Category Archives: Arts, Culture & Entertainment

Sanju is musically high, courtesy this Allahabad lad

Arts, Culture & Entertainment

Two hit numbers marks the arrival of Vikram Montrose as music composer in Bollywood.

Vikram Montrose.

Even as Sanjay Dutt’s biopic Sanju is all set to cross the coveted Rs 200 crore box office collection, one man who is on a high is Vikram Montrose — one of the music composers of the film.

Reason: On the loop of music buffs are the two songs that have been composed by this Allahabad lad.

“Both ‘Baba Bolta Hain Bas Ho Gaya’ and ‘Kar Har Maidaan Fateh’ have received praise from both movie buffs and critics alike. I feel like on cloud nine,” says Vikram, a veteran of few albums and Marathi movies.

In Mumbai, literally struggling for last 13 years, Sanju marks Vikram’s arrival.

“I think it is. At least a lot of people know my name now,” he says while crediting Sanjay Dutt for the break.

“I owe everything to Sanjay Dutt. It was he who introduced me to Raj Kumar Hirani (film’s director) and encouraged me to come out with my best,” says Vikram, whose father NB Montrose is a known name in Allahabad. “My mother Dr Rama Montrose is a singer. In fact, my love for music blossomed when I used to accompany her to Prayag Sangeet Samiti when she was doing her Pravin,” says the St Joseph’s College alumnus.

While he has taken no formal training, he started singing and composing for functions at local churches. “The accolades I received while performing in Allahabad helped me get the confidence and the permission from my parents to shift base to Mumbai,” says the musician who has done a number of albums and also a Marathi movie.

So which one of the two songs is his favourite?

“Both are my babies and are getting praises. While ‘Baba Bolta Hain Bas Ho Gaya’ is a peppy yet somewhat sarcastic take on how every aspect of Sanjay Dutt’s life gets blown out of proportion, ‘Kar Har Maidaan Fateh’ is a purely commercial Bollywood number with a pinch of everything massy,” he says.

Baba Bolta Hain features Sanjay Dutt as well as Ranbir Kapoor, who portrays Sanjay in the movie.

“It’s a fun, sing-song sort of a track, where Kapoor is singing for himself,” says Vikram who got Ranbir Kapoor to accompany Papon and Supriya Pathak on the vocals in the song.

source: http://www.hindustantimes.com / Hindustan Times / Home> Cities> Lucknow / by Mohd. Arshi Rafique, Hindustan Times,Lucknow / July 05th, 2018

Lucknow boy Rishabh Dubey ready with his third book

Arts, Culture & Entertainment

20-year-old Lucknow boy Rishabh Dubey is all set to come out with his third book that revolves around the collective concept, intent and ideologies of all religions existent in the nation of diversities.

Rishabh Dubey (Dheeraj Dhawan/HT Photo)

20-year-old Lucknow boy Rishabh Dubey is all set to come out with his third book that revolves around the collective concept, intent and ideologies of all religions existent in the nation of diversities.

The book is titled ‘The religion called pragmatism’. His earlier books have been ‘The Mangoman’, a political-satire, and ‘Krikos: The Vertical Horizon’, a science fiction.

“My schooling from City Montessori School helped me in forming an unbiased perspective about different religions in India. Eventually, I realised that the contrasts in religions have mostly been due to misinterpretation, misrepresentations and partial-religious-consciousness,” he says.

Being member of nuclear family of liberals, Rishabh says, also helped him get a different comprehension of religion.

To get a wider understanding on the issue, he plans to travel across India covering as many religious centers as possible.

He says the only aspect channelling the existing differences were initial geography, demography and chronology.

Rishabh says his incessant zeal to create virtual characters and scenarios drifted him towards fiction.

“It was only when I was introduced to the art of science-fiction by a friend and also some of its pioneers like Huxley and Asimov that I found unwavering resonance,” he says.

The political set-up of India in 2014 helped Rishabh get the idea for his first book. “The book, The Mangoman, stands on the virtue that an omnipotent superman can never be the leader that a commonman can be which makes the latter the greatest superhero,” he says.

Partridge, a wing of Penguin Random House, gave him a collaborative offer for his second book, which in turn became his first officially published book.

Rishabh is pursuing MBA from Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS), Mumbai and loves to strike a balance between academics and writing.

“If we dedicate a few hours in the day we spend in school/college to concentrated learning we would have the rest of the day to act upon our dreams and pursuits,” he says.

Lucknow University denies admission to students who protested against CM AdityanathThis balance helped him to secure 95.75% in ISC examinations and is also presently aiding him in following his passion for writing.

His experimental urges have also helped him to become a social media influencer, a literary counsellor, a fitness motivator, a blogger, an orator and a travel writer.

source: http://www.hindustantimes.com / Hindustan Times / Home> Cities> Lucknow / by Rajeev Mullick, Hindustan Times,Lucknow / July 03rd, 2018

‘For me, weaving chairs with blind eyes is like knitting dreams’

Amazing Feats, Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Business & Economy, Inspiration / Positive News and Features

Bareilly :

People sitting in the veranda of the district magistrate court, waiting for their turn, are absorbed by the dexterity of a certain visually impaired man who can always be seen hard at work, knitting chairs, heedless of the arguments and appeals in the courtroom. Patiram’s (he goes by his first name) fingers move flawlessly, weaving bases of wooden frames of chairs. The moment he finishes a chair, onlookers applaud with amazement. “For me, knitting chairs with blind eyes is like knitting dreams,” he says.

Patiram, 36, is one of the few men in the country that are working hard to keep alive the art of weaving chairs, which is on the verge of disappearance. An optimist, Patiram says he never let his blindness stand in the way of his dreams. He was determined to achieve things on his own instead of being favoured for his disability.

“I have been in this profession for the past 16 years. Today, I have a job, a beautiful wife and a son. Life is all about struggle and working hard to make your dreams come true,” he says. Sitting on an empty jute bag, he steadily adds layer after layer of white plastic threads, creating strong supporting bases so that those using the wooden chairs can sit comfortably.

“I am never bored with my job. I never complete a chair hurriedly. I know that even a single misstep in knitting can cause discomfort to the person sitting on the chair. I knit every chair as if it were my first,” he says.
Patiram’s chairs are used in the collectorate and all six tehsils of the district. There are 181 plastic-knit wooden chairs in the collectorate and 90 in the tehsils. Every time a chair needs repair, Patiram reaches the tehsil concerned to fix it.

Life was never easy for Patiram, who has been blind since birth. His father was a small farmer and mother a homemaker. A native of Mau district, Patiram studied up to class VIII and then left for Banda in 2001, where he completed a one-year course in chair knitting at an institute run by the National Federation of the Blind. “Since I didn’t get enough work to make ends meet, I took to teaching chair knitting to visually impaired persons at a school in Mau, which had been started by a close aide of former MP Kalpnath Rai. After Rai’s untimely demise, the school was closed due to lack of funds. After a seven-month stint there, I reached Rajkiya Kaushal Vikas Kendra in Gorakhpur, where someone introduced me to the manager of the center and I got a job there,” Patiram recalls.

Life in Gorakhpur was no easier on Patiram. He was paid a meager Rs 10.75 on the days the centre didn’t receive any orders to knit a chair. “It was a hand-to-mouth existence. I spent 10 years there only because I didn’t want to become a liability for my family,” he says.

Patiram then got to know that those with experience in chair knitting were eligible for government jobs. “I applied for my first government job in 2011 in Allahabad but couldn’t get through. I kept going to several interviews for the next three years in several cities, including Varanasi, Lucknow, Bahraich, Bareilly and Muzaffarnagar, but had no luck. Finally in 2014, I came to know of a vacancy that had been created in Bareilly after the retirement of one Zamir Ahmed. Thanks to my hard work and luck, I was selected for the post of kursi bunkar there,” he says with a smile on his face.

As living alone became difficult for him in Bareilly, he suggested some relatives to get him married. “I knew it would be hard for anyone to accept me as a husband because of my blindness, but I never lost hope. My cousin’s husband found a girl for me and when I first met ‘malkin’, I told her, till my last breath, I would never let her down. I’m not sure how that impressed her but she accepted my proposal and we got married in April, 2016.”

Patiram now earns around Rs 25,000 a month. His wife’s name is Mina but he calls her “malkin” (mistress) out of love and respect. He says he has a happy life with his nine-month-old son, who is a handful. “My son pulls at my plates when I sit down for a meal. His antics amaze me and fill me with joy. My only concern is his health, especially his eyesight, as doctors say that the first 11 years are crucial for a child with a blind parent,” he says with a deep breath.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City / by Pankul Sharma / June 30th, 2018

The 200-year-old Meerut cemetery where nine British soldiers lie

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Historical Links / Pre-Independence, Records, All, Travel, World Opinion
A sketch depicting the death of Col. John Finnis in Meerut in Illustrated London News, 1857. | Photo Credit: Wiki Commons

The oldest grave here dates back to 1810

Robert Robinson, 56, lives in a graveyard, in a one-room structure, with little walking space left between his bed and fridge. In white pants that have yellowed a bit, Robinson meets me at the gate but is reluctant to let me in.

“You need to get permission,” he says, but eventually opens the gate for me and even walks me through the cemetery. The recent ‘thunderstorms’ have uprooted dozens of trees and they lie supine on the graves. The air is thick with the fragrance of seasonal flowers, the ground infested with snakes. There is so much goat and nilgai dropping, it is difficult to walk.

I am at the vast, 200-year-old St. John’s Cemetery in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, where dotted within the foliage are thousands of graves, of which nine are of British casualties in the 1857 uprising. Robinson is the caretaker here. On one side of the cemetery are the graves of the British, on the other side are those of Indians. The graves are an amalgam of Mughal and colonial architecture, many with domes. In some, the inscriptions are still startlingly clear, as are the motifs and sculptures.

“Look there, by the yellow tomb. That’s the oldest grave here — dates back to 1810,” says Robinson. He then points to the grave of Colonel John Finnis, the first British officer killed in 1857 on May 10, the first day of the uprising. His gravestone reads: ‘Colonel Finnis, who fell while endeavouring to quell the mutiny in the 20th regiment, May 10, 1857, 53 years.’

Graves at the 200-year-old cemetery. | Photo Credit: SANDEEP SAXENA

Vincent Trecar, 48, was killed on the same day, as was John Henry George Taylor, the 57-year-old captain. Both their graves are here.

‘Captain of the 20th regiment who was killed by his own men on the 10th of May 1857, 35 years, with his wife Louisa Sophia aged 30 years, who was barbarously murdered the same night while trying to make her escape with her three infants from her burning house to the European Line,’ reads the gravestone of Donald Macdonald.

There is a tall memorial gravestone with more than 100 names of European soldiers carved on it — soldiers who died between 1888 and 1905, during their service in India.

I ask Robinson if the families of these officers ever visit these graves. He hands me a visitor’s register where I see no entries in the last three months. “Who has time these days?” he asks.

Amit Pathak, a Meerut-based historian, a radiologist, and author of 1857: A Living History, who conducts tours of the 1857 uprising-related sites in the city, has a particular attachment to St. John’s Cemetery.

The 200-year-old St. John’s Cemetery in Meerut. | Photo Credit: SANDEEP SAXENA

Entire villages were burnt down by the British army in and around Meerut. Of the 50 British army personnel killed during the mayhem here at that time, 32 were buried at the cemetery, says Pathak. “But we could trace only nine graves, those that were cemented. The rest were made of mud and lost with the time.” Graves of British men who died in 1857 can be found in Delhi and Lucknow as well.

The historian recounts the particularly tragic story of Louisa Sophia, the wife of Donald Macdonald, a British officer who was killed. “She was at home when one of her servants helped her escape by covering her in a burkha along with other women of his family. But while escaping from the backdoor, they were caught. She was asked to identify herself, and when she said “Hum hain” (It is I) in Hindi, she was gunned down.”

Her English accent had given her away.

The writer is a U.P.-based crime and political journalist with a penchant for human-interest stories.

source:http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Society> History & Culture / by Ishita Mishra / May 26th, 2018

Chitrapriya Singh becomes the fbb Campus Princess 2018 from Lucknow

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Education, Records, All

A fashion show was recently organized by a private institut of fashion designing at Paryatan Bhavan.

L) Ravi Kapoor (R) Roshmitha Harimurthy (BCCL/ Vishnu Jaiswal)

Organized by the second year students of the institute, the show had Yamaha Fascino Miss Diva 2016 Miss Universe India Roshmitha Harimurthy, and actor and Lucknowite Mohit Kesarwani as showstoppers for the evening. SP Singh, vice-chancellor of Lucknow University and Anis Ansari were the chief guests of the event which had Madrid as its theme.

The Best Designer award went to Hafza Abdul while Aqsa Fatima bagged the Miss College award.

L) Chitrapriya Singh (R) Mohit Kesarwani (BCCL/ Vishnu Jaiswal)

However, the highlight of the event was the fbb Campus Princess 2018 auditions in which Chitrapriya Singh was adjudged the winner. Being gratified as the finalist of the fbb Campus Princess pageant, Chitrapriya will get an opportunity to get groomed and participate in the Miss India organisation’s national beauty pageants.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> News> City News> Lucknow News / TNN / June 20th, 2018

With IIT-K startup’s help, Lucknow firm ready for drone delivery of food

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Business & Economy, Records, All, Science & Technology, Travel

Kolkata/Lucknow:

In a first, an IIT-Kanpur startup, in association with a Lucknow-based food delivery firm, successfully flown in flasks of freshly brewed tea on the doorsteps of its customers in the city of nawabs.

TechEagle Innovations, founded and run by IIT Kanpur graduate Vikram Singh Meena, pilot-tested delivery of two litres of hot tea with the help of battery-powered and GPS-fitted drones on May 23. It has developed the specialised drone to drop-ship a consignment up to 2 kg within a 10-km-radius of its take-off station with just a single click of a mouse. TechEagle has joined hands with OnlineKaka, a Lucknow-based food delivery startup, for these test flights.

“We have successfully delivered world’s first chai via drone. Now, we would provide these mean machines to other food delivery startups like Zomato, Swiggy and Foodpanda. To begin with, we plan to venture out in north India,” Meena told TOI.

Talking about the drone-delivery model, Bilal Arshad, who founded OnlineKaka, along with friend Ahad Arshad and Salman, said: “It’s not like the customer will directly receive the order from the whirring gadget. The drones would be flown and received by our executives at different points and because they would not be commuting through the busy streets, it would cut down the delivery time drastically.” Although the cost implications would be known only after a full-fledged launch of the service, both Bilal and Ahad said they would try to ensure that there was no extra burden for the customer as they would be saving on commuting. At present, they charge Rs 59 per delivery.

Although the trial was conducted with DGCA’s permission, the firs is yet to get a nod for the regular service. “The DGCA had said the norms for drone delivery would be specified in January but it hasn’t come through. It is now expected sometime in July. In sync with the Civil Aviation ministry, the DGCA would mark zones for the drone flights and assign altitude, etc, besides issuing licence for each gadget. The pilots hired for the drones would be another factor to determine cost of operation,” said Ahad.

Interestingly, there are no active drone-based food delivery services in the world. UberEats, the largest grub-delivery platform which has recently opened shop in India, has recently tested a similar drone-based delivery in San Diego, US.

In October last year, global e-tail giant Amazon had filed patent for delivery of products via drones in India.

In 2014, an unmanned drone was used to deliver a pizza to a flat in a high rise in Worli, Mumbai. Another drone startup, based out of Kanpur, called Aarav Unmanned Systems, raised a bridge round funding In April 2016.

However, many firms and startups, who are raring to begin unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) or drone-based commercial operations (like door-to-door delivery, aerial mapping, infrastructure monitoring and product transport) across the country, have hit a regulatory roadblock as India’s sky watchdog, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), hasn’t yet formulated a final official policy for the same. Although, Goldman Sachs has estimated that drone industry will be worth $125 billion globally by 2020.

The founding members of TechEagle Innovations started designing and manufacturing since 2015 in the garage of IIT Kanpur hostel and formed the B2B tech startup only in January 2017.

“Our startup develops custom-made drones of both types — rotary wing and fixed wing — which can carry 500gm to 5kg payload. The wingspan ranges between 60cm and five-meter, flight time varies between 30 min and two hours,” added Meena.

“The drone-based delivery system came to our minds when we saw real-life problems like traffic jams affecting delivery services, especially food transportation. Then, we partnered with Online Kaka,” the TechEagle CEO said.

TechEagle plans to expand its services across the country based on need and resources. “We have analyzed that around 10-15 drones can be deployed in one city. Our drones can traverse 10 metres in one second and one single trip can last up to 20 minutes. So, it can fly up to 6km to deliver tea and come back to its take-off spot. We are doing research on batteries to increase the payload capacity and flight time,” Meena added.

On the likely cost of food or tea to be delivered via drones, Meena signed off by saying, “Quality and price of tea or any food items will be handled and decided by the food delivery firms, who will use our drones, instead of a bike or a motor van. We can’t disclose the exact selling prices of the drones at present. But when the service becomes fully functional, our drone delivery will definitely be cheaper than the current modes of transportation. We are in talks with quite a few food delivery startups.”

There was a time in the city when one could order little from home other than pizza. It was 2016 and while big names like food panda and zomato were foraying into the Lucknow market, a startup with just two delivery boys caught the fancy of locals, whose staple feast is the kabab-biryani fare. “Our shoestring budget did not allow a lavish ad campaign, so we relied more on word of mouth,” said Ahad Arshad, who founded OnlineKaka, along with friend Bilal Arshad, adding.

Founded in 2016, OnelineKaka is a popular service in Lucknow for delivery and is preferred for delivery from iconic joints from crowded Old City. “It saves people the trouble of commuting to the crowded, jammed areas and they could enjoy kabab-paratha, biryani, kulcha-nihari in the comfort of home,” Bilal says. Today, they have a 125-strong army of delivery boys and an equal number of vendors on their panel, with over 500 new joints in queue. From a turnover of Rs 20 lakh in their first year, they have notched Rs 5 crore and recorded a 15% growth per month, said the founders.

“There was a minimum-order rider in the beginning but now we deliver the smallest of orders,” said Ahad, adding that their latest offering was delivery of the city’s favourite chai and bun-makhan, anywhere. “The packing ensures you get your cuppa steaming hot but with a successful run of delivery by drone, we hope to pick up more orders in this segment,” he added.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> News> City News> Lucknow News / by Sovan Manna / TNN / June 01st, 2018

In this documentary, Varanasi’s sari weavers talk about their craft and its present state of decline

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Business & Economy, Records, All
A still from Bunkar.

“I used to weave saris. It didn’t pay well, so I took to driving a rickshaw.”

Somewhere in the middle of Bunkar: The Last of the Varanasi Weavers, filmmaker Satyaprakash Upadhyay asks erstwhile weaver Shyam Jiyavan if he still keeps his loom. He does, he says, but at home. Does he still use it? “No, I have dismantled and stored it carefully so that it stays safe,” he says.

Another former weaver, Naeem, talks to Upadhyay while sitting in his bright red-and-green autorickshaw. He sounds disgruntled: “I used to weave saris. It didn’t pay well, so I took to driving a rickshaw.”

No longer feasible

Several more of Naeem’s kind find a voice in Upadhyay’s debut documentary, where Varanasi sari weavers talk about their craft and its present state of decline. Most of them have been forced to abandon their profession because it is no longer feasible. Activists and revivalists, who are trying to help the artisans, plead their case.

Since the film is pegged on the weavers, it is a pity that it does not delve deeper into their personal narratives. We meet them late, some 13 minutes into the lengthy and sometimes repetitive 68 minute-long film. The film rides on its breathtaking visuals, capturing the vibrancy of the art form, from the rich hues of the saris to their delicate detailing, and Varanasi’s landscape of opposites, with its teeming life and rituals of death. Cinematographer Vijay Mishra’s artistry is somewhat marred by the relentless background music though.

Bunkar opens with a shot of the emerald-green Ganga and pans to Varanasi’s riverfront before it unexpectedly cuts to a CGI of the river — a voiceover that seems determined to exhaust all the metaphors related to weaving. Sample this: “I [Ganga] have watched the loom of time weave the past into the present.”

The film then segues into a sketchy history of the art form, lists the weaving styles, and then comes to the threat posed by the near-identical, mass-produced and significantly cheaper saris made on power looms. The threat has forced many craftsmen to take up other professions.

“I can’t blame one department or a particular association [for the decline], for the problem is vast,” says Upadhyay. “My aim is rather to inform people,” he adds.

And so the tone of his film remains equivocal and non-committal to the point that at times it contradicts itself. It does manage to make interesting juxtapositions — but that may have been accidental.

Disparities

Take, for instance, the documentary’s discussion on the government’s efforts to protect and preserve the art form by giving it a GI tag and a Handloom Mark. A weaver concedes that such initiatives have given a boost to his business. This is followed by a former weaver saying that only a handful of craftsmen who were awarded the government certification could benefit from it, and that the effort is hardly enough to combat the steady and overwhelming influx of power-loom products. The documentary does not dwell on this disparity.

Upadhyay’s film is an important discussion on the lives of the Varanasi sari weavers but its voice flounders. At the same time, it achieves more by way of solutions than similar documentaries, which do no more than simply acknowledge that a problem exists.

The Mumbai-based freelance journalist is obsessed with cinema and gender rights.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Entertainment> Docu-Drama Movies / by Anahita Panicker / May 05th, 2018

Lucknow University alumni share anecdotes at felicitation

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Education, Leaders

Lucknow :

Some prominent alumni of Lucknow University, including UP’s chief secretary Rajive Kumar, former DGP Sulkhan Singh, Justice Vikram Nath and Justice (retd) Khem Karan were felicitated at a function on Saturday.

UP’s chief secretary Rajive Kumar, Justice Vikram Nath, former DGP Sulkhan Singh, urologist Dr Salil Tandon, animal rights activist Gauri Maulekhi, badminton player Dharmendra Soti, and Ravindra Verma known for his work on mining were given Distinguished Alumni Award by deputy chief minister Dinesh Sharma.

UGC member Prof DP Singh, Jagdish Gandhi, Justice (retd) Khem Karan and Prof Shishir Kumar Dubey were honoured with the Lifetime Achievement Award.

The alumni shared some interesting anecdotes. Former DGP Sulkhan Singh, who did his LLB in 2005-2008 while he was in service, recalled, “I was stopped by security guards on the first day of the examination. They strictly told me that parents are not allowed during examination. I was allowed to enter only when I showed them my admit card and student identity card.”

Animal rights activist Gauri Maulekhi shared that she also found her life partner in LU when she took admission in BCom in the year 1995. “I met Dushyant on the very first day when I entered the classroom. I fell in love with him and we got married,” Maulekhi reminisced.

Deputy CM Sharma also inauguarated the portal of LU Alumni Foundation. Alumni from across the world will be able to register on the portal. Sharma also released a souvenir.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India/ Home> News> City News> Lucknow News / TNN / April 29th, 2018

Two more products of Varanasi joins GI club

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Business & Economy, Historical Links / Pre-Independence, Records, All, World Opinion

Varanasi :

The eastern UP’s two more handicraft goods – Soft stone undercut work and Ghazipur jute wall hanging joined the league of Geographical Indication (GI). With the addition of these two products to GI club, the Eastern UP has emerged as a hub of goods protected under Intellectual Property Rights (IPR).

The GI expert and facilitator Dr. Rajni Kant of Human Welfare Association said that the GI certification was granted to soft stone undercut work (registration number 556) and Ghazipur jute wall hanging (registration number 555) on March 30. Now, the east UP has a total of 10 GI products including Banaras brocade & saree, Handmade carpet of Bhadohi, Banaras gulabi meenakari craft, Varanasi wooden lacquerware & toys, Mirzapur handmade dari, Nizamabad black pottery, Banaras metal repouse craft, and Varanasi glass beads.

He said that with the support of National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), Lucknow, the local artisans had applied for GI tag in July 2016. These two products were also put on display at the Deen Dayal Hastkaka Sankul for the view of French President Emanuel Macron and Prime Minister Narendra Modi during their visit to the city on March 12. The crafts were highly appreciated by them.

The undercut stone carving at Varanasi is very unique producing different artifacts. The most noted product of this kind is an undercut elephant. Artisans carve variety of products from soap stone. Lamp stands, small bowls, jaalis, candle stands and decorative items. Similarly, the wall hanging of Ghazipur is one of the unique handicraft products transformed from the best combination of golden fiber jute yarn and fabric. Proper display of this product provides aesthetic pleasure. Jute fiber used as basic material is a natural gift of mankind, which is biodegradable, non-toxic and environment friendly.

Kant said that the soft stone undercut works produced exclusively in Varanasi, Chandauli, Mirzapur and Sonbhadra districts, and jute wall hanging procuced in Ghazipur, Varanasi , Chandauli and Mirzapur districts are entitled to use GI tag after certification.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News> City News> Varanasi News / by Binay Singh / TNN / April 16th, 2018

11th-century bodies near Meerut give new archaeological twist to history

About Uttar Pradesh, Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Historical Links / Pre-Independence, Records, All, World Opinion

Excavation unearths 13 bodies that roughly date back to 11th century AD; discovery leads to calls for a deeper examination because people of the region in that period were known to cremate the dead.

An excavation by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) near Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, has unearthed 13 bodies that roughly date back to 11th century AD, according to people familiar with the developments. This has sparked interest among experts and led to calls for a deeper examination because people of the region in that period were known to cremate the dead.

Historians have defined the era between the 7th century AD and the 12th century AD as the Rajput Period, and archaeologists say that this is the first time that any excavation has revealed the burial of bodies from that period in north India.

“We have found extended burial of 13 persons which include a male, a female, children and a handicapped person,” said Sanjay Manjul, director at the Institute of Archaeology, who is overseeing ASI’s Barnawa excavations.

“While twelve bodies were placed in a particular direction, with the head facing the North, one body was found placed in the opposite direction,” Manjul said.

He said that burial pots were recovered with the bodies, suggesting that people of that era may have believed in life after death.

“Since this is the first discovery of burials which seem to be from the later Rajput period, we need to further examine it scientifically and arrive at an exact time period,” he said.

Manjul feels that the discovery is significant as it will throw light on death rituals and cultural aspect of people of that era living in this area.

“Since Muslim Turks, who used to follow burial practices, arrived in India after the 12th century, it would be interesting to determine who these people were and why were they not cremated,” Manjul said, adding that burials were practised in the Harappan and Later Harappan periods, and also among certain Hindu tribes before the Raput Period.

Other archaeologists and historians feel that these burials might unravel some mysteries of the cultural aspect of life of people.

Dr Buddha Rashmi Mani, Director General, National Museum, says that though he doesn’t have first-hand experience of the excavated materials, the recovery of burial pots suggests the body doesn’t belong to members of the Muslim community.

“The Veerashaiva community in southern India practice burying the dead, so there is a possibility of existence of a similar community at the excavation site in UP,” said Mani.

“However, it is also possible that these bodies were of people who died due to some dangerous disease or some calamity and buried at one place in a group. Both possibilities require through investigation.”

Noted archaeologist KK Muhammed, who is credited for discovering Mughal emperor Akbar’s Ibadat Khana (House of Worship), from where the Mughal king propounded the religion Din-i Ilahi, said that that during wars people would bury bodies due to lack of time and resources in the war field. It’s a notion that historian Kapil Kumar agreed with, but both said that it would be too early to determine the identity of these people and the reasons for such graves, and called for a thorough examination.

According to historian Makkhan Lal, “It’s a good thing that we are paying attention to the excavation of the Rajput Period sites which has not been done so far.”

HT had reported earlier this month that the excavations at Barnawa, which started last December, also tried to determine the existence of the Lakshagriha episode mentioned in the epic Mahabharata. Archaeologists had said that artefacts found there bore strong a cultural resemblance to those found at sites such as Hastinapur, Indraprastha, Kurukshetra and Mathura — places that find mention in the epic.

source: http://www.hindustantimes.com / Hindustan Times / Home> India / by Jeevan Prakash Sharma, Hindustan Times,New Delhi / April 26th, 2018