Working with a cast of amateurs, who had never faced a camera before, was tricky enough. But Domalpalli was also making his own debut as a director. Vanaja is the Silicon Valley engineer-turned-film-maker’s Master of Fine Arts thesis film and it’s surprised everyone by winning awards at film festivals around the world and is now enjoying an art house release in the US.

Domalpalli’s excited about the film’s success (The New York Times calls it “an engrossing fairy tale’’) but also acutely aware that films like his have as much chance of really making money as Vanaja herself does of breaking through caste, class and sex barriers in a small village in Andhra Pradesh in the sixties. “The art house scene in India is more or less dead,’’ says Domalpalli sitting in a coffee shop in San Francisco. “The big theatres draw the autorickshaw-wallas and college kids who want fun. The multiplexes show Bollywood and Hollywood.’’ Vanaja has three strikes against it—it’s about village life, it has no stars, and it’s in Telugu. “That means it’s a ‘foreign’ film in India,’’ smiles the director.

In America, the language doesn’t matter. It’s just another subtitled film and Domalpalli says it’s been a very mixed audience, mostly Americans “who embrace other cultures’’. He does get a fair sprinkling of Indians too, though some of them complain that it’s 2007 and here’s yet another film about caste, class and a little girl being exploited in a village.

“My India is harsh but beautiful,’’ says Domalpalli. He admits some issues defy cultural translation. Vanaja becomes a servant in Rama Devi’s home, in the hope that in between sweeping and chopping she will learn Kuchipudi. “We too have servants at home,’’ says Domalpalli. “So I can’t point a finger and say this is bad. Our servants at home cannot sit at the table. But just because I am part of the system doesn’t mean I can’t record it.’’

But in directing Vanaja, the director had to reach across the class divide. He remembers how, while making the film in 2002, his cast was sitting around on mats, having lunch. As soon as Domalpalli sat down in their midst all conversation stopped. Eventually they put out a chair for him and set his food there. “Then all the laughter came back,” he remembers. In 2007 he went to a film studio in Andhra Pradesh. The studio boss insisted on taking him to the officer’s canteen. The next time he insisted on going to the canteen his driver went to. “We were totally comfortable but it took five years to get there,” says Domalpalli. “But I still can’t repeat it at home.”

Vanaja is suffused with Domalpalli’s nostalgia for everything that’s fading in the onslaught of urbanisation in India. The folk singers who open the film are now dead and their children have not followed the family footsteps. When he asked young children to sing a traditional Andhra folk song, they were embarrassed but they could belt out the latest Chiranjeevi hit. When Domalpalli found young Koya tribal boys they all wore shirts and pants. He asked one why he had given up his traditional clothes. “Because I want to be like you,” the boy replied.

It was probably the dream of much of his cast. Post-Vanaja their lives have changed but there has been no fairy-tale ending. The vivacious Mamatha Bhukya who plays Vanaja will probably have a career in films, says Domalpalli, though he worries she will be exploited. Somayya, who played her father, is now a gardener at Domalpalli’s mother’s friend’s house. Krishnamma who plays the old mail is sick but won’t take the medicines prescribed to her by Apollo Hospital, relying instead on tribal remedies. Krishna who plays the postman is married but stuck in the same manual labourer job. Krishna’s younger brother Prabhu lives with Domalpalli’s parents and is enrolled in an English-medium school but is having a tough time.

“So it’s mixed,” says Domalpalli with a smile. But he didn’t make a film to start a social revolution. “I just wanted to record India, the memories of my childhood, even the bad things. That’s why I named it Vanaja or water lily, it grows in the muck, but it grows into something beautiful.’’

Courtesy: TOI

"The chief minister had been informed that ‘Madras’, like Bombay, was actually a Portuguese coinage, derived either from a trader named Madeiros or a prince called Madrie. ‘Madras is not a Tamil name,’ announced the chief chauvinist to justify his decision to rename the city of ‘Chennai’, the word used (though not always) by Tamil speakers.

Once again, name recognition — Madras kerchiefs, Madras jackets, Bleeding Madras, the Madras monitoring system — went by the board as Chennai was adopted without serious debate. More unfortunately, however, the chief minister had overlooked the weight of evidence that Madras was indeed a Tamil name (derived, alternative theories go, from the name of a local fisherman, Madarasan; or from the local Muslim religious schools, madarasas; or from madhu-ras, from the Sanskrit and Tamil words for honey). Worse, he had also overlooked the embarrassing fact that Chennai was not, as he had asserted, of Tamil origin.

It came from the name of Chennappa Naicker, the Raja of Chandragiri, who granted the British the right to trade on the Coromandel coast — and who was a Telugu speaker from what is today Andhra Pradesh. So bad history was worse lexicography, but in India-that-is-Bharat it is good politics."

- Shashi Tharoor

Read the complete article by Shashi Tharoor

Courtesy: Business Standard

http://asap.ap.org/data/interactives/_entertainment/etv/

This serial entrepreneur, with a penchant for executing projects before time, has always been ready to seize every opportunity that came his way. At one point, when India was a licensed economy, GMR had applied for and managed to get licences for a wide range of industries which had very little in common — from earbuds to ferro alloys, jute yarn to sugar, breweries to textiles. What may come as a surprise is that he managed to dabble in quite a few of them, making money every time he exited.

“My father has always believed in focusing on one project till such time that we secure it,” says Kiran Kumar Grandhi, GMR’s younger son who heads the aviation vertical. “This is why we have managed to be successful in whatever we have taken up. Perseverance and single-point focus is the clear message for all of us.”

Daring is a trademark with GMR, even in the most unlikely arenas. He, for instance, accepted the challenge of changing his dietary habits and venturing into non-vegetarian food during his college days, to prove a point to his fellow students. “My classmates at Vizag Engineering College called me pappu (a simple, vegetarian village boy) as I had came from a Dhumpbaldi — a ‘sweet potato school,’ a nickname alluding to village schools in interior Andhra where children would eat roasted sweet potatoes as a special treat,” recalls GMR, revealing that he was the first in his family to join an engineering college.

“They found it difficult to believe that I could contest student elections and often ragged me for being vegetarian. But I had great support and I was not willing to let them down; I won the election and became general secretary of the students’ union. That’s the time I also took to non-vegetarian food like fish to show I could match them on all counts!”

This passion for challenge has not only seen GMR scripting his own story, but also changing his characters and goals to cope up with changing scenarios. His foray into the power sector, for instance, was thanks to the imposition of ‘prohibition’ in the state. In the early 1990s, GMR Technologies got a licence for breweries. Land had been bought and the project was about to begin. Then, chief minister NT Rama Rao decided to impose prohibition in Andhra Pradesh and the company was left groping for an alternative.

“Most of the people had no idea how to deal with that sudden turn of events. But GMR decided to take advantage of a new growth area — the power sector — and soon acquired the licence for a power project in Tamil Nadu, the Basin Bridge power plant in Chennai, which became the first to be developed by the group,” says BVN Rao, a long-time friend and now chairman of the energy vertical. The group now has three operating power projects — Basin Bridge, Tanir Bavi in Karnataka and the Vemagiri Power in Andhra — and has already ventured into the hydel power sector too.

GMR relishes beating competition decisively. Right from those watershed college elections (his victory margin is still a record there!) to bid for road projects where seasoned players were left guessing how the numbers worked, he has a will to win.

“We were always several notches lower in our bid when it came to road projects,” remembers a close associate of GMR, who has been working on the financials of various projects. “Being a first in many, competitors were sceptical. But project execution and financial engineering has been a hallmark of this group. While we bagged projects with low bids, we managed to securitise them as soon they went onstream, which provided us with capital for other projects.”

GMR, who cut his entrepreneurial teeth with a jute yarn facility in Rajam, went on to display his talent in sugar and other agri businesses, ferro-alloys, IT and banking before he finally decided to zero in on infrastructure. It all began when his father, who was a small-time jewellery trader, decided to divide his wealth among his children. GMR’s share of Rs 3 lakh was the seed capital for his first dream project.

“My dream today is to build the group into one of the leading infrastructure companies of the world,” he says with pride. “We have made a beginning overseas with the Istanbul airport project. But lessons learnt from my jute and banking days hold good even today, and I think they have played a large role in shaping my current thinking and outlook.”

Setting up a jute yarn facility taught him a great deal about teamwork and taking his fellow workers along. His banking experience is what he treasures the most. “Turning around non-performing assets and building confidence among customers after a total change in the top management was not easy. We were dealing with public money,” he says. “We had to work individually on each of the NPAs and it required personal relationship skills. It is then that I acquired most of my friends in the banking and financial world.”

GMR, in his capacity as the single-largest shareholder of Vysya Bank, had to walk in almost overnight to rescue it after its then-CEO Ramesh Gelli walked out with the top 100 employees to form the Global Trust Bank. “This was, in some ways, his biggest challenge. It is in his DNA not to leave a project mid-way. We have to pursue it and make it a success,” says BVN Rao.

Running the bank required some tough talking and decisions: in 1985-86, RBI pressurised the bank to increase capital from Rs 60 lakh to Rs 120 lakh. The bank was listed, the shares were sold at Rs 10 each and they gave 18% dividend. Even then, only Rs 30 lakh could be mobilised. He managed just about Rs 3-4 lakh more from friends.

This left him with no other option but to turn to family assets. He persuaded his wife (who is learnt to have been reluctant at that point) to pledge her jewellery, which helped GMR make up the rest of the amount. Even today, he cherishes this example of how his family played a role in building his empire. GMR, incidentally, later exited the bank by selling his around 37% stake to ING.

His entry into the airport sector, however, was a considered decision, and GMR bagged the Delhi airport improvement project and a greenfield airport at Hyderabad. “We decided to get into this sector in 1999 at Hyderabad,” says GMR’s younger son Kiran Grandhi who is now chairman of the airport venture. “That meant dealing with several improbabilities. But we went ahead and it was only in 2004 that we finally bagged the project. We had seen the early bird advantage in other sectors and we were ready to take up the challenge.”

Having relied on taskforces for most of the early projects, GMR has now stepped back to take on the role of a strategiser for the group. And he is taking his new job seriously. A rigorous exercise schedule with meditation is a must to take up the new challenges which require him to stay ahead of the curve — even to beat his sons at the business!

“He is so agile and alert that he beats us at almost everything,” laughs Kiran Grandhi. “I’ve learned most of the things on the shop floor as I was made to get exposure in almost every business of the group. I even spent time at the sugar factory in the village! My father told me that was a live MBA programme!”

GMR, unlike most family-run businesses, has also put in place a succession plan in the form of a family constitution, which has been revealed to shareholders as well, to ensure transparency in operations. On criticism about the family’s role in his companies, GMR has a confident answer: “It’s run by family professionals. Almost 70% of the listed companies on BSE are family-run businesses anyway.”

But even at 58, GMR, has merely written the preface of his entrepreneurship story, it seems. He’s now poised to enter the big league and if early indications are anything to go by, getting awards too could become a habit!

Courtesy: Economic Times
Telugu

NEW YORK: The US Congress has issued a Congressional recognition honouring Indian music maestro M. Balamuralikrishna for his stellar contribution to Carnatic music for the past seven decades.

The proclamation, successfully piloted by Texas Congressman Nick Lampson, was presented to the music maestro at a function held here last weekend.

New Jersey State Assembly's resolution paying a tribute to Balamuralikrishna was also read out on the occasion. A concert by the maestro followed the function.

The event commemorated Balamuralikrishna's career spanning 70 years as well his 77th birthday. It was organised by Shri Vari Foundation, formed in New York to promote Indian music and dance in the US.

Prakaash M. Swami, a journalist who has launched Shri Vari Foundation, described Balamuralikrishna as a living legend.

His rich contribution to Indian classical music includes sustained efforts to resurrect forgotten ragas and innovating on the tala system.

He has over 400 compositions to his credit including varnams, krithis, javalis, devotional songs and thillanas. He has sung in Telugu, Tamil, Bengali, Oriya, Kannada, Malayalam, Sanskrit, Marathi, Hindi and French. He has given concerts across the world and cut scores of albums.

The acclaimed vocalist's duets with North Indian vocalists and instrumentalists such as Bhimsen Joshi, Kishori Amonkar and Hariprasad Chaurasia have forged national integration through music. He is also an accomplished instrumentalist, playing the violin, veena, ganjira, viola and the mridangam with equal ease.

The MBK Trust founded by him in Chennai is carrying out research on music therapy. Balamuralikrishna's contribution to Indian music has won him laurels at home and abroad.

He is a recipient of the Padma Vibhushan, the second highest Indian civilian honour, the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, and Sangeetha Kalanidhi of the Madras Music Academy.

France has bestowed on him the title of Chevalier des Arts et Letters (Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris honoured him with the Gandhi Memorial Medal.

Balamuralikrishna has been conferred honorary doctorates by 10 universities in India. He served as pro chancellor of Telugu University in Hyderabad and as first professor of Dr. Radhakrishnan Chair at the Central University, also in Hyderabad.

Chennai-based Balamuralikrishna was born in East Godavari District of Andhra Pradesh. Beginning to perform at the age of eight, he was a child prodigy.

Courtesy: TOI

‘Desi’ flavour

GUNTUR: Studies in Telugu language are not going on at expected lines, Minister for Animal Husbandry Mandali Buddha Prasad has said. He laid the foundation-stone for an administrative block, to be constructed at a cost of Rs 6.21 crore, on the campus of Acharya Nagarjuna University on Friday.

University Vice- Chancellor V Balamohan Das laid the foundation for an open auditorium in the university.

Speaking on the occasion, the minister said though the demand for classical status to Telugu was forthcoming from all quarters, Telugu departments were showing little interest to come up with evidence to prove that Telugu was an ancient language.

On the other hand, Tamils strained their every nerve to get classical status to their language whereas our researchers and Telugu language lovers were not keen as their counterparts in Tamil Nadu did. If the situation continued, Telugu may lose its sheen and finally its existence, the minister added.

If Nannayya had written the Mahabharata in Telugu, the language might have flourished evidence to substantiate our demand for ancient status to Telugu, Prasad observed.

ANU was catering to the educational needs of Guntur and Krishna districts. There was a need to set up another university in Krishna district, he said and added that Chief Minister

Y S Rajasekhara Reddy’s ambition was to set up a university in every district. MLC Rayapati Srinivas said that after Balamohan Das took over the reins of the university, it was equipped with good infrastructure.

Balamohan Das said that many new buildings were coming up on the campus to provide all facilities to the students.

The open auditorium to come with Rs 1.5 crore would have a student facility centre, he added. YOUTH FEST: A three-day youth festival would be organised in ANU from October 27, said university students affairs coordinator N Samuel. Students from 406 colleges under the university purview would take part in the festival.

The winners of the festival would participate in the inter-varsity youth festival to be held at Padmavati Mahila University at Tirupati from November 12 to 16, he added.