156 items in this section. Displaying page 7 of 16
The Cure is Laughter
It is not a new way of spreading happiness. The method has been practised for a while and has also been captured on celluloid by Hollywood in the film ‘Patch Adams’. In the film (based on a true story) Patch Adams is the name of a student of medicine, who decides to use humour to help patients. The role was played by Robin Williams, Hollywood’s leading comedian. This technique has been adopted in Brazil, to great success....
The Stockholm Effect
Sweden lies in the Scandinavian Peninsula in northern Europe, with Norway to the west and Finland to the northeast. Stockholm, its permanent capital since 1523, is located at the junction of Lake Mälar (Mälaren) and Salt Bay (Saltsjön), an arm of the Baltic Sea, opposite the Gulf of Finland. Due to its location, built as it is upon numerous islands, Stockholm is regarded as one of the most beautiful capital cities in the world. The Stockholm Effect [Illustration by Sudheer Nath] The Swedish capital, Stockholm, has puzzled people for ages....
The Day the Bomb Fell
Near the centre of the explosion, people were instantaneously vapourised by the seeing heat, leaving only their shadows scorched into the stonework of walls or roads. Thousands more were killed by being blown to bits, more commonly being hurled against solid subjects, crushed beneath falling buildings. Others were simply cremated into charred corpses or hideously burned with great patches of skin stipped from their bodies and hanging in flaps around them. In Hiroshima, 13 square kilometres of area was devastated and 92 per cent of its buildings were destryed....
The 'Jawabi Keertan'
I saw it 23 years ago, but the incident is as fresh in my mind as if it happened yesterday. I was seven years old then and staying with my grandmother in Shahjahanpur, a sleepy little town in western Uttar Pradesh. The nearest big city, Bareilly, known for its glass bangles industry, was one hour away. It was the month of July and most people found it difficult to do anything beyond wiping the sweat off their brows....
The Making of a Prodigy
When Siva Kalyan was born, his spine or backbone was deformed resulting in a lifelong difficulty in walking. But that hasn’t stopped the nine-year-old from becoming a prodigy. This child, who loves reading comics, writing stories and enjoys sketching cartoon strips, is learning advanced mathematics and physics from one of the most reputed universities in the United States of America. The Hindu reports that Siva’s parents were in Tamil Nadu when Siva was born. His backbone was not straight, his joints were loose and the muscles were weak....
The 24-hour Film!
Guess how long it takes to make a feature film, say like Star Wars or The Sixth Sense? Nothing less than three to four months! And that’s rushing it through. And if it’s a musical or action film, it will take longer as you add in rehearsal time. Hollywood makes something like 250 films a year and that’s counting foreign language films too. However, the largest film producing country in the world is India with over 700 feature films a year and in 16 Indian languages....
A Sojourn in Venice
Venice is one of Italy’s major seaports, and capital of the province of Venezia in northern Italy. It was the greatest seaport in late medieval Europe and Europe’s commercial and cultural link with Asia. It is also one of the world’s oldest tourist and cultural centres. Aditi De writes of her visit to this most romantic of cities. Venice is such a strange city. It is built on an Italian lagoon in the Adriatic Sea. It has canals instead of roads, which means there are no cars or buses, no trams or trains or bicycles whizzing past us....
Madhubani Magic of Gangadevi
Aditi De of the ‘Women’s Feature Service’ writes about a meeting she had in the 1980s, with Gangadevi, the gifted painter of Mithila. Gangadevi is largely responsible for placing an ancient art, practiced for centuries by the women of her village, in the artistic map of the world. Face to face, Gangadevi, seemed shy at first glance. She drew the pallav (the border of the sari) of her brightly coloured cotton sari over her head, and pushed her black-rimmed spectacles firmly onto the bridge of her nose....
Weave of Survival
To unravel the story behind the famed Kota doria sari, Aditi De of the Women’s Feature Service, travelled to Kota in Rajasthan recently. From there she went to the hamlet of Kaithoon, 15 km from Kota. Kaithoon is the real home of the legendary Kota Doria sari. The creation of each sari is a work of art, involving the labour of the entire family of the weaver. The weaving is mainly done by the daughters of the family, most of whom are small girls too busy working to go to school....
Sundari
Sundari was my cousins’ immediate neighbour. She lived with Lalit Kapoor and his German wife, Hazel, in their beautiful bunglow in Nizammudin East. This goes back many, many years, when I used to come to Delhi from Indore for my holidays. I must have been six or seven years old then. I saw her for the first time from my cousins’ balcony. She was lazing in the garden enjoying the sun on that wintry afternoon....