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METRO
FEATURE
Off
Court
 A
turbaned Leander Paes seated imperially on the back of an elephant was
good south Indian exotica for the 25 foreign players at the 5th Gold Flake
Open tennis tournament in Chennai ... but not enough. So the organisers
got into action last week, bringing the essence of Tamil Nadu in a nutshell-well,
in a hotel ballroom to be precise-with an evening jamboree of Kuchipudi,
Bharatnatyam and some typical Tamil music and food. Who went: Cedric Pioline
of France, Paul Rosner from South Africa, Aslam Qureshi from Pakistan,
Mahesh Bhupathi and about half a dozen other champs along with Anand Amritraj
and Enrico Piperno. (Pioline had to virtually squat to present his forehead
to the sari-clad usher to get the tilak.) Who didn't: world No. 4 and
top seed Magnus Norman of Sweden and eventual winner Michal Tabara of
the Czech Republic. Obviously they don't party when they play.
Near the
entrance, the soothsayer with the flowing beard and a parrot got the inaugural
attention. "Good things await you," he told Rosner. "Like
what?" said the eager South African. "Perhaps the doubles title,"
the interpreter chipped in. Never mind that he was right off target-the
Black brothers got the doubles.
The bangle
corner and the mehndiwali were the other runaway hits-Pioline got a delicate
henna tattoo on his triceps followed by just about everyone else. "Great
people," said 20-year-old Qureshi, possibly referring to the over-attentive
waiters. "I've come with my coach and I am enjoying every moment."
But Paes only came around midnight to enjoy himself, when the traditional
music had finally given way to resounding disco. Blame it on an elephant
ride earlier in the day.
Arun
Ram
Remember
The Time
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| Roy
Chowdhary gives a lec-dem |
Russian
journalist Suleiman Shirishevsky had a talent scribes would kill for:
he could recall any incident (to the date and time) that occurred in the
20 years he was in the profession. Shirishevsky, who lived and died in
the last century, still inspires people like Calcutta-based engineer Biswaroop
Roy Chowdhury, who has crammed 600 years of the Gregorian calendar into
his brain and can tell you whether June 6, 1568 was a Sunday or Tuesday.
"It boils down to using the entire brain, both creative and logical
side, to remember things," says Roy Chowdhury, 27. His techniques
-a combination of phonetics, mnemonics and visual aids - seem simple:
numbers are coded with a visual (the cube root of 10 could be a rose),
while unusual words are tagged a personal-meaning association. The three-time
Limca Book of Records entrant (for remembering 4,200 digits after the
decimal point in the value of Pi), calls this method the Dynamic Memory.
Time to trash the computer?
-Labonita
Ghosh
Feast
of the East
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| Painting
by Paritosh Sen |
Of
all the states in India, the one often easily identified with art and
things artistic is, of course, Bengal. For reasons of history and of temperament,
the Bengali has been held in awe by many Indians as the epitome of culture
and intellectual refinement. Yet, although there is the much mentioned
Bengal School,the sheer range of styles and kinds of artistic enterprises
that proliferate in Bengal today is staggering. Delhi's Art Today gallery
has put up a fairly comprehensive sampling of creative diversity,The Art
Of Bengal. A large group exhibition along with the Calcutta-based Gallery
Katayun comprising no less than 52 artists cutting across age, style and
mediums.
So from
Paresh Maity's huge canvas to Jayshree Burman's whimsical watercolor to
a tiny but gem of a tempera on paper by the late Jamini Roy the gamut
is truly extensive. While there are several works that are out of the
ordinary, the small, unusual landscape by Roy is worth a view for its
own sake. The show will be open till January 31.
-S. Kalidas
Player
of the Week
Ken
Zuckerman. Ali Akbar Khan. Sarod. If you're trying to pick the odd one
out, you can quit trying because there isn't one. Zuckerman happens to
be one of sarod maestro Ustaad Ali Akbar Khan's best disciples. The man
who has studied Indian music for 24 years was in Delhi last Friday for
a concert. You'd think hordes of people would turn up, if only to see
a white man play this difficult Indian instrument. But they missed the
sounds of the beautiful bhup-maand-and the sight-because they were across
the street ogling at Nandita Das who was giving a regulation interview.
Their loss.
-Samrat Chaudhury
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METRO TODAY
Sagarika
Ghose's The Gin Drinkers is easily the best diaspora novel set in India
and an account of existential dilemmas of Indian PLUs , writes INDIA TODAY
Deputy Editor Swapan Dasgupta in 