MUSIC APPRECIATION PROMOTION

Contemporary Protest Music in India
Speaker: Dr Rahul Ram, lead singer, songwriter and bass guitarist with the Indian Ocean band

Chair: Kajal Ghosh, singer

The presentation will focus on different forms and aspects of protest music in north India. The programme will include recorded music and live rendition

BOOK DISCUSSION GROUP

Shri Inder Malhotra, veteran journalist; Prof Ashis Nandy, Senior Fellow, CSDS; and Shri Ajoy Bose, journalist, anchor and author, discuss Ink in my Veins: A Life in Journalism by S. Nihal Singh (New Delhi: Hay House India, 2011)

Chair: Shri Krishna Prasad, Editor-in-Chief, Outlook

Environment and Health Public Lecture Series

Environment and Health Public Lecture Series
Disappearing Sparrows

Film screening and discussion on why the common sparrow, once ubiquitous in our cities, is now increasingly rare, as are certain other bird species"”a sign of larger changes in our environment?

Beyond the Mirage (30 min; dvd; 2006; English)
Director: Nutan Manmohan
Documents how Delhi's smaller birds are fast losing out to big predators in the battle for food and habitat

Followed by a panel discussion
Speakers: Dr Surya Prakash, School of Life Sciences, JNU; and Dr Koustubh Sharma, Senior Regional Ecologist, Snow Leopard Trust, and Co-investigator, BNHS-Citizen Sparrow Foundation

Moderator: Shri Ravi Agarwal, Director, Toxics Link

Kathak Recital

Pani, Potties aur Makaan: Fractured Domestic Landscapes

Ms Julia King, PhD candidate in Architecture for Rapid Change and Scarce Resources, London Metropolitan University, in conversation with Dr Renu Khosla, Director, Centre for Urban and Regional Excellence

Presentation on the development of a cluster-based sanitation system in Savda Ghevra, a resettlement suburb west of New Delhi whose inhabitants can seldom afford individual toilets with septic tanks. Following consultation with the community, municipal authorities were involved in revising regulations, and in place of the impractical strategy of community toilets was set up a low-cost system using rainwater collectors and individual basic toilet bowls connected to a common septic tank. For devising a simple, replicable model where service-users partner in a programme's design and management, the project received a Holcim Award for sustainable construction.

Roads of Bhakti Poetry

Roads of Bhakti Poetry

Speaker: Dr Andrew Schelling, Jack Kerouac School, Naropa University, Boulder, Colorado

Chair: Ms Vidya Rao, scholar and singer

A translator from Sanskrit, Pali and Hindi, and author of six volumes of poetry indebted to studies in ecology and ethnopoetics, the speaker has edited The Oxford Anthology of Bhakti Literature (New Delhi, 2011), and describes how Bhakti is "˜salted' with an intensity that requires intellectual effort and much honest probing to get close to, how efforts to break free of social constraint took hundreds of forms across India, and the resonances of this literature for audiences far removed in time and place.

Eye Care for the Elderly

Speaker: Dr Ritu Aurora, Coordinator and Head of the Department of Opthalmology, Max Balaji Hospital

Chair: Prof Ranjit Roy Chaudhury, Emeritus Scientist, National Institute of Immunology

An overview of practices, including yoga exercises, that help to prevent damage to the eyes, with a focus on precautions to be taken by the elderly while working on computers or reading fine print

Kathak Recital

By Rekha Mehra from Delhi, disciple of Smt Uma Sharma, Late Pt Tulsi Tej Prakash and Guru Ram Kumar

MUSIC APPRECIATION PROMOTION

Overview of Carnatic Music with a focus on Madurai Mani Iyer to Celebrate his Centenary Year

Speaker: Dr S.A.K. Durga, eminent ethno-musicologist and Member of the Experts Committee, Music Academy, Madras

Chair: Shri S. Kalidas, music critic

Magic Realism and After: Indian English Fiction 1981-2011

(52 min; dvd; English)
Director: Shri Suresh Kohli

Screening will be followed by a discussion

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