core sector communique

Mountain Echoes 2012

Day 3: Tarayana Center
22^nd May, 2012

In the lap of the beautiful Himalayan valley the third day of the festival began with a conversation on a forgotten hill far away in the busy suburb of Andheri, Mumbai. Surgeons and writers Kalpana Swaminathan and Ishrat Syed began with a much coordinated reading from their book, ‘Once Upon a Hill’, and then presented a slide show of pictures of this Gilbert Hill from different angles showing the dismal state of disappearance that it is in now. They talked about the various stages of research they went through, the hill cutters they met, the librarians they couldn’t find, the temple that is now crowning the hill and the birth of their merged writing identity as Kalpish Ratna. They were also joined by an unexpected member from the audience, Gulzar Saheb, who shared his memories of many years ago living in Andheri, close to this hill, which once upon a time was there.

The second session for the day was an intriguing and intimate discourse on the status of local Bhutanese languages. Dr. Karma Phuntsho introduced Kuenzang Thinley, a great scholar of the Bhutanese Dzongkha language, who has written several songs and one of his biggest achievements being the Dzongkha dictionary. Together they looked at the rich Indo-Himalayan literary traditions and the development of language as a human creation. They talked of the efforts being put in to preserve the literary wealth of Bhutan, which has about 23 different languages spoken there. Kuenzang Thinley also spoke of why the title of the festival is so appropriate, given the significance of the mountains as spiritual abodes of their deities, sources of water and life, political and geographical boundaries for the northern region, and mountains as a natural offering from the region and inspiration for writers and poets. The session was rounded up with a reading of his song and Sonam Dorji giving it music. He also promised that he will compose a song on Mountain Echoes next year.

This was followed by a motivating and moving conversation between award winning writer and diplomat Lily Wangchhuk and Sathya Saran. Lily Wangchhuk shared the story of her extraordinary life and how she overcame the most challenging situations with determination and positivity. Her childhood started off with losing her father and trying to prove to her siblings that she was not a curse to the family. Going from a shy child worrying that she could end up as a social misfit, to deciding that she will not let herself become a victim of her situation and joining the foreign services, she came a long way to achieve a successful career and a happy life. But just when things were looking great, she was detected with third stage cancer. She realized that while she had been trying to live for the future she was suddenly robbed of her present. But after the initial depression, she found strength in the power of mind over matter and once again decided that she will fight the situation and fulfill her purpose of life. She came out victorious and is now grateful for the lessons that she learnt because of cancer that made her cherish every moment of life.

The account of a personal journey moved to a physical one as writer and historian Patrick French spoke with Amrita Tripathi about his latest book, India: An Intimate Portrait, and the Himalayan task that went into the writing of that book. He read an interesting excerpt from his book about the inheritance factor that is such an inherent part of Indian politics and how the hereditary MPs always defend their nomination by quoting tradition where it’s only natural for sons to inherit the father’s occupation. He shared his experience while researching this book and the disparate set of people he spoke to for getting a wide array of perspectives and examples of what is happening in India. He spoke of interviewing people from different languages, using of interpreters, learning how to tell when an interpreter is holding back information, picking up the non verbal cues and how sometimes the stupidest questions lead to the most interesting information. Patrick French is now writing a book on the Himalayan region and has been traveling around the area, writing a historical biography of the Himalayas, finding unifying characteristics in countries that look seemingly different on the surface.

After forty minute lunch break, the audience was in for a yet another feast as Dayanita Singh and Pramod KG shared some of their fascinating pictures and talked about photography as an archiving process and the various influences that can affect different photographers clicking the same image. Dayanita Singh spoke of how she made the move from photojournalism to family portraits. She then spoke of why she gets excited about photographing rooms full of paper, which she thinks are packed with stories, secrets, facts and fiction and how she found records of her own family by a chance visit to the land records archive. Pramod KG then shared a picture story to show why archives are interesting to him, the need for creating a photographic history of Bhutan and the importance of outreach for any cataloguing project.

The session on archiving seamlessly led to a discourse by Wendell Rodricks on the history of Goan textiles. He talked about the culture of the people who were forced to create a new textile and costume for themselves because their colonizers so decided and why the Goans were the first artisans to leave the country after getting colonized. He showed pictures to explain his work, which covers the rich tradition of gold in Goa, the purpose of clothing in India, the importance of checks in Indian saris, the Buddhist and Muslim influences on Goan textiles and how the people fought to retain the Hindu and Goan traditions through Portuguese and Catholic conflicts.

After all this talk about history, it was time to trace the fifty years of Indian cinema with Shantanu Ray Chaudhury and Sharmila Tagore, who made her debut with Satyajit Ray over fifty years ago in 1960 and then moved to Bombay in 1963. She talked of all the things she had to learn and unlearn while navigating these two diverse cinematic worlds, as she moved from Ray to ‘Kashmir ki Kali’. The difference was highlighted when the audience was shown clips of her first film as 13-year-old child bride and then from her Bollywood blockbusters. She shared her experiences about filming with Ray, carving her own identity, the perception of female actors and the changes that the film industry has seen over the years.

The conversation on Indian cinema gave way to a discussion on the proliferating Bhutanese cinema between Kelly Dorji, Tsokye Tsomo Karchung, Thukten Yeshi and Phuntsok Rabten. The young actors and filmmakers spoke of how Bhutanese cinema, which had been a hangover of what the older generation liked in Indian cinema, was now growing tremendously. They talked about how they write their scripts, the commercial forces at play and the recent rise in devotional scripts. Phuntsok Rabten described her journey from behind the camera to in front of the camera and her decision to write films that are women oriented.

The day at Tarayana was concluded with a lovely round of readings by three writers from three different countries, Navdeep Suri, Shazia Omar and Ali Sethi.

Simultaneously, in another venue, other sessions were rolling out. The day at Taj Tashi started with a travel session between Vikram Seth, William Dalrymple and Patrick French, moderated by Nidhi Razdan. Vikram Seth spoke of his unexpected journey to China and how he ended up writing a book. William Dalrymple on the other hand said that when he started writing, the best way to get published was to write travel books. While William felt that an outsider’s eye is sometimes sharper than those who inhabit a culture, Patrick French said that with so many Indians writing about India, the insider’s perspective was very valuable.

This was followed by a session with Mushtaq Sheikh, Arshad Warsi and Shakun Batra on destination cinema and how the flavor of a place and uniqueness of a nation influences the nature of the script. They spoke of how in a film a location becomes a character and weaves into the story but there are also practical aspects to keep in mind like accessibility and availability of resources.

The next session reflected on the issue of development as Pavan Varma, Arun Sinha, Tshering Tobgay spoke whether the most efficient way to measure the impact of development is through statics or the quality of life. They picked up examples from India to look for strategies that are viable and successful in a democracy.

The last session for Taj, ‘Style in the Kitchen’ had Wendell Rodricks giving Maria Goretti instructions to cook some moth watering Goan fish.

The Nehru Wangchuck Center screened three films, Living Stories introduced by Amrtita Tripathi, Religious Linkages between Bhutan and Ladakh, introduced by Thukten Yeshi and Shining Mountain: On the Edge introduced by Stephen Alter.