LILA Foundation, Author at LILA Foundation for Translocal Initiatives

21 Oct 2014

Uzramma: Cotton Cloth as Continuity

by LILA Foundation | posted in: Event Reports | 2

The story starts as a fairytale. Once upon a time, a country produced enough cotton to clothe its large population, and much of the rest of the world. A tale in which emperors would go to any extent to acquire those refined, light and smooth clothes. And this fairy tale, is the story of cotton cloth in India. And a fairy tale it is, sadly, because the worldwide fame of the past has ironically turned into a leftover industry in its own land, overrun by the capital and energy demanding reign of the power looms. “The handloom is a low carbon production technology for the energy-stressed future,” textile activist Uzramma said, in the introduction of the eighth PRISM lecture of this year’s series… and yet, this industry, which employs nearly fifty million people in the country, is unrecognised, almost invisible, indebted and under-promoted today.

4 Oct 2014

Pepita Seth: Ritual as Continuity

by LILA Foundation | posted in: Event Reports | 1

“She binds a large part of Malabar together; that, there is no doubt.” She is Annapoorneswari, alias Amma, goddess and mother of the people of North Kerala. In the seventh lecture of the PRISM Series 2014, photographer and writer Pepita Seth brought the focus on Kerala, and the Theyyam rituals associated with the worship traditions of Annapoorneswari, to unravel yet another face of culture as continuity. Through her experience of over three decades in the southern state, Pepita Seth could present how some of our oldest traditions, at the crossroads of religion, social order and pre-Hindu rituals, can highlight another model of governance, ancestral yet urgently relevant in today’s world.

18 Sep 2014

Navtej Johar: Physical Traditions as Continuity

by LILA Foundation | posted in: Event Reports | 1

“There are some questions on Yoga that a practitioner such as myself needs to air.” For the sixth event of the PRISM Lecture Series 2014, Navtej Johar delivered a talk that was enlightened and scholarly, but also oriented towards very concrete and quotidian concerns. “In my teachers, in my students, I can see how much Yoga creates Sukha, happiness – it is tangible, evident. This state permits to maintain the moderation of Sattva, surfacing between the creative dynamic of energy and exhaustion that makes Yoga. But, what happens when we block the depth of this Sukha? Yoga creates happiness, but we don’t let it sink. It turns into a dusty carpet we throw in the air – the dust goes off for a little while, until it comes back in another configuration.”

15 Sep 2014

Tapan Chakravarty: Urban Space as Continuity

by LILA Foundation | posted in: Event Reports | 0

Listen around: the city has become, too often, the very emblem of the discontinuous. Till today, we tend to see the city as the absurd reconstruction of an artificial environment, permanently mutating, changing, transforming itself, everyday moving further away from our natural roots. Grand parents regret the peace of the countryside, while parents are nostalgic of the city of their youth. “Pollution, crowd, or time act on us as markers of something,” argued Tapan Chakravarty, “and that thing is discontinuity.” “Space has been taken away in the city, they say…. But, is it really so?” How can we retrieve the continuity of urban spaces? That is the task of urban designers, Chakravarty explained, but the first challenge is one of understanding, for everyone. Continuity is all around us. “What is discontinuity? As long as time does not halt, there is nothing like discontinuity. It may be transformation, mild change, drastic change… but is it always continuity. Discontinuity can only be death, the end of everything.” To undertake this change of outlook, Chakravarty presented his two key words. “There is Thing, and there is Thought. A thing without a thought is useless. A thought without a thing is abstract.”

4 Sep 2014

Vidya Rao: Song as Continuity

by LILA Foundation | posted in: Event Reports | 1

Through the small changes, the tangents, the idiosyncrasies, across decades and regions, a genre grows, expands and relocates. “With Thumri, continuity and discontinuity are not sufficient words. With song traditions, one needs to break those categories.” In the fourth lecture of the LILA PRISM Lecture Series 2014, Thumri-Dadra performer and writer Vidya Rao invited the audience for a journey through the dis/continuous history of the Thumri genre. “In India, we say one should never seek to know the source of a river!” Vidya Rao led the exploration of Thumri’s evolution through a dozen audio excerpts from performances, twelve halts illustrating departures, alternatives and junctions. The examples started with Malka Jaan, one of the earliest singers ever recorded in India, in 1904. At the time, Thumri was performed by courtesans for the entertainment of an elite male audience and for their patrons, with whom they often also were involved in sexual liaisons. But, more than just channels for the sensuous, the Thumri singers influenced their cultural environments.

20 Aug 2014

Ritu Menon: Biography as Continuity

by LILA Foundation | posted in: Event Reports | 0

The genesis and realisation of a biography echo the way we deal with the relevance of others’ lives. Biographies attempt the full picture, the small details, the backside of the public image, on societal agents who have inspired generations. Such works aim at ‘humanising’ them, to replace the quantity of their achievements with the backdrop of their personal trajectories. But what, exactly, is at the centre of a biography? Is it the life of an individual, liberated from her own cautious confessions? Or, is it the continuous presence of an actor of change within the larger dynamic of a society’s history? As a part of the second edition of the LILA PRISM Lecture Series titled ‘Cultures as Continuum’, publisher and feminist researcher Ritu Menon reflected on the discontinuous-continuous space of interaction that the genre of biography draws into focus. Seeking to rescue its subject from her past by bringing her into the middle of the present, a biographer intensely studies history, its politics as well as its unsuspected roots in the realm of the personal. A biography is always a new take on the connection of historical periods with personal time.

13 Aug 2014

Vandana Shiva: Food as Continuity

by LILA Foundation | posted in: Event Reports | 0

Opening the second edition of the LILA PRISM lecture series, Malaysian puppetry conservationist Eddin Khoo had reaffirmed cultures, history and memory as the subversive forces to political shortsightedness. In this second event, ecology activist Vandana Shiva forwarded the confirmation of cultures as the main force of continuity. In fact, Vandana Shiva’s response was but inevitable: it is only in the last four centuries that the word ‘culture’ shied away from its initial meaning – cultivation, growing soils – to the establishment of a cardinal metaphor: human culture as the cultivation of the mind, of manners, of practices. Not only could humanity sprout through agricultural innovations, but the very elaboration of cultures, traditions, customs also followed the paradigm of nature. And at the heart of culture, of cultivation, is food. Food is life. In Sanskrit, Pran means rice, and life.

11 Aug 2014

Voices in Verse

by LILA Foundation | posted in: Event Reports | 0

“For the dead and the living, we must bear witness…” The spirit of Elie Wiesel’s words animated the air as the Sahitya Akademi hosted a unique poetry evening, with readings by seven major writers in various languages, and a conversation among them, to mark the launch of the cultural banner of LILA Foundation, LILA Bearing Witness. The event, entitled ‘Voices in Verse’ celebrated the multicultural origins of the participants, and also served as an initial collective reflection on the possibilities of individuals and communities bearing witness to the times in general, and to the multitudinous ways in which poets in particular tend to bear witness.

5 Aug 2014

Eddin Khoo: Puppetry as a Paradigm of Continuity

by LILA Foundation | posted in: Event Reports | 0

Puppetry, a paradigm of continuity. Why? Opening the PRISM Lecture Series 2014 on Cultural Continuum with Malaysian cultural conservationist Eddin Khoo was a hint at the ambitious spatial and temporal scope of the debate. South East Asia is a cultural crossroad, echoing the multiplicity inherent in Indian traditions, and, in fact, often genealogically related to them. But, the spread of Sanskrit as the lingua franca of literature and the arts around the turn of the first millennium, or the simultaneous spread of Hinduism and Buddhism, should not reduce the region to a mere offspring of Indian cultures. What makes South East Asian culture, then? What is Malaysian culture? Eddin Khoo recalls the interrogation he offers to initiate with his students. “What is the Malay identity?” The only available answers are constitutional. Never cultural. A unified, common cultural history cannot easily be found. And it is precisely through culture, and through the multiplicity of cultures, that the concept of identity can be questioned. Through culture, the ubiquitous starting point of today’s political climates can be shaken.

27 Dec 2013

Srinath Reddy: Universal Health Coverage for India: Dream or Development Imperative?

by LILA Foundation | posted in: Event Reports | 0

Srinath Reddy began his lecture by stating that it is important for societies to invest in health, because it has both instrumental and intrinsic values. From a utilitarian point of view, improved health increases productivity, while it offers a sense of well-being to an individual. Health indicators of a society also indicate the amount of vulnerability and values that are shared within that society. In Sridhar Venkatapuram’s words, “a well-ordered society would ensure that all individuals have the capability to be healthy, and at a level that is commensurate with human dignity in the modern world, which is their right.” Having thus established equity in health as a fundamental criterion for a society to be called modern, Srinath tried to understand what makes such equity possible.

Author Archives: LILA Foundation