Seven in her bag, many more in her mind

This story was sheer luck when I was covering the World woman snooker championship for the Deccan Herald in Delhi in 1994, that I saw the Hindu correspondent talking to Allison Fisher who was all time great in the table top ball game. So I just joined in the chat and asked a few questions myself and later found that this chat turned out to be a Q&A piece.

At 26, Allison Fisher has already won the women’s world snooker championship seven times. In the latest edition of the championship, in Delhi, Fisher fought off Stacey Hillyard to complete a hat-trick of triumphs too.
In a dozen years in the game Fisher could proudly say she ahs won all there is in the women’s game. Not to rest on her laurels, the blonde from Hertfordshire in Sussex has stormed the mal bastion and promises to make a success of it.
Fisher spoke to Deccan Herald during the Highball world championship at hotel Le Meridien in the capital. Excerpts:

Q: When and how did you take to this game?
A: When I was seven years old I saw this game on TV and took a keen interest in it. In the evenings my parents used to take me to some of the social clubs. Most of them had a six-foot table and that is where I started my game when I was about eight. At 14, I got the big break when I was allowed to play with men.

Q: is anybody else in your family into the game?
A: No, nobody, though my father is trying to now. All my three brothers tried and gave up because the have no patience.

Q: Which matches would you rate as your best and the worst in your professional career?
A: I would rate the semi-finals here against Tessa Davidson as the best. I was three games up only to see the fourth which I by a difference of two points. This was the toughest and memorable one. The worst was again with Tessa in the semi-final of the 1990 world championship where I lost 5-2. I was not able to play one shot straight after being the world champion. That embarrassed me most.

Q: Which other player do you respect on the circuit?
A: I respect almost all of them but I have special regard for Tessa Davidson and Stacey Hillyar. Among men Steve Davis is the only one I respect though (Jimmy) White and Stephen Hendry are also good players.

Q: Who are the players to look for in the future?
A: Among the ladies, it is Kelly Fisher which in the men’s it is Ronnie O’Sullivan, because both of them are good positional players and crack potters.

Q: What made you move over to the men’s circuit?
A: I didn’t have much to prove on the ladies circuit. What was to be achieved had been done time and again. Besides there is more money and more experience to be had on the men’s circuit. In the women’s game, there is not so much prize money. I found it very difficult to find sponsor four or five years ago, and I remember I had to play with the same cue for close to ten years. Now that I am in the men’s circuit, and in the top 200, I have signed a four year contract with a Chinese company named Cue-Tec.
It is also a challenge for me and I have not taken it lightly though I have lost close matches to O’Sullivan and (Alan) MCManus. By the end of 1995 I think I will be able to challenge even the best players even if I am not able to beat them.
The standard of the ladies snooker has improved. While in the late 80s you had to wait till the semi-final for a good match, there are better matches to be had now right from the start. The men’s tournaments continue to get more publicity while the ladies events are pushed backstage.

Q: What can be done to improve the ladies scene?
A: All I can say is we need some dedicated people who have no other jobs other than making sure that tournaments are held regularly to enable the players to improve their skills and find sponsor for themselves.

Q: Why did you suggest clubs for ladies when they are already plenty of them in London?
A: Because the clubs we have back home are not places where a lady could go and have a few decent games.

Q: Have you ever played billiards?
A: I did try long back when I first won the world championship. Billiards needs more patience while snooker is a game which can be finished off. Billiards is very technical and I am not qualified for it right now.

A Fine Gesture

This story on an American teaching the Indians the dance form which they had ruled for centuries happened when I was sitting at the National School of Drama and taking to Krithi Jain the then director in 1993. So after a lot of phone calls made to Justin I finally managed to tell him that the story which I was working on is trendy and dance related, since he was reluctant to speak to me at the onset.

Dance: US-born Justin McCarthy, who came to India to learn Bharatnatyam, is now teaching Indians nuances of the dance. S Shiv Kumar profiles the guru

A young Justin loved the sound of music and the melodious pounding sounds of the feet – dance, but his parents forced him to learn the piano, and told him that dance is only for girls. It was at the California University that McCarthy, then 15, tried his hands at various dance forms such as ballet – and even karate. He joined the San Francisco Ballet School as a pianist. It was in 1978 that he witnessed a performance of Bharatnatyam by two reputed teachers and also the pupils of he legendary T Balasaraswati, from ‘Under the way of The Dance School’.

He joined the school as a pupil of Lesandre Ayrey and Mimi Janislawaki. After learning the basics for a year, he decided to move to Madras to learn the form completely. Overcoming stiff opposition to the idea from his parents and relatives, he set foot in the land of Natyam, It was in 1979, and he was 23. no sooner did McCarthy reach Madras that he took ill with jaundice, malaria and diarrhea.
However, he soon overcame the setback, and with an artist’s discipline and determination, spent hours every day learning the dance from stage by stage. Like other dancers I did not want to try my luck on the at a early stage during my learning process, which may have result in some people becoming disinterested in your dance.
His cherished moments to date are two group shows performed in Delhi in January 1993, the staging of Madurai Kanchi and Maruduha Attam from Sangam literature, and then later in October the staging of Jalkson Pollock visits Tanjore with five others. He has performed in Germany, Belgium and England where the audience turnout was not upto expectation.
McCarthy refuses to say if he is happy with what he earns teaching Bharatnatyam. “I make some extra bread by giving private piano lessons,” is all he would add.
McCarthy has also learnt Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Sanskrit. He has no plans of going home for now. “When I set off for India in 1979 I had planned to stay only for five years. People tell me to set up a Bharatnatyam school back home, but I don’t think that will be fruitful ,” he says.

Man in a great hurry

This small piece written by me was published in the Deccan Herald reporter’s dairy. What was nice in this small piece was that I wrote about a man who transformed the face of the electorate and also the fort which holds such electoral process. I think by now you would have taken a guess? Yes it was none other than T N Seshan the Chief Election Commissioner – CEC of the Election Commission of India.

Countdown has begun… that’s how Chief Election Commissioner T N Seshan’s encounter begins with the press photographers in Delhi every time they come across the ebullient former civil servant.
Seshan, who has a penchant for publicity and would invariably like to see his pictures in newspapers, normally sets a time-limit for lensmen to ‘shoot’ him before every important meeting he attends.

On September 28, 1994 too, when he, along with the other two Election Commissioners, met the leaders of various political parties, the countdown… was repeated by Seshan as photographers jostled with each other to capture the rotund CEC in their cameras at the Nirvachan Sadan, the headquarters of the Election Commission. Looking at the battery of lensmen ready to ‘snipe’ at him in the small, clustered hall of the Sadan, Sehsna cried out at the cameramen “the countdown ha begun” and to no surprise of the photographers started counting: 1000, 999, 998, … 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0 …” and yelled ‘Now get out all of you.’ “The meeting will start now.” As the CEC continues to be the prize catch, he was promptly there to meet all the newspapers the next morning.

Lucy carries on for Harry

This one on one piece happened when I was covering the Davis Cup Semi-Finals between Australia and India at Chandigarh in the month of October, 1993. There was a very special guest from Australia whom most of the sports reporters had missed and since I had this habit of trying to go for the extra mile, I asked some of the Australian players who was she and collected enough information on her before talking to her. The story you see below is an extract from the 2 hour long conversation I had with Lucy Hopman on the final day after I had transmitted the action pictures to our Bangalore office for print.

For those who were at the Davis Cup semi-final at Chandigarh it was the chance to se a 73 year old lady with a tanned face and a figure that you get to see on Star TV. The lady is none other that Mrs. Lucy Hopman, the wife of Late Harry Hopman who was the most successful captain –coach in the Davis Cup history.
Under Harry Hopman’s watchful eye the Australians won the Cup 16 times in 21 years, and players like Neale Frazer, John McEnroe, Vitas Gerulaitis, and our own Ramesh Krishnan attend his Saddlebrook International Tennis Camp, at Tampa Bay, Florida, after he had moved to the USA. In 1985 Harry Hopman died, leaving his ever-smiling wife Lucy Hopman to carry on.
It was like a baseline ballet down memory lane as Mrs Hopman narrated her past. She married Hopman and recalls how much she loved him with a hint of tears in her eyes.
Lucy first met Harry when she was just 18 years-age when the Australian team was in the US for the Challenge Round of the Davis Cup. It happened again the next year, but this time the Australians triumphed, coming back from 0-2 down to beat the US. Then came World War II which caused a break in Davis Cup history. Thereafter Australia declined while the US grew in Davis Cup Strength.
As Mrs Hopman wipes her sweaty brow she adds with delight and pride that Australia won the Davis Cup in 1950 and on 14 more occasions till 1969 under Harry.
In every country in the world there is at least one player who was coached by the ‘Great Kangaroo’ from Down Under. Mrs Hopman herself came from a tennis family. Her aunt Hazel Wightman became the US national champion in 1920, the year in which she was born. She shyly says “I was born in and fed tennis, but I could not be more than a social player.”

Talking about the Harry’s dream – the tennis camp at Florida, she said that of the 40 courts at the camp two were grass to help players prepare for Wimbleton, two red clay for French Open, and the rest clay courts. This camp is used by the present World No 1 and 2 Pete Sampras and Jim Courier for training. “I will continue the work as long as me knees mal me stand upright, though I cannot play tennis.” Yet she was seen wielding the racquet on the synthetic surface with Ramanathan Krishanan two days before the start of the Davis Cup tie.
In 1996 she was in Australia to witness the tie against India and got an enormous look of how Indian lady's dressed, when Ramesh Krishnan’s mother and another lady came in sarees and wore jewels to steal the center stage from the players. “Well I am taking back home a lot of these sarees and jewels,” she says as she displays a few of them with her eyes twinkling.
She adds that she as is old as the Pope and has been to Perth on occasions especially to watch the Hopman Cup in which 12 countries participate. “I do this only because I love tennis and Harry. Talking about the kind of tennis played during the three days she said that it was not bad but both the Indians were not at their best and ends “that’s all I can say”.

Chalk Sculptor

Cariappa a good friend of mine who is a central government employee had a few things inside him which even I did not know until I visited him for a drinking session 1n 1994 when he had just moved from Bangalore to New Delhi. He had these miniature chalk carvings displayed in his showcase which was his passion part from Phrenology, which is the study of human behavior.

To most of us, chalk is a breakable piece of stationary used in classrooms. But to Kaleyangada Cariappa, a central government employee in Delhi who hails from Karnataka, chalk is what his are is all about. With some imagination and ingenuity, he turns chalk into miniature carvings which, can stay for life.
Cariappa’s latest work, now under scrutiny by editors of the Guinness Book of Records, is a three mm-high elephant flanked by smaller versions of 2mm and 1 mm each. Cariappa is happy about his achievement. “it cost two weeks and a lot of chalk, but it is now ready at last.”
Cariappa started chiseling chalk when he was six years old. “When I began, it used to help me control my anger over criticism about my failure. It could be that I had failed in some exam, or hat somebody teased about it and I couldn’t take it. It is as though so I needed to prove to myself that I could achieve something …. Something unique,” he says.

Most of his works have motifs. One of them is a carving of an angry man with an uplifted hat. This was to show that “when people get angry, they talk through their hats.” Another impressive carving is of a running dog.
The tools Cariappa uses are simple: a blade and a needle.
He says all arts involving carving need a lot of practice and chalk carving more than most arts. But it has one big advantage: it is inexpensive, no matter what the wastage.
Most of his works are made from a single piece of chalk, though some are two or more pieces glued together. One of his most impressive works is a pregnant woman surrounded by five children. Another carving of a couple with their son and daughter is almost as good.
Besides chalk carvings, Cariappa also pursues another passion called phrenology, which is the study of human behavior from the size, shape, form and contour of the human head. Cariappa makes fantastic claims about phrenology. For instance, he says it could help check crime by 50 per cent. He even claims that it could help nab Veerappan, (the mosted wanted man by the law in 1994), along with suggestions on how to go about arresting him.
In addition to chalk carving and phrenology, Cariappa has other hobbies like designing greeting cards with thumb impression, zari threads and beads.

NSD readies its Stage for South

This story was written when I had visited a friend of mine during my stint at the Deccan Herald Bureau office at New Delhi some time in 1993. Since it had a south connect and more so with Bangalore I went back to the office and discussed it with my seniors who asked me to write it and send it for the Sunday pages.

Theatre: National School of Drama’s decision to open its first regional center in Bangalore augurs well for theatre in Karnataka, Writes S Shiv Kumar

After several years of debate on strengthening theater traditions in various regions of the country, and a recommendation of the Haskar Committee, the Delhi-based National School of Drama (NSD) has decided to open schools at Bangalore, Bombay, Calcutta, Guwahati, Varanasi/Patna and Chandigarh.
The first of these zonal centers is expected to begin functioning in Bangalore in March. It will be a resource-cum research center (RRC) which will conduct its activities in the local languages.
NSD Director Kirthi Jain told Deccan Herald that these regional centers were meant to rejuvenate local theater traditions. Bangalore has been chosen as the first center because “it has people from virtually all parts of the country. All languages of the south have a presence in the city, which will enable the center to turn mobile and access villages and tap the right potential”.
The Bangalore center- which will work in co-ordination with State level cultural bodies-will begin short-term courses of 15 days to two months, for serious students from all over south India to be chosen on the basis of entrance tests and interviews. Experts like G V Shivananda, B V Karanth, Prasanna, Raghunandan and Walter D’Souza are expected to guide the students and monitor their progress. Prominent NSD alumni in the State like C Basavalingaiah, Srivivas Prabhu, Jayatheertha Joshi and Chidambara Rao Jambe will be on the faculty.
The State Government has assured the NSD that it will provide the premises to house the regional center. “Otherwise, we will hire an apartment to start with,” says Keerthi Jain, which hopes funding agencies like the UNESCO will lend a helping hand later. Depending on the response in Bangalore, “we will start in Calcutta followed by Bombay. That would mean a center in each of the four zones.”
All these days, as she points out, people from various parts of the country came to Delhi only to realize that they were taught in Hindi. This will change now. The regional center will conduct training programmes, promote research, encourage children’s theater through workshops and activities in schools, undertake field work, mount exhibitions, take up documentation and data collection. It will also coordinate the activities of university drama departments assist them in their activities.
An advisory committee with representatives from all the States, the NSD, the regional centers and the repertory companies, and headed by the NSD chief, will be formed to achieve these objectives. A decision is yet to be taken on who will head the regional center.

Swan Song - Thanjavur Saraswati Veena's

Around 100 artisan families in the temple town of Thanjavur are dedicated to the art of making the Saraswati Veena

Earnest music enthusiasts will tell you that even today when you listen to the recording of Ustad Zia Mohiuddin Dagar and S Balachander, you get goose bumps and are mesmerised. But even while we listen to a veena concert by a maestro, how many of us will actually wonder about the making of the magnificent instrument and the people who have toiled to get music out it? Not many, perhaps.
While several art forms die a slow death because of lack of patronage, more than 100 families in Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu, have kept the veena making art alive and have passed it on through the generations.
For these families in this popular temple town, known more for its paintings that the South Indian style of veena made here, it is daily grind as they set about making the Tanjori Veena, more commonly known as the Sarawasti Veena.

“These musical instruments, made of wood from the jack fruit tree, go through rigorous testing before they are ready for use. The veenas are then sold to customers across the world, who have exclusively placed orders,” said R Venkatesan, Manager of the Thanjavur Musical Instruments Workers Cooperative Society.
MAKING A VEENA
The Saraswati Veena is one of the most ancient and revered of South Indian instruments. Its is attractive and the highest quality veenas have the entire body carved out of a single block of wood. The more ordinary ones, said Ganeshan, a veena maker, have a body which is made in three sections – resonator, neck and head. There are 24 frets made of brass bars set into wax. There in another resonator at the top of the neck of the veena. This is no longer a functioning resonator, but is mainly used as a stand to facilitate the positioning of th instrument when it is played. As it does not serve a musical purpose, it is not unusual to find that this upper resonator may be made of acoustically neutral materials such as paper mache, cane or other similar materials.

The Sarawasti Veena has four playing strings and three drone strings (thalam). The main bridge is a flat bar made of brass. This bar has a alight curve, and it is this curve that gives the veena its characteristic sound. The string instrument with two ground resonators is connected by a central shaft and held diagonally from lap to shoulder.
“The Thanjavur veena is considered the most sophisticated of all veenas. We can make any kind of veena, with any specification given by the customer, of course for a price,” says Ganeshan.
While shaping a veena out of blocks of wood is an arduous task, testing it for the right quality of music is no small work. “The veenas have to be tested for the right sound and notes and at least ten testers have to do the job before the Tanjori Veenas are shipped to their respective destinations.” says E Lakshman.
He added that the cost of a Sarawasti Veena varies from one piece to the other – the more th art work, the more the cost. While a non-decorative veena made out of three pieces of wood may cost around Rs 5,000, those which are intricately carved out of a single piece of wood cost upto Rs 50,000.

WAITING FOR THEIR DUE
“The invasion of western culture and with it, the popularity of western instruments, has brought down the demand for traditional instruments, such as the veena,” said Jayabalan, a veena maker. Though the artisans produce around 300 veenas on an average, in a year, their sale is not very high, he added.
Most of the veeena makers of Tanjore have been approaching the Tamil Nadu government for more than 10 years and also the Central government for subsidies, but they are yet to get them. They allege that the other artisans get both the state as well as the central subsidies, but the veena makers are nor getting what is due to them. “But whether the subsidies come or not, the 100 veena-making families of Thanjavur will continue their work and keep the art alive, even though it our only source of income,” said Jayabalan.
These families are determined to preserve their tradition, so that classical musicians across the country can make music.

PLAYING THE VEENA
The veena is played while sitting cross-legged with the instrument held tilted slightly away from the player. The small gourd on the left rests on the player’s left thigh, the left arm passing beneath the neck with the hand curving up and around so that the fingers rest upon the frets. The palm of the right hand rests on the edge of the top plank so that the fingers (usually index and middle) can pluck the strings. The drone strings are played with the little finger. The veena’s large resonator is placed on the floor beyond the right thigh.
DIFFERENT KIND OF VEENA
Venkatesan says that they are various types of veena across the country and have specific ways of playing them. He added that they are also made in different styles to suit the customer. To name a few there is the Rudra Veena which is mostly used by the Dhrupad performers which is considered as the oldest Indian music.
Then there is the Vichitra Veena which was popularized by Abdul Aziz Khan who was a court musician in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. And lastly the Saraswati Veena or the Tanjori Veena which is the most popular.
MYTHOLOGICAL TIES
The patron Hindu goddess of learning and the arts, Saraswati, is often depicted seated upon a swan or peacock playing a veena. According to Hindu mythology, the demon-king Ravana and the monkey-god Hanuman were great veena players, as was the sage Narada.