AlokeKumar/india

A.R.RAHAMAN

(1966 - present )


A.R.Rahman was announced winner of the Best Score for Slumdog Millionaire and Best Song for Jai Ho from the same film at the 81st Academy Awards night held at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood on the 22nd of February, 2009. Rahman is the first Indian to win two Oscars. The movie nominated for 10 Oscars in nine categories had a dream run, winning eight trophies, including best film and best director. In a way, the Oscar ceremony evening belonged to India. Other than the Oscars, Rahman has won the BAFTA and the Golden Globe Award for SD Millionaire recently. Indiaaaaaaaaa Jai Ho !

Rahman is working in several of India's various state,language film industries, international cinema and theatre. Rahman, in a career spanning over a decade, has sold more than one hundred million records of his film scores and soundtracks world-wide, and sold over two hundred million cassettes making him one of the world's top 25 all-time top selling recording artists.His acclaimed music compositions have led TIME to declare him the Mozart of Madras and several Tamil commentators have given him the title Isai Puyal (Musical Storm).

Born A.S. Dileep Kumar in 1966 to a Hindu Brahmin family. His father R K Shekhar, of Tamilian descent, was a composer and conductor for Malayalam-language films in Kerala . His father died when Rahman was nine years old, and his family rented out musical equipment as a source of income. His family converted to Islam in the late 1970s. Rahman served as a keyboard player and an arranger in a band "Roots" with childhood friend and percussionist Sivamani. He played the piano, synthesizer, harmonium and guitar. His curiosity in the synthesizer in particular increased because, he says, it was the "ideal combination of music and technology". He began early training in music under Maestro Dhanraj. At the age of eleven, he joined, the troupe of Ilaiyaraaja. Latter Rahman obtained a scholarship to Trinity College of Music in London, where he graduated with a degree in Western Music.

It wasn't until 1992 that Rahman planted the first seeds of his film career. When Sharada Trilok's ad for Leo Coffee won an award, she introduced Rahaman ,the music composer to her cousin, Mani Ratnam. Impressed with his work, the director signed him to compose the music for Balachander's film Roja. Rahman's scored, a colorful, uncluttered combination of pop, rock, and traditional music, reshaping the genre, winning him three awards for Best Music Director. Roja became the equivalent of an Indian cro

INDIA

(1947-present )

INDIA UNDER ATTACK

At the time of posting 125 people were killed, 327 injured and up to 100 still under hostage by suspected Islamic terrorists in a series of attacks in Mumbai targeting British ,American and Israeli citizens, other than Indians.

Militants attacked a crowded railway station, two luxury hotels, an Israeli Centre and a backpacker bar frequented by foreigners, with automatic rifles, bombs and grenades. All the sites were in the south of India's financial capital.

Hostages were seized at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, where a group of British MEPs were staying, and the Oberoi nearby. Paramilitary forces had gathered around both buildings. A police inspector said: "The terrorists are throwing grenades at us from the rooftop of the Taj and trying to stop us from moving in." The co-ordinated attacks, on soft Western targets, showed all the signs of an al-Qaeda strategy. Intelligence "chatter" in recent weeks indicated that al-Qaeda was plotting an attack. The first incidents were reported at about 10.30pm local time.

Even by the standards of terrorism in India, which has suffered a rising number of attacks this year, the assaults were particularly brazen in scale and execution. The attackers used boats to reach the urban peninsula where they hit, and their targets were sites popular with tourists.Guests who had escaped the hotels told television stations that the attackers were taking hostages, singling out Americans and Britons.

A previously unknown group claimed responsibility, though that claim could not be confirmed. It remained unclear whether there was any link to outside terrorist groups. Gunfire and explosions rang out into the morning.Hours after the assaults began, the landmark Taj Mahal Palace & Tower Hotel, next to the famed waterfront monument the Gateway of India, was in flames.


Fire also raged inside the luxurious Oberoi Hotel. Some guests, including two members of the European Parliament, remained in hiding in the hotels, making desperate cellphone calls,describing their ordeal.

Alex Chamberlain, a British citizen, told the television that a gunman had ushered 30 or 40 people from the restaurant into a stairway and, speaking in Urdu, ordered them to put up their hands."They were talking about British and Americans specifically," he said. "There was an Italian guy, who, you know, they said, `Where are you from?' and he said `Iam from Italy', and they let him go."

Attackers had also entered Cama and Albless Hospital, struck Nariman House, home to the city's Israel and attacked the Victorial Railway Terminus. Several high-ranking law enforcement officials, including the chief of the antiterrorism squad and a commissioner of police, were reported killed. The military was quickly called in to assist the police.

. This spot is dedicated to Hemant Karkare , Chief of Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) who was killed in the Mumbai siege.

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

(1863-1902)

Vivekananda was an Indian spiritual leader who promulgated Indian religious and philosophical values in Europe, England, and the United States, founding the Vedanta Society and the Ramakrishna mission.

Vivekananda was born in Calcutta of high-caste parents. His family name was Narendranath ("son of the lord of man") Datta. His father was a distinguished lawyer, and his mother a woman of deep religious piety. The influence of both parental figures clearly affected Vivekananda's early life and mature self-conception. He was a fun-loving boy who also showed great intellectual promise in the humanities, music, the sciences, and languages at high school and college. At the age of 15 he had an experience of spiritual ecstasy which served to reinforce his latent sense of religious calling - through he was openly skeptical of traditional religious practices. He joined the liberal Hindu reforming movement, the Brahmo Samaj (Association of God). But his deeper religious aspirations were still unsatisfied.



In 1881 Vivekananda met the great Hindu saint Ramakrishna, who recognized the young man's immense talents and finally persuaded him to join his community of disciples. After Ramakrishna's death in 1885, Vivekananda assumed leadership of the Ramakrishna order. He prepared the disciples for extensive missionary work, which he himself undertook throughout India - preaching both on the spiritual uniqueness of Indian civilization and on the need for massive reforms, especially the alleviation of the poverty of the Indian masses and the dissolution of caste discrimination. In 1893 his fame and brilliance gained him the nomination as Indian representative to the Parliament of Religions in Chicago.

Vivekananda's successes there led to an extended lecture tour. He stressed the mutual relevance of Indian spirituality and Western material progress - both, in his view, were in need of each other. In Boston he found much in common with the philosophy of the transcendentalists - Emerson, Thoreau, and their followers. After touring England and Europe, Vivekananda returned to the United States, founding the Vedanta Society of New York in 1896. His lectures on the Vedanta philosophy and yoga systems deeply impressed William James, Josiah Royce, and other members of the Harvard faculty. Vivekananda then went back to India to promote the Ramakrishna mission and reforming activities.

Swami Vivekananda took Samadhi, a willful cessation of physical existence through
Yoga, on July 4, 1902.


This spot is for my friend Pihu from India,who comes from the land of Swami Vivekananda. For more on her visit: pihujain.stumbleupon.com [pihujain.stumbleupon.com]

SATYAJIT RAY

(1921-1992)

The Indian film director was noted for his refined and subtly moving studies of family life. His creations possess a humanistic warmth which transcend all barriers. of alien cultural sensibility.

Satyajit Ray was born in Bengal.
His grand father was a painter, a poet, and a scientist who edited the first children's magazine in Bengal. Ray's father was the author of, among other works, Bengal's classic Book of Nonsense.


In 1940 Satyajit Ray graduated with a degree in economics from the University of Calcutta. With the encouragement of Rabindranath Tagore, the great Indian writer-philosopher and close friend of the Ray family, the youth undertook graduate courses in graphics at the Santiniketan Institute.

Ray was subsequently hired as an art director for the Calcutta branch of a British advertising agency in 1945 and was transferred to the firm's London office. Here, besides his regular assignments, he designed a new edition of Bibhuti Bhusan Banerji's novel, Pather Panchali. With the cinematic version already germinating in his mind, Ray, a movie enthusiast from childhood, attended the screenings of John Ford and William Wyler. He was particularly impressed by Vittorio de Sica's Bicycle Thief; and, in addition, he studied Eisenstein and Pudovkin.

When Ray returned to India in 1950, he met the French film maker Jean Renoir, who, while completing the location shooting of The River. Ray began work on the scenario for the Banerji story. Ray's sensitive visualization of the life of a poor Brahmin family, released in 1955, earned over 100 international film awards and fervent critical praise.

Ray continued with Banerji's tale in his next production, Aparajito, a film as lyrical as the first, though more advanced technically and structurally. Before undertaking the concluding portion of the trilogy, the director shifted his focus from the physical hardships of the impoverished to the spiritual malaise of the declining aristocracy, creating The Music Room (1958). The final chapter in Ray's national epic, The World of Apu (1960), contrasting the joys of married life and childbirth with the desolation of defeat and bereavement, provided an ideal ending for a work of art which climaxed with intensity on a mythical level.

With Devi (1960) Ray examined with compassion the problem of Hindu superstition, and in Two Daughters (1961) he explored the tension resulting from unyielding family ritual. Kanchenjanga (1962), the director's first color film, dealt with domestic conflict, as in The Big City (1964), The Lonely Wife (1964), The Chess Players (1977) and The Home and the World (1984). After a health problem he returned to directing in 1989 ,with Ibsen's An Enemy of the People and in 1992, he turned out Agantuk (The Visitor).

In 1992, Ray was presented with a "Lifetime Achievement" Academy Award and in that same year he died on April 23rd.

This tribute is for Samita from Kolkata. India ,who likes the films of Ray. For more on her visit : samitachatterjee.stumbleupon.com [samitachatterjee.stumbleupon.com]

RAJA RAVI VARMA

(1848-1906)


Ravi Varma was an Indian King and painter who achieved recognition for his depiction of scenes from the epics of the Mahabharata and Ramayana. His paintings are considered to be among the best examples of the fusion of Indian traditions with the techniques of European academic art.Raja Ravi Varma is most remembered for his paintings of beautiful women, who were portrayed as very shapely and graceful.

He was the most important and one of the earliest Indian artists of the 19th century to work in oil paints. The subjects of his paintings were often mythological.

He absorbed the influence of such French 19th-century academic painters as William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Gustave Boulanger. His successful exploitation (from 1894) of the lithographic reproduction of his paintings ensured, for the first time in India, that the work of an individual artist could reach a mass market. He was also a proficient portrait painter.


Ravi Varma was born in the royal palace of Kilim anoor, in Kerala, India. Ravi Varma showed talent at a young age. He got the patronage of Ayilyam Thirunal Maharaja of Travancore when he was 14 years of age, and was taught by the palace painter Rama Swamy Naidu. He was later taught oil painting by a British painter, Theodor Jenson. The power and forceful expression of European painting fascinated Ravi Varma, which came across to him as strikingly contrasting to stylized Indian artwork.

Raja Ravi Varma came to widespread acclaim after he won an award for an exhibition of his paintings at Vienna in 1873. He travelled throughout India in search of subjects. He often modeled Hindu Goddesses on South Indian women. Ravi Varma is particularly noted for his paintings depicting episodes from the story of Dushyanta and Shakuntala, and Nala and Damayanti, from the Mahabharata. Ravi Varma's representation of mythological characters has become a part of the Indian imagination of the epics.

Raja Ravi Varma is often criticized for the fact that his paintings overshadowed traditional Indian art forms because of their widespread reproduction as oleographs, flooding Indian culture with his version of Indian myths, portrayed with a rather static realism. Dadasaheb Phalke, considered the father of Indian cinema, is thought to have been influenced by Ravi Varma's static realism.

Raja Ravi Varma was married to Rani Bhageerathi Bayi of the Mavelikara Royal Family and to them were born three sons and two daughters.


After a successful career as a painter, Raja Ravi Varma died in at the age of 58. He is one of the greatest painters in the history of Indian art.

This spot is for my dear friend Jayshree. She writes , "Enjoyed Ravi Varma very much. We have an ancestral painting done by him in our home". For more on her visit : moonrays.stumbleupon.com [moonrays.stumbleupon.com]