential trainees and a 700,000 litre rainwater harvesting tank. The College is also completely solar-electrified.

Today solar energy drives not just the equipment. This is a larger social experiment to improve the lives of some of the world’s poorest people. It begins in the classroom run by instructors who themselves have little or no formal education. Instruction is delivered with a mix of body language, a few essential terms in English, and lots of hands-on practice.

The students create an illustrated manual they’ll take home. It’s the closest thing to a diploma certifying their training as solar technicians. But just coming here is an unlikely achievement for students like 56-year-old Sarka Mussara, a widowed grandmother and many others who never attended school or even left her village.

Roy says a key to sustaining rural jobs and development is to use technology that can be managed by the local community, like solar lanterns and technology that’s more familiar, like rainwater collectors. All the roofs of this whole campus are connected underground to a 400,000 liter tank. We collect every drop of rain that falls on the campus.

These women, who come here to train themselves, are obviously going to have a very positive effect on the society. They are going to make sure that their daughters go to school or train themselves to be self reliant in life.

Barefoot College is not only a blessing for women of India, but even outside India. Women from Africa, Afghanistan,  and other under-developed parts of the world come here to get trained. Barefoot College has solar electrified some 350 villages across India and dozens more in sub-Saharan Africa and even war-torn Afghanistan.

Source: (1) Barefoot College in India, Article by Fred De Sam Lazaro of RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY (2) Website of Barefoot College India - http://www.barefootcollege.org/

AR Rahman- Oscars 2009

A R Rahman, now know as Mozart Of Madras,  picks up three Oscars  for his work in Danny Boyle’s Oscar winning Slumdog Millionaire. Rahman is the third Indian to win an Oscar, after costume designer Bhanu Athaiya for her work in Gandhi in 1983 and director Satyajit Ray in 1992.

“I just want to thank again the whole crew of Slumdog Millionaire, especially Danny Boyle, for giving me such a great opportunity,” he said, while accepting the award.

Slumdog Millionaire took the best-picture Academy Award and seven other Oscars today, including director for Danny Boyle, whose ghetto-to-glory story paralleled the film’s unlikely rise to Hollywood’s summit. It was a big winner at the Golden Globe Awards. It won film of the year and two other awards at the Richard Attenborough Film Awards, voted on by British critics. The movie has British director, producer, writer and studio. Nevertheless India has claimed it as its own perhaps because of the cast, crew, and location.

Here is the script of the film Slumdog Millionaire.

However the film has not been much loved in India. Not only did the film failed to capture the imaginations of Indian film goers; it’s also been dogged by controversy over its name and the treatment of its child stars. Some have called it poverty-porn.

Residents of a Mumbai slum show their displeasure over the name of the hit film Slumdog Millionaire in a protest outside the office the film's co-star, Anil Kapoor.

“If ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ projects India as Third World dirty underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations,” leading actor Amitabh Bachchan said in a posting on his blog  from Paris, France. “Its just that the ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ idea authored by an Indian and conceived and cinematically put together by a westerner, gets creative global recognition,” he added.”The commercial escapist world of Indian cinema had vociferously battled for years, on the attention paid and the adulation given to the legendary Satyajit Ray… and not a word of appreciation for the entertaining mass-oriented box office blockbusters that were being churned out from Mumbai. “Ray portrayed reality. While, the other – escapism, fantasy and incredulous posturing. Unimpressive for Cannes and Berlin and Venice (film festivals),” he explained.

Smile Pinky: Best Documentary Short Subject

While Slumdog Millionaire won eight  Oscars, it’s not the only film shot in India that was nominated and won. A 40-minute documentary about an eight-year-old girl Pinky Sonkar from Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh, Smile Pinky by American filmmaker Magan Mylan has also been nominated for Best Documentary.

Pinky had stopped smiling, even stopped going to school because she was ashamed of her cleft lip, a deformity 35,000 children are born with in India every year. Then this year, The Smile Train arrived in Pinky’s village and her world changed forever. The story was captured by American filmmaker Magan Mylan for the world in a film he called Smile Pinky. While Pinky was getting ready getting her passport and visa ready to walk on the red carpet, she did not know why. Pinky’s mother could not watch the Oscar ceremony since she does not have access to television set.

Not only some of the cast and their families aware of the success of these films at Oscars, they are not even aware what Oscars are.

“I liked the film. I felt that I was seeing my own life on big screen,” Dighe said, while adding that its success would have little impact at home. “I don’t see anything changing in Dharavi. It will be the same in my lifetime,” Dighe said. “Our politicians couldn’t change anything in the last 60 years, so what will these filmmakers do? They will come and shoot and make money. We will be here today, tomorrow and even after next 60 years,” he added.

“It won’t make any difference to our lives,” agreed Manjula, a mother of six, as she collected water from one of the slum’s communal pumps. “Whoever made it, they will make money. What do we know about all that?” she said.

“I’m not sure if it will do anything for the films that are being made here, because it was made by a British director with a very Western sensibility,” said Mrinal Desai, who worked on the movie as second director of photography. “What I think ‘Slumdog’ will provide is a higher level of credibility to the production process of making films in India and working with Indian crews,” Desai said.”Very much like outsourcing of software writing has been done to India, India might become a destination of sorts for certain kind of film productions as well.”

Noted Bollywood filmmaker, Mahesh Bhatt, said the Indian and Western approach to cinema storytelling remained fundamentally different. “India lives in Dharavi but our films are about Disneyland,” Bhatt said.

Jill Gwen said, “If you have a great quality product with content that is very provocative, endearing and intriguing, people will go to the movies.”

RahulBose added, “You make what you want to make and it carries appeal across cultures and if it will make sense to somebody in Toronto or Berlin.  One will either have to tell special stories or tell them specially.”

“Don’t let the title throw you off,” OprahWinfrey says. “If you are ready to be swept away by one of the most original love stories of the year—one of the most original love stories we’ve ever seen—you must give yourself the gift of Slumdog Millionaire.”

“They have done India proud,” said Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in a message congratulating the “entire Slumdog Millionaire team.”

Kite-flying enthusiasts have gathered from around the world for the 19th International Kite festival in Ahmedabad. More than 163 kite-flying enthusiasts from 36 countries will compete in the five-day long festival which starts today. Each and every kite is unique in color, designs, and size. Some are more than 50 feet in diameter.

Click on the Image for More

Kites has a very ancient kite tradition. Most people believe that kites were brought into India by Chinese travelers F Hien and Huin Tsang. Patang or guddi as it is more commonly known, are made of tissue paper, and bamboo. And almost all Indian kites have a very similar shape and that is of a diamond tissue paper with a center spine and a single bow intersecting the spine.

Kites are a part of everyday life in India. The anxiety and the energy that runs over many a rooftops during pench larana or kite fighting evokes immense nostalgia. The tradition is passed onto kids from their elder brother or father or cousins. or they will pick up the tricks of the trade while assisting their seniors by holding the charkhi or the roll on which glass coated thread or manjha is wound, and keeping the line free of tangles. If you are a good assistant, you would grow up to be a good kite fighter!

Many a afternoons will be spent on the rooftop in kite fighting. Many take it as a leisure activity, and others use it as a means to vote! Many toss a coin and set the rules of distance, and position of attack.

So what exactly is kite fighting? Once the kite flyers indicate that they are ready, the referee gives the signal for the battle to begin. Your objective is to cut the opponent’s kite string by either giving dheel (by leeting out line) or by khainch (pulling the string tightly). Once the kite is cut, it belongs to the person who cuts it, and is declared the winner.

Kites are also an important part of the festival Makar Shakranti which is held on January 14 of every year. Millions of kites will fly in the sky on this festival. International festivals in Jaipur and Ahmedabad coincide with this festival.

Just a fragile piece of paper and two pieces of bamboo, but still such an integral part of our lives and tradition. For centuries kites have connected the people by crossing the boundaries of caste, color, reliogion, and even nationality, and soared the spirits of each into limitless blue skies.

Satyajit Ray at 5

This was published in India Today in January 1979. The text of the article in India Today :