Undergroundworld of street dancestays quiet but entralsPage 3

Murals thatshowcase journey ofGandhi’s lifePage 2

Metrolife

TuesdayOctober 6, 2015

www.deccanherald.com

Your bond with Delhi

● Persons with disability

EMPOWERMENT Inclusive measures are inadequate for persons with disability in the society.

One of the prominentlessons taught in highschool is the difference

between ‘sympathy’ and ‘em-pathy’. Yet most of us end upshowing pity whether at apoor child on a traffic signalor at a wheelchair bound per-son. From sympathising eyesto inaccess to disabled-friend-ly infrastructure, persons withdisability (PwDs) face manychallenges across cities.Metrolife spoke to a few in thecapital to know what it entails.

On a recent visit to RohiniMetro Walk, a mall andamusement park, AbhaKhetarpal, encountered “an-other instance where there isno sensitivity towards personswith disabilities”. The wheel-chair bound polio survivor re-counts, “They didn’t evenhave a ramp. Attitude is thebiggest barrier which needs tobe removed.” A practisingcounsellor and a psychothera-pist, she adds, “The environ-ment is very unkind. To be in-dependent is a distant dreamfor us.” Pointing out that ac-cessibility is not only makingramps and providing wheel-chair to a PwD, she states, “Italso needs to be inclusive andshould be a complete pack-age, say in instances of disas-ter management.” Whilementioning that PwDs are of-ten looked at as an excludedgroup, she states that hospi-tals are not fully medicallyequipped to cater to PwDs.

● Art talk

‘Antiquities completelyunrecognised in India’

shot in a single day.Mehta explains that anyone

can pick their camera (eventheir phone) and film things

that can be self-reflexive(them speaking to the cameraplainly), representative (show-ing something they observe)or character-based (aboutthemselves or someone they know).

“It can be a journey (repre-sented in one day) or a snippet(a sunrise or sunset, a personmaking daal or a dosa, a childplaying cricket, a person goingfor a walk) anything the shoot-er finds interesting. They thenupload that footage, betweenOct 11-17, onto the website andwe will look at it all and editwhat we feel is compellinginto a feature-length docu-mentary called ‘India in aDay’,” he says.

While there are a few do’sand don’ts like ‘make sure toshoot in landscape mode’, ‘up-load original uncompressed,

unedited footage’, ‘don’ t shootposters of a famous person,artwork, brands or trade-marks’ and ‘don't record your-self or others swearing or do-ing anything obscene orviolent’, the film can be shot anywhere in India, in any language.

“This is a great time for India, the country is growing,technologies are altering the way people lead their lives. Hence, we thought itwould be great to put togethera short film that helps show-case the story of evolving India. The main idea is toshow how technology has transformedIndia. What can you do todaythat you couldn’t do five yearsago? What do you hope for?What can you now achieve?

As the new CEO of onlineauction house, Saf-fronart, Hugo Weihe

has laid out a roadmap to pro-mote India’s vibrant-yet-wide-ly ignored antiquities andminiature art segment. Underthis new plan, the former in-ternational director of AsianArt at Christie’s hopes to shiftbuyers’ perception by high-lighting the importance of an-tiquities and sculptures.

“If you display a beautifulChola bronze sculpture peo-ple don’t know about, you arebound to get reactions whenthey look at it in the light.They would see how beautifulit is and would want to learnmore about it. Great thingslike these haven’t been presented here,” Weihe tells Metrolife.

“In the modern market,people have matured and un-derstand art well. They knowhow everything works, butthis necessarily isn’t the casewith sculptures. People don’t

know what sort of a conditionit is acceptable in. Suppose anarm of the sculpture is broken,but it is 1,000 years old. How would you price it? So, incase of antiquity it is the history that matters themost,” he adds.

Weihe joined Christie’s in1998 and established the De-partment of Indian and South-east Asian Art. It was on hisproposal that Christie’s heldits first Indian auction inMumbai in December 2013,where modernist painter V S Gaitonde’s abstract worksold for a world record at Rs23.7 crore.

His complete understand-ing of Indian art market iswhat makes Weihe optimisticabout the promises Indiaholds in the global scenario.“India already has a sculpturetradition which goes back to5,000 years. So, personally forme, one of the great opportu-nities in India market is of an-tiquities. It’s been lingering

sign language training, skilltraining and easy accessibilityof loans to make the countrymore amenable to PwDs.

Khetarpal shares, “Indiacomes out with the best poli-cies but is poorest at their im-plementation. That is why, Iam keeping my fingerscrossed.”

Presently, there is no na-tional guideline on universal

infrastructure for PwDs. An-jlee Agarwal, founder of advo-cacy NGO Samarthyam men-

tions, “A unified design guide-line is pending for approvalunder the Ministry of UrbanDevelopment. The one underCentral Public Works Department is faulty.”

Agarwal was an athlete anda Bharatnatyam dancer butwith muscular dystrophy orprogressive weakening of themuscles setting in, she wasforced to occupy a wheelchair.Now, with her NGO which is apartner in the Accessible IndiaCampaign, she shares, “Themandate is to have universaldesign in terms of infrastruc-ture of public buildings, publictransport and information andcommunication technology.”

Dr H S Chhabra, chief ofSpine Services and medical di-rector, Indian Spinal InjuriesCentre (ISIC) deals with PwDson a regular basis. Pointingout that availability of wheel-chairs at airports and lifts atmetro stations are somechanges that would not havebeen visible, a couple ofdecades ago, he says, “Thingsare somewhat better but farfrom ideal.”He goes on tomention the need for a “com-prehensive rehabilitation in-cluding physical, psychologi-cal and vocational aspects”.

While mentioning the caseof Tokyo in Japan where “anaccessible washroom can beseen at a distance of every fivekilometers”, Agarwal ques-tions why can’t sensitivity beshown to make disability, a human right issue in India. She concludes, “Disability isseen in India as a charity andcare issue. But it is a basic hu-man right.” Jayashree Narayanan

VISUALISER Richie Mehta

Capturing vignettes of IndiaWhat can you now change?”Sandeep Menon, directormarketing, Google India,

● Indian frames

October 10 would havebeen just another day,had it not been for a

chance to capture regular mo-ments reflective of what life inevolving India is all about. Beit a frenzy moment withfriends or a quiet meal withfamily, ‘India in a Day’ is allabout recording a typical day,which would be made into aspecial film that will capture amoment of time as seen bythousands of people acrossthe country.

An initiative by Google inpartnership with filmmakersRidley Scott, Richie Mehtaand Anurag Kashyap, the filmproject will capture theessence of evolving Indiaacross 24 hours.

“It means something veryspecial to me. It's a chance toreally show the world what

makes India so extraordinary -it's diversity. I think we are al-ways trying to generalisethings to simplify and betterunderstand, or categorisethem. But a place like this de-fies all generalisations. Any-thing you can imagine existshere, in terms of types of ani-mals, plants, landscapes,tastes, scents, even types ofpeople, and their behaviours.And it's all represented acrossthe spectrum. And I want toget a taste of that on film toshow the world, and show In-dia herself,” Mehta, known forfilms like Siddharth, Amal andI’ll Follow You Down, tellsMetrolife.

Participants just need toshoot and upload theirfootage on http://indiaina-day.withgoogle.com.

Those whose footage makes

it into the finished film will be credited as a ‘co-director’ in the first user-generated feature-length documentary

tells Metrolife.Slated to be a feature

length, India in a Day will becompleted by Spring 2016.

Ask Mehta about the ele-ments that would be kept inmind while putting thefootages together and he says,“That’s the challenge in edit-ing this film - having no pre-conceived notions as to whatwe will receive, or how to pro-ceed. Aside from the technical- if someone's footage is tooshaky, or too out of focus forexample, we can’t use it - butit's about responding to whatis given to us. So I’ll be lookingfor what is dramatic, beauti-ful, amazing to me. But keepin mind, what might be mun-dane and boring to someonecan be fascinating and beauti-ful to someone else. Which iswhy we ask people to film any-thing in their day –it might be magical.”Shweta Sharma

FILMED India in a Day will celebrate the nation’s extraordinariness.

“We are sometimes treated asuntouchables. In fact, not asingle hospital in the countryhas an accessible mammo-gram or breast-examiningmachines.”

Census 2011 data shows‘decadal increase in propor-tion of PwDs is significant inurban areas’ from 1.93 per-cent to 2.17 percent. Hintingat the need for job creation forPwDs, Pranav Desai, founderof Voice of Specially AbledPeople (VOSAP), an advocacyNGO, says that the intention isto make company manage-ments take “inclusive deci-sions”. “They are nonvisible inthe mainstream community. Itis just not only a money issue.It is about empowerment.”

Government’s AccessibleIndia Campaign, an initiativefor equal opportunity and uni-versal access building has re-cently mentioned wheelchairfriendly buildings, widespread

there and never had the prop-er platform to flourish.”

For his new role, Weihewould be shuttling betweenMumbai and New York, buthe is constantly involved inevery single step. Talking for-ward this much-cherisheddream of highlighting India’srich sculpture tradition, Wei-he promises to bring togetherrarest and important pieces inDecember auction.

“Indian antiquities law is abit difficult, but it is absolutelypossible to work within exist-ing framework. So you caneasily find old Indian collec-tions which are registeredwith the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and anew buyer can register hisname as well,” he says, addingthe antiquities and sculpturesfor this auction would be from the Chola and Medieval periods.

Weihe, who has a Phd in arthistory, understand the mas-terpieces are hard to comeby.He suggests that the time isripe to expand the field in In-dia. Giving an example of Sto-ryLtd, Saffronart’s onlinebrand that deals in popularart, folk tradition and Bolly-wood, Weihe says, “We are go-ing to look at it carefully andunderstand how do we plan toexpand it in India and whatare the opportunities. This is

equally important for theoverall understanding and vitality of the creative world.”

“Art is all about how youlook at it, I hope we areable to change people’sperception,” he says.

Shilpa Raina

A sword thatstill hangs

“The environment isvery unkind. Tobe independentis a distantdream for us.”Abha Khetarpal

“

“Disability isseen in India as a charity andcare issue. But it is a basic human right.”Anjlee Agarwal

“

“Indian antiquities lawis a bit difficult,but it is absolutely possible to workwithin existingframework.”Hugo Weihe

“

TALENTED Ridley Scott

VERSATILE Anurag Kashyap