Sancharam- A backpackers journal

Sancharam is the travel experiences of a lone back packer, Santhosh George Kulangara, who traverses around the globe. He has been making solo journeys from country to country for the last 15 years  , is the first telecast of a visual travelogue in Malayalam language television. It is being aired at prime time 12:30 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. (IST) on every Sunday in Asianet news television channel and re-telecasted three times in a week by Asianet’s main and subsidiary channels. The program has completed over 550 episodes and has been shot in more than 75 countries during the last 15 years.
The following are the countries Santhosh George Kulangara has visited. Nepal, Maldives, Thailand, Singapore, Qatar, Britain, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, France, Italy, Vatican, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, Belarus, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, 
Sri Lanka, Austria, Hungary, Liechtenstein, Netherlands, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Bhutan, Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, U.A.E, Spain, Portugal, Monaco, Indonesia, Kenya, South Africa, Cambodia, Vietnam, Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, Ethiopia, Uganda, Syria, Bahrain, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Honduras, Belize, Mexico, Oman, Seychelles, Mauritius, Myanmar, Barbados, Saint Lucia, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Cyprus, Laos and Antarctica.

An internet edition of Sancharam is also available free of cost. In the website, viewers may choose the countries they wish to watch by using drop-down list with audio by commentator currently available in Malayalam. It claimed to be the first Internet television in Kerala.

Sancharam is about to be shot in space by Santhosh George Kulangara who has been selected for the Virgin Galactic’s next space tourism programme, SpaceShipTwo. With this space journey, he is slated to be India's first space tourist.

Vanaprastham - a soulful masterpiece

Vanaprastham, the pilgrimage , a master piece like no other. Visoned with mastery, etched with perfection, this is not a movie but an experience like no other.

The plot essentially focuses on Kunhikuttan (Mohanlal), a Kathakali artist who becomes the object of desire and seeming delusion of Subhadra (Suhasini), the Maharaja’s niece.  Subhadra is a playwright who earnestly wishes to write a play portaying Arjuna’s ardour in the mythological story of the kidnapping of Subhadra, one of her favorite pieces.  When she sees Kunhikuttan portay Arjuna during a Kathakali performance for the King, she is mesmerized.  As the story goes on, we see that she is clearly confusing Kunhikuttan playing Arjuna with the real Arjuna.  A romantic liason between the two produces a child that Subhadra withholds from Kunhikuttan, cruely adding insult to injury of a man who was denied legitimate recognition by his landlord father and now is being denied access to his only son.  
It is these practical aspects that Vanaprastham touched on which beckoned me to remove my rose-colored glasses.  In the film, the group of Kathakali artists live in such poverty that the tearing of a Chenda (traditional drum) is a catastrophic event.  They receive a pittance in compensation for their immense efforts at performing the art form.  Despite being the only ones carrying forth an ancient traditional dance form that could easily be lost to history and is considered a source of pride to its people, the artists are not provided the support they need.  When Kunhikuttan and the group give a performance for the Maharaja in his estate, the Maharaja remarks jubilantly that the performance has "elevated his mind and made him content."  When Kunhikuttan honestly reveals that the group lives in dire poverty, all the king can do is look down and say... "what a pity."  Pity, indeed.

The form also serves as an outlet for its performers to express those emotions and feelings they keep hidden by channeling them through the characters they enact.  Kunhikuttan tries to drink away his relationship and personal problems through alcohol, and the only time he seems to be able to express his emotions publicly is during his Kathakali performances.  This is most brilliantly and stunningly demonstrated when we see the crash and burn of his relationship with Subhadra cause him to decide to play  negative roles on the stage.  In the very next shot, the camera focuses on a close-up of his meticulously-madeup face as he screams in anger.  Anger of the mythological character he is representing but most important, his own seething, unreleting anger. This scene in the film completely took my breath away.

Vanaprastham - a soulful masterpiece

Vanaprastham, the pilgrimage , a master piece like no other. Visoned with mastery, etched with perfection, this is not a movie but an experience like no other.

The plot essentially focuses on Kunhikuttan (Mohanlal), a Kathakali artist who becomes the object of desire and seeming delusion of Subhadra (Suhasini), the Maharaja’s niece.  Subhadra is a playwright who earnestly wishes to write a play portaying Arjuna’s ardour in the mythological story of the kidnapping of Subhadra, one of her favorite pieces.  When she sees Kunhikuttan portay Arjuna during a Kathakali performance for the King, she is mesmerized.  As the story goes on, we see that she is clearly confusing Kunhikuttan playing Arjuna with the real Arjuna.  A romantic liason between the two produces a child that Subhadra withholds from Kunhikuttan, cruely adding insult to injury of a man who was denied legitimate recognition by his landlord father and now is being denied access to his only son.  
It is these practical aspects that Vanaprastham touched on which beckoned me to remove my rose-colored glasses.  In the film, the group of Kathakali artists live in such poverty that the tearing of a Chenda (traditional drum) is a catastrophic event.  They receive a pittance in compensation for their immense efforts at performing the art form.  Despite being the only ones carrying forth an ancient traditional dance form that could easily be lost to history and is considered a source of pride to its people, the artists are not provided the support they need.  When Kunhikuttan and the group give a performance for the Maharaja in his estate, the Maharaja remarks jubilantly that the performance has "elevated his mind and made him content."  When Kunhikuttan honestly reveals that the group lives in dire poverty, all the king can do is look down and say... "what a pity."  Pity, indeed.

The form also serves as an outlet for its performers to express those emotions and feelings they keep hidden by channeling them through the characters they enact.  Kunhikuttan tries to drink away his relationship and personal problems through alcohol, and the only time he seems to be able to express his emotions publicly is during his Kathakali performances.  This is most brilliantly and stunningly demonstrated when we see the crash and burn of his relationship with Subhadra cause him to decide to play  negative roles on the stage.  In the very next shot, the camera focuses on a close-up of his meticulously-madeup face as he screams in anger.  Anger of the mythological character he is representing but most important, his own seething, unreleting anger. This scene in the film completely took my breath away.

Shutter Stories

"A photographer is someone who paints with light"

                                                                         -Wim Wenders, The Salt Of The Earth

Mary Ellen Mark

Falkland Road

Amy Vitale

Gujarat

Pablo Bartholomew

Morphine Addicts

Stephanie Sinclair

The Little Bride

Brent Stirton

Blood Ivory

Marcus Bleasadle

Sebastio Salvagado

Rwanda

Steve Mccury

Prayers

Nick Nicholas

Touch

Nirvair Singh Rai

Monk

The tortured genius

                    Kurt Cobain, the tortured genius. best known as the lead singer, guitarist, and primary songwriter of the grunge band Nirvana, the band that redefined the sound of the nineties . Cobain formed Nirvana with Krist Novoselic in Aberdeen, Washington, in 1985 and established it as part of the Seattle music scene, having its debut album Bleach released on the independent record label Sub Pop in 1989. After signing with major label DGC Records, the band found breakthrough success with "Smells Like Teen Spirit" from its second album Nevermind (1991). Following the success of Nevermind, Nirvana was labeled "the flagship band" of Generation X, and Cobain hailed as "the spokesman of a generation". Cobain, however, was often uncomfortable and frustrated, believing his message and artistic vision to have been misinterpreted by the public, with his personal issues often subject to media attention. He challenged Nirvana's audience with its final studio album In Uetro (1993). It did not match the sales figures of Nevermind but was still a critical and commercial success.

He died at the age of 27, by a supposedly self inflicted shot gun wound, leaving behind a musical legacy, Here is one of the few interviews he ever gave.

A double edged sword called technology.

The dilemma of the generation.
Is technology  good? Or is it bad? Can something that's good for someone be bad for somebody else?Or  is it all a matter of perception?

Faced with these questions I decided to head out for answers, and this what I found..

Life saver.

His eyes looked dead.

 He sat there in one corner, hunched over a book, occasionally staring out at the emptiness that the window of the train offered.

That’s how I met Dr.Arpith Patel, everything about him suggested that he’s a doctor.

The formal clothes, the shining shoes, the expressionless face, everything.

He caught me starring at him and smiled.

And then he started telling me about himself.

He was working in a Tejasvini Hospital at Mangalore. He specialised in orthopedics, which involved the correction of deformities or functional impairments of the skeletal system.

I don’t know how but our conversation somehow twisted and turned and reached a topic so disconnected to our conversation yet very much attached to our life, technology.

Dr.Arpith Patel respected technology. He believed that it could change lives. infact he used it to change lives every day. Technology saves millions of lives every second he told me, conviction visible in his eyes.

Earlier it would take us hours to identify blood groups, now it takes only seconds, it saves time like magic and in the case of an emergency every second matters. What used to be hopeless cases once could be easily being taken care of now all thanks to technology.

There were machines for everything he said, for joint replacement surgeries they had machines that would specify even the angle in which the bone has to be cut, Major surgeries could be conducted through a tiny hole, Heart,liver,lungs everything could be replaced.

The term saving lives had been taken to whole new level.

When the main doctor is not available at the hospital , X-rays and scans could be sent to his computer so that he could advice his juniors about what to do, while earlier you had to wait till the senior arrived and by that time the patient could die.

After I listened all this I couldn't help but ask," Do you think all these facilities could be accessed by all?"

He thought for a while before he replied, he looked down for a while, and then looked up, his eyes expressionless again.

He replied his voice strained, Most of these new stuff are pretty expensive so...

He trailed on, his voice replaced by an uncertain silence.

I couldn't help but ask, "So what do you think is more important for a doctor, the economic gains or his humanitarian values?"

He looked down again and looked up, he replied, his voice hard.

"It takes 30 years and half a crore to be a doctor, so what do you expect?"

With that he turned away and started staring infinitely. I stared out of the window.

Emptiness swallowing whatever the window lit up, like the lives of the thousands of poor people in my country, the narrow beam of light that escaped out of the train window didn't stand a chance against the vast darkness around it.

Technology was magic for the doctors, but does everyone get a share of this magic?

My question remains unanswered.

Teachers tales.

 She shook her head and said they’re never going to use it just in the right way, no matter how much you educate them, there will always be some who would use it in the bad way, and there will ALWAYS be some.

I didn't know what to expect as I walked in through the gates of the Sanskrit College, Udupi.

The ancient building stood sky high in front of me. Children were playing tennis with badminton racquets in a makeshift court in front of the college; I dodged tennis balls and entered the college.

Towards the right was the staff room, I walked in to find a lady dressed in a blue saree,

Bend over a bundle of paper with a red ink pen in her hand and a curious expression on her face.

She nodded at me through her square framed spectacles, 

“How can I help you?” she asked.

I explained my intentions to her, I explained to her how I was there to talk to her about her views on technology.

“Technology....”she trailed off.

Technology is something good, but not as good as everyone thinks”, she said “I mean yes technology is making our lives better but it’s all in a way taking away its foundation. All the moral and cultural values that our society was based on are getting eroded slowly. Children are losing even the basic moral values, they are so much influenced by that they don’t respect relations and responsibilities anymore. And then they say that we don’t understand life as we are 'outdated'."

Students are getting more and more distracted everyday from their studies because of mobiles and computers, and God knows what they’re seeing in those mobile phones” she said shaking her head.

I nodded; there was only so much I could tell her.

She continued, “What about their parents? Do they ever think about it?

And look at the library, nowadays I find people using their mobile phones even in there; they have no more interests in our books and culture.

“What if  you educate them properly?” I asked.

She shook her head and said they’re never going to use it just in the right way, no matter how much you educate them, there will always be some who would use it in the bad way, and there will ALWAYS be some.

Her words echoed in my ears as I walked out. A sea of children came running into the college and I stood there amidst them thinking, was this all that technology was doing to them?

Or was it all a matter of perception?

Again, my question remains unanswered.