Latest Art & Culture
Cast in glass

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Vijay Kowshik’s etchings, masks, busts draw attention to the delicate technology that is behind it
By Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr
The facial expressions etched on glass remind one of the early university lessons in literature about Greek drama, how the actors used the mask and it was called persona, which evolved into the idea of personality. The expressions on Vijay Kowshik’s masks speak directly to the viewer. You can recognise them instantly – the expressions as well as the idea of the mask/persona.
You then turn your attention to the almost the busts, of the grand old man of Indian art, BC Sanyal, then the face a near-old man almost baring the anatomy of the bone structures beneath skin and conveying the reality of the human body without overemphasising the fact. You see the face of Nelson Mandela, a bust set in the frame, which has the appearance of a half-mask.
The etchings include what appears to be the figure of a dancing dervish, and a torso which reminds one of a prehistoric sculpture.
There is a surprising interactive element in two of the exhibits. One of them is a horizontal fossil-like outline, with troughs and lines. He showed how if you apply your hands on the undulated surface, you get the lingering notes of a church organ. He had placed copper wires beneath the glass surface which is attached to a switch. As the hand glides along the grainy surface, the notes come to life. The other interactive exhibit is an octopus-like figure, which when you touch it breaks into squeals of laughter and even howls!
The fascinating thing about this all is the technology behind it. Kowshik uses quartz moulds and the glass castings are heated in a furnace, which is carefully controlled. The temperatures go up to 1,300 degrees Celsius, and cooled for some purposes to 1,100 degrees Celsius to achieve the desired shape. The furnace used for the castings in glass is kept going for days, and there are instances when it takes even two weeks for the cast to cool. Liquid lead is dropped into the glass casting to give the spattering of light in crystal glass, he explains. He says that it is a lead content in the glass window in a nuclear reactor that protects people from the radiation unleashed by nuclear fusion/fission processes.
He says that the technology of making art in glass is not available in India, and that it is not taught in any of the art schools in the country. He has learnt the technique in Europe and America, especially in east European countries like Czech Republic and Slovakia. He says even artists from western Europe come to the eastern side for glass casting because it is relatively cheaper.
Yes, this brings to mind the stained-glass paintings of the European cathedrals. Kowshik says that the play of sunlight on the stained-glass paintings in the cathedrals is awe-inspiring.
The exhibition of the glass works called “Parsing—The Mind’s Eye” is on at the India International Centre till February 3, 2016. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Latest Art & Culture
British author Patrick French is no more
The news of his demise was confirmed by Indian writer Ramchandra Guha on Twitter.

Noted British author and historian Patrick French passed away on Thursday. He was 57. The news of his demise was confirmed by Indian writer Ramchandra Guha on Twitter.
In a tweet, Guha paid a heartfelt tribute to Patrick French and applauded his books on Francis Youndhusband and VS Naipaul. Guha continued that French was also a kind human being, unfailingly generous to friends, and strangers alike.
Have a look at the tweet:
Patrick French is best credited got his biography on Francis Younghusband, The World Is What It Is and Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer. For his work in writing, French won the National Book Critics Circle Award in the USA.
Entertainment
2 States author Chetan Bhagat uses Uorfi Javed for 2 minutes of publicity?
If you didn’t know who Uorfi Javed is: she’s an actor-model who has made a name for herself in the entertainment industry, breaking shackles with her unconventional fashion choices.

Chetan Bhagat, the management grad-turned-bestseller writer famous for flip-fiction, recently showered woke gyan about how the young in India are going to bed with Uorfi Javed’s pictures under their blankets.
If you didn’t know who Uorfi Javed is: she’s an actor-model who has made a name for herself in the entertainment industry, breaking shackles with her unconventional fashion choices. From creating an outfit with just mobile phones and charging cables to acing an outfit of garbage bags, the actor, more of a fashion icon of late, made head turns not once but over a million times.
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Uorfi Javed has also been acknowledged by another fashion icon with an atypical sense of fashion, Ranveer Singh, on the popular talk show Koffee With Karan. But who remembers this?
So let it go and remember what gyan Chetan Bhagat recently put out there for the country’s youth. First, the author has two young sons, who obviously, if one goes by their father’s words, don’t get excited by the female form.
Bhagat not only tagged Uorfi, who is way more popular than him in recent times, as someone using her body for publicity but also promoted the long-lived taboo on sex in the country which may well be called the origin of sensuality and eroticism, Kamasutra.
The author also compared jawans at the borders protecting the country with the youth who are hunkering down with a hot photo under their blankets. As if, the armed forces is meant to be celibate!
Bhagat also said youth nowadays spend most of their time liking women’s pictures and reels on Instagram and Uorfi gets crores of likes. He further called Uorfi a bechari, who is making a career.
Uorfi Javed is a former Bigg Boss contestant, TV actor, and now a social media sensation aka fashion icon! She is no “bechari” and she does not use her body for publicity. But this time, Chetan Bhagat of Three Idiots fame definitely used Uorfi Javed for just two minutes of publicity.
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India News
Women’s rights activist Mary Roy, mother of Arundhati Roy, passes away at 89
She was the founder and director of Pallikoodam School, which was formerly known as Corpus Christi High School.

Academician and women’s rights activist Mary Roy passed away in Kerala’s Kottayam on Thursday. The activist was the mother of the renowned Booker Prize-winning author Arundhati Roy. She is survived by her two children, daughter Arundhati Roy and son Lalit Roy.
She was the founder and director of Pallikoodam School, which was formerly known as Corpus Christi High School, located in Kalathilpady, a suburb of Kottayam town in Kerala.
She is known for winning a Supreme Court lawsuit in 1986 against the gender-biased inheritance law, famously dubbed the ‘Mary Roy Case,” which was prevalent within the Syrian Christian community in Kerala. The judgement ensured equal rights for Syrian Christian women as with their male siblings in their ancestral property.
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Personal Life
Mary Roy was born in 1933 to an entomologist P.V. Isaac. She did her schooling at Jesus and Mary Convent in Delhi and graduated from Queen’s Mary College in Chennai. Her grandfather John Kuriyan established the first school in the Kottayam district – Rao Bahadur John Kuriyan School.
While working as a secretary for a company in Calcutta, she met her husband Rajib Roy. After experiencing marital problems, she returned to her father’s home in Ooty with her two kids. She eventually engaged in court conflict with her elder brother George Isaac over the ownership of this property.
What was the court case about?
Travancore Succession Act of 1916 says that the women of Mary Roy’s Syrian Christian community could not inherit property. In 1960, she filed a case against her elder brother after her father’s demise to gain equal access to the inheritance left to them. The case was considered a landmark case for the reason it fought for equal property rights for Syrian Christian women. After eight years of a long struggle, she finally received the property.
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