(bdnews24.com, April 29, 2011)
It is being called the wedding of the decade. But then they said that about another wedding that happened many years before, in 1981, when Lady Diana Spencer married Charles, heir to the throne of the British empire. On April 29, today, her first son, Prince William of Wales, married Catherine Middleton at Westminster Abbey. And, we hear, that it all took so long to actually come about (ten years since the happy couple first met in 2011) because the two of them wanted to be absolutely sure that they would remain a happy couple indeed and not live separate and unhappy lives after a few seasons together as man and wife.
Whatever the two still-fairly-young people have decided to do, and for whatever reason they have decided to do it, it is after all their lives – or life, when it is all done and signed – and we, as bystanders, however interested, have no business sticking our noses into it. And isn’t that what got Diana killed? Too many people taking too much of an interest in her business? In a way it is all part of life as it is today. Enquiring minds, as the catchphrase goes, want to know and the media is duty-bound in its role as media to provide that information. So when it comes to the wedding of the son of a star personality that the press went crazy chasing, that frenzy starts up all over again.
The hype over the wedding of Prince William and his lady love is not without parallels in less royal circles. In India, the hype-bug struck very recently when paparazzi tried to storm the venue for the big day that Bollywood star Lara Dutta and tennis biggie Mahesh Bhupati were celebrating with a circle of close friends and family. A few years ago, the wedding of former Miss World Aishwarya Rai and Bollywood scion Abhishek Bachchan had the press photographers camped outside various places that the different ceremonies were scheduled to be held, with someone actually sneaking very private images of the actual nuptials out to the waiting newshounds for instant ‘scoop’ publication. And of course, on an international level, there is the ever-hungry public waiting to know more about when Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are going to make their relationship legal. Gossip websites the world over focus on these issues, never mind that they do not really impact the state of the world apropos peace, global warming, nuclear winter or the price of…well…eggs!
What really amuses me is the so-called ‘educated speculation’ that people indulge in. While there is some justification for the royal PR people to divulge ‘insider’ information – that bit about how the royal couple wanted to be sure they would stay happily married before actually committing to a date comes from them – to have the man (or woman) on the street professing to know all sorts of confidential tidbits about how Kate and William will live their lives as husband and wife, from the colour of their bedsheets to the flavour of their toothpaste to the swimwear they will use during their honeymoon seems a bit too much to digest. However public a figure, whatever their profile, wherever in the world they may be, no one has a right to poke their snoopy noses into a private and personal existence; the outside world needs to learn how to stop at the bedroom door, for one!
Oddly enough, it is the new princess’ fashion sense that is attracting the most comment. From her figure – now even slimmer than before, perhaps because of the stress of becoming a wife so publicly – to her wedding gown, everyone has something to say. Along the way, comparisons are being made, naturally of course, to her late mother-in-law, Diana, with editorial opinions and photo-features by the dozen talking about how Diana wore this so what will Kate wear on a similar occasion? The burning question editors of websites, newspapers and magazines have right now is what will Kate wear for her wedding? Should it be sexy and a la mode, as befits a young woman with a decidedly modern personal style, or should it be modest and reflective of a future queen who will lead by example? Should she buy British or opt for a more global design statement? And should it be white, which seems out of sync since the pair has been together for so long, or include a touch of colour, which would make it more edgy, contemporary and young? Everything that is the bride’s prerogative has become a matter of open debate.
Is this fair? Doesn’t a young woman, especially one newly married, deserve some privacy? She has a life, she has so many changes to adjust to, she needs time and space to be a princess, a wife, a part of a very large and even more illustrious family, she needs to feel like she is still who she essentially is, a young woman with a mind and a psyche that has the freedom to be what it is. And it is up to us, as the general public, to give her that respect.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Sunday, April 24, 2011
The great buying bazaar
(bdnews24.com, April 22, 2011)
I was at the mall yesterday and found that almost every store had a huge crowd bogging up the aisles, milling around the checkout counters and trolling through the shelves. It was sale time, a special event that had been announced in every newspaper, magazine, brochure and flyer for many days before the melee actually started. Privileged clients, mainly those with special credit cards from selected stores, had received news of the discounts and deals via text messages on their mobile phones, emails and the occasional pesky phone call.
As all these potential customers, along with arbitrary visitors wander through the mall, they are wooed by touts from various stores, inviting them into their establishments, to ‘just look, madam’, to hopefully spend a few more shekels than actually budgeted for. And the money flows out of wallets and into cash registers, good fly off the shelves, big bags are carried out and cars, autorickshaws, trains and buses head to different parts of the city with loads of passengers, happy and spent, literally and metaphorically. Welcome to the great Indian bazaar!
It is much easier to be truly capitalist and indulge in gratuitous expenditure today than it was a few years ago. Thanks to the unprecedented burgeoning of malls all over the subcontinent, making the good old ‘department store’ defunct, there has been a sudden and drastic increase in not just availability, but also awareness of what is available where, when and for how much. And along the way, there has also been a growing demand for quality, for international brands and for a degree of convenience that was once available only in stores in the more developed and commercially elitist nations. In other words, the power of money has become reality, with everyone asking for more every day, in every way.
Once upon a time, the mall was an elitist concept, a place that people with money went to buy everything from kitchen gadgets to lingerie to toys for the children. Today, just a couple of years after the mall made its debut in India, for instance, there is a distinct divide in the customer base and the kinds of stores in a particular hub. Some are indeed more upmarket than others, showcasing high-street brands and one-of-a-kind products. Designer clothes, couture accessories, fine jewellery, big-name cookware, even mobile phones and sound systems that could cost the same as a small car will be available to a clientele that lives in million dollar homes and considers spending thousands on a simple meal an everyday way of living.
In other shopping malls, bargains will be a way of rolling the cart through the aisles, a huge discount attracting the most customers and pulling in the profits for the suppliers, never mind that the goods may not last too long – as long as they are affordable, look decent, get the job done…for now…it is fine and will be bought.
Malls today are a fact of everyday life. In my own neighbourhood, fairly elitist and suburban, there are three enormous ones within a ten minute walking radius of my home. One has high-end stores, with designer labels and wares that are generally found more in shops abroad, selling dreams and aspirations more than goods. The other is more middle-market, with more local products, some expensive, some not, selling utilitarian products of fairly high quality but not exceptional brand. And the third is a more accessible set of shops that provide service to the huge lower-middle class, the kind who would consider a car a luxury and food more important than interior decor. All these people need to be catered to, their needs fulfilled, but at a price that makes sense to them and delineates a certain consciousness of necessity versus luxury.
It is perhaps the story of a global virus called commercialism. There is a need for more than our parents and grandparents had, an awareness that there is more to everyday living standards than perhaps a few years ago. People want more, rather than merely need more, to be comfortable, to feel that they have a decent standard of living, to live up to their own heightened expectations. Along the way, it becomes a generational aspiration, a desire to satisfy a hunger that the elders did not feel as strongly, to become more than what the parents were, to have more than the grandparents did.
Jobs and salaries reflect that evolution – not necessarily good or bad – and so do credit card company profits, which over the past couple of decades have soared, even through the recession and any bad times that the economy went through. The attitude change, too, is revealing of a changing time, where people are willing and able to spend plenty of money and demand plenty of bang for their spent buck.
And if they can get their satisfaction, everyone goes home happy!
I was at the mall yesterday and found that almost every store had a huge crowd bogging up the aisles, milling around the checkout counters and trolling through the shelves. It was sale time, a special event that had been announced in every newspaper, magazine, brochure and flyer for many days before the melee actually started. Privileged clients, mainly those with special credit cards from selected stores, had received news of the discounts and deals via text messages on their mobile phones, emails and the occasional pesky phone call.
As all these potential customers, along with arbitrary visitors wander through the mall, they are wooed by touts from various stores, inviting them into their establishments, to ‘just look, madam’, to hopefully spend a few more shekels than actually budgeted for. And the money flows out of wallets and into cash registers, good fly off the shelves, big bags are carried out and cars, autorickshaws, trains and buses head to different parts of the city with loads of passengers, happy and spent, literally and metaphorically. Welcome to the great Indian bazaar!
It is much easier to be truly capitalist and indulge in gratuitous expenditure today than it was a few years ago. Thanks to the unprecedented burgeoning of malls all over the subcontinent, making the good old ‘department store’ defunct, there has been a sudden and drastic increase in not just availability, but also awareness of what is available where, when and for how much. And along the way, there has also been a growing demand for quality, for international brands and for a degree of convenience that was once available only in stores in the more developed and commercially elitist nations. In other words, the power of money has become reality, with everyone asking for more every day, in every way.
Once upon a time, the mall was an elitist concept, a place that people with money went to buy everything from kitchen gadgets to lingerie to toys for the children. Today, just a couple of years after the mall made its debut in India, for instance, there is a distinct divide in the customer base and the kinds of stores in a particular hub. Some are indeed more upmarket than others, showcasing high-street brands and one-of-a-kind products. Designer clothes, couture accessories, fine jewellery, big-name cookware, even mobile phones and sound systems that could cost the same as a small car will be available to a clientele that lives in million dollar homes and considers spending thousands on a simple meal an everyday way of living.
In other shopping malls, bargains will be a way of rolling the cart through the aisles, a huge discount attracting the most customers and pulling in the profits for the suppliers, never mind that the goods may not last too long – as long as they are affordable, look decent, get the job done…for now…it is fine and will be bought.
Malls today are a fact of everyday life. In my own neighbourhood, fairly elitist and suburban, there are three enormous ones within a ten minute walking radius of my home. One has high-end stores, with designer labels and wares that are generally found more in shops abroad, selling dreams and aspirations more than goods. The other is more middle-market, with more local products, some expensive, some not, selling utilitarian products of fairly high quality but not exceptional brand. And the third is a more accessible set of shops that provide service to the huge lower-middle class, the kind who would consider a car a luxury and food more important than interior decor. All these people need to be catered to, their needs fulfilled, but at a price that makes sense to them and delineates a certain consciousness of necessity versus luxury.
It is perhaps the story of a global virus called commercialism. There is a need for more than our parents and grandparents had, an awareness that there is more to everyday living standards than perhaps a few years ago. People want more, rather than merely need more, to be comfortable, to feel that they have a decent standard of living, to live up to their own heightened expectations. Along the way, it becomes a generational aspiration, a desire to satisfy a hunger that the elders did not feel as strongly, to become more than what the parents were, to have more than the grandparents did.
Jobs and salaries reflect that evolution – not necessarily good or bad – and so do credit card company profits, which over the past couple of decades have soared, even through the recession and any bad times that the economy went through. The attitude change, too, is revealing of a changing time, where people are willing and able to spend plenty of money and demand plenty of bang for their spent buck.
And if they can get their satisfaction, everyone goes home happy!
Monday, April 18, 2011
The art of craft
(bdnews24, April 15, 2011)
A couple of weeks ago the gentleman who supplies us with printing paper and cartridges for the printer called to say that he had received a new shipment of stuff. His wife was really the dealer, he explained, and she was ready to show us some of the latest lot. Good quality, he promised, good prices too. For a few seconds, I wondered, but then I realised I already knew. It was nothing in the least bit nefarious that he was speaking of, but something quite innocuous albeit desirable.
The gentleman has a wife who came from Bangladesh. She has a little home business of embellished fabrics that she sources from her home country. And every time she brings in some, the shipment is gone in a matter of a few hours. This time, we were getting a preview, just because we had been asking to see the materials ever since we had heard about them.
So we trotted over, took a good look, a second look and a third, and picked out what seemed to be the best of the lot, overall a good lot. It was not especially traditional, unlike some of the other samples in the bundle, but it was pretty and had the kind of subtle impact I tend to favour in my clothes. There were some pretty examples of nakshi kantha, the craft I had read so much about, all adapted nicely to suit a modern urban lifestyle, used on cool cotton saris, stylish kurtis and elaborately worked salwar-kameez suits. The work was very similar to what is produced in Bengal, the traditional and age-old kantha work, simple stitches elaborately set into intricate designs that make art out of what is essentially a village craft, used in garments that have acquired high-fashion tags the world over.
That is what fascinates me about culture and tradition. There is a growing newfound respect for that which we have taken for granted for generations, elevated from something that was used to make everyday utilitarian items, often for household use, prettier. It could make a chore a little more pleasant and time spent in the house more aesthetic. Once upon a time it could have been done with the intention of giving a housewife or ageing member of the family something to do; painting could have been a matter of decoration, or for ritualistic purposes, to ward off evil or send a message or even just camouflage the home from possibly-hostile visitors to the area. Inside, too, there would have been some kind of ornamentation, a sense of house-proud-ness, an attempt to make the surroundings more appealing and interesting.
However, history and the human mind being what they are, much indigenous culture has got lost over time, due primarily to the whimsical nature of man and his snob values. There have been many times in India, for instance, when local culture and tradition has given way to the western music-video ethos, be it in films, in fashion and, inevitably, in craft. Fortunately, every time, there has been a valiant group of individuals who battle to make that erosion stop, to even reverse it in certain cases, making sure that what is irreplaceable and valuable as a reflection of the history of a human evolution is not lost forever.
Many years ago, I met an elderly lady who told me about a fascinating method of tie-dyeing textile, native to a region in western India. The bandhini, a tie-dye technique that caught tiny pinches of fabric in string, protecting them from being coloured when the piece is dipped into a vat of dye, told stories in the designs that were created by the intricate pattern of dots and circles that resulted. There were myths retold, the lady explained, and see here, this is how the new bride tried to entice her husband to stay with her and not go on a business trip; and this is what the woman said to her daughter when the girl said she wanted a new skirt that had gold paisleys on a scarlet background; and this one is about the man who won the battle that he fought against 17 men who tried to take over his field…
Fabric is one almost-universal way of capturing legends and passing them on to a new generation. It is useful in so many ways, a sari converting to a quilt that is usable as a tent that can be made into baby clothes that may end up as a bag for carrying new saris. Each may be embellished, with simple stitches like in kantha or more intricate ones as in the fine tilla work of Kashmir, and each tells of a world, a people, a life.
As these pieces are passed down from elder to child, from community to clan, from one village to another, the stories spread, the myths get tweaked, a new history is created. In that, even the salwar kameez piece I bought, sent via various people from your country, Bangladesh, to mine, India, will become a part of my personal culture, one that bonds us with a sense of beauty.
A couple of weeks ago the gentleman who supplies us with printing paper and cartridges for the printer called to say that he had received a new shipment of stuff. His wife was really the dealer, he explained, and she was ready to show us some of the latest lot. Good quality, he promised, good prices too. For a few seconds, I wondered, but then I realised I already knew. It was nothing in the least bit nefarious that he was speaking of, but something quite innocuous albeit desirable.
The gentleman has a wife who came from Bangladesh. She has a little home business of embellished fabrics that she sources from her home country. And every time she brings in some, the shipment is gone in a matter of a few hours. This time, we were getting a preview, just because we had been asking to see the materials ever since we had heard about them.
So we trotted over, took a good look, a second look and a third, and picked out what seemed to be the best of the lot, overall a good lot. It was not especially traditional, unlike some of the other samples in the bundle, but it was pretty and had the kind of subtle impact I tend to favour in my clothes. There were some pretty examples of nakshi kantha, the craft I had read so much about, all adapted nicely to suit a modern urban lifestyle, used on cool cotton saris, stylish kurtis and elaborately worked salwar-kameez suits. The work was very similar to what is produced in Bengal, the traditional and age-old kantha work, simple stitches elaborately set into intricate designs that make art out of what is essentially a village craft, used in garments that have acquired high-fashion tags the world over.
That is what fascinates me about culture and tradition. There is a growing newfound respect for that which we have taken for granted for generations, elevated from something that was used to make everyday utilitarian items, often for household use, prettier. It could make a chore a little more pleasant and time spent in the house more aesthetic. Once upon a time it could have been done with the intention of giving a housewife or ageing member of the family something to do; painting could have been a matter of decoration, or for ritualistic purposes, to ward off evil or send a message or even just camouflage the home from possibly-hostile visitors to the area. Inside, too, there would have been some kind of ornamentation, a sense of house-proud-ness, an attempt to make the surroundings more appealing and interesting.
However, history and the human mind being what they are, much indigenous culture has got lost over time, due primarily to the whimsical nature of man and his snob values. There have been many times in India, for instance, when local culture and tradition has given way to the western music-video ethos, be it in films, in fashion and, inevitably, in craft. Fortunately, every time, there has been a valiant group of individuals who battle to make that erosion stop, to even reverse it in certain cases, making sure that what is irreplaceable and valuable as a reflection of the history of a human evolution is not lost forever.
Many years ago, I met an elderly lady who told me about a fascinating method of tie-dyeing textile, native to a region in western India. The bandhini, a tie-dye technique that caught tiny pinches of fabric in string, protecting them from being coloured when the piece is dipped into a vat of dye, told stories in the designs that were created by the intricate pattern of dots and circles that resulted. There were myths retold, the lady explained, and see here, this is how the new bride tried to entice her husband to stay with her and not go on a business trip; and this is what the woman said to her daughter when the girl said she wanted a new skirt that had gold paisleys on a scarlet background; and this one is about the man who won the battle that he fought against 17 men who tried to take over his field…
Fabric is one almost-universal way of capturing legends and passing them on to a new generation. It is useful in so many ways, a sari converting to a quilt that is usable as a tent that can be made into baby clothes that may end up as a bag for carrying new saris. Each may be embellished, with simple stitches like in kantha or more intricate ones as in the fine tilla work of Kashmir, and each tells of a world, a people, a life.
As these pieces are passed down from elder to child, from community to clan, from one village to another, the stories spread, the myths get tweaked, a new history is created. In that, even the salwar kameez piece I bought, sent via various people from your country, Bangladesh, to mine, India, will become a part of my personal culture, one that bonds us with a sense of beauty.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Ratheesh T
(The Times of India Crest Edition, April 9, 2011)
Sometimes you look at a work of art and wonder whether you haven’t wandered off into your own nightmares. Sometimes you see strange apparitions that could only have come off a medieval woodcut that spoke of demonic rituals and unholy desires. Sometimes you can wonder if you are really on the same plane, physical of psychical, as you explore visually, strangely disturbed by the images, but unable to move away from them. Such it is with the work of Ratheesh T, often described as magic realism, the genre so evocatively and expertly channelled by literary greats like Gabriel Garcia Marquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude) and Leslie Marmon Silko (Ceremony) and in art by Paul Cadmus and George Tooker. In India, OV Vijayan’s Malayalam prose captures the essence of fantasy in the highest quality of language, presenting a stunning series of word-pictures that seem, in a strange way, to find reflection in what Ratheesh creates. His works are, on the surface, highly detailed and astonishingly intricate; as you look closer, the spooky element comes to the fore, leaping off the large oil-daubed canvases to smack you in the eye, metaphorically speaking, of course, with a certain unnerving sense of horror, of weirdness, of a realm where fantasy and horror collide in a parallel universe that does nothing to soothe rattled senses.
Ratheesh T was born in Kilimanoor in Kerala in 1980 and lives and works in Tiruvananthapuram, from where he earned a BFA at the College of Fine Arts. He started exhibiting early, with works at the Kerala Lalithkala Academy in Kochi in 2003, and has shown in prestigious galleries and fora in the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom. His involvement and empathy with his art shows in his responses to questions, thoughtful, passionate, occasionally incoherent, but loquacious, his eyes gleaming with a strangely otherworldly excitement though his spectacles as he speaks in a heavy Malayali accent. His recent show at the Galerie Mirchandani-Steinrucke in Mumbai, a preview to an exhibition including his works in Berlin, is called Green Pond and is indicative of the predominant colour in his works. As he explains with characteristic enthusiasm, “it comes naturally...it just comes”
There is a lot of green used, something that has been commented on before. Does this stem from your background in Kerala, or the channeling of nature as the main focus of your thought processes?
That is a good question. My paintings have a lot of green, my studio space is surrounded by green so it comes naturally, I do not think about it. One painting I made in Scotland is very brown...it comes to one, it just comes.
‘Magic realism’ is a phrase oft-used to describe your work. Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a master of the art in writing. How would you, the artist, explain this concept of magic realism in the context of your work?
People think about it as magic realism, but my ideas come from real life, from the heart. How do we create a total feel? That is very important. As an artist, I will do anything, go in any direction to achieve my purpose of getting this total ‘feel’. In my self portrait there are snakes inside my brain - now that is not only a snake; somebody may think ‘only snakes’, but for me it is showing the complexities of its body and powerfulness of its head. Also, it tells the story of the history of the snake in India - Krishna sleeping on a snake, Shiva wearing a snake...it all relates to power, the power of God, or in my case, the power of the brain. Magic realism is other people's issue, it is not my issue.
At first look, the work is full of life, of energy, vibrant, positive. As you look deeper, there is a certain sense of darkness, an underlying evil almost, that comes through. Is that a reflection of life today or a comment on it?
Peripherally, we can say that there are so many images of that kind. But deeply, underneath the peripheral, if you go into any detail, you will find abstraction of the universal - in life and looking at it, everything appears peripheral when one sees what I am doing on the canvas. But that is not the right way of looking...
First, when we are looking at the canvas, we get the total feel, the first impression. Only after that do we notice details, we walk to and then into the details. That is going towards another way to discover the truth.
How do you do your work – the paintings are so complex, so detailed, so intricate – where do the ideas come from? Is there any method with which they are executed? And is this complexity the reason you do not show that much in Mumbai?
Much of it comes from my love and admiration for my mother. My birth into my family is a great gift. This birth - where I was born, when I was born - each and every idea comes from this, it is my gift. An artist is born. Some paintings take less time and are less complicated, like Memory and Mother Goddess; others take very, very long.
What are you, the artist, attempting to communicate to your audience?
What I try to make is total energy of real spirituality, that which is inside me. This has nothing to do with religion's God, but everything to do with energy.
It has been said by critics and essayists that you are making trenchant comments on the issues that matter today – could you explain that?
Everything is positioned on the landscape and the landscape sometimes answers back when you ask questions. I am also on the landscape all the time, so I am too close to it, I cannot say much about it. Instead, I paint.
Sometimes you look at a work of art and wonder whether you haven’t wandered off into your own nightmares. Sometimes you see strange apparitions that could only have come off a medieval woodcut that spoke of demonic rituals and unholy desires. Sometimes you can wonder if you are really on the same plane, physical of psychical, as you explore visually, strangely disturbed by the images, but unable to move away from them. Such it is with the work of Ratheesh T, often described as magic realism, the genre so evocatively and expertly channelled by literary greats like Gabriel Garcia Marquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude) and Leslie Marmon Silko (Ceremony) and in art by Paul Cadmus and George Tooker. In India, OV Vijayan’s Malayalam prose captures the essence of fantasy in the highest quality of language, presenting a stunning series of word-pictures that seem, in a strange way, to find reflection in what Ratheesh creates. His works are, on the surface, highly detailed and astonishingly intricate; as you look closer, the spooky element comes to the fore, leaping off the large oil-daubed canvases to smack you in the eye, metaphorically speaking, of course, with a certain unnerving sense of horror, of weirdness, of a realm where fantasy and horror collide in a parallel universe that does nothing to soothe rattled senses.
Ratheesh T was born in Kilimanoor in Kerala in 1980 and lives and works in Tiruvananthapuram, from where he earned a BFA at the College of Fine Arts. He started exhibiting early, with works at the Kerala Lalithkala Academy in Kochi in 2003, and has shown in prestigious galleries and fora in the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom. His involvement and empathy with his art shows in his responses to questions, thoughtful, passionate, occasionally incoherent, but loquacious, his eyes gleaming with a strangely otherworldly excitement though his spectacles as he speaks in a heavy Malayali accent. His recent show at the Galerie Mirchandani-Steinrucke in Mumbai, a preview to an exhibition including his works in Berlin, is called Green Pond and is indicative of the predominant colour in his works. As he explains with characteristic enthusiasm, “it comes naturally...it just comes”
There is a lot of green used, something that has been commented on before. Does this stem from your background in Kerala, or the channeling of nature as the main focus of your thought processes?
That is a good question. My paintings have a lot of green, my studio space is surrounded by green so it comes naturally, I do not think about it. One painting I made in Scotland is very brown...it comes to one, it just comes.
‘Magic realism’ is a phrase oft-used to describe your work. Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a master of the art in writing. How would you, the artist, explain this concept of magic realism in the context of your work?
People think about it as magic realism, but my ideas come from real life, from the heart. How do we create a total feel? That is very important. As an artist, I will do anything, go in any direction to achieve my purpose of getting this total ‘feel’. In my self portrait there are snakes inside my brain - now that is not only a snake; somebody may think ‘only snakes’, but for me it is showing the complexities of its body and powerfulness of its head. Also, it tells the story of the history of the snake in India - Krishna sleeping on a snake, Shiva wearing a snake...it all relates to power, the power of God, or in my case, the power of the brain. Magic realism is other people's issue, it is not my issue.
At first look, the work is full of life, of energy, vibrant, positive. As you look deeper, there is a certain sense of darkness, an underlying evil almost, that comes through. Is that a reflection of life today or a comment on it?
Peripherally, we can say that there are so many images of that kind. But deeply, underneath the peripheral, if you go into any detail, you will find abstraction of the universal - in life and looking at it, everything appears peripheral when one sees what I am doing on the canvas. But that is not the right way of looking...
First, when we are looking at the canvas, we get the total feel, the first impression. Only after that do we notice details, we walk to and then into the details. That is going towards another way to discover the truth.
How do you do your work – the paintings are so complex, so detailed, so intricate – where do the ideas come from? Is there any method with which they are executed? And is this complexity the reason you do not show that much in Mumbai?
Much of it comes from my love and admiration for my mother. My birth into my family is a great gift. This birth - where I was born, when I was born - each and every idea comes from this, it is my gift. An artist is born. Some paintings take less time and are less complicated, like Memory and Mother Goddess; others take very, very long.
What are you, the artist, attempting to communicate to your audience?
What I try to make is total energy of real spirituality, that which is inside me. This has nothing to do with religion's God, but everything to do with energy.
It has been said by critics and essayists that you are making trenchant comments on the issues that matter today – could you explain that?
Everything is positioned on the landscape and the landscape sometimes answers back when you ask questions. I am also on the landscape all the time, so I am too close to it, I cannot say much about it. Instead, I paint.
Gingger Shankar
(The Times of India Crest Edition, April 9, 2011)
She is all Indian, genetically speaking, but truly global in sound. Her father, with whom she is not the closest of friends, is the well-known violinist, L Subramanium, and her mother Viji was a classical singer who passed away in early 1995. Gingger Shankar is all about music, about art, about performance, about the beauty of Indian culture in its purest and most communicative form. Raised in India and the United States, Los Angeles in particular, Gingger studied vocal music, violin, piano, dance and opera, starting her performing career at 14. Touring with her as-famous uncle L Shankar, table maestro Zakir Hussain and ghatam expert Vikku Vinayakram, took her to festivals and events all over the world. Adding to this already distinguished resume has been work she has done with musicians of the ilk of Smashing Pumpkins, Talvin Singh, Steve Vai, Sussan Deyhim, James Newton Howard, Rabbit in the Moon, Tony Levin and Steve Lukather. Her 2004 triumph rings the high note in her collaboration with composers John Debney and L Shankar for the musical score of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of The Christ, in which her voice and her instrument, the double violin, are clearly audible right through. Films, concerts, albums...she has them all to her credit, from Charlie Wilson’s War and The Forbidden Kingdom to live venues like the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles, the San Diego Indie Music Festival and the Sundance Institute Composer’s Lab.
The list of performances, awards, honours and fan clubs can go on and on. But from the point of view of her unique talent, Gingger is perhaps the only woman in the world who has mastered the ten-string double violin, which covers a whole orchestra worth of double bass, cello, viola and violin in tonality and range. Add to that her astonishingly facile voice, covering five octaves, and her extremely glamorous appearance, it is not surprising that the world of modelling, films and high-voltage celebrityhood occasionally invites her to make a special appearance. In an email interview, she tells Ramya Sarma a little of what she is all about...
Tell us something about growing up with music - you come from a family well known for its artistry, is that where your talent was nurtured and honed? How did it all happen to bring you to where you are in your journey?
I was around music from the time I was born (probably earlier!). I was very lucky to have a mother who exposed me to so many different types of music. We'd go to classical concerts and listen to rock music on the way back home. She was a very open minded person and because of that I was able to soak up so much music by the time I knew I wanted to perform. My mother taught me singing, my grandfather taught me violin. I also studied piano, opera and western music. All those influences definitely make me the artist I am today.
This is what i have read about you "dedicated to stretching her boundaries and spreading her wings, always experimenting with elegant and exciting mixtures of sounds. She weaves an intricate tapestry of musical styles" - how much of the Indian musical tradition is reflected in the music you make? And what other culture is most significant?
It entirely depends on the project. When I toured with the Smashing Pumpkins, I added Indian influences to what I was performing. In the movie world, some projects want eastern sounding scores, others want very traditional western scores. My record has hints of Indian influence. I think my music reflects me- modern, traditional, Indian, western, electronic..I am definitely a hybrid!
The Indian (especially the Carnatic) raga explores a different and more intricate scale than the western musical repertoire. Does understanding one system make the other easier to play with? Does one influence the other?
I think having both influences definitely gives me a larger palette to work with. I love crossing the boundaries of both and creating new soundscapes. Especially in the land of film scoring, taking a western traditional score and putting an indian twist to it is so much fun.
You have such a fabulous resume where your film work is concerned - have you considered a stint in Bollywood, especially today, when so much new stuff is being explored and experimented with? Acting, music. vocals, there is such a lot someone with your background and talent could be part of!
I would love to. I have just never been approached to do it!
The double violin is your speciality. How does vary in potential and sound quality from the more conventional one? And, of course, in the kind of music it can produce?
It definitely has a unique tone that no other instrument can produce. It is fantastic for movie soundtracks as well as live performances. It covers the whole orchestra, so it has quite the range as well as dynamics.
You have worked with so many well known musicians in various styles - what or who have the significant influences on your own work been?
That is a very difficult question to answer. I think when you collaborate with an amazing musician, you both influence each other a bit. I have had the luck to work with and listen to so many talented artists along the way, that I feel my inspirations and influences have come from many different places and people.
What kind of music makes you really happy, brings you joy, makes you smile? And what makes you cry?
I listen to loads of music, and it all depends on where I am in my life. Right now I love Kanye West's new record. That is my driving music. My mom's music always makes me cry.
Banal question: What does music mean to you? How would you describe it and its role in your everyday life?
Music is weaved into every part of my life. I am very blessed to do what I love for a living. Besides that, I listen to so much music as well. My friends constantly give me tracks to listen to. And, like everyone else, I have my workout songs, my angry songs, my break up songs, my memory songs, etc.
You have been part of various charitable, awareness-raising movements, mainly through concerts you have been part of. Are you focused on any particular cause?
I have been lucky to work with some incredible charities. Everything from juvenile diabetes and cancer research to promoting music in schools. I don't think there is any cause that is better than another. As long as I can help in some small way to bring awareness to these wonderful organizations and support them, I am thrilled to do so.
What are you working on currently?
I recently finished scoring the feature film Circumstance, which just won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival. It is being released in the summer. I also completed another feature film Homecoming which is by a very talented new director Sean Hackett. Now I'm working on my album as well as a theatre play in Los Angeles.
She is all Indian, genetically speaking, but truly global in sound. Her father, with whom she is not the closest of friends, is the well-known violinist, L Subramanium, and her mother Viji was a classical singer who passed away in early 1995. Gingger Shankar is all about music, about art, about performance, about the beauty of Indian culture in its purest and most communicative form. Raised in India and the United States, Los Angeles in particular, Gingger studied vocal music, violin, piano, dance and opera, starting her performing career at 14. Touring with her as-famous uncle L Shankar, table maestro Zakir Hussain and ghatam expert Vikku Vinayakram, took her to festivals and events all over the world. Adding to this already distinguished resume has been work she has done with musicians of the ilk of Smashing Pumpkins, Talvin Singh, Steve Vai, Sussan Deyhim, James Newton Howard, Rabbit in the Moon, Tony Levin and Steve Lukather. Her 2004 triumph rings the high note in her collaboration with composers John Debney and L Shankar for the musical score of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of The Christ, in which her voice and her instrument, the double violin, are clearly audible right through. Films, concerts, albums...she has them all to her credit, from Charlie Wilson’s War and The Forbidden Kingdom to live venues like the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles, the San Diego Indie Music Festival and the Sundance Institute Composer’s Lab.
The list of performances, awards, honours and fan clubs can go on and on. But from the point of view of her unique talent, Gingger is perhaps the only woman in the world who has mastered the ten-string double violin, which covers a whole orchestra worth of double bass, cello, viola and violin in tonality and range. Add to that her astonishingly facile voice, covering five octaves, and her extremely glamorous appearance, it is not surprising that the world of modelling, films and high-voltage celebrityhood occasionally invites her to make a special appearance. In an email interview, she tells Ramya Sarma a little of what she is all about...
Tell us something about growing up with music - you come from a family well known for its artistry, is that where your talent was nurtured and honed? How did it all happen to bring you to where you are in your journey?
I was around music from the time I was born (probably earlier!). I was very lucky to have a mother who exposed me to so many different types of music. We'd go to classical concerts and listen to rock music on the way back home. She was a very open minded person and because of that I was able to soak up so much music by the time I knew I wanted to perform. My mother taught me singing, my grandfather taught me violin. I also studied piano, opera and western music. All those influences definitely make me the artist I am today.
This is what i have read about you "dedicated to stretching her boundaries and spreading her wings, always experimenting with elegant and exciting mixtures of sounds. She weaves an intricate tapestry of musical styles" - how much of the Indian musical tradition is reflected in the music you make? And what other culture is most significant?
It entirely depends on the project. When I toured with the Smashing Pumpkins, I added Indian influences to what I was performing. In the movie world, some projects want eastern sounding scores, others want very traditional western scores. My record has hints of Indian influence. I think my music reflects me- modern, traditional, Indian, western, electronic..I am definitely a hybrid!
The Indian (especially the Carnatic) raga explores a different and more intricate scale than the western musical repertoire. Does understanding one system make the other easier to play with? Does one influence the other?
I think having both influences definitely gives me a larger palette to work with. I love crossing the boundaries of both and creating new soundscapes. Especially in the land of film scoring, taking a western traditional score and putting an indian twist to it is so much fun.
You have such a fabulous resume where your film work is concerned - have you considered a stint in Bollywood, especially today, when so much new stuff is being explored and experimented with? Acting, music. vocals, there is such a lot someone with your background and talent could be part of!
I would love to. I have just never been approached to do it!
The double violin is your speciality. How does vary in potential and sound quality from the more conventional one? And, of course, in the kind of music it can produce?
It definitely has a unique tone that no other instrument can produce. It is fantastic for movie soundtracks as well as live performances. It covers the whole orchestra, so it has quite the range as well as dynamics.
You have worked with so many well known musicians in various styles - what or who have the significant influences on your own work been?
That is a very difficult question to answer. I think when you collaborate with an amazing musician, you both influence each other a bit. I have had the luck to work with and listen to so many talented artists along the way, that I feel my inspirations and influences have come from many different places and people.
What kind of music makes you really happy, brings you joy, makes you smile? And what makes you cry?
I listen to loads of music, and it all depends on where I am in my life. Right now I love Kanye West's new record. That is my driving music. My mom's music always makes me cry.
Banal question: What does music mean to you? How would you describe it and its role in your everyday life?
Music is weaved into every part of my life. I am very blessed to do what I love for a living. Besides that, I listen to so much music as well. My friends constantly give me tracks to listen to. And, like everyone else, I have my workout songs, my angry songs, my break up songs, my memory songs, etc.
You have been part of various charitable, awareness-raising movements, mainly through concerts you have been part of. Are you focused on any particular cause?
I have been lucky to work with some incredible charities. Everything from juvenile diabetes and cancer research to promoting music in schools. I don't think there is any cause that is better than another. As long as I can help in some small way to bring awareness to these wonderful organizations and support them, I am thrilled to do so.
What are you working on currently?
I recently finished scoring the feature film Circumstance, which just won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival. It is being released in the summer. I also completed another feature film Homecoming which is by a very talented new director Sean Hackett. Now I'm working on my album as well as a theatre play in Los Angeles.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Book review
(Times of India's Crest edition, April 9, 2011)
LOVE VIRTUALLY, by Daniel Glattauer
Very often, life is a twisted tale of serendipity. Sometimes it is all about a mistake, a tiny error made because fingers did not obey what the brain told them to do. Such was the story that began with an email sent to cancel a subscription. A person called E Rothner sends mail to Like magazine asking that it be stopped. The first is polite, asking if the cancellation can be done over email. The third explains a little, saying that the ‘rag...is gradually going down the drain...’ Unfortunately for E Rothner, the mails have been sent to the wrong address, woerter@leike.com instead of woerter@like.com and, a little to and fro of ‘round robin’ mails later, Leo Leike responds to Emmi Rothner in person. The typo leads to a strange and occasionally funny love story with a slight difference to it: the two people involved in the romance never meet, limited by Emmi’s ‘married’ status and some degree of instinctual reactivity that kept them – perhaps serendipitously – apart.
In some ways, Love Virtually is something that has happened to all of us. Anyone who has ever been part of an email correspondence knows that it is easy to be friendly on a keyboard, especially when there is little chance of actually meeting the other person. Small intimacies develop rapidly, with endearments sliding into the writing as easily as it is to press the ‘send’ button. Personalities are revealed – in this odd, going-nowhere tale, this version a translation from the original German Gut Gegen Nordwind, Leo is a Language Psychologist at a university working on the influence of email on linguistic behaviour, while Emmi is a married (and happily so, she tells him) woman with two stepchildren that her husband brought with him into the relationship and saved her the trouble of pregnancies, she says. Even as mails get longer and more detailed, while at the same time getting shorter, choppier and in that more personal, Emmi learns a great deal about Leo while protecting herself, giving away nothing in actual words, but a great deal in the tone. An inevitable possessiveness creeps in to the ‘relationship’, such as it is, developing from teasing lightheartedness to a more intense sense of belonging, a feeling of ‘mine’, a resentment for anyone else – especially another woman in Leo’s life – who is becoming important.
Along the way, as they two emailers begin to know each other, there is, as would be expected, a need to meet, a desire to see what the other person is all about in reality, even as they both maintain their privacy and keep some vital information to themselves. In that very self-protective bubble, they meet, but don’t actually meet, dropping by the same pub for a drink at a specified time. And they play a little guessing game, a flurry of emails, short and long, strident and non-committal, slowly revealing more about themselves and their growing bond. There is a gentle eroticism in everyday information – do you wear pyjamas to sleep in? I bought a new pair today only for you...A kiss is planned, one where the blinds are closed, but hands are not free and clothes – oh, what shall I wear? The language of lovers anticipating a rendezvous, with all the trepidation and anxiety people meeting for the first time feel flavours the short messages, sent back and forth in moments. Just when reality starts to trickle into this fantasy electronic world, the door crashes shut and an email Emmi sends to Leo telling him that she loves him is rejected. The end? No, Every Seventh Wave, a sequel, is due this summer, hopefully taking this utterly frustrating, totally idiotic, voyeuristically unsatisfying story forward.
But then, we have all at some stage been there, done that, occasionally even taken off the T-shirt!
LOVE VIRTUALLY, by Daniel Glattauer
Very often, life is a twisted tale of serendipity. Sometimes it is all about a mistake, a tiny error made because fingers did not obey what the brain told them to do. Such was the story that began with an email sent to cancel a subscription. A person called E Rothner sends mail to Like magazine asking that it be stopped. The first is polite, asking if the cancellation can be done over email. The third explains a little, saying that the ‘rag...is gradually going down the drain...’ Unfortunately for E Rothner, the mails have been sent to the wrong address, woerter@leike.com instead of woerter@like.com and, a little to and fro of ‘round robin’ mails later, Leo Leike responds to Emmi Rothner in person. The typo leads to a strange and occasionally funny love story with a slight difference to it: the two people involved in the romance never meet, limited by Emmi’s ‘married’ status and some degree of instinctual reactivity that kept them – perhaps serendipitously – apart.
In some ways, Love Virtually is something that has happened to all of us. Anyone who has ever been part of an email correspondence knows that it is easy to be friendly on a keyboard, especially when there is little chance of actually meeting the other person. Small intimacies develop rapidly, with endearments sliding into the writing as easily as it is to press the ‘send’ button. Personalities are revealed – in this odd, going-nowhere tale, this version a translation from the original German Gut Gegen Nordwind, Leo is a Language Psychologist at a university working on the influence of email on linguistic behaviour, while Emmi is a married (and happily so, she tells him) woman with two stepchildren that her husband brought with him into the relationship and saved her the trouble of pregnancies, she says. Even as mails get longer and more detailed, while at the same time getting shorter, choppier and in that more personal, Emmi learns a great deal about Leo while protecting herself, giving away nothing in actual words, but a great deal in the tone. An inevitable possessiveness creeps in to the ‘relationship’, such as it is, developing from teasing lightheartedness to a more intense sense of belonging, a feeling of ‘mine’, a resentment for anyone else – especially another woman in Leo’s life – who is becoming important.
Along the way, as they two emailers begin to know each other, there is, as would be expected, a need to meet, a desire to see what the other person is all about in reality, even as they both maintain their privacy and keep some vital information to themselves. In that very self-protective bubble, they meet, but don’t actually meet, dropping by the same pub for a drink at a specified time. And they play a little guessing game, a flurry of emails, short and long, strident and non-committal, slowly revealing more about themselves and their growing bond. There is a gentle eroticism in everyday information – do you wear pyjamas to sleep in? I bought a new pair today only for you...A kiss is planned, one where the blinds are closed, but hands are not free and clothes – oh, what shall I wear? The language of lovers anticipating a rendezvous, with all the trepidation and anxiety people meeting for the first time feel flavours the short messages, sent back and forth in moments. Just when reality starts to trickle into this fantasy electronic world, the door crashes shut and an email Emmi sends to Leo telling him that she loves him is rejected. The end? No, Every Seventh Wave, a sequel, is due this summer, hopefully taking this utterly frustrating, totally idiotic, voyeuristically unsatisfying story forward.
But then, we have all at some stage been there, done that, occasionally even taken off the T-shirt!
Saturday, April 02, 2011
No apologies, please!
(bdnews24.com, April 1, 2011)
It’s cricket season and crunch time, with the semi-finals showing who has the power to stay in the game and compete for the coveted World Cup. Bangladesh, unfortunately, crashed out some days ago, when South Africa beat the team quite comprehensively. As host of the opening game, the nation must have been devastated, but team captain Shakib Al Hasan could do little to change that, except for a simple apology. “Just sorry,” he is reported to have said.
But a small explanation followed: “The way we finished the tournament was not the way we wanted to finish. We wanted to finish on a high. But that can happen in cricket. We didn’t play good cricket throughout the tournament. Though we won some matches, we didn’t play good cricket.”
After the semi-final between India and Pakistan on Wednesday, the Indians certainly went all out to rub defeat into Pakistani’s faces and egos – and, as could almost be predicted, there was another apology forthcoming, this time from Pakistan team captain Shahid Afridi, who congratulated the Indian team for the win they managed to achieve, and then went on to say, “At the same time, I want to say sorry to my nation. We tried our level best but couldn’t make it…”
While these seem like rather irrelevant apologies for more widespread and important issues like global warming or peace on earth, apologies do make things go more smoothly in many cultures. Bizarre as it may sound, officials at the Tokyo Electric Power Company in Japan are now saying many sorries for messing up on radiation readings after the disaster that hit that country last month caused cooling systems at a nuclear power plant to fail and thus leak deadly radiation into the water and air. Is it something that they could have prevented? Perhaps, yes. But is it something that apologising for could fix? Hmmm, that is a point to be thought about long and seriously, once the crisis has been dealt with rather more effectively, that is.
It is easy to say sorry. We all do it, so quickly and casually, often not really meaning it in the least bit. Apologising for dropping an atomic bomb on a nation may be a little more significant than saying a shamefaced sorry for stepping on someone’s toes, or dropping water on someone’s shirt or even breaking a glass at a dinner party, but neither does much to rectify the situation, often not much to mollify the person upon whom the error impacted most.
Would it not make more sense, I often think, even as I myself may be apologising for something I have done that I should not have done, to have not done, to not affect someone or something in a way that should deserve an apology? Or is that the story of living in cloud-cuckoo land, where dreams come true and idealism is the local form of government?
Apologies are excuses for what should not be done, someone said when I talked to them about this particular piece that I planned to write. Sometimes the feeling is that you do something that you know you should not, because it gives you some odd, perhaps perverse pleasure in doing it, even as you know well that you are doing something wrong, maybe even something so uncharacteristic that it is not obvious that you are doing it. Saying sorry allows you to make mistakes deliberately, consciously, as a purposeful act of fulfilling some purpose or the other.
I could attack my colleague with a knife, for instance, just because I think he slighted me in the lunch room by not passing me the salt; it will be done knowing that it is really not my usual norm of behaviour, but I need to get it off my chest, off my mind, off my list of to-do tasks for the day. There is an anger that needs to be addressed, dealt with, deleted from my mind, which can only be done by stabbing my work-friend. But having done it, or even merely trying to do it, I would be horrified, conscience-stricken, shamed enough to want to undo the very thought. So I would say sorry, many times over, attempting to delete the action and make my colleague see me once again in the same light as before my ‘error’.
Would an apology stem the blood, if there was any? Perhaps not. Would it make my workmate feel better, if I had actually shown my anger or whatever emotion I had inside me? No. But it would, viscerally, make me feel as if some of the harm has been alleviated, mitigated, undone.
All I would need to do is say sorry. And that, like I said, is often seen as solving a lot of problems…
It’s cricket season and crunch time, with the semi-finals showing who has the power to stay in the game and compete for the coveted World Cup. Bangladesh, unfortunately, crashed out some days ago, when South Africa beat the team quite comprehensively. As host of the opening game, the nation must have been devastated, but team captain Shakib Al Hasan could do little to change that, except for a simple apology. “Just sorry,” he is reported to have said.
But a small explanation followed: “The way we finished the tournament was not the way we wanted to finish. We wanted to finish on a high. But that can happen in cricket. We didn’t play good cricket throughout the tournament. Though we won some matches, we didn’t play good cricket.”
After the semi-final between India and Pakistan on Wednesday, the Indians certainly went all out to rub defeat into Pakistani’s faces and egos – and, as could almost be predicted, there was another apology forthcoming, this time from Pakistan team captain Shahid Afridi, who congratulated the Indian team for the win they managed to achieve, and then went on to say, “At the same time, I want to say sorry to my nation. We tried our level best but couldn’t make it…”
While these seem like rather irrelevant apologies for more widespread and important issues like global warming or peace on earth, apologies do make things go more smoothly in many cultures. Bizarre as it may sound, officials at the Tokyo Electric Power Company in Japan are now saying many sorries for messing up on radiation readings after the disaster that hit that country last month caused cooling systems at a nuclear power plant to fail and thus leak deadly radiation into the water and air. Is it something that they could have prevented? Perhaps, yes. But is it something that apologising for could fix? Hmmm, that is a point to be thought about long and seriously, once the crisis has been dealt with rather more effectively, that is.
It is easy to say sorry. We all do it, so quickly and casually, often not really meaning it in the least bit. Apologising for dropping an atomic bomb on a nation may be a little more significant than saying a shamefaced sorry for stepping on someone’s toes, or dropping water on someone’s shirt or even breaking a glass at a dinner party, but neither does much to rectify the situation, often not much to mollify the person upon whom the error impacted most.
Would it not make more sense, I often think, even as I myself may be apologising for something I have done that I should not have done, to have not done, to not affect someone or something in a way that should deserve an apology? Or is that the story of living in cloud-cuckoo land, where dreams come true and idealism is the local form of government?
Apologies are excuses for what should not be done, someone said when I talked to them about this particular piece that I planned to write. Sometimes the feeling is that you do something that you know you should not, because it gives you some odd, perhaps perverse pleasure in doing it, even as you know well that you are doing something wrong, maybe even something so uncharacteristic that it is not obvious that you are doing it. Saying sorry allows you to make mistakes deliberately, consciously, as a purposeful act of fulfilling some purpose or the other.
I could attack my colleague with a knife, for instance, just because I think he slighted me in the lunch room by not passing me the salt; it will be done knowing that it is really not my usual norm of behaviour, but I need to get it off my chest, off my mind, off my list of to-do tasks for the day. There is an anger that needs to be addressed, dealt with, deleted from my mind, which can only be done by stabbing my work-friend. But having done it, or even merely trying to do it, I would be horrified, conscience-stricken, shamed enough to want to undo the very thought. So I would say sorry, many times over, attempting to delete the action and make my colleague see me once again in the same light as before my ‘error’.
Would an apology stem the blood, if there was any? Perhaps not. Would it make my workmate feel better, if I had actually shown my anger or whatever emotion I had inside me? No. But it would, viscerally, make me feel as if some of the harm has been alleviated, mitigated, undone.
All I would need to do is say sorry. And that, like I said, is often seen as solving a lot of problems…
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