My Science School

homes were slowly inundated with colourful prints of deities and mythological figures — many of which could be traced back to the paintings of Raja Ravi Varma. Encouraged by the British to use western artistic techniques to reinterpret Indian mythology, Varma set in motion the creation of an Indian aesthetic that exists till date.

Varma was eager to paint from a young age, and his uncle encouraged this artistic inclination, persuading the Maharaja of Travancore to let him stay in the palace and learn from famous artists who visited the court. 

Art historian Geeta Kapur describes Varma as both a traditionalist and modernist. He grew up studying Sanskrit and orthodox scriptures, but took pleasure in experimenting with European drawing styles, exploring realism and using his scientific knowledge of perspective in landscapes and portraits.

His work in realism began as a portrait artist of mostly aristocratic women. He then delved into mythological paintings inspired by Puranic texts, and later narrative paintings after being influenced by Parsi and Marathi theatre in Bombay.

 

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Many anniversaries occasioned the volume of Paniker, published by Artworld in 2016 – the fortieth death anniversary of KCS Paniker, a widely influential painter, the fiftieth anniversary of the book’s publishing house and Chennai’s oldest gallery Artworld, as well as the fiftieth anniversary of Cholamandal Artists’ Village – the Chennai landmark that Paniker helped found.

Paniker was born in Coimbatore in 1911 and spent his childhood in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. He studied art at the Government School of Arts, Madras, and was appointed as a teacher there after graduation. By 1944 he had established the Progressive Painters’ Association, that enabled artists to exhibit all over India, and later, London.

Before he retired, Paniker made a contribution to the Chennai cultural scene which he will forever be remembered for – he founded the the Cholamandal Artists’ Village, a 10-acre plot of land composed of studios, permanent collections, workshops, and guesthouses for visiting artists, all built by artists themselves.

 

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Rasipuram Krishnaswamy Iyer Laxman or as we call him RK Laxman was born on this day in Mysore in 1921. An Indian cartoonist and illustrator who took most of his inspiration from the common man’s life and aspirations, his works are appreciated by people belonging to each age group.

His cartoons and caricatures have become synonymous as the means to define the Indian landscape in simple terms. His first job as a cartoonist was for The Free Press Journal in Mumbai. Later in 1951, he joined The Times of India and worked there for nearly five decades. Best remembered for his creation of ‘The Common Man’ and the daily cartoon strip ‘You Said It’, his witty style has made him occupy a special place in our memories.



For his remarkable contributions in his field, he has been conferred with the Padma Bhushan in 1973, Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1984 and Padma Vibhushan in 2005. He received the honorary Lifetime Achievement Award for Journalism by CNN-IBN TV18 in 2008.

Although the maestro passed away in 2015, his bespectacled dhoti-clad protagonist continues to represent India and its many idiosyncrasies.



 

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India's greatest painter of modern times, the snowy-haired and bearded, barefoot Maqbool Fida Husain -- who died in self-exile in London four years ago – is a forgotten figure on his birth centenary 

Renowned equally for his artistry and eccentricities, the internationally acclaimed artist is credited with catapulting Indian art to the world arena -- though he was hounded by a spate of controversies virtually all his life.

Once hailed as India's 'Pablo Picasso' by the Forbes magazine, Husain is largely remembered among the Indian masses for his paintings depicting prancing horses, women subjects, historical figures and nude paintings of Hindu gods and goddesses, besides other events.

His portrayal of horses with their "tremendous lines and the majestic way that the horses held their heads high" - as Sotheby's specialist in South Asian modern and contemporary art Priyanka Mathew once said - were held amongst his most sought after and highly-priced collections.

It was way back in the 1930s that the tall, young Husain rejected a prospective job as a tailor's assistant to paint cinema hoardings in Mumbai for a paltry 25-35 paise per square foot -- and this ultimately proved to be his art school, college and university.

Earning recognition quickly, he joined, in 1948, the famous artist F.N. Souza's Progress Artists Group, a conglomeration of aspiring young painters with a desire to create an Indian version of modernist art in those struggling days of India as a newly-independent country.

 

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Debi Prasad Roy Choudhury MBE (1899–1975) was an Indian sculptor, painter and the founder chairman of the Lalit Kala Akademi. He was known for his bronze sculptures, including Triumph of Labour and Martyr's Memorial, and is rated by many as one among the major artists of modern Indian art.

Roy Choudhury was born on 15 June 1899 at Tejhat, in Rangpur in the undivided Bengal of the British India (presently in Bangladesh), and did his academic studies from home. He learnt painting from Abanindranath Tagore, the renowned Bengali painter, and his earlier paintings showed influence of his teacher. Turning to sculpting, he initially trained under Hiromony Choudhury, and later, moved to Italy for further training. It was during this period, his works started to gather western influences. Returning to India, he joined the Bengal School of Art for further studies. In 1928, he moved to Chennai to join the Government College of Fine Arts, first as a student and then worked there as the Head of the Department, vice principal and the principal till his retirement in 1958. 

In 1958, the Government of India awarded him the Padma Bhushan, the third highest Indian civilian honour. He received the Lalit Kala Akademi Fellowship in 1962 and, six years later, Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata, honoured him with DLitt (honoris causa), in 1968. Choudhury, who was married to Dolly, died on 15 October 1975, aged 76.

 

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The original Constitution of India, adopted on 26 January 1950, was not a printed document. It was entirely handcrafted by the artists of Shantiniketan under the guidance of Acharya Nandalal Bose, with the calligraphy texts done by Prem Behari Narain Raizada in Delhi. 

His genius and original style were recognized by famous artists and art critics like Gaganendranath Tagore, Ananda Coomaraswamy and O. C. Ganguli. These lovers of art felt that objective criticism was necessary for the development of painting and founded the Indian Society of Oriental Art.

He became principal of the Kala Bhavana (College of Arts) at Tagore's International University Santiniketan in 1922.

He was also famously asked by Jawaharlal Nehru to sketch the emblems for the Government of India's awards, including the Bharat Ratna and the Padma Shri. Along with his disciple Rammanohar, Nandalal Bose took up the historic task of beautifying/decorating the original manuscript of the Constitution of India.

He died on 16 April 1966 in Calcutta.

Today, the National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi holds 7000 of his works in its collection, including a 1930 black and white linocut of the Dandi March depicting Mahatma Gandhi, and a set of seven posters he later made at the request of Mahatma Gandhi for the 1938 Haripura Session of the Indian National Congress.

In 1956, he became the second artist to be elected Fellow of the Lalit Kala Akademi, India's National Academy of Art. In 1954, Nandalal Bose was awarded the Padma Vibhushan.

 

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Anjolie Ela Menon (born 1940) is one of India's leading contemporary artists. Her paintings are in several major collections. In 2006 her work "Yatra" was acquired by the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, California. Her preferred medium is oil on masonite, though she has also worked in other media, including glass and water colour. She is a well known muralist. She was awarded the Padma Shree in 2000. She lives and works in New Delhi.

Being a well-known muralist, Anjolie Ela Menon has done over 35 solo shows and many group shows in India and abroad and in 1968, 1972 & 1975 she performed along with I, II, III International Triennale by Lalit Kala Akademi, with Paris Biennale, France in 1980 and in 1980 at New York & Washington D.C.

In the year 2000, Government of India conferred Anjolie Ela Menon with the most prestigious Padma Shri Award. She is on the board of trustees in IGNCA             (Gandhi National Centre for the Arts). In 2002, her work was shown in a major exhibition event at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai which eventually toured other towns including Bangalore, Chennai and Delhi. Her life and work has been featured in several publications and films made for CNN and Doordarshan Channels.

 

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Sayed Haider Raza (22 February 1922 – 23 July 2016) was an Indian painter who lived and worked in France since 1950, while maintaining strong ties with India. He was born in Babaria, Central Provinces, British India, which is now present-day Madhya Pradesh.

He was a renowned Indian artist. He was awarded the Padma Shri and Fellowship of the Lalit Kala Academi in 1981, Padma Bhushan in 2007 and Padma Vibhushan in 2013. He was conferred with the Commandeur de la Legion d'honneur (Legion of Honour) on July 14, 2015.

His work evolved from painting expressionistic landscapes to abstract ones. From his fluent water colours of landscapes and townscapes executed in the early 1940s, he moved toward a more expressive language, painting landscapes of the mind.

In 1962, he became a visiting lecturer at the University of California in Berkeley, USA. Raza was initially enamored of the bucolic countryside of rural France. Eglise is part of a series which captures the rolling terrain and quaint village architecture of this region. Showing a tumultuous church engulfed by an inky blue night sky, Raza uses gestural brushstrokes and a heavily impasto-ed application of paint, stylistic devices which hint at his later 1970s abstractions.

 

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Renowned Gond tribal painter Bhajju Shyam who was honoured with Padma Shri this year, recalls an incident with a laughter, which proved a turning point in his life.

Bhajju Shyam is a Gond artist who was born in the village of Patangarh, Madhya Pradesh. While looking for work in Bhopal, Bhajju was encouraged to take up art by his uncle, Jangarh. His internationally acclaimed book, ‘London Jungle Book,’ is a Gond artist’s reflections on the cultural experience in the city of London. A renowned illustrator, he was awarded the Italian Bologna Ragazzi for his work on ‘The Night Life of Trees,’ along with Durgabai Vyam. He has also been conferred with the Padmashri – the fourth highest civilian honour in India – in 2018, for his contribution to the arts.

For his book The Life of Trees Night (2006) he was awarded the 2008 Bologna Children's Book Fair. Bhajju Shyam lives in Bhopal, India. He was awarded India's fourth highest civilian award the Padma Shri in 2018.

 

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Amrita Sher-Gil was an eminent Hungarian-Indian painter. She has been called "one of the greatest avant-garde women artists of the early 20th century" and a "pioneer" in modern Indian art. 

She painted women going to the market, women at a wedding, women at home. Sometimes she showed women bonding with other women. At times the works seemed to convey a sense of silent resolve. It was a rendering rarely seen in depictions of Indian women at the time, when portrayals tended to cast them as happy and obedient.

Her 1932 painting “Young Girls” received a gold medal in 1933 at the Paris Salon, the renowned art show. It depicts her sister, Indira, wearing European clothing and a look of confidence while sitting with a partially undressed friend, Denise Proutaux, whose face is obscured by her hair — one woman bold and daring and another reserved and hidden. The painting reflects the different aspects of Sher-Gil’s personality — outgoing and sociable, as she was known among those who encountered her at Parisian parties, or tucked away and painting vigorously.

 

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Somewhere deep inside the Peruvian jungles of the mighty Amazon, Ed Stafford found a purpose to his life. Facing gun-toting tribes and predators, he became the first man to walk the 6,400 km length of the river.

A strong desire to discover his true self pushed Stafford towards the extreme adventure. Leaving behind a potentially lucrative career as a stockbroker in England, he delved deep into the darkness of the Amazon and emerged as one of the bravest explorers of the 21st century.

Here’s a brief account of his life and his hair-rising adventures:

Off the beaten track

When a young Stafford attended career counseling sessions at his school, he was told that a career as a logistics manager suited him best. And so, Stafford spent the rest of his life proving them wrong.

He liked the outdoors and joined the British Army. After retirement, he planned to become a stockbroker, like most of his colleagues.

On a whim, he joined an organization conducting expeditions and volunteering programmes for young people.

Thrilled with the experience, Stafford decided never to go back to work in London and instead, set out looking for more adventures.

He was eager to go on a kayaking expedition but everything seemed to have already been done. No one, however, had ever attempted to walk the length of the Amazon.

The Amazon rainforest

Along with his friend, Luke Collyer, Stafford began his expedition on April 2, 2008. The journey took 860 days, much of it hacking through the jungle with a machete and surviving on geckos, insects and fish. Stafford blogged and filmed his deadly journey.

Halfway through, his partner abandoned him and Stafford ran out of money (his sponsors pulled out due to recession). He appealed to his viewers to fund the rest of his expedition and help poured in.

Left on his own, Stafford stoically trod through the jungle without any maps or even a Global Positioning System (GPS) – he had carried a GPS device but it stopped working. Close encounters with jungle predators, flesh-eating maggots and poisonous snakes tested his survival skills. Once, he was arrested for alleged murder by the Shipebo tribe. They had mistaken him for someone else, and refused to consider his passport as an identity proof. They insisted that it was fake as it was not ‘personally signed by the Queen.’

The two-year-long journey, which finally came to an end in August 2010, helped Stafford find his passion.

A way of life

But Stafford’s thirst for adventure was not yet quenched. His subsequent adventures included surviving on an uninhabited Fijian island. For 60 days, he lived without food, water or survival equipment of any sort. The resulting series aired on Discovery Channel in 2013. Two follow-up series saw him marooned in a different location each episode – from the Gobi desert to the jungles of Borneo. In 2015, he explored the Danakali Desert in Ethiopia, the hottest place on Earth.

In 2019, Stafford went on another epic adventure, this time with his fellow adventurer and wife, Laura Bingham, and their two-year-old toddler in a remote island in Indonesia.

Recognition

His intrepid adventures earned Stafford the European Adventurer of the Year award in 2011 and the Mungo Park Medal by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society in recognition of outstanding contributions to geographical knowledge through exploration. Following this, the Guinness World Records formally recognized Stafford’s achievement in walking the length of the Amazon. He appears in the 2012 Guinness Book of Records.

Wanting to encourage other explorers, Stafford is now a trustee of the Transglobe Expedition Trust, a body that gives grants to expedition leaders. He is also an ambassador for the Scouts and a patron of the British Exploring Society.

Oh Really?

• Stafford has written a book, Expeditions Unpacked, that reveals what great explorers such as Captain Scott and Roald Amundsen took with them on their journeys into the unknown.


• He meditates frequently. Even in a life-threatening situation. Stafford finds that closing his eyes for a few seconds and clearing his mind, helps him in responding to the emergency.

 

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Writer Kavitha Mandana was born in Mysore (now Mysuru), and her schooling was part in Mysore and part in the Nilgiris. She began writing when she joined advertising. “It’s a great discipline where deadlines are always ‘yesterday’. So, after four or five years there, when I had a baby, writing seemed a natural thing to pursue. It’s also when I gathered the courage to begin illustrating,” she says. When her daughter was two, in the days before Indian publishing took off, Kavitha began writing and illustrating for the kids’ supplement of the Karnataka-based newspaper “Deccan Herald”. And there began a fascinating journey into stories.

Writing like Kavitha Mandana

• Read a lot…the more you read, the better you’ll write. Also you’ll discover which genre you prefer to write in.


• Most of us who write, want our work to be read. So look out for those in your peer group (classmates, bus-buddies, cousins, grandparents, etc.) you could share your first stories or reports with. If you find even two others like yourself, read each others’ work and share what it is that you like about the work and what you might like changed (all politely done, of course!).


• A good exercise is to look t a piece of writing that you did for a school assignment, like an essay on your holidays. That would have been written with your teacher as your ‘audience’; which means you would use language appropriate to her age (not yours) and the point of the writing would also be to score marks. Now imagine writing about your holidays – for your friend. The age group changes; things you couldn’t mention in a school essay could be mentioned here, and in this case, you’re not interested in marks, but in entertaining or making things interesting for your friend. Compare the two pieces about the same holiday and you’ll learn a lot about how to write for different audiences.

The writer’s routine

“What inspires me is real life, mostly,” says Kavitha About her novel “No. 9 on the Shade Card”, she says, “It happened just by watching what was playing out in my, at that time, teenaged daughter’s life. She is very outdoorsy, athletic and generally played any game she got a chance to. But when trying to build relay teams or throwball teams, she realized that often even very talented girls weren’t permitted to play outdoors because of safety concerns or the parential worry of girls ‘turning dark’.”

In fact, a lot of her short stories are based on her childhood growing up in the Nilgiri hills, in boarding school, at her grandparents’ place in Coorg, and more. In fact, her first novel for middle-graders, “Bando, the Dog Who Led a Double Life” was really a combination of the goofy Labradors she had at home when growing up. “Of course, none of them could cartoon, like Bando could, in any book!” she laughs.

Kavitha confesses though that she has no process or pattern to her writing time. “I’M a very fits-and—starts kind of person. Besides, I have a full-time job that pays the bills! So writing is fun,” she reasons.

Kavitha Mandana’s books

• Trapped


• No. 9 on the Shade Card


• The Emperor Who Vanished: Strange Facts from Indian History


• The Sixth Grade Wedding Planners

 

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The Birds is a 1963 American natural horror-thriller film produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Loosely based on the 1952 story of the same name by Daphne du Maurier, it focuses on a series of sudden and unexplained violent bird attacks on the people of Bodega Bay, California, over the course of a few days.

In 2016, The Birds was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress, and selected for preservation in its National Film Registry.

The majority of the birds seen in the film are real, although it is estimated that more than $200,000 was spent on the creation of mechanical birds for the film. Ray Berwick was in charge of the live birds used in the production, training and catching many of them himself. The gulls were caught in the San Francisco garbage dump and the sparrows were caught by John "Bud" Cardos. However, the captured sparrows had to be used alongside birds from pet shops to achieve full effect in the scene where they invade the house.

 

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Puja Pednekar

On a whim, a young Poorna Malavath signed up for rock climbing offered by her school when she was almost 12 years old. Before she knew it, she had mastered the art of balancing, bouldering and rappelling. And in 2014, she made history as the youngest girl to ever climb Mount Everest. Subsequently, she became the world’s first tribal woman to set foot on the six tallest mountain peaks across six continents. This is her story.

Malavath is from the remote village of Pakala, where her parents worked in paddy fields. When she was 11, she moved to a residential government-run school in a nearby district. The school had introduced a few extra-curricular programmes to encourage students to attend school. The drop-out rate of girls was quite high in the region.

Malavath’s enthusiasm and skills brought her to the notice of R. S. Praveen Kumar, an Indian Police Service officer and secretary of the Telangana Residential Educational Society, which runs schools for scheduled caste, scheduled tribes and underprivileged children.

Kumar sent Malavath for rock climbing camps to hone her skills. On a five-day camp in Bhongir in Nalgonda district, Malavath scaled the 6,500 feet Bhongir rock with relative ease and dexterity. She seemed to be a natural at finding the right crevices that can act as foot holds on its steep surface. Reaching to the top of the formidable rock, Malavath gained confidence in her mountaineering skills.

Her coach, Sekhar Babu decided to put his faith on the young gun and prepare her alongside another student, S Anand Kumar, 17, for the ultimate mountaineering challenge – Mount Everest. She was sent to the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling, where six-months of grueling workouts and rigorous exercises followed. She ran 20 to 25 km every day and rested only one day in a week. But this was just the beginning. As part of her training, she had to scale Mount Renock at 17,000 feet in the Kanchenjunga range in the Himalayas, which was then followed by acclimatization in the mountains around Ladakh, at -35 degrees Celsius.

A momentous feat

Malavath attempted to climb Everest from the Tibetan side because Nepal has a strict age limit of 16 and above. When her team reached the Everest base camp in 2014, they heard that 16 Sherpas were killed in an avalanche. The teeth chattering, icy coldness made her feel sick and weak. Though she ran a fever for a few days and was constantly throwing up, Malavath was not ready to give up. The ice and cold did not scare her. But on her way to the summit, the sight of six dead bodies in Everest’s “death zone” sent shivers down her spine. At 8,000 m, the death zone is the part of Everest where there is not enough oxygen for humans to breath. This is where most of the climbers breathe their last and the area is infamously strewn with corpses. It was the first time she had seen a dead body. Suddenly, a cloud of uncertainty and fear gripped her, but Malavath overcame the rush of emotions and carried on. Within 15 minutes, on May 25, 2014, Malavath and Anand Kumar, reached the summit of Everest.

Her Everest feat inspired Rahul Bose to make a biopic on the young mountaineer titled Poorna. It released in 2016.

Other milestones

Bolstered by her Everest success, Malavath scaled Mt. Kilimanjaro (Africa), Mt. Elbrus (Europe), Mt. Aconcagua (South America) Mt. Cartsnez (Oceania region) and Mt. Vinson Massif (Antarctica). She is close to achieving her goal of scaling the seven tallest summits located in seven continents. She is gearing up to scale Mt. Denali, the highest peak in North America, which is every mountaineer’s dream.

Mountaineering gave Malavath unprecedented opportunities and exposure. It also taught her to dream big. Currently pursuing an under graduate course at the University of Minnesota in the U.S. as a fellow of the Global Undergraduate Exchange Programme, Malavath plans to pursue her postgraduate studies and prepare for the Civil Services exam. Like her mentor, she too wants to become an IPS officer and perhaps, change the lives of other girls in her community.

OH REALLY?

• In 2019, Poorna published her biography, Poorna: The Youngest Girl in the World to Scalw Mount Everest.


• She wanted to become a cricketer, and enjoys playing volleyball and kabaddi too.

 

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The computer mouse was invented by Douglas Engelbart in the 1960s, and patented in 1970. Dr Engelbart who died on July 2, 2013 also invented a number of other interactive information systems that helped make the computer a user-friendly tool. Before pioneers like specialized machines those only trained scientists could operate.

The computer mouse was popularised by its inclusion as standard equipment with the Apple Macintosh in 1984.

Why was it called ‘mouse’? The object’s shape and tail-like cord suggested the name.

A year after the mouse was invented, a researcher named Jack Kelley created the first mouse pad.

 

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