 |
| UP FRONT: The three student organisers of the
conference that attracted 300 participants |
Philandelphia:
Anil Ambani of Reliance Industries Ltd has been awarded the first Wharton
Indian Alumni Award instituted this year to enable students to reach out
to members of Wharton's alumni community. The award was announced at the
annual Wharton-India Economic Forum (WIEF) that featured prominent business
and political leaders, including Victor Menezes, chairman and CEO of Citibank,
North America, and Lalit Mansingh, India's ambassador to the US. Ambani's
address was beamed to the audience through a recorded video presentation.
The conference, entitled "Global Leadership: Vision 2020", focused
on the opportunities and challenges faced by Indians as they establish
global leadership roles. Since its inception in 1996, WIFE has emerged
as one of the fora for discussion of business and economic issues affecting
the Indian subcontinent and the Indians in America.
-Anil Padmanabhan
Women's Voices
 |
| RIGHT WAY: Fahima and Sunita, co-founders of
WAW |
New York: India-born Sunita Mehta, and Fahima Danishgar, an Afghan-American
graduate student, may not have known each other some months back. But
now, as co-founders of Women for Afghan Women (WAN), they are involved
in speaking for the rights of women caught in Afghanistan's nightmare.
At a two-day conference convened by WAW, speakers offered solutions for
building a more equitable Afghanistan. Both Mehta and Danishgar felt it
was important for Afghan women's voices to be heard in the plans for the
rebuilding of Afghanistan. The panellists at the conference emphasised
the importance of not foisting Western standards of feminism on Afghan
women, and allowing them to develop their own means of empowerment in
keeping with their cultural and religious mores.
-Lavina Melwani
 |
| ALL OOMPH: Leone |
In the Buff
California: Sunny Leone moved in with a boyfriend at an age when
most little girls are in school. Then did some adult shoots. In March
this year, the 20-year-old became the first Indian model to feature as
a Penthouse Pet. Subsequently, Leone appeared in Club International and
Cheri, but more recently, she generated a carnal buzz as covergirl of
Hustler's Holiday 2001 issue. "I was nervous," Leone concedes
of her first shoot with Jay Allan, a photographer specialising in erotic
art, "but I'm open-minded and just did it." Leone gives herself
five more years as an adult model.
Blurred Tenses
 |
| PAST & PRESENT: Allan de'Souza with his
work |
New York: You see the orange flames, the plumes of smoke rising
from a skyscraper and you do a U-turn. After all, September 11 has left
us all edgy. But artist Allan de'Souza created this startling photograph
long before the World Trade Center attacks. Take a closer look at the
aluminium-mounted image and you see things are not what they seem, for
the photograph is not of an actual landscape but of a model cityscape
built from found objects-circuit boards, pieces of wood and industrial
waste. "The models were a response to my present experience of the
city, and also my memory of it," he says. "It felt as if the
found objects held a kernel of something larger, that when accumulated
and reconfigured formed a microcosm, a synecdoche for the city, or simply
a visual but evocative joke." Indeed, de'Souza's cityscapes and terrains
are never what they seem. With wit and irony he turns earwax, dental floss,
electronic and computer components, used cotton swabs and trash into dramatic
and lush landscapes. Photographs from the Cityscapes as well as the Terrain
series were exhibited at the Talwar Gallery in New York in November.
-Lavina Melwani
|
Travel Bonanza
Register Now 
CURRENT
ISSUE DEC 17, 2001
){kind=link}