Wednesday, June 24, 1998
An exercise in black & white
Half a dozen youngsters dressed in black slacks and white T-shirts, are sweating it out on a bare platform at Prithvi Theatre's rehearsal hall. They go through an exercise routine -- doing push-ups and flexing their muscles -- with great fervour. After a few minutes of hectic warming-up, they collapse on the wooden platform and sit quietly for a while.
Unveiling the word
Reading a translation," remarked the celebrated Israeli poet, Yehuda Amichai, on his trip to India some years ago, "is like kissing a woman through a veil." Despite the sexist and Orientalist overtones one may choose to read into that, I recall being struck by the near-aphoristic quality of the observation.
Gaining ground
June is always a busy month for Indian art lovers in London, as both Sotheby's and Christie's hold their annual South Asian Art auctions during that period. But this year proved to be busier than most as records were broken at both sales. At the Sotheby's Contemporary and South Asian Paintings auction, an Abdur Rahman Chugtai went for 34,500 pounds when the estimated sale price was between 10,000 pounds to 15,000 pounds.
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