LUCKNOW: City youth on Saturday took out a campaign to promote the use of indigenous energy resources such as coal, gas, solar, wind energy, biogas, and ensuring future energy supplies from Iran and other countries of West and Central Asia. The campaign, titled ‚Lessons from Japan 2011‘, was taken out to mark the Hiroshima Day that falls on August 6. …
A film ‚Buddha Weeps in Jadugoda‘ was also screened. The movie showed hazards faced by people due to uranium mining and dumping in Jadugoda, Jharkhand. Meanwhile, students put up posters as part of the campaign and participated in ‚Lessons From Japan‘ interactive dialogue on peace, nuclear disarmament and clean energy option.
Ramsar village, Barmer, Rajasthan. „Desert dreams sting as sharply as the desert sun,“ Rukma Bai warns.
At five in the morning, you can already feel against your skin, the sun sucking the chill out of the desert dawn. Memories of Rukma Bai piercing the night with her powerful rendition of Kesariya balam, give way to the sounds of a morning raga. We clamber out of our sleeping bags to the words of a playful bhajan, about a young Krishna talking to birds. The ’nandlal‘ in the bhajan is clearly her grandchild, who plays by her side as she makes bajre ki roti with lehsan ki chutney. Our breakfast.
Rukma Bai lost both her legs to polio. She drags herself on the stubs of her knees, burnt repeatedly by the scorching earth. It’s painful, she says, but less so than some episodes in her life. Her husband left her, ran away with her sister. She had to bring up three children. Recurrent drought killed all her cattle. With no legs to walk on, she could not go, like others, to work at drought-relief sites. Hunger threatened her children, which is when Komal Kothari, ethnomusicologist and unrivalled expert in desert music, suggested she sing in concerts, in public, for money.
„When a Manganiyar baby cries, it is in the tune of a raga.“
„If I cut you, blood will flow. If you cut me, there will be blood, but with it sand and music will flow too.“ …
