Traveling Wilburys

We traveled quite a bit in February.

Mysore.
H.D. Kote on our field trip.
Nagarhole Forest... jeep ride that I would not want to do again.
Kabini... crossed the river. beautiful coracle ride.
Wayanad... lovely food. very very short trip to the border.
Somnathpur... Hoysala temple architecture.
Bylakuppe... Golden Temple, monastery, Tangka paintings, Buddhist flags.
Bangalore... stop over to catch my breath.

Back to Chennai.

Colour Thandava Part II- Seminar & Panel Discussion on Colours

We, Good Earth and DakshinaChitra Arts Management Interns, organised a seminar and panel discussion on Colours on 13th March, 2010.

The morning session had the speakers give a short lecture on colour in their respective fields.

The speakers were:

Mr. G. Venketram (reknowned photographer) on Photography
Mr. K. Hariharan (national award winning director & head of L.V. Prasad film academy) on Cinema
Mr. Prakash Dharmarajan (President, Ogilvy & Mather, Chennai) on Advertising
Ms. Yamuna N.S. (reknowned theatre personality) on Theatre
Ms. Sharan Apparao (Owner, Apparao Gallery & Art dealer)on Art
Ms. Rehane (Fashion Designer) on Fashion
Ms. Visalakshi Ramaswamy (Textiles expert) on Tradition Textiles
Ms. Vasantha Muthiah (Faculty, NIFT, Chennai) on Textile Design
Ms. Leela Samson (Dancer & Director, Kalakshetra) on Dance

The afternoon session was a Panel Discussion moderated by Mr. Sadanand Menon, journalist and cultural critic.

Piet Mondrain

During the class on Design Movements, we came across Piet Mondrain and the De Stijl design movement. I found Mondrain's work truly amazing.

He believed in geometric shapes and line, only horizontals and verticals- which signified the female principle and the male principle. He used bold bright colours, mostly the primary colours- blue, yellow and red- which stood for ether, sky and earth. The manner in which he distributes the colorus and the shapes gives a strange sense of balance.

The Schroder house is one house that he designed during his career and it has all the elements of the De Stijl movement and his own characteristic style.

He also designed furniture and this chair above is a classic example of how the design has evolved from the De Stijl elements.

Some interesting people I came across

The Pelican Man and The Elephant Man

Two people I happened to meet while in H.D. Kote...

Manu, who calls himself 'the pelican man', is a naturalist. He has been involved in saving the endangered pelican species in India, and many other such endangered animal and plant species. When I met him he was involved in bringing theatre to the Jenu Kuruba children's school. We even watched a skit that was put up by these kids after a workshop they had with 'the pelican man' and his group.

Surendra Varma, is a person who I call 'the elephant man'. He works in the Ecology Dept. of IISc, Bangalore. He has been studying elephants and human interaction for the past two decades or so. On the last day that we were there, when we were all dead tired after an all nighter, he managed to keep us all glued to his powerpoint presentation till late night... where he shared a lot of information about elephants, the whys and whats of their behaviour, some statistical analyses about them and many anecdotes and trivia about elephants.

:)

The Jenu Kurubas

As a part of our Cultural Studies course, we went for a field trip to H.D. Kote off Mysore. As a team we visited the National Folklore Support Centre's Digital Archive centre and also many tribal settlements or haadis. Our professor, M.D. Muthukumaraswamy had already given us an overview of the Jenu Kurubas or the 'honey gatherers', a forest tribe, who lived in the forests/ the forest peripheries of Karnataka and northern Kerala.

Before we started on the field trip we read a book written by Mr. Ksheerasagar, who had worked extensively with the Jenu Kurubas. The book was titled, 'Playing with the Children of the Forest'. It talked about how the children of this forest tribe had various games and toys which were intertwined with the forest itself. Their life and outlook on life was deeply rooted in the forest itself.

We were introduced to Dr. Peter Claus an anthropologist and folklorist from the Fulbright Academy. He showed us a short film called the Rabbit Proof Fence, with the tagline 'If you were kidnapped by the government, would you walk the 1500 miles back home?', as a mood setter for our trip to H.D. Kote.

Once we reached H.D. Kote, we spent our days meeting tribal leaders and members of the Jenu Kuruba community. These people were originally forest dwellers till the Government passed the Forest Act. After that they were forced to vacate the forests and live in the forest periphery and in the villages. They still struggle as they have been uprooted from their natural surroundings. They crave to go back to their forests. They face an identity crisis as there is an inevitable clash of living conditions. They have been given box like constructed houses by the government and the children go to village schools, while the elders are still itching for the forest.

The children took us to the forest periphery one day and showed us wild roots, and different tricks and games with plants, flowers and leaves. They cooked the wild roots and served it for us. It was quite yummy with its smoked taste. We were also given black tea with jaggery.

Somanna was another stunning character we met. He is a powerhouse of knowledge about herbs and animals. He is a tribal leader who contested in the MLA elections only to be defeated by a fake tribal candidate. He is a very simple and humble person who spent days with us explaining things to us and accompanying us on our trips to the various haadis.

Prof. Kikkeri Narayan is another expert on the Jenu Kurubars. We were honoured to have him as well with us for a few days. He showed us many documentaries and gave scholarly inputs on the Jenu Kurubars, their rituals and practices, their language composition and their beliefs.

We spent one night at a Girijan school near another haadi, where we stayed in one of the classrooms. It was a one night halt, as that particular haadi was quite a distance away from the dormitory where we were staying on the other days. We got to interact with the school going Jenu Kurubar kids the next day morning.

At the end of the 5 days, we had collected some 'life experience narratives' or 'oral history' of the Jenu Kurubars. Ours was an academic trip there, so all we did was to document what we observed, heard and experienced there. We did make a presentation and a contribution to the NFSC digital archive before we left. As we left, we realised that the Jenu Kurubars had touched our hearts in a manner that's very unique and extremely difficult to verbalise. There was one amongst our group who actually had tears in her eyes as she said bye to Somanna.