When silhouettes echo a cause

Gaurav Jai Gupta’s line V, on show in the city, weaves in tribal tunes and the Kucheipadar villagers’ revolt against bauxite mining

It began with the sound of revolution. Delhi-based designer Gaurav Jai Gupta was on the prowl for his next spark of inspiration, when he stumbled upon Word Sound Power, an artist collective by musicians Chris McGuinness and Delhi Sultanate, who repurpose protest music from conflict zones across South Asia into contemporary electronica. Gaurav plugged into ‘Blood Earth’, the album born of the project’s journeys through Kucheipadar village in Kashipur, Orissa, sampling the folk songs that tribals used to defy corporate bauxite mining of their soils. In their desperate cries for autonomy, and charged calls for a united revolt, Gaurav found a story he wanted to tell through clothes.

“The more I heard their music, the more I wanted to know the history behind these folk songs, and the deeper I delved into research,” says Gaurav. The Autumn-Winter 2014 line from his label Akaaro, thus translates the visual cues of this terrain onto a wide variety of silhouettes inspired by Gaurav’s observances of the people of Kucheipadar. Titled V (Vendetta), and now showcased at the Amethyst Room in Chennai, the line features shift dresses, jackets, loose crop tops, three-fourth pants, over-sized shirts, sculpted drapes, knee-length skirts and capes that could be worn either as separates or layered into an ensemble.  “We looked at the work-wear of the Dongria Kondh tribal community and modelled our cuts broadly along those shapes. Most of the men and women work at the mines there, so we have jumpsuits in this line inspired by that, several men’s shirts reworked for women, and lots of scarves, worn similar to the way the women drape sarees around their necks there.”

V takes forward Akaaro’s reputation in homespun fabrics that are either pure silk or cotton, or blends of the two with stainless steel. “There’s often a misconception that handlooms cannot be edgy, but Akaaro has always stood for a modern, contemporary, edgy, experimental interpretation of handloom, and this collection falls in line with that,” says Gaurav. The resultant coal blue colour of the stainless steel blend also fit perfectly in with his vision of V’s colour palette. While silver-sheer pieces add that shock of sudden shimmer to the collection, and symbolise the finished product steel, the line largely plays with mustard yellows, blood reds, oranges and brown reflecting its earthy, rooted spirit.

Alongside the conception of V, Gaurav happened to be building a collection of terracotta accessories, with chunky, statement, coiled or hung necklaces, which perfectly complemented the texture of the line. Hence, on the ramp, the line was flaunted to the background of Blood Earth’s music, and paired with these terracotta pieces and aluminium shoes. On the surface, V features little embellishment, save for the V pattern of the Chevron weave itself, which Gaurav has frequented in the past.

While the weave lends its name to the collection’s title, V, Gaurav says, also stands for victory. “It is my political statement of revolt, too, against an unsympathetic government that doesn’t hear its people’s voices. What’s the point if fashion is merely pretty,” asks Gaurav, “it needs to do and mean far, far more.”

October 17, 2014

http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/fashion/gaurav-jai-guptas-line-v-on-show-in-chennai/article6507087.ece?textsize=small&test=2

Playing with paper

Contemporary artists have used paper imaginatively to create diverse works that are on show in the city

It’s everywhere, and there’s no escaping it. It’s in our books and our wallets, with our morning coffee and on our daily commutes. But it’s also slowly slipping out of our lives. As the world strides towards a digital future, Apparao Galleries pauses to look at this object most innocuous: paper. Its ongoing show, ‘The Passion of Paper’, brings together contemporary artists from across the country who look at the prosaic medium in vastly imaginative ways.

French artist Diane de Valou, who works from Jaipur as well, revels in the scale and texture of handmade paper in her series of untitled paintings. Giant strips of painted paper line up vertically along her landscape canvas, exploring various colour schemes — either fading, strip by strip, from deep brown to pale orange, or simply reflecting a rainbow-like shift of colours. Mukta Wadhwa, in Possibilities I and II, works with slivers of papers too — slim, pure white and overcast by parallelly travelling copper wires. Bordering on sculpture, her works play with light and shadow, buoying the three-dimensional capabilities of paper. Artist Dhasan takes this further in the way he twists, folds and coils coloured paper into spirals packed too tight to tell their beginnings from their endings.

‘No beginning, no end’ reads Chantal Jumel’s drawings on paper inspired by kolams typically drawn on floors. She covers her canvas with endless rewritings of the ‘om’ symbol, till it ceases to be a symbol in itself anymore, but takes on the shapes and patterns she fuses it into. Her ‘Origin of the World’ piece too, uses the repeated motif to create a voluptuous woman from whose being the stars, the planets and space emanate. It is this simple use of symbols that Rajesh Patil plays with as well in his ‘Con-Temporary’ series that takes everyday artefacts such as light bulbs and house keys, and overlays them with English and Hindi scripts to comment about contemporary issues that plague our world.

S. Nataraj looks at two diverse worlds in his watercolours on paper: in the first people trudge down roads, their backs bent double with burdens, while in the second, a jet-setting class perches on airplanes, pipes in hand, umbrellas shielding them from the sun, flying far away while the world languishes below. It’s this juxtaposition of two worlds that Mainaz Bano does in one frame which takes the courtly textile prints from her Awadh hometown in Uttar Pradesh and merges them with single images that represent the nation, the tiger, for instance. This posturing questions the relevance and place of royalty in today’s democratic times. Rohini Singh also draws from her cultural history in ‘Shadow of life’ and ‘Postcard From The Hills’, both of which superimpose paper cut-outs to create a picture of quiet, village living.

The Passion of Paper also looks at paper in conjunction with other media. Parul Pattani, for example, layers plastic bags over flowers from magazines in ‘Lotus’, while Srinivasa Reddy looks at paper in the form of currency in ‘Good Vision’. Here, Gandhi peers at a Rs. 1,000 note through a microscope above, while a man with binoculars examines it from below — both seemingly taking a closer look at the root cause of greed.

October 16, 2014

http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/playing-with-paper/article6503318.ece

The shape of things to come

As one of two artists chosen for the Rashtrapati Bhavan’s ‘In-Residence Programme’, Chennai-based Rahool Saksena speaks about his days in the President’s house and seeing art in the discarded

Rahool Saksena. Photo: R Ragu THE HINDU

Rahool Saksena is still a little breathless from the whirlwind the last three weeks of his life has been. From the moment he stepped off the Delhi-bound flight, and was whizzed past the city’s tight traffic as a State Guest, to when he stepped into Rashtrapati Bhavan as one of two artists chosen nationwide for its ‘In-Residence Programme’, dined with the President and gifted him his art, Rahool’s days have been filled with moments of awe. For a boy who grew up watching the stars, learning of rocks from his geologist father, and went on to exchange a 15-year corporate career for the life of an artist, there could be no greater validation for following “the song in his heart.”

Rahool first heeded that quiet call as a child, crafting and pruning bonsai plants. Years later, in memory of one of his cherished pieces that withered away, he fashioned a replica, this time, immortalising it as a lampshade, its stand resembling the bonsai’s stem, shedding light on a little four-legged animal, all of which was carved from roots picked up at construction sites in Vasant Kunj, Delhi. And therein lies Rahool’s expertise: to take the scrap of the world and turn it into art. From discarded bangles to coconut shells, food grains and chillies, wax and paper, Rahool’s eyes see possibility everywhere. At the Rashtrapati Bhavan’s premises too, he nearly stalled an official tour to pick up a discarded piece of wood that resembled a peacock’s head to him. “Sometimes, it’s the things I see that spark the idea for a piece; at other times, I’ve got the idea in my head and I’m hunting for that exact material to suit it,” he says.

It is in this perfect blend of diverse media that Rahool finds great joy. His gift to the President, for instance, was ‘Nritya’, a dancing peacock, its crown and beak gold-plated, with feathers of fused glass, set against a backdrop of rain carved into wood, and framed in raw silk. It was Rahool’s ode to the peacock apartments that he was housed in at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the peacock golf course around him, the peacock dining room and all the live peacocks that peopled his weeks there. The programme’s purpose was to demystify the Rashtrapati Bhavan for common citizens, and open its hallowed precincts to inspire art.

Thus, as exciting as watching a film at the President’s private theatre and sitting beside sculptures of freedom fighters was, Rahool treasures his time in the Rashtrapati Bhavan’s many museums, soaking in the splendour and grandeur of the best of art from around the world. His time there concluded with an exhibition of his pieces for State eyes only, which was replicated as ‘Re.Play’ at Delhi’s Lalit Kala Akademi for the public.

‘Re.Play’, which Rahool hopes to showcase in Chennai too, soon, spanned the width of his artistic career thus far. All through his time with various multinational companies, which peaked as Creative Director of O&M, Rahool rummaged through abandoned or leftover fragments of metal, wood and glass to repurpose into quirky pieces of art. In 2002, he finally gathered his guts, quit the corporate world and plunged fully into art. It was in this early season that Rahool made a name for himself with his signature lamps, pieced together with everything from black pepper pods and cans to ceramic and twisted metal, and sold at oddly numbered rates, the dividends of which went to different causes. “The lamps were a way to spread light, both physical and metaphorical,” he says. One his most innovative pieces remains the ‘Terrarium,’ a wide-bottomed bottle that housed within it a thriving garden, fed with light from the lamp above it, and auctioned for NGO The Banyan. “There’s only one principle behind all of this,” says Rahool, “and that’s ‘Willing to experiment, allowed to fail’.”

Over the years, Rahool has also spent substantial time working on commissioned art for close to 50 corporates, such as Ford, Murugappa, and Radio Mirchi among others, designing logos, gifts and coats of arms, thus bringing together the conceptual strengths from his advertising experience, and his penchant for creativity. Creative satisfaction, though, comes from the passion he has for reviving crafts that generate employment. Through workshops with master craftsmen at DakshinaChitra, for example, Rahool worked on redesigning coconut shells into everything from pen stands to mobile holders, and creating souvenirs from palm leaves, a project he wants to carry forward today. His days, now, are spent in shifting workspaces, from glass factories, and carpentry shops to granite sculptors looking for material that will fuel his future plans: public sculptures of the trash gathered from Chennai’s streets. In the meanwhile, he hopes to work with children, inspiring them, just as he did, to follow the song in their hearts.

October 14, 2015

http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/shape-of-things-to-come/article6500589.ece

Future-facing design

Chennai-based architect Benny Kuriakose tells me about the changing definitions of sustainable living

Benny Kuriakose. Photo: R. Ravindran THE HINDU

In architect Benny Kuriakose’s mind, there’s a fledgling dream that’s taken root and pushes forth shoots. He dreams of solar-powered apartments that exist off the grid but for air-conditioning, where a planted indigenous forest co-exists with rain-harvested water bodies, where each home opens into his trademark courtyard and ornate veranda, and each floor hosts common living and dining spaces, where terrace farming feeds its inhabitants and the aged find convenience and purpose; where the best of commune living meets the standards of urban design.

Only, these aren’t just dreams.

They’ve materialised into site drawings and floor plans, multi-dimensional projections and cross-sectional views, and most recently found a Coimbatore-based buyer. For the architect best known for designing DakshinaChitra’s public buildings and heritage homes, for fronting Chennai’s alternative architecture subculture, and for helming the Muziris Heritage Project as conservation consultant, this foray into “green living” is his next phase of reinventing the definition of sustainable architecture.

The seeds to his career path were sown as a young idealistic student working with Kerala Shastra Sahitya Parishad that nurtured in him the science of sustainability. In 1984, fresh out of College of Engineering, Thiruvananthapuram, Benny interned with Laurie Baker, whose philosophy of architecture synced perfectly with his personal ideology. From 1985, he grew from strength to strength in Kerala, building low-cost houses that mirrored Laurie’s style, until his popularity peaked in 1992 with the building of actor Mammootty’s house. “Deep within though, I knew it was time to move away from Baker buildings and discover my own architectural voice,” says Benny. It was Laurie himself, who directed Benny toward DakshinaChitra, where he eventually made a name transplanting and reassembling entire traditional Kerala homes. Talent aside, Benny says he owes this young success to the anonymity and freedom to experiment that Chennai offered him, away from the arclights in Kerala. “Chennai gave me creative rebirth.” It also gave wings to his first love, conservation architecture, the subject of his masters in University of York, England.

For the last five years, Benny has given this passion full expression through the Muziris Heritage Project. Floated in 2008, it is India’s largest conservation project that would spread over 25 sites and links Kerala’s histories of Dutch, Arabic, Chinese, Jewish, Greek, Portuguese and Roman roots in the forgotten port of Muziris from 1 Century BC onward. “Research and excavations have shown that there were close to 400 historic buildings here, about ten per cent of which we’ve begun to restore. It’s not even scratching the surface.” Under the leadership of the then Kerala finance minister Thomas Isaac, Benny and his team drew up the project’s master plan, immediate among which were the successful restoration of the 1615 Paravoor synagogue, with even a replica of the original ark of the testament made, and the renewal of the Dutch 1663 Paliam Palace. The first phase of the Muziris Heritage Project is finally set to be inaugurated by the President of India next month.

For the scale and ambition of the project, it’s been compared to the conservation of Greece’s Athens and Cambodia’s Angkor Wat, and the UNESCO hopes to integrate it into its worldwide Spice Route trail. But for all the efforts Benny and his team have showered on the project, its progress has been slow, courtesy characteristic political hiccups. Benny’s satisfaction though, comes from the local community’s involvement with the project, which included even the rehabilitation of the still-thriving Kottapuram and Paravur markets. “We had no model for this project; our only guiding principle was to never approach it top-down with forced legislation, but to build it grassroots upward.”

The proposed renovation of Cherman Juma’ah Masjid’s basement

The success of this outlook was most evident when the regional heads of the Cherman Juma’ah Masjid, believed to be India’s oldest mosque, built in 629 AD by Malik Ibn Dinar, requested the project to restore the mosque to its original state. Over the years, atypical minarets and domes, metal sheets and GI roofs had been appended to the structure, modernising it out of character. “The older generations simply mimicked stereotypical Persian architecture when they re-did it. Our restoration will replicate the turn of the first century Arab mosques, which will be more consistent with the times Cherman was built in.”

In the two decades that Benny has worked in conservation architecture, the sphere has mushroomed in India from nonexistent to flourishing, thanks to greater awareness of heritage preservation. “Back when I began, there were hardly any projects. But one needed to live! So I took to building new houses that drew from the traditional Kerala and Chettinad styles I’m familiar with, and reinterpreted them contemporarily.”

Today, Benny is known for structures built of natural materials, timber, timbre, stone,

One of the many low-cost houses Benny has designed in Chennai include Casa Rojo.

exposed brick and much else, that are energy efficient, thermal controlled and environment friendly. Nature segues seamlessly into his houses’ interiors through broad courtyards and verandas. “I begin each new house on a blank slate. All I’m sure of is that our homes must cater to our various moods, not force occupants to adjust their personalities to the concrete boxes we now build.” Benny’s unconventional material choices have often led his architecture to be labelled low-cost, but as he is quick to clarify, low-cost is relative, and means “performance approach to cost reduction,” a definition he imbibed from Baker. In practice, it took spacious lands and a considerable budget for these artisan homes, a luxury often affordable only to the elite.

To balance the tilt of this see-saw, in some sense, Benny spent three years of his life, from 2005, in Tharangambadi and Chinnangudi villages in Nagapattinam, designing almost 1,500 individualised homes for fisher folk under the Tsunami Rehabilitation Project. Earlier this year, he completed his Phd on low-income housing from IIT, which focuses on the social and cultural factors that dictate the success or failure of public housing, where current research has only zeroed in on its physical aspects. “It’s true that we have public houses built in the 80s collapsing barely 25 years later; if we could build better, surely they’d last longer.” But an ignored aspect, says Benny, has been in examining what degree of ownership inhabitants have over these houses, and whether their sense of community encourages or dissuades upward social mobility. A book of this thesis is set to release this year.

“It’s taken me all these years to realise just how important it is to theorise in academic terms, what I’ve learnt from over two decades of practical experience,” says Benny. His home-office on Ranjith Road is flooded with interns and young architects eager to learn from him; more books are in the pipeline and, in two weeks, Benny will also conduct a three-day workshop at DakshinaChitra on his brand of vernacular architecture.

There’s an example he loves to tell his students of how when he built Chandramandapa and Chandramandala at Spaces in Besant Nagar, in honour of dancer Chandralekha, the skeleton of his structure already lay in the Natyashastra’s ancient stagecraft design principles. His task was only to modernise our native wisdom. “In the 50s and 60s, we made mistakes imitating the Western concrete and glass trends that were never meant for our needs.” Says Benny, “We mustn’t make the same mistakes with alternative alternate and green architecture either.”

And that explains Benny’s decision to enter the apartment market with his new vision for the vast possibilities of green building. “If there’s one critique I may make of Laurie Baker, it is that while he pointed out the pitfalls of mainstream architecture, his own remained niche. With public housing, Muziris and now the “green living” project, I’m attempting to step out of my comfort in the alternative and into the mainstream, but, of course, in my own terms. Is this wise? Only time will tell!”

August 1, 2014

http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/futurefacing-design/article6272325.ece

Movement, his muse

A dancer’s fluid moves and body language are reflected in the soft lines and hues of designer Joe Ikareth’s collection on view at Amethyst

A piece from the collection

Joe Ikareth loves dance. As a child, he worshipped Michael Jackson’s moves. As a designer, he launched his first collection with Parisian dancers and acrobats, swirling and swishing in his costumes. The decade since has seen him work with Kalaripayattu artistes, Bharatanatyam, Kathakali and Mohiniyattam dancers to interpret their traditional attire for contemporary couture. In his most recent collection, currently on display at Amethyst Room, Joe still translates the magnificence of movement into pieces that glory in that gentle fall over the body’s curves, in soft colours, clean lines and simple fluidity.

Joe’s artistic impression of a dancer’s body language is spoken through creative pattern-making. He hand-makes the patterns for every collection, introducing lines of movement and direction in basic templates, such as circles, squares and L-shapes, by using darts, pleats, pin-tucks and delicate detailing. The collection at Amethyst ranges from structured tunic tops and cowl pants, to skirt-trousers and double-layered pants, each with his trademark sense of flow and comfort. “Traditional pattern-makers are often unaware of the human body and the shapes it takes in movement. We get that knowledge from dance and, over the years, we’ve become so experienced with pattern-making that those ideas from the stage are not lost in translation in the clothes,” says Joe.

Joe came to this method of ‘design through pattern-making’ from his student days at NIFT Delhi. Slated to become an illustrator first, his professors in college guided his transition from “two-dimensional sketches into three-dimensional cloth”. Besides art, as a writer and musician himself, Joe believes his clothes are subconsciously moulded by these alternate creative pursuits too. “The clothes never come out of nowhere. The poetry, dance, music and design inspire each other within me,” he says. His inventive process is admittedly mood-inspired; the greys, whites, blues and other light pastel colours in this collection, Joe explains, are deliberately “soft on the eye” for they come from the “place of quiet” that he was in when he envisioned them.

There is also a larger philosophy that defines Joe’s work. After NIFT, Joe spent three years working with designer Suneet Varma in Delhi, whom he then left to relocate to Kottayam, Kerala. With a team of five at his home studio, and a Joe Ikareth store in Mattancherry, Kochi, Joe now retails to big metros across India, managing everything from the sketching to cuts, sewing and finishing from Kottayam. The move was a purposeful choice to get away from the “noise and pollution”, both literal and metaphorical, of big cities and “step out of the rat race” of fashion. Thus he no longer creates Spring/Summer season collections, only designs individual pieces that make it to designer boutiques. “I wanted to create a more efficient, more pure design that wasn’t dictated by the pressure of what was ‘in’ or ‘out’ in the dominant trends. Because we’re in a quieter place shouldn’t mean that we’re any less interesting or creative,” he says.

These personal choices reflect most in Joe’s preference for natural fabrics — cotton, linen and silk — that make this collection a return-to-roots statement of sorts. Over the years, Joe has become renowned for his designs that modernise Kerala’s traditional handlooms, from his most recent ‘Sing the Body Electric’ line that had Jaipuri block-prints on white handloom, to ‘Structured Poetry’ that used silver threads and mirrors over Kerala cotton. Although this collection at Amethyst doesn’t showcase these lines, the environment-conscious design aesthetic is still visible. “Even in a technology-dictated industry, it is important to keep the traditions of pattern-making, block-printing, and embroidery alive by bringing it into a new, contemporary space.” Joe also recently fronted ‘TransForm’, an initiative to upcycle his and other designers’ ‘dead stock’ into one-off couture pieces that are available at his Kochi store; his team also repurposes all excess fabric at this studio into carry bags. “The idea of repurposing cloth is something that can be taken forward into a whole art form of its own,” says Joe. While that is certainly one of his future projects, he continues to experiment and evolve his existing designs into new fabrics and new styles.

The clothes never come out of nowhere. The poetry, dance, music and design inspire each other within me

July 08, 2014

http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/fashion/movement-his-muse/article6189976.ece

Wear your garbage on your sleeve

Kochi is one of Kerala’s largest sources for used plastic bottles that are transformed into polyster fibre for fabric

Trash to resource : A view of the sorting process at a local bailing unit PHOTO: THULASI KAKKAT THE HINDU

“8 Bottles. 1 Jean. Waste Less” proclaimed a televised Levi’s advertisement last year. A single used PET bottle hung by a rope in the opening shot. In seconds, it travelled through dustbins, garbage dumps, and a recycling unit, met a crusher, was broken into flakes and melted into polyester fibre. A pair of jeans emerges at the close of the advertisement. Was this merely clever marketing, or could clothes really be made of waste? A growing global market of discarded PET bottles reveals that Levi’s is just one among numerous clothing retailers slowly turning to trash for raw material. And in this global chain of recycling, Kochi plays a small role.

At the deserted end of Jew Street in Mattancherry, far away from the tourist hub, stands an unassuming godown-like building called ‘Shadhiya Bottles’. Within it mountains of plastic bottles pile up, ready to be recycled for textile industries elsewhere in the country. In business parlance, this set-up is called a ‘bailing unit’ and performs the first step in converting post-consumption bottles into usable material. Owner M.S. Shameer says, “I have five tempo vans that go across Kochi, and to Kottayam, collecting used bottles from shops every day. The average daily collection varies between one and two tonnes.” The price paid to shopkeepers fluctuates by the season, from Rs. 20 upwards for a kilo of empty bottles. Another common source for used PET is migrants who scavenge waste dumps for extra income. They are paid Rs. 15 per kilo, says Shameer, as what they find is often of assorted branding unlike shops who supply a uniform variety.

From mineral water bottles, to cool drink and aerated beverage bottles, and most commonly, alcohol bottles, they arrive in various shapes, sizes and colours to be sorted by a team of eight people. Clear bottles are separated from blue and green ones, while other colours are piled together since each colour is processed for a different colour of fibre. Two women remove metal rims and caps, and hundreds of bottles are then fed into a hydraulic bailing machine that, over an hour, crushes them into cubical bales weighing 140 kilos each. “A tonne of uncrushed bottles would take an entire lorry to transport, but one tonne makes eight bales that can fit in a regular lorry,” says Shameer.

Trash to resource : The bottles crushed into ‘bales’ for transport PHOTO: THULASI KAKKAT THE HINDU

In Kerala, the largest collection of used bottles comes from Ernakulam district, says Markham Gomes, a trader who is the middleman transporting bales from local units to textile industries in Gujarat, Delhi and Tamil Nadu, the three States where recycled polyester fibre is primarily manufactured. While a handful of bailing units are in Kochi, (clustered in Perumbavoor), Palakkad, Thrissur and Kozhikode are also hubs, he says. Bales cost between Rs. 30 and Rs. 60 per kilo, amounting to almost Rs. 5,000 for one. “Prices depend on international rates for fibre. The demand for used bottles is now high enough for us to even import them. Just last month we brought 2,000 tonnes excavated from dumps in West Asia. If this import trend grows, the local market rates will fall,” says Markham. Even so, the demand for used PET from Kerala is high, he adds, because the majority of the bottles here are liquor bottles with a greater thickness that yields more fibre.

One of the key buyers of Kerala’s used PET in South India is Sulochana Mill for recycled polyester fibre at Palladam, between Tirupur and Coimbatore. Once the bales reach the mill, they are broken into flakes and undergo repeated washing with hot water and chemicals to remove all contaminants such as label paper and gum, says V.S. Ganesan, general manager, marketing. “This stage involves much manual labour as well. The clean flakes are then melted into filaments that are solidified into ‘recycled polyester fibre’ that has 80 per cent of the strength that virgin polyester has and can be used just like it is.” Thus clear bottles make white fibre, while the coloured bottles giving blue and green are 20 per cent of the produce. These are then spun into yarn, dyed different colours and used as synthetic fabric.

“The market for recycled polyesters has grown considerably in the last decade and so the business of procuring used bottles has become quite competitive,” says Shameer. While revolutionary in its technology, recycled polyester has been questioned for whether its elaborate processing method is environmentally sustainable. What it certainly does though, is keep the colossal waste from our consumerist cultures away from open dumps and landfills. It’s finally time to wear your garbage on your sleeve.

June 19, 2014

http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/wear-your-garbage-on-your-sleeve/article6130132.ece

The world’s their stage

Swiss mime artiste Markus Schmid’s travelling production troupe Andrayas has performed across the world, addressing social issues and finding stories of hope

Mime is a universal language, believe Maria Gomez and Markus Schmid. Photo: Thulasi Kakkat THE HINDU

French writer Jean Giono’s story The Man Who Planted Trees, tells of a young man’s meeting with an old shepherd. Through their conversation, the shepherd narrates his life story of hardship, of losing his family and home to a great fire, yet striving to fulfil his life’s one goal: the single-handed creation of a large forest. The tale ends with the shepherd having realised his dream. For Swiss mime artiste Markus Schmid, the story forms the script of a play he’s performed 150 times in the last year and a half, across three continents to audiences in jungles and hills, with his travelling family production troupe, Andrayas

Markus performs The Man Who Planted Trees in Kochi on March 19 and in Kannur on March 20, both in association with Helen O’Grady, an international organisation advocating theatre for children, and Back2School, an after-school learning programme in Kerala. Markus says the play’s themes of resilience and daring to dream mirror the story of his family. “Eight years ago, we had an idea: to leave Switzerland and travel the world as a family in a non-touristy way,” says Markus. “We spent six years planning, preparing two plays, went to Argentina first and have since been to Paraguay, Peru, Colombia, Costa Rica, South Africa, several countries in South-East Asia and we’ve been in India from January,” says his biologist wife, Maria Gomez.

The couple travel with their children Felix (12) and Leo (10), who are currently home-schooled, and manage the sets, props and stage design of Markus’ 45-minute acts. “Mime is a universal language. I use practices from the circus, puppetry, film and theatre, blending projections, shadows, body language, music and visual tools to tell a story. The plays – ‘Enki’ based on the Sumerian mythical god of fresh water, and the forest planter’s story – address environmental issues that are universal too,” says Markus. From nation to nation, responses to the acts have differed, but always sparked conversations about local struggles.

In Laos, for instance, their scripts had to clear censorship boards before performance, but the audiences resonated deeply with the themes because these were strong political issues there. In India, Andrayas has travelled across the metros and covered many cities in Tamil Nadu, and is soon headed to Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. The greatest benefit from this nomadic way of life has been to be “connected with people at the grassroots who work for and believe in change,” says Maria.

Above all, it has been an education in the cultures of the world. “In Peru, we performed at 4,000 m above sea level. I could barely breathe. Entire villages came running out to watch us at the call of a megaphone. In South Africa, people danced with me when I wore masks. In India, they clap every time something good happens,” adds Markus. “All of these countries are often portrayed in the media with so much despair. But everywhere we went, we met stories of hope.”

March 19, 2014

http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/the-worlds-their-stage/article5805264.ece

Bringing Jack back

Agricultural journalist Shree Padre campaigns for the humble jackfruit to be back in the Indian meal

For 25 years Shree Padre has been the editor of Adike Patrike, a Kannada agricultural magazine written by farmers for farmers. Photo:Thulasi Kakkat THE HINDU

For six years now, agricultural journalist Shree Padre has been working to overturn one paradox: in lands where jackfruit is produced in abundance, it is wasted in abundance too; but when hoteliers conduct jackfruit festivals, plates are wiped clean in no time. “It’s not that there aren’t jackfruit lovers in our country,” says Padre, “It’s either that the jackfruit is considered too cumbersome to process at home, or that it is perceived in a bad light.”

Prior to Padre’s ardent jackfruit campaign, he was involved with the rain-water harvesting movement, encouraging non-chemical farming methods such as vermicomposting and was also one of the earliest to sound the alarm on Kerala’s endosulfan tragedy. All this through his 25 years as editor of Adike Patrike, a Kannada agricultural magazine written by farmers and circulated among the farming community in seven districts around Puttur in South Karnataka. For his work, he was recently awarded the fourth Disha Green Globe Award 2013, a biennial award conferred by Kochi-based NGO Disha Global.

“I’m not a jackfruit gobbler,” confesses Padre. “But I am passionate about it because in India, we experience so many anxieties over food. It is then criminal that we waste approximately 75 per cent of the jackfruit we produce.” The problem, Padre observes, is that a clear-cut picture of the cultivation area of jackfruit in India is difficult to estimate. In most farms in Kerala, Karnataka and Maharashtra, jackfruit trees are often scattered across the plot but rarely actively cultivated. But all three states have a rich history and variety of jackfruit. “Keralites won’t forget jackfruit easily. When other crops failed, this was the staple,” he says.

In Vidharbha, Maharashtra, Padre says farmers who had invested in a handful of jackfruit trees survived the recent drought better than their counterparts did. “A fecund jackfruit tree fetches a farmer Rs. 2,000 to Rs. 5,000. All that the tree requires in return is periodic flood irrigation and one or two manure applications,” he says. Moreover, the sale of jackfruit increases when it is even minimally processed. “It’s important to reduce the gap between mouth and hand. Thus vendors who simply cut and chopped the jackfruit into bulbs and applied lime to prevent browning, increased their sales by 50 per cent,” he says.

In this regard, technology has come to jackfruit’s rescue. Jackfruit evangelists such as Joseph Luckose and James Joseph have been actively involved in processing and packaging jackfruit for later use. “Just by dehydrating jackfruit, we are able to readily use it in homes. The ripe jackfruit should be reintroduced as a table fruit and the raw jackfruit can be used just as vegetable is. In its pulped version, it can be used to make ice-cream, pappad, rolls etc. Once you teach the housewife the potential of jackfruit pulp, the imagination is your limit in terms of recipes. Serving it at high-end hotels also lends an aspirational value to the common-man’s fruit.” Padre adds that pulping jackfruit could additionally provide employment and income for labourers during the months that the fruit isn’t harvested.

Adike Patrike has also been instrumental in Padre’s jackfruit campaign. It has collected success stories from across the world, especially nations such as Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Philippines through its “pen-to-the-farmer” process, where those who farm are taught to write their stories. “We ventured into this kind of ‘self-help journalism’ because we found that agricultural journalism till then was such that those who wrote didn’t farm and those who farmed didn’t write,” says Padre.With farmers themselves narrating their difficulties and success, the approach to journalism grew more hands-on and readers were even able to replicate farmers’ experiences. “Just as tapioca has had a second-coming in Indian homes, the day that India doesn’t waste jackfruit is the one I’m looking forward to,” closes Padre.

January 31, 2013

http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/society/bringing-jack-back/article5639047.ece

Straight from the woods

Valmik Thapar talks about his book Tiger Fire – Five Hundred Years of the Tiger in India and conservation of the species

Talking Tigers: Valmik Thapar. Photo: R.Ragu THE HINDU

Valmik Thapar’s love affair with tigers stemmed from his love affair with Ranthambore at 23. “I’m a romantic at heart,” he says. There was something irresistible about the heady mix of history and natural life at Ranthambore, with the ruins of the Jaipur maharaja’s fort for a backdrop and tigers striding across the dry grass at the fore. His affair stretched across 20 books on tigers and other wild cats before finding its full fledged love letter in his magnum opus published by Aleph — Tiger Fire – Five Hundred Years of the Tiger in India.

In a lecture at Lit For Life on the book’s contents, Valmik said the book was a collection of the best writings and pictures on the tiger in the past 500 years. The book opens with the tiger’s biological evolution, leads onto its representation in mythology as the vehicle of Goddess Durga, revisits the Mughal era engraving of staged encounters with tigers, and shows paintings of over 150 years old by the British of their explorations in the forests.

An important section documents the creation of Ranthambore national park by Fateh Singh Rathore, with whom Valmik explored the land. It narrates the story of creating a sanctuary from scratch, the relocation of villagers and the slow growth, breeding and preservation of the tigers there. Alongside the story come stunning pictures of the tigers at Ranthambore — a male and female with their two cubs, mothers carrying cubs to change dens and tigers wandering the slim pathways amidst tall brush. After all this absolute beauty came Valmik’s chilling sentence: “Many of the tigers recorded here have died of poaching, either their mothers poisoned or their cubs killed.”

Tiger Fire also features rare photographs of tigers with varied prey — spotted deer amidst water, sambas, boars, crocodiles, sloth bears, pythons and even porcupines or anteaters in both stark black and white and rich colour. “These visuals have been gathered from across libraries and photographers nationwide,” said Valmik. The book closes with the stories of people who have worked with tigers such as Jim Corbett and Fateh, with final pieces on the problems India’s tigers face. “We need a sea of change in thinking,” says Valmik. Tiger conservation cannot be monopolised by the bureaucracy, he emphasises; rather he foresees a future where naturalists, villagers, tribal leaders, conservationists and activists play an equally important role in decision making. “We need to release tigers back into freedom, for that’s what they represent — the spirit of freedom.”

January 14, 2014

http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/straight-from-the-woods/article5578565.ece

Have cycle, will ride

Esther Elias finds that the decade-old rent-a-bicycle culture in Kochi faces smooth patches as well as pot holes

Road ahead: Given traffic’s impatience with cyclists and the absence of designated cycle tracks, Kochi has a long way to go before it becomes cycle-friendly. Photo: H. Vibhu THE HINDU

About 10 years ago, Mikko Zenger, a journalist and tourist from Finland visited Kerala and met A. Mohamad Ali at his antique and handicraft shop just by the Customs Jetty in Fort Kochi. They became friends over time and before Mikko left, he gifted Ali a cycle that he had brought with him. A photograph of Mikko and Ali hangs off the dusty sunlit wall of Adams Handicrafts even today. That was the beginning of Ali’s side endeavour —‘Rent-a-bicycle’ — a trend that spread across the city’s tourist hubs and has survived a decade now.

Opposite Santa Cruz Basilica, Fort Kochi, Victor Benson has run his tourism agency and internet cafe, with stacks of cycles for rent piled outside, for as long as Ali has. “We began this rather cautiously at first, to see how tourists would take to it. Soon we realised that cycle safaris were popular abroad, so European and American tourists preferred to go around Kochi this way too,” says Victor. Tourists were free to explore the city at the pace they chose; they didn’t have to haggle with taxi drivers or bother with public transport. “This was a pollution-free, and exercise-included answer to their travel problems.”

As the inflow of tourists grew each year, the number of ‘rent-a-bicycle’ outlets rose too. “There was a sort of boom in the business in 2008,” says Victor. However, as many homestays began offering their customers this service, the bustle in business has slowed observes Ali. The more problematic hit has shown itself this year, with the marked fall in tourists this season. “Normally the tourist season begins in early December and extends to late February. Now all our cycles go on some days, and on others, none are taken,” says Victor. He adds that several tourists who’ve made repeated visits to Kochi in the past, have opted for Sri Lanka this year and among the ones who do come here, fewer opt to cycle given the bad roads they must battle.

Cycling groups such as Cochin Biker’s Club and Athi’s Bicycle Club have been founded in the city, and the streets often see helmeted riders cycling to work. Yet Kochi isn’t cycle-friendly with the absence of a designated cycle track on main roads and traffic’s impatience with cyclists. “When foreigners come, they find the potholes difficult to navigate and even our Indian make of bicycles different to use,” says Victor. Even so, his clients are known to cycle up to Cherai Beach, Alappuzha and beyond. “We also have clients who rent the cycles for several days together for long tours.”

Maintaining his cycles have been Mohammad Arafat’s biggest hurdle since when he began in 2005. He functions from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. off the pavement at Quiero’s Street in Park Avenue, and chains his cycles together at night, protecting them with a tarpaulin sheet. “I’ve never had a closed space to store these cycles. Many of them have even been stolen because of this. Since tourists enjoy cycling so much, I wish the government helped all of us who rent cycles, with a common space to keep them.” Others echo his sentiments, saying rusting in the rain and few repair shops have plagued them too. “I’ve had to change my cycles every two years because of this,” says Antony Biju, who runs Ocean’s Pride tourism agency.

Most owners have since diversified to renting scooters and bikes, or running other enterprises alongside. In the off-season, business comes from the locals too, says Ali. “I have children who come regularly to take the cycles to the beach. Locals from Ernakulam, who come to Fort Kochi for a few hours, take them too.” He says he prefers lending to known customers after several sour instances of theft. With increased awareness of cycling’s health benefits, tourists from Bangalore and Mumbai have opted also to cycle here, adds Antony.

Across the board, most owners say the experience of running rent-a-bicycle outlets have connected them to cultures across the world. Victor, who runs a homestay as well, says he’s met many of his clients on his trips abroad. He fondly remembers an American tourist who appreciated his work as he was a professional cyclist touring India on two wheels. “Kerala really is God’s Own Country; if we could develop tourism further here, our cycling culture could go far.”

Penny wise

Most rent-a-bicycle outlets own between 10 and 15 cycles which they rent at approximately Rs. 100 for a day. Those who lend by the hour charge Rs. 10 for each hour. Foreigners must usually submit a photocopy of their passport and locals give in a working phone number. While most owners stock cycles built for both men and women, they say the popular ones are the ‘full Indian cycle’ (with a cross-bar) or the mountain bikes for long distances. Cycles specifically for children are rare to come by.

January 5, 2014

http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/have-cycle-will-ride/article5538478.ece