AN EXHIBITION OF PHOTOGRAPHS

Across The Crossfire - Women in the Conflict Zone

History has demonstrated, time and again, that women, even when they are not combatants themselves, have had to bear in large measure the grievous impacts of conflict and violence. These could range from injury and the loss of close family members to dispossession, displacement and the vulnerabilities and responsibilities that accompany such conditions.

It is against this backdrop that Women's Features Service (WFS) and Women Unlimited-Kali for Women, have brought out a book entitled "˜Across the Crossfire: Women in the Conflict Zone', to be released on December 5, 2012. This work, supported by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), is a compilation of narratives generated by WFS from various zones of conflict in India, written between 2009 and 2011. They focus on the discrete situations of women caught up in insurgencies, wars, riots, situations of civil disorder and natural calamities.

Riveting images from this compilation will be on display in the IIC quadrangle from December 4 to 10, 2012. From a landmine victim in Kashmir struggling to make ends meet to young tribal children living in an orphanage in Raipur, in insurgency-hit Chhattisgarh, to Assamese women who have been forced to call relief camps their home since the last 15 years to the dynamic women health workers, ASHAs, who are spreading a million smiles throughout conflict-prone Odisha, we capture the tragedies and hopes that mark times of conflict.

Christmas concert presented by the Canticle Choir

Singers: Beula Francis; Gracia Odile; Lavina Dutta Nag; Mercy Nimal, Shekinah Olive; Vanaja Gabriel; Nelson David; Nicodemus Samuel;S.S.K.Titus; judah Stephen; Simon; and Wilson Samuel

Pianist: Pramod Kingston

Speakers: Dr Magid Shihade, Faculty Member, Abu-Lughod Institute for International Studies, Birzeit University, Palestine; and Dr Sunaina Maira, Professor of Asian American Studies, University of California, Davis

Chair: Ms Seema Mustafa, Palestine Solidarity Committee, India

Elements of the Opera
Illustrated lecture by Shri Diganta Choudhury, voice teacher at the Delhi School of Music and Theme Music Institute

A personal response to the evolution of opera down the ages, with special reference to bel canto technique. The speaker will seek to understand the style and to see it in the light of an art form

GOLDEN JUBILEE LECTURES Origin of the Universe
Speaker: Prof Paul Davies, Regents' Professor and Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, Co-Director, ASU Cosmology Initiative, and Principal Investigator, Center for the Convergence of Physical Science and Cancer Biology, Arizona State University

Chair: Prof M.G.K. Menon, Life Trustee, IIC

Cosmologists agree that the universe as we know it began with a big bang about 13.7 billion years ago, but many questions remain. What, if anything, came before the Big Bang? Can a universe appear from nothing? Was the Big Bang also the origin of time and space? Can such an event ever be fully explained scientifically? This lecture will tackle such deep and important topics. It will also review the history of the universe from the first split second to the present epoch, as well as predict the ultimate fate of the cosmos

(51 min; 2010; dvd; English & with subtitles)
Directors: Philipp Eyer & Jonas Scheu

Philipp Eyer will introduce the film and lead a discussion after the screening

A pilgrimage to the biggest religious gathering in the world. This adventurous outer journey through the colourful festival turns into an inner journey in search of knowledge, exploring the question of immortality, and becomes a meditation on the self, the soul