2017-11 Perth

PUBLISHER

Pawan Luthra

EDITOR

Rajni Anand Luthra

ASSISTANT EDITOR

Harshad Pandharipande

MELBOURNE COORDINATOR

Preeti Jabbal

CONTRIBUTORS

Preeti Jabbal, Sai Narayan, Nisha Joseph, Grahak Cunningham, Romea Promodh, Puneet Anand, Uma Nair, Krishna Neelamraju, Nury Vi achi, Jyoti Shankar, Ritam Mitra, Dhanya Samuel, Darshini Kanagalingam,

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Rudd, Jones, Jones and Adani

BY PAWAN LUTHRA

Only days ago, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and shock jock Alan Jones found themselves as panellists on ABC TV’s Q and A program.

Jones, whose voice dominates Sydney radio airwaves, is known to be like a bulldog over a bone, so tenacious are his views on any topic on which he has made up his mind. He has been very vocal in his opposition to the Adani Group’s Carmichael coal mine being set up in central Queensland. He is the public face of the anti-Adani ads on behalf of campaign group Lock the Gate, which seeks to ‘stop the taxpayer loan to Adani’. In the ad, Jones expresses his disbelief at the potential use of taxpayers’ money to help fund the $16.5 billion coal mine.

All sides of politics - the Greens excluded - seem to back the Adani

project. During his last visit to India, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull had a number of requests from India’s corporate leaders to meet with him. The list, it seems, included leading IT companies such as TCS, Wipro and other businesses either doing work with Australia or keen to engage. Yet the only one-on-one meeting which Turnbull took, blessed by Indian PM Modi, was with Gautam Adani. Photos of both the Prime Ministers and Gautam Adani, splashed across the media in Australia, only raised the ire of those in opposition to the mine. The Labor party has also committed to this project. In the lead up to the Queensland elections, both the first-term incumbent Labor government currently led by Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, and the Liberal National opposition currently led by Tim Nicholls, have endorsed the project. At stake, cry the political leaders, are 10,000 jobs to be created in Queensland which is suffering the downturn of the resources boom. Not true, say those who oppose the mine - they count new jobs to be created at less than 2,500.

Yet, a recent survey by company ReachTel of 2,194 Australians found

that 55.5 per cent of voters said they opposed the project, with only 26.1 per cent in support and the balance undecided.

And so, why are the governments in power - the Coalition at the federal level and Labor in Queensland - willing to face community backlash on this project?

To get an insight in the workings in the Prime Minister’s office, Alan Jones asked his fellow panellist former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd this question, “Nothing adds up (on the Carmichael project). So why are these political leaders falling over themselves (to endorse the Adani deal)?”

With bated breath, one waited for the answer from the former leader of the government who could have shed some light… but before Kevin Rudd could answer, another panellist jumped in with a different issue.

And to the dismay of the Stop Adani brigade, host Tony Jones did not come back to the question at hand, passing it off as a comment.

What a blunder from Australia’s preeminent journalist.

The answer would have been fascinating.

Cover photo: Ravinder Singh Virk

YOUR SAY

LESSONS FROM THE LAMB AD

HARSHAD PANDHARIPANDE wrote on how the community handled the infamous lamb ad featuring Ganesha eating meat.

Sadanandan Nambiar AO wrote: I was interested in your coverage of the concern raised by some members of the Indian community and subsequent media news about the protest related to the depiction of a version of Ganesh (an actor with a mask around a funny dinner table) in a TV advertisement promoting the consumption of Australian lamb meat. Around the dinner table were similar caricatures from several other religions and beliefs. The advertisement was a display of typical Australian humour, and a commonly seen marketing ploy. That is all. I gave up eating meat some years ago.

I understand the sentiments of Ganesh worshippers. However, with due respect to their views, I would like to share another perspective through your columns. In comparison with all other religions in the world, Hindu thought probably allows the highest form of exibility, in matters of intellectual freedom, debates and multiple paths to spiritual enlightenment. Hindu gods are the embodiment of virtues and faults, passionate sexuality and deep and contemplation, acquisition of brutal power and detachment into nothingness. Krishna is an embodiment of just about every fault that we have, yet he is divine to millions. Hindu mythology is replete with paradoxes; Ganesh is a god to many, but also a jolly-good, indulging, over-eating guy to many. Creation (not by birth) of Ganesh himself is the ultimate paradox, an outcome of an unbelievably cruel act of impulse, anger, vanity and compromise. Yet, millions worship Him and nd in Him a source of support and seek his blessings for wealth. If Ganesh is a personi cation of God or God himself to a true worshipper, how can Ganesh be dishonoured by man’s jokes or stupidity? Is He not above such things?

Vegetarianism is not necessarily a Hindu belief; it came into practice in some sections of Hindu communities very long after Hindu philosophical thoughts were well advanced. Today, millions of non-vegetarians and Indians classed as “lower caste” worship Ganesh in India. Explicitly and wildly sexual carvings on stone walls in our many great monuments and places of past worship would more than match the most pornographic displays found today. Such were the strengths of our ancestral thoughts, truth seeking and wisdom.

Our mythology and epics are full of humour and jokes. For centuries, Vaishnavites (followers of Vishnu) and Shaivites (followers of Shiva) joked, abused and insulted each other, one calling the other “meat-eating, drunken mongrels”. There are brilliant Sanskrit plays written about this and such plays have entertained and enlightened Indians - Hindus - for centuries.

Some years ago, I played the lead role of Sathyasoma, a Shaivate monk, a drunken, cunning, half-mad, rude, womanising yet jealous fellow, to a packed audience (with repeat performance!) in a small theatre in Adelaide; my wife acted as Devasoma, my call-girl offering “hotpleasures”! That was a Sanskrit play written a few centuries ago and staged in temples. These are rich and intelligent traditions of Hindu thoughts and culture.

For an analysis of the extraordinary intellectual dimension of the deeper Hindu thoughts, as depicted in the great epic Mahabharata, I commend to your readers the scholarly and compelling book by the illustrious writer Gurucharan Das, called The Dif culty of Being Good: On the subtle art of dharma.

Our community would do well to take these things with a sense of humour, as intended by those who created the MLA advertisement, and take such stunts in our stride with a broader perspective, informed by higher order thoughts about the meaning of Hindu Gods and our philosophy.

Voice raised to draw attention to the recent misinterpretation of the Indian national boundary is a serious and important one. In future, we would make more impacts and gain respect, if we learn to target our concerns and protests more selectively and judiciously, and on matters that really count for India, Indian secular diaspora and Australia. If we fail to uphold Indian issues in judicious ways, we might descend to be seen as petty and immature.

PAWAN LUTHRA was a judge for the Blacktown City Council’s Light Up Your Homes for Diwali competition organised in conjunction with Indian Link Arun Sharma wrote: Although it is lovely Diwali lighting and the winner must be congratulated, this is not the rst instance in Australia as claimed. The organisation Celebrate India in Melbourne has held the Home and Of ce illumination competition from 2007 to 2012. That was the rst ever!

CONFLUENCE, A TRICKLE?

With its limited reach and menu, the Festival of India in Australia runs the risk of not engaging with mainstream Australians, wrote PAWAN LUTHRA

Preeti Thadani wrote: Parenting my son who is born and raised in Oz, I was delighted when he and some of his Aussie friends got exposure to Indian culture and performing arts outside of Bollywood, at last year’s Con uence Festival. This year, fellow school parents and I were eagerly waiting to feast on a smorgasbord of performances with our children. Sadly, Sydney got only one classical music performance and one Bollywood dance workshop (a formula, we all agree, done to death). Con uence 2.0 seems more about grant gatherings, political agendas and appeasing sponsors than about PM Modi’s vision, which he shared with Sydney audiences in 2014 about wanting to showcase Indian arts to mainstream Australians. Con uence 2017 has farcically disconnected the audiences.

AT LAST, FEMINISTS OF COLOUR: MELB WRITERS FEST

APARNA ANANTHUNI reported from the Melbourne Writers Festival about feminists of colour talking about taking control of their own narratives.

Ruby Hamad tweeted: A concise but incisive roundup of the Decolonising Feminism session at MWF 17...

Aneeta Menon tweeted: Absolutely amazing women and awesome coverage from @indian_link #RepresentationMatters #ifshecanseeit

Designer tram

BY PREETI JABBAL

t’s kitschy, it’s cool and it’s definitely colourful.

For commuters on the streets of Melbourne, it is hard to miss the bright vinyl wrapped tram that currently plies on route No 11 West Preston and No 86 Bundoora tramlines.

Tramjatra is first of the eight trams designed to bring colour and creativity to Melbourne’s daily commute and is eliciting mixed response for its visual imagery.

Using elements of popular Indian streets and tribal art, Lucknow-born IndianAustralian artist Bushra Hasan has designed Tramjatra to honour the 21-year-old tramways relationship between Kolkata and Melbourne.

Esoteric is the word that springs to mind as one absorbs the art that has been made inherently accessible and public, courtesy the Melbourne Art Trams project.

A Victorian Government initiative, the project is a collaboration between Creative Victoria, Public Transport Victoria and Melbourne Festival with Yarra Trams.

The annual Melbourne Art Trams project, now in its 5th year, invites Victorian artists and community groups to submit designs that transform trams into mobile artworks.

Apart from Bushra, this year the designs are by artists Robert Owen, Matthew Clarke, Emma Anna, Oliver Hutchison, Justine McAllister, Josh Muir and St Albans Heights Primary School’s Community Hub.

Speaking animatedly, Bushra shared the story of how her art made it to the largest ever canvas she has worked with.

“My art exists beyond the gallery, it is in everyday objects from a simple spoon to a storage can, buckets, tins and now to a tram,” said Bushra, who is also the cofounder of Indybindi designs.

Bushra created Indybindi, along with her two sisters Maryam and Zoya, to give visual expression to ordinary items and transform them into masterpieces.

Their promising business venture also supports Ashiana, an NGO for underprivileged women and children in Uttar Pradesh. Rural women are encouraged to learn to paint items, generate an income and be self-reliant.

A graphic designer by profession, Bushra has worked in India with fashion and lifestyle magazine Marie Claire as a senior designer and Harper’s Bazaar as an Assistant Art director.

She migrated to Australia in 2013 and after brief stints in Sydney and Launceston, settled for the world’s most liveable city.

During a visit to meet her sister, who was studying at RMIT, Bushra visited Melbourne and the city worked its charm on her. “The artist in me wanted to live in this beautiful city and I moved here with my husband in 2014,” she said, sharing her migrant journey.

She worked for St Kilda News as a graphic designer and is currently working on freelance projects with Multicultural Arts Victoria (MAV). She was also responsible for designing the two lifelike moving elephants at the Moomba Parade in 2015.

Tramjatra was initiated in partnership with Melbourne trammie Roberto D’Andrea. A friendship society was started in 1996 between Melbourne and Kolkata as the two cities outside of Europe that have used trams since 19th century. This year, they celebrated their 21st anniversary.

“I must admit that initially when Roberto explained the concept to me, I was unsure how to incorporate all the past Tramjatra characters and over 20 years of history in my design. It was such a good story with so much to say but I did not want the tram to look cluttered so I decided to use truck art,” said Bushra.

“Truck art is funky, kitschy and I can juxtapose it with artworks from different regions of India that are reflective of its diversity,” said the talented artist.

According to Bushra, she added her own

touches like the eyes of Goddess Durga that ward off all evil and are symbolic of the complexities of India’s contemporary society, particularly notions of gender.

She tried to reflect the warm Indian welcome and hospitality on the doors with images of flowers being showered on the passengers and the Indian Namaste.

Characters like Bondhu, Calbourne, Sundari, Cricket, Baccha, Shared-Lung, Paribeshbandhu and Gitanjali were incorporated in the design. Orange-bellied Parrots next to Great Indian Hornbills were also included.

All of this was designed on computer and then reproduced on vinyl. It took her a month to create the design and then put it

on sticker art. It took nearly two days and specialised workers to wrap the vinyl in perfect alignment around the tram.

“I want everyone who looks at the tram to smile. I want to communicate the vibrancy, colour and diversity of India whilst retaining the rich Tramjatra history,” said Bushra. “I also want the colours to cut into the grey tone of Melbourne,” she continued with a smile.

The other seven trams, with their own unique design concepts, will also be hitting Melbourne’s streets soon. All the trams will stay on tracks till April 2018.

Throughout the lively conversation on topics ranging from challenges faced by her to her grasp of traditional art and technology, her politically inclined family and her rebellious siblings, Bushra was delightfully candid.

She also shared with characteristic enthusiasm the ‘overall positive’ feedback she has received for her design so far.

With art being subjective and open to multiple interpretations, people have made several comments on Bushra’s artwork ranging from incredible to hideous. Whether you love it or hate it, you simply cannot ignore it.

I want everyone who looks at the tram to smile. I want to communicate the vibrancy, colour and diversity of India

‘‘

Indian-Australian artist turns Melb tram into a colourful canvas with a Kolkata connect

#LookAtMeSail

An all-girl Indian crew on a daring mission to circumnavigate the world stops by at Fremantle. SAI NARAYAN and RAJNI ANAND LUTHRA report

FFor a young woman who grew up in the mountains, Vartika Joshi has done pretty well as a sailor.

The spunky Garhwal girl is leading a team of six Indian women who are circumnavigating the globe on a sailing vessel. Her boat, INSV Tarini of the Indian Navy, docked at Fremantle WA on 23 October, in its first stop on a 7-month voyage. They sailed onward to Lyttleton (New Zealand) on 5 November.

As Vartika guided her crew in to Fremantle, the 56-foot Tarini had been at sea for 44 days and had sailed 4800 nautical miles.

A welcoming committee awaited, made up of the local Indian community, the Indian High Commissioner Ajay Gondane, Consul General of India (Perth) Amit Kumar Mishra and others of the diplomatic corps, and the media.

“It is wonderful to see this welcome,” skipper Lt. Commander Vartika Joshi said upon coming ashore. “Having been tossed about on the seas, and having been away from home for so long, it’s the warmth of this welcome from the people here that we will take with us when we go back to sea.”

The all-girl crew of the INSV Tarini, under the program Navika Sagar Parikrama, was flagged off from their base in Goa by another woman, India’s Defence Minister Nirmala Seetharaman, on 10 September. Their project, christened ‘Navika Sagar Parikrama’, is the first attempt by Indian women to circumnavigate the world.

Lt. Cdr Joshi’s Team Tarini consists of Lt. Cdr Pratibha Jamwal (Hull Officer), Lt.

Cdr Patarapalli Swathi (Navigating Officer), Lt. Aishwarya Boddapati (Electrical Officer), Lt. Vijaya Devi (Seamanship Officer), and Lt. Payal Gupta (Logistics Officer). The average age on the boat? 26 years.

“Our aim is to promote the idea of sailing, even amongst men,” Vartika told Indian Link, in her trademark calm and collected demeanour. “Sailing as a sport is not exactly popular in India! We are also aiming to encourage more women to take up adventure sports.”

After a fortnight-long halt at Fremantle, the girls proceeded to Lyttleton (New Zealand). From there, there next stop will be Port Stanley (Falklands) and Cape Town (South Africa), before returning to home base on 18 April 2018.

To be technical, circumnavigation requires the vessel to be in open waters at all times and not in canals or straits. The Equator must be crossed at least once, and the total distance covered must be more than the circumference of earth, i.e., 21,600 nautical miles.

Life on the high seas

What’s the journey been like thus far?

“We’ve had a mix of calm weather and rough seas in our journey so far,” Vartika recounted. “When we set sail, there were no head winds. This reduced our speed - it was frustrating. But that has been our only low point thus far.”

The highpoints have been many, the girls chipped in.

“Dolphins - we saw plenty of dolphins,” offered Swati. “I was on watch on one occasion when some dolphins came around. The sailboat doesn’t make much noise, and these dolphins just roamed around us casually. What we saw first was a streak like a white doodle, or a big white snake. I froze for 5 or 6 seconds, then I calmed down and realised what it was. It was a sight to see, as they came at us like a torpedo!”

Killer whales were sighted too, she revealed. “We saw some baskets floating around, with some fish underneath them. It was like ‘man overboard’. We thought we’d do a drill, pretend the fish is a man. We tried recovering the whole thing for over an hour, tempted by the fish which was very colourful and attractive, but gave up ultimately.”

Another highlight was Diwali at sea, and a call by the Prime Minister himself. Vartika recalled, “We were an hour and a half ahead of India, expecting PM Modi’s call at 1600 IST. We set about making our flour diyas and drying them in the sun. A call came through and we thought it was be a trial call, but it was the PM… he had called early! We were like, oh no, we’re not ready!!” Of course, the call was shared nationally.

There has been plenty of work was well. The ladies have been collating and updating meteorological, ocean and wave data on a regular basis for accurate weather forecasts by the India Meteorological Department (IMD). The Indian Ocean has seen some horrific natural disasters in recent times

and many resources are being invested to gain a better understanding of weather conditions.

They’ve also been also monitoring marine pollution, and have recorded lower levels south of the equator.

Food and watch duties were shared on a roster.

“We keep fresh food to last us for about 10-15 days,” Vartika described. “Then we switch to dry rations which we reconstitute with hot water.”

There was however, a particularly rough patch with the weather.

“We were expecting to hit a cold front in the southern hemisphere and had been preparing for it even five days in advance,” Vartika revealed. “We had no idea though of what the intensity would be. When the storm came it was high in intensity - with winds of 35 knots that picked up much more. We hadn’t ever experienced winds like that before, so it was a little bit scary but we came through it well.”

How it all began

The Sagar Parikrama (literally, circumnavigation) program began in 2009 when Cdr Dilip Donde set off on the first-ever solo expedition. Following him, Cdr Abhilash Tomy bettered the record by accomplishing this feat nonstop and unassisted. Both sailed on the INSV Mhadei, the navy’s first sail boat that Donde helped build.

In an attempt to keep up this newly established tradition, the Indian Navy struck upon the idea of having an all-girl

The Tarini team with Consul General of India (Perth) Amit Kumar Mishra, and WA Parliamentarians Paul Andrews, Yaz Mubarakai and Simone McGurk

crew take up the challenge.

“The call for volunteers went out in 2014,” Vartika said. “Three women sailors including me were picked for a mixed crew, on an experimental basis. Although the Navy had female officers by then, they were not serving in the field. There was no history of women on ocean-going platforms. But we coped well in our little experiment, and it was agreed we could take it up further.”

Volunteers were sought then for INSV Tarini. “Twenty applications came in; six were picked. We belong to different cadrestwo of us are naval architects, two are from training, and two from air traffic control. The Navy gave us the option of pulling out whenever we wanted.”

Vartika loved the experience, having sailed since 2010. But one of the younger girls revealed she found it much harder. “My first few days of sailing were very tough and I thought I would never come back to it. But soon, I was hooked!” The girls mentored by Cdr Dilip Donde, came together as a team in 2015. They clocked up nearly 25,000 nautical miles onboard INSV Mhadei and Tarini as part of training, including an expedition from Goa to Vizag for the International Fleet Review 2016, two expeditions to Mauritius (in 2016 and 2017), and a voyage from Goa to Cape Town. They also participated in the sailing race Cape to Rio earlier this year.

Fremantle

In its fortnight-long break at Fremantle, INSV Tarini underwent regular maintenance checks and replenishment of supplies for her onward journey.

“There is much to prepare for the next leg of our travels,” Vartika noted. “Southern Ocean conditions are known to be even rougher so we are preparing the

boat as well as ourselves.”

The young crew were also out and about, meeting and talking to people. They were welcomed warmly at schools and universities, at media interactions and within the local Indian community, the curiosity always high about a group of young Indian girls on a daring sail across the world. Particularly interesting for the girls themselves were their meetings with women in high profile positions, such as WA Governor Kerry Sanderson, the Deputy Mayor of Fremantle Cr Ingrid Waltham, President of the WA Legislative Council Kate Doust, and Deputy Lord Mayor of Perth Cr Jemma Green.

One of the stated aims of the program has been to showcase Nari Shakti, or women’s empowerment. “This would also help to discard the societal attitudes and mindset towards women in India by raising visibility of participation by women in challenging environments,” a government communique had declared.

Pratibha is particularly keen on this showand-tell feature. “We want to meet people and tell them that Indian women are doing this, on a boat that’s made in India.”

In recent years, India has been taking a renewed look at its naval program. Programs to modernise - and indigeniseits platforms have been announced in the backdrop of increased naval activities in the Indian Ocean Region, and also as concerns grow for it as a trade route and as a region vulnerable to natural disasters.

In light of this, its attempts to find larger roles for its women officers is a welcome initiative.

No doubt the next level up in the Sagar Parikrama program will be a solo circumnavigation - unassisted and non-stop of course - by an Indian woman. We keenly await this announcement.

INSV TARINI

> INSV Tarini, the Indian Navy’s second ocean-going sailboat, was inducted in February this year.

> Designed in the Netherlands, she is a sloop built by Aquarius Shipyard Pvt Ltd at Divar, Goa.The hull is made of a wooden core berglass sandwich that performs better than aluminum and steel.

> NSV Tarini carries a suite of six sails including a main sail, head sails, downwind sails and a storm sail. It is made out of wood covered in ber glass.

> The mast is 25 meters tall and has been custom-built by Southern Spars, Cape Town, for sailing in extreme conditions.

> It also boasts of a Raymarine navigation suite and an array of latest satellite communication systems through which she can be contacted anywhere in the world.

> INSV Tarini is almost identical to its predecessor, INSV Mhadei, which has sailed over 115,000 nautical miles in the past eight years.

> This includes path breaking voyages like the rst Indian solo circumnavigation undertaken by Captain Dilip Donde (retd) in 2009 and rst solo, non-stop and unassisted circumnavigation by Commander Abhilash Tomy in 2013.

> The successful construction of both the Mhadei and Tarini in Goa are a tribute to the Government’s Make in India policy.

> The Indian Navy is currently operating two other sailing vessels also built in shipyards at Goa - Tarangini and Sudarshini - capable of open ocean deployments. The Navy is attempting to revitalise open ocean sailing and will shortly be inducting four 40-feet, state-of-the-art open ocean racing sail boats.

> INSV Tarini draws her origin from the famous Tara-Tarini temple of Orissa’s Ganjam district. The word Tarini means boat and is also a Sanskrit word for saviour.

> Tara-Tarini is the patron deity for sailors and merchants and is worshipped for safety and success at sea.

> Tara-Tarini of Orissa is known to have historical linkages with the river Goddess Mhadei -- the exclusive boat deity of Goa’s Mhadei river. Both deities have sculptural similarities.

Photos: Ravinder Singh

Virk and Indian Navy website

Closing multinational tax loopholes is helping return more money to Australia

By closing international loopholes, and actions by the ATO, more money is being collected from large multinational corporations. As a result, more money is being invested here, benefiting Australian communities and the economy.

Since July 2016, ATO action has collected over $1.5 billion from large multinational corporations.

Find out more at fairtax.gov.au

From 1 July 2017, large multinational corporations that move undeclared profits overseas can be penalised with a tax of 40%.

Tax Avoidance Taskforce

The new Taskforce continues to investigate multinational corporations and enforce Australia’s tax laws.

Diwali by the river

Swan Festival of Lights makes it a celebration of multiculturalism

The Swan Festival of Lights (SFOL) is celebrated around Diwali, but Arun Krishnan insists that the festival is not restricted to India. No wonder then, that this year, the 10th edition of the festival had performers from as far and wide as Ukraine, Indonesia, Japan and even Pakistan! But more on that later.

Krishnan, a volunteer dealing with media and community engagement of SFOL, said the festival symbolises multiculturalism and involves all cultures that celebrate light and sound.

There was plenty of both these elements at this year’s festival that took place from 13 to 15 October. This free entry event, a smoke and alcohol free family affair, was held at Supreme Court Gardens, Perth.

SFOL is hosted by Saraswati Mahavidhyalaya (SMV) and Annalakshmi Cultural Centre of WA, both non-profit institutions staffed entirely by volunteers and guided by the principles of ‘Give, Love and Serve’ and ‘Art for Art’s sake.’

Continuing its tradition of showcasing one Indian state each year, this year SFOL celebrated the northern state of Punjab in all its glory.

The entire ‘Punjab experience’, including a Punjab village scene, was recreated in collaboration with close to 150 local members of Perth’s Punjabi community. So, colourful turbans, delicious vegetarian Punjabi snacks and meals and, of course, bhangra were the order of the day. There was also a marquee, with photos from Punjab, along with information about the contribution of Sikhs to society.

In fact, as a special treat, on 14 October after the evening fireworks, close to 2,000 festival-goers danced into the night as the DJ spun Punjabi numbers as part of the mass ‘Bhangra Under the Stars.’

What gave a soulful touch to the celebrations were Qawwali performances by Fareed Ayaz, Abu Muhammad and their troupe from Pakistan. “Almost two-thirds

of Punjab is in Pakistan, so we thought it would be fitting to forget our political differences and celebrate Punjab as one. With less than 10 days to go for the festival, we organised the Pakistani performers to be with us. The visas and other formalities also fell in place rather quickly. It was meant to be,” Krishnan shared, adding that while listening to the qawwalis, there was many moist eyes in the audience, “not only because of the music, but the memories associated with it.”

Turban tying has been an ingenious way of introducing non-Sikhs to the faith, and at SFOL, it was a passionate youngster, Harjit Singh, who carried out this initiative with aplomb. “He even tied a turban around the head of WA Premier Mark McGowan and Consul General of India in Perth Amit Mishra.”

Other performers included many talented groups from Perth, such as Indonesian Jatayu Productions, Chung Wah Dance (Chinese dance), Casa Del Compas (Spanish dance), Roztiazhka Ukrainian (Cossack dancers) and Taiko On (Japanese drummers).

For the first time this year, the Consulate General of India in Perth partnered with the event. “They had their own stall that showcased the initiative of Make In India. India Tourism Sydney also put up a stall. Not only that, even the WA government supported us and the Premier Mark McGowan made sure to visit the festival,” Krishnan said. Indian Link was also a partner of SFOL.

It was also supported by the Government of Western Australia Office of Multicultural Interests, Healthway promoting the LiveLighter message, Lotterywest, City of Perth and the Government of India.

“We started the festival with 1,000 people 10 years ago. This year, we had 40,000,” said Krishnan. “It’s great to see the event becoming mainstream and bringing communities together.”

ISWA Diwali

This year, the Indian Society of Western Australia (ISWA) organised its annual Diwali event at Claremont Showground as a two-day extravaganza. It was a move back to a more central venue as Claremont had been used previously by ISWA a few years ago. The Saturday afternoon was blessed with a few drops of rain and a dramatic rainbow. The weather wasn’t intolerable though, and the crowds sure packed in. Sunday was perfect weather so anyone who was over-cautious on Saturday and missed out, was able to attend. Each night the audience built as the night progressed to the fireworks.

During the day kids were entertained with carnival rides, go karting, bubble balls and bouncy castles and everyone enjoyed the

numerous food, business, clothing, spiritual and information stalls, Indian Link included.

The stage was an ongoing gala of amateur entertainment featuring dance troupes, rappers, drummers and marching bands.

ISWA was incorporated in 1972 to foster the participation of Indian ethnic communities in the development of a cohesive community. It aims to assist, encourage, participate and initiate activities which promote the welfare, social, cultural and educational aspects of Australian Indians. Diwali is their biggest event and ISWA takes months to organise it. The hours of effort that go into organising and funding such a large event is massive. Next year will be bigger and better than ever.

Grahak Cunningham

How spring opens the mind

So Change Inc’s Basant (Spring) Festival is fast becoming a calendar event in the Indian community

As the cold harsh winters recede in the north of India early in the calendar year and spring begins to bloom, the agrarian communities gather to celebrate. The opening up of the seasons is marked as Basant (spring) festival.

In Australia of course, the season comes round much later in the year, but that hasn’t stopped the migrant Indian community from celebrating it in exactly the same way. And why not – spring affects the mood in positive ways, whichever country you live in, right?! It is a simple celebration of being in the outdoors and enjoying the longer days, and

of course the Indian elements of song and dance and food.

All of these elements came together in the recent Livelighter Perth Basant Festival on Curtin University grounds, brought to us by the Salman Foundation and So Change Inc.

Plenty of colour yes, thanks to the colorful kurtis, dashing pathani suits, Patiala shahi paggs, muktsari juttis, bindis and bangles. The bright blue skies were also dotted with the colour of kites, a great spring tradition inIndia.

Plenty of food too, as everyone marked their ‘cheat’ day: steaming bhaturas and

mouth-watering gulab jamuns, hey, you don’t do it every day!

The carefully planned entertainment was ‘beyond India’: Polish dance from Kurpi region, Sri Lankan combination dance of Uda Rata and Pahatha Rata, Bharathnatyam, Brazillian Semba dance, Amoura belly dancers, Malwai gidha, Vietnamese hip hop. Giddha, peacock dance were darling performances.

The fun and frolic aside, Muhammad Salman of Salman Foundation encouraged all to think a little about the less fortunate. A raffle event raised funds for his very

worthy Feeding Australia initiative. In this project, a food truck helps feed the homeless in Northbridge on a weekly basis. Some $10,000 worth of prizes were donated towards raffle tickets for this cause. Footfall was around the 27,000 mark, festival organisers reported later. The Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Premier Mark McGowan both sent their good wishes for the festival and MLA Tony Krsticevic made a mention of it in Parliament, acknowledging So Change Inc’s cultural and social justice initiatives.

Puneet Anand

Photos: Ravinder Singh Virk

An Indian link at Community Safety Day

City of Armadale involves local Indian community in annual event

BY NISHA JOSEPH

The City of Armadale’s annual Community Safety Day had a wonderful Indian link this year. It partnered with the Piara Waters Punjabi Club to successfully launch ‘Piara Masala’, a fun-filled community safety awareness day last month.

True to its name, the event witnessed a celebration of Indian culture including a fusion of Bollywood beats, Indian cuisines, kids’ performances, entertainment, giveaways and games. This was an opportunity for locals to meet their local Canning Vale police, Kidsafe, fire rangers, enjoy the puppet show organised by Constable Care and learn about the various services available in the community.

On the whole, it was a day of great family entertainment on the lawns of the Piara Waters Pavillion.

Launched for the first time, this free event turned out to be great way for the Indian community to interact with the wider mainstream. Talking to Indian Link, Raj Rajpaul Sandhu, President and Co-ordinator of Piara Masala remarked, “Most often, community events are exclusively conducted for only their respective members. That way, they look isolated from the wider community. But Piara Masala is our way of showing our integration into this beautiful Australian community by involving the emergency service representatives and local Aboriginal groups.”

The event kickstarted with the Mungart Yonga dance group to the rhythmic tunes of the Didgeridoo. Paul observed that this is our way of honouring the native Indigenous people of this land.

Hundreds of local residents flocked in to witness an array of creative fun events to keep their kids entertained. With face painting, a garden space ship ride, bubble blowing and garden games, there were lots of activities to keep the little ones busy.

Naresh Shah, an active organiser of the show, added that this this event truly offered a holistic approach to community building by including a display of talents in Punjabi music, dances and promoting concepts of healthy lifestyle. “We are big believers in giving back to the community,” he said.

This was an opportunity also for many non-profit and small and medium business organisations to promote their work.

The local community was able to experience some popular Indian entertainment live with musical groups and artists performing on stage. “People love the distinctive Indian music with its heavy beats and foot tapping numbers,” added Sharon Bal, another key organiser.

The main highlight of the day was its focus on community safety. For that, ambulance tours, health assessments, CPR demonstrations, home safety advice and car restraint fitting sessions were held free of cost. MLA Jandakot Yaz Mubarakai presented awards and goodies to the winners in various categories.

For those looking to buy homes, young parents enquiring about upcoming day care options in the area or parents of adolescents trying to get their kids to be physically active through sports, there were various stalls with successful, qualified people from the respected industries waiting to interact with customers and offer solutions. This definitely looked like one promising event offering a variety of services.

With their debut launch receiving a big bang round of applause, Piara Masala has indeed stolen everyone’s hearts and is sure to emerge bigger next year. Kudos to the team for pro-actively placing community interests above their own.

Tribute to mum

Perth-based actor puts aside early trauma to nd himself in art

BY ROMEA PROMODH

Every work of art requires passion and hard work, but when the story is close to the artist’s heart, it reflects in his work and one can tell it apart. Every second of Maa, a full-length dance-theatre piece performed by Jay Emmanuel, was a captivating and heart-wrenching theatrical work recited by him through creative elements.

In the production, Jay made wonderful use of dance, music, a few props, a simple black board and paint, to tell his story and keep the audience glued to their seats for 60-odd minutes. A gripping and affecting tale of childhood brutality, it is redemptive at the end - and a testimony of how liberating can art be.

For this production, Jay teamed up with award-winning director Phil Thomson from

Company Dramaturg, Ochre Contemporary Dance Company, and internationally acclaimed composer Tao Issaro, well known composer/performer, Daksha Seth Dance Company.

Narrating the incidents which inspired him to create Maa, Jay recollects his childhood as he spoke with Indian Link “At four, my father passed away, and during those days in India, it was considered inauspicious when the male died; the woman was blamed as if she had brought bad luck to the family… so we were thrown out by our family and were on the streets.

I thought I was lucky then to find an older woman who agreed to take care of us. In exchange for this favour of shelter and food my mother had to be her slave. I realised that wasn’t luck but the beginning of a chapter where only my resilience could help me. When my mum left us to qualify herself so she could feed me and my younger brother, I had to take on the role of carer for this woman and the nightmare began.”

Maa is a poetry which recites the story of those two years when Jay’s mother was away. “It was a very difficult decision for

her to leave us, but it was important because if she hadn’t gone and done what she did, we would still be in that place.”

Only sheer brilliance can make a solo performance so effective. “The energy came from somewhere else, may be deep within as it was a personal story,” Jay revealed. “It was draining no doubt, but fulfilling. This was special as it encompassed many elements. The style was also influenced by the training that I had in Kathakali; from painting, which I was always interested in, and of course the

narrative itself.”

It is clear that art has been therapeutic in the life of this young actor. Today Jay Emmanuel is the Artistic Director for the Cathedral’s new St George’s Dance and Theatre programme. Born in India and raised in Australia, Jay is a graduate of the prestigious Jacques Lecoq School in Paris, whose alumni include industry greats Geoffrey Rush, Simon McBurney and Ariane Mnouchkine. After graduation, he beat over a thousand dancers to participate in Radhouane El-Meddeb’s Heroes Prelude, the first dance work ever at France’s Pantheon. After two years with ElMeddeb he returned to India for a period of artistic research, and worked with the legendary Ariane Mnouchkine/Theatre du Soleil. Last year he presented at the Delhi International Arts Festival. In 2017, he directed Biryani in collaboration with Palme D’or winning actor Kali Srinivasan and Tao Issarro.

Maa has been Jay’s most personal work ever and solo debut in Australia. It is a traumatic story of separation and grit, which ends on a positive note.

Photos: Mustafa Al Mahdi

The energy came from somewhere else, may be deep within as it was a personal story

Jay Emmanuel

‘‘ ‘‘

When the music takes you back music

It was a con uence of times as two greats of contemporary Indian music performed in Perth. UMA NAIR reports

Last month, I had the pleasure of watching renowned violinist Dr. L. Subramaniam and his wife and playback singer Kavitha Krishnamurthy Subramaniam perform live in Perth as part of the Confluence 2017, Festival of India in Australia.

This is the second year of the Confluence, a 5-week nationwide festival organised as a partnership between the Australian and Indian governments with the aim of fostering bilateral ties through collaborations and performances by Indian and Australian artists.

After a busy week following Confluence performances in Sydney and Melbourne, Dr. L Subramaniam, Kavitha Krishnamurthy and accompanying artists performed their final show of the 2017 Australia tour in Perth.

Held at the aesthetic Perth Concert Hall, the stage was set for an incredible evening

of music as rasikas and distinguished guests, including MLA Yaz Mubarakai, began filling the auditorium seats.

Kavitha Krishnamurthy Subramaniam commenced the show with a traditional Sant Tulsidas Sanskrit invocation. Despite being down with a cold and being on stage with tissues in hand, the moment she begun to sing, her high-pitched and powerful voice wholly engulfed the hall, with a certain indescribable magic that every member of the audience could feel down to their fingertips.

Following this piece, a solo introduction portion by keyboardist Athul Raninga (who played on the background score of film 3 Idiots) led into an intense and heartwrenchingly melancholic rendition of Tadap Tadap Te from the 1999 film Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. Upon a request by a Perth musician in the audience, Krishnamurthy next performed Om Namashivaya where she

put her Hindustani background on display by effortlessly weaving through the S R G P D S of Mohanam/Bhopali Raaga. She concluded her segment of the show with the Meera Bhajan Jo Tum Todo Piya and Tu Hi Re from the 1995 film Bombay, leaving the audience not only with goosebumps, but also immensely overwhelming feelings of nostalgia.

The second half of the show featured Dr. L. Subramaniam performing Hamsadhwani Raaga. He begun with a brief description of the format of a Varnam, the several speeds used, as well as a short explanation of words such as vadi/samvadi swaras and gamakas which would have proved to be very valuable for those in the audience not from a Carnatic background. For those of us who are trained in Carnatic music, or are committed rasikas, it seemed to be an interesting piece to choose to perform. The beginning phrase g r S n s r g r r s n brings back fond memories of my vocal lessons from ten years ago, sitting in a group music class on a terrace in Chennai, competing against the cawing of the crows. For context, this piece he chose to perform, Hamsadhwani Varnam is like the Jingle Bells of Carnatic music - everyone involved in Carnatic music has learnt it at some point in time.

Soon enough it did become evident as to why he went with such a simple and wellknown piece. Just like many aspects of his music, it was all about executing the familiar with a fresh perspective. Subramaniam has been a part of numerous international collaborations, intertwining Indian classical music with musical forms from all over the world. Perhaps it was simply practice picked up along the way, but it was fascinating to see all the different techniques he employed,

particularly in regards to bowing techniques such as tremolos, as well as ornamentation such as trills and the occasional little-finger pizzicato at the end of a phrase - all of which are not commonly seen amongst orthodox Carnatic violinists. His musical prowess was unquestionable - with fluid movements and an impeccable ability to jump octaves/ harmonics as well as having perfect control over every inch of the fingerboard and section of the bow.

Dr. L Subramaniam is a qualified GP and also holds many additional honorary doctorates. He has received a Padma Bhushan award (third highest ranking national Indian civilian award) from the Government of India for his contributions to the arts and culture, as well as countless other awards and recognitions. Despite all this, he was humble enough to repeatedly remind the audience to applaud for his accompanying artists - as though he meant to say that he was not the only star of the show - earning him the utmost respect from every audience member.

The on-stage dynamic between tablist Tanmay Bose, mridangist Vidwan DSR Murthy and morsing artist Vidwan Ghantasala Satyasai and Dr. L. Subramaniam was exciting to say the least, and augmented the improvisational ragam-tanam-pallavi portion of the performance he concluded with, to new heights - making it an incomparable musical experience.

It was an honour to have been able to attend a concert of some of the greatest Indian classical artists of our time, and I hope to see more events such as Confluence in the future, that will bring more virtuosos to Australia and keep us connected with our traditions and culture.

Labour pains of adoption

Liz and Adam Brook’s story shows how a freeze on adoption from India has kept Australian childless couples in limbo

BY RITAM MITRA

By some estimates, India is home to between 20 and 30 million orphaned children, the overwhelming majority of whom are orphaned by abandonment, rather than because of the death of their parents.

Lost in a sea of some 400 million children - the largest child population in the world - the outlook is bleak for those left behind. Crippling poverty and poor literacy rates form an unforgiving couple, leading to a vicious circle of child labour, child trafficking and systemic abuse.

Yet, even as India’s population continues to skyrocket, and adoption becomes more accepted within its borders, adoption rates in India have plummeted over the last 7 years.

Over the same period, almost under the radar, the Australian government has upheld a ban on the adoption of children from India, amid a cloud of bureaucratic smoke and mirrors that continues to frustrate prospective adoptive parents and denies some of the world’s most desperate children the chance of a new beginning.

It’s now been seven years since Australia suspended its adoption program with India, when the then Attorney-General placed a hold on applications to India, purportedly in response to ongoing investigations into illegal adoptions and child trafficking.

Although the Indian adoption environment has been overhauled since the hold was first announced, the Australian government’s position remains inexplicably unchanged. It’s been a period largely characterised by misinformation, a dearth of transparency and, most dishearteningly for Australian couple Liz and Adam Brook, relentless uncertainty.

It’s quite a contrast to the spirit of National Adoption Awareness Week that is marked from 8 to 14 November. The Week aims to increase awareness about adoption and remove the stigma around it. Actress and adoption advocate Deborralee Furness and her husband, actor Hugh Jackman, recently launched a hashtag on social media called #ahomeforeverychild, to encourage Australians to think about adoption reform. News presenters Louise Ransome and Angela Bishop and journalist Sandra Sully are just some public figures who have supported the Adopt Change campaign.

Just as importantly, it is also worth noting that former Australian women’s cricket

captain Lisa Sthalekar, who has Indian biological parents, was adopted as an infant from Pune.

A subcontinental romance

Liz and Adam form part of a crushing but unavoidable statistic: they’re one in six Australian couples who experience infertility. Even at an early stage of their relationship, the couple discussed openly the avenue of adoption with each other.

Liz had been diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome as a teenager. It was around this time that Liz also fell in love with the subcontinent.

“I have been fascinated by India since I was a child,” says Liz. “My parents made sure we were exposed to different cultures, races and religions. But it wasn’t until Boxing Day in 1998 or 1999, when I was about 13, that India became a larger part of our lives.”

That was when, as Liz recalls, multicultural broadcaster SBS aired the 1996 film Raja Hindustani. “I was hooked,” says Liz. “It took years and a lot of development until Google was good enough to find me that film again, but my sister and my mum contented ourselves with whatever we could find on eBay.”

By 2013, Liz and Adam owned dozens of Bollywood films, and were regulars at their local Indian restaurant. That year also marked Liz’s first visit to India; she would return again in 2015 with Adam to tour Rajasthan and its surrounds, Adam learning how to play several Bollywood tracks on the guitar along the way. With Adam having since taken Hindi classes, and the couple notching up another trip to India this year, it’s no surprise that now, as ever, Liz and Adam picture themselves with an Indian child.

“I remember early on in our relationship, going through a drive-through and the

server was a young girl of Indian descent, her name was Anjali - which of course got my attention, reminding us of Kajol!” laughs Liz. “From then on, we had this fantasy that our daughter would be Anjali, the first female Formula 1 champion.”

Hopes dashed

But the couple were dealt a harsh blow at the very beginning of their journey in 2017, learning that Australia’s adoption program with India was on hold. Having spent countless hours reading about the Australian and Indian adoption regimes, including trawling through outdated Australian government websites, navigating broken links and weeding out general misinformation, Liz emailed a number of government agencies and politicians –including Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull - seeking clarification. “I could have accepted it if the answer was no,” laments Liz, “but the limbo is killing me.”

On each occasion however, Liz was given the same, bitter pill to swallow: that the Australian government is “continuing to monitor” India’s adoption system.

India’s adoption regime

Australian governments have - rightly - consistently adopted a conservative and cautious approach to Australia’s intercountry adoption programs; and particularly so since 1998, when Australia ratified the 1993 Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption.

But the procedure and regulation of adoptions in India has changed significantly since applications were suspended in 2010.

In February 2011, a delegation comprising officials from the AttorneyGeneral’s Department and the Victorian Department of Human Services met with

the Indian Ministry of Women and Child Development and the Central Adoption Resource Agency (CARA), the statutory body for the adoption of children in India, and had meetings with the Australian High Commission in India as well.

During these meetings, delegates discussed the approval and implementation of the new Guidelines Governing the Adoption of Children, a key milestone in India’s quest to abolish illegal and mismanaged adoption practices. The guidelines, which were based partly on the Hague Adoption Convention (to which India is also a signatory), were implemented later that year.

More recently, in 2015, amendments to the Indian Juvenile Justice Act further revolutionised India’s adoption program, making adoptions faster and more transparent by moving the application process online, creating a centralised waiting list, and most importantly, requiring closer monitoring of the practices of adoption agencies.

And it’s not just pen on paper - CARA and the Ministry of Women and Child Development have already begun cracking down on illegal adoptions and adoptions facilitated by unauthorised agencies.

A culture of nger-pointing

Despite the significant steps taken between by Indian lawmakers and authorities over the best part of the last decade, the position of Australian authorities with respect to the India program remains overwhelmingly unclear, and authorities seem determined to avoid the issue at all costs.

An intercountry adoption kit issued by the Victorian Department of Human Services, for instance, cites that the decision to place the adoption program on “temporary hold” was actually in response to “current investigations being undertaken by the Indian Central Bureau of Investigation in relation to illegal adoptions,” while a Daily Telegraph article wrongly accuses India of suspending its adoption program with Australia.

Even in the wake of the most troubling child-trafficking allegations from India, which surfaced in late 2013, the then Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced the establishment of a taskforce to report back to the government on Australia’s intercountry adoption regime, citing the “millions of children in orphanages overseas who would love to have parents,” and that “tens of thousands of those could come to Australia.” Despite recommending that Australia “reinvigorate” its efforts to establish new country programs across the world, the ensuing report essentially ignored the plight of one of the largest, poorest populations of adoptable children the

world; instead, the report failed altogether to consider India’s renewed adoption regime, and merely noted the fact that the hold on the India program remained in place.

The relevant state and territory adoption bodies also appear to have been left in the dark, and the bureaucracy is deflating for prospective parents. Having requested only to attend an adoption information seminar facilitated by the NSW Department Family and Community Services - the only agency in NSW which can arrange intercountry adoption - Liz and Adam were turned away, with a FACS case worker notifying the couple that the “India program has been on hold for several years and we don’t know when the hold will be lifted,” and that there would be no room for “newcomers” to attend the seminar.

CARA CEO, Deepak Kumar, suggested to Liz that the ball was in the court of

Australian authorities. “We had a few sessions of interaction with the Australian central (adoption) authority and their embassy in India at CARA & through Skype,” said Kumar. “The Australian authorities were convinced but have been non-committal. In fact, every time (we speak to them), they say the Minister) for Social Services, the Hon Christian Porter MP) is yet to take a decision. We are committed to recommencement of the program but you must ask the Australian government to take the decision at the earliest.”

Yet Kumar’s comments, too, are to be taken with a pinch of salt. Campaigners in India are currently calling for an immediate end to intercountry adoptions, on the basis that they do not provide adequate protections for children. These calls have come following the death of a threeyear-old girl, ostensibly at the hands of

her adoptive father. The toddler, Sherin Mathews, was adopted from the Mother Teresa Orphanage and Children’s Home in Bihar, India, just over a year ago.

More recently, local media outlets reported that Assistant Social Services Minister, Zed Seselja has confirmed that discussions are in final stages to allow Australian parents to adopt children from India. Yet the irony is that no such confirmation has been provided to the couples most affected by that decision, or to the public more generally. Once again, no information appears on any relevant government website.

In fact, in response to a query by Indian Link, the department of social services said via a spokesperson that there has been no change to the status of the India-Australia intercountry adoption program. “Australia’s hold on sending new intercountry adoption applications to India remains in place.

Representatives of the Department of Social Services visited India earlier this year to see the changes in India first hand and understand the steps India has taken to improve adoption practices as well as how the current adoption process operates. While there is no specified timeframe for lifting the hold on the India-Australia program at present, the Australian Government continues to actively engage with India’s adoption program and Indian officials.”

It’s also unclear whether Indian authorities have been kept in the loop; as recently as last month, CARA noted that it was unable to shed any more light on the situation and was in continued discussions with Australian authorities.

An inconsistent approach

Aside from the prevalent culture of red tape and buck-passing, there’s a particularly cruel irony in the position taken by Australian authorities: although Australian state and territory adoption authorities will consider “ad-hoc adoption” applications for children

from countries with which Australia does not have an active intercountry adoption arrangement, ad-hoc adoption applications are not accepted for countries where an adoption program exists. In other words, if the adoption program with India had been cancelled altogether in response to child trafficking allegations - rather than put on hold - it would have been possible for prospective parents to submit to their respective state and territory central authorities ad-hoc applications to adopt Indian children.

It’s also curious that the Australian government - whose recent human rights track record, for the record, is unconvincing, at best - should cite its Hague Adoption Convention responsibilities in relation to its reluctance to reinstate the India program, despite other major signatories to the Hague Adoption Convention, such as the UK and the USA, continuing to allow their citizens to adopt children from India. The Australian government’s seven-year long vigil is, in essence, an indirect suggestion that other Hague Adoption Convention countries have violated their obligations under the Convention - of which there appears to be no evidence.

The harsh reality for couples like Liz and Adam is that managing intercountry adoption sits low on the priority list for elected officials in Australia, where successful intercountry adoptions are, by numbers, few and far between. It’s certainly a path that merits careful traversing; the risks of poor oversight and blasé due diligence can hardly be overstated. Yet, for those few dozen children in India each year who could quite literally be given a second chance at life in Australia - and equally, for the Australian couples desperate to give those children that chance - the very nature of the industry demands a more balanced, transparent and functional approach to policy and governance.

National Adoption Awareness

Week (8 to 14 November) aims to increase awareness about adoption and remove the stigma around it

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Liz and Adam Brook at Pushkar, India

Deborra-lee Furness and her husband, actor Hugh Jackman Photo: Twitter

Are you free to disagree?

The real test of freedom is dissent without fear, not silence

BY KRISHNA NEELAMRAJU

True freedom is best witnessed when the minorities in a society can raise their voices without repercussions from the establishment. The Indian community in Australia had a taste of such freedom recently. Hindus of Indian origin, despite being an ultra-minority in this country, turned up in healthy numbers to express their opposition to the Meat and Livestock lamb ad. The protests caught mainstream attention and politicians of all parties expressed support. Some of the protestors’ energies were spent in a futile attempt to get the ad banned, which is really a hangover of the ‘ban’ culture in another part of the world. Nevertheless, the best outcome of the episode was proof that minorities in Australia enjoy the unrestricted freedom to protest without a fear of violent backlash.

Granted, the lamb ad was a harmless distraction for the average Australian who did not care enough about the outcome. Another minority issue, a thoroughly mainstream one, of the British statue inscriptions raised by Stan Grant of ABC provoked rigorous debate and hot tempers. Even that was largely devoid of threats,

violence or economic blockade. Contrast this with the incidents such as the assassination of Gauri Lankesh in India just for being a contrarian or Donald Trump’s call to fire the kneeling NFL athletes in the US, and Australian freedoms shine in the brighter light. When the majority starts reacting viciously to those who dissent, the idea of freedom becomes an illusion. The implicit message is, you are free only until you agree.

Especially in the Indian context, it is essential to preserve the freedom to disagree, given the diversity of cultures, languages, and religions in the country. Disagreement is inherent to Indianness. It’s impossible to get the whole country to agree on any one thing and the argumentative Indian takes pride in being adversarial as a matter of principle. Disagreement was also one of the most active tools of India’s non-violent freedom struggle. The civil disobedience movement, for example, was built entirely on the idea of peacefully disagreeing with the law of the land.

A couple of months ago, a remarkable document from 1930s India surfaced from archives and was shared on Twitter, shining the spotlight on the disobedience movement. The document showed a list of freedom fighters sentenced to prison by the City Magistrate of Bombay for violating a government ordinance. The offences were flimsy, but the punishment was rigorous. The British colonialists were bent on crushing dissent and imposing order. The draconian laws had very little effect on

the freedom fighters who not only broke the law openly, but also did it in style, as the document shows. The names on the prison manifest are remarkable, to say the least. Not needing to prove their identity, prisoners renamed themselves ‘Son of India, God’, ‘George V Ram’ (King George V was the British regent in 1930), ‘Zindabad Mahatma Gandhi’, ‘Inkhilab Mahatma Gandhi’, ‘Bharat Shevak Mahatma Gandhi’ etc. for the court records. It is a fascinating window into the thinking of the foot soldiers of the Indian freedom movement. Freedom is a sanguine concept. It evokes powerful, positive imagery - people in pastel coloured clothes, glowing with laughter, running through lush green fields; soldiers saluting a fluttering flag; perhaps a famous singer blowing up her lungs singing an anthem. Freedom always looks good visually, particularly on TV. But, is that the freedom ‘Zindabad Mahatma Gandhi’ yearned for? In 1930, Indians weren’t actively seeking a full exit by the British. They were only aiming for better representation in lawmaking, to put it bluntly. No matter the lesser cause, the protesters were happily filling up the prisons by violating the civil law and in the process, experiencing a freedom they didn’t have - the freedom to disagree.

Seven decades after independence, some Indians are still fighting for that right. British-era laws such as sedition have seen a resurgence in recent times. Sedition is now unapologetically used against political protesters while the government runs

amnesty schemes for armed Naxalites accused of murder.

Rationalist voices are being silenced through terrorist tactics. More shockingly, these atrocities have widespread public support in the name of ‘order’. Decades of corruption, poverty and political inaction are making Indians forget the roots of their independence struggle. They seem to be ready to surrender their freedoms in favour of ‘order.’ The same old ‘order’ that the colonialists promised, peddling the same old arguments - ‘agree with us and enjoy peace, enjoy prosperity; disagree and face prison.’

Indian Australians can perhaps use their recent experiences to remind their friends and family in India that the real test of freedom is dissent, not silence. Minorities with limited political power need the freedom to express themselves without fear of repercussions or their freedom lacks meaning. Protest against your government, criticise an ideology, ridicule politicians and if you are not forced to go into hiding for the fear of personal safety or incarceration, you can be sure you are free.

The best outcome of (the lamb ad protests) was proof that minorities in Australia enjoy freedom to protest without a fear of violent backlash

Australia’s Hindu community felt free enough to protest MLA’s recent lamb ad. Photo: Facebook

Oz volunteers support Rally for Rivers

has brought together not only several state governments but has also received support from leading personalities across India and overseas.

Hundreds of thousands of people showed up on the rally route. It’s time now to raise awareness of this incredible national movement among Australian Indians.

The campaign in India is calling for missed calls to be sent to the number +91 80009 80009. It is hoped that 30 crore missed calls will be recorded by 31 Oct.

The Perth event was graced by the presence of the Consulate General of India, Amit Mishra, the president of ISWA, Ramkrishna Bansal and Rajyashree Malaviya from the Hindi Samaj. Mishra applauded this campaign and said “Please be a part of this campaign and give a missed call to 8000980009. Let us rejuvenate the rivers together!”

On Sunday 8 October, a group of volunteers from Isha Foundation gathered along the banks of the Swan river in Perth. They were there to commemorate and support

the campaign Rally for Rivers in India, and to acknowledge their foundation’s tireless efforts towards revitalising the rivers of India.

Indian rivers are depleting rapidly. A 650-page draft policy

WHAT’S ON

COMMUNITY

Phulwari

Sat 18 Nov (5.30pm-8.30pm)

Come and witness the yearly talent show of dance/song/drama, brought to you by Hindi Samaj of WA, at Kim Beazley Theatre, Murdoch University.

Details Rupesh Kulshrestha 0418 587 250 or Divya Palsodkar 0451 954 599.

INDIA DAY

Sat 4 Nov (10.00am-5.30pm)

South West Indian Group and Consulate General of India, Perth present INDIA DAY at South West Italian Club, 13 White Street, Bunbury WA. Join in for Indian food, themed stalls, saree wearings, yoga, meditation, henna, rangoli, warli art, bhangra and much more entertainment. Details: com.perth@ mea.gov.in/swigbunbury@gmail.com or 08 9325 7442/0469 882 635

2nd Punjabi Sports Event

Sun 12 Nov (9.00am -9.00pm)

Bertram Punjabi Club & Loan Market

Balpreet Singh present Punjabi sports and multicultural event at Calista Oval, 2 Walgreen Cres, Calista. Come and enjoy sports, kabaddi, volleyball, tug o’ war, seep, musical chair, free jumping castle, water and tea.

recommendation was presented by Sadhguru, Founder of the Isha Foundation, to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 3 Oct.

It suggests that one very simple yet effective means to replenish our rivers, is to create a kilometre-

wide tree cover on riversides (and half a kilometre for tributaries). Sadhguru made the presentation to the PM after personally driving over 9000 kms from Kanyakumari to New Delhi through 16 states.

This unprecedented campaign

Bansal was very happy to support this campaign and said “I appeal to everyone to give a missed call and help the cause.”

You too can show your support by calling +91 80009 80009 and giving a missed call. Every call counts!

Darshee Kanagalingam

Details Jagga Chauhan 0423 945 915 or Sandeep 0450 413 558

Mighty Khalsa Camp

Sat 25 Nov (9.00am-1.00pm)

SAWA and Sikh Youth Australia present Khalsa camp at Sikh Gurudwara Canning Vale. Register your kids for turban learning, saakhian, quiz, art and craft, sports and much more. Details Manmeen Kaur 0430 021 790

STAGE

Yugpurush

Tue 5 Dec (7.00pm onwards) Shrimad Rajchandra Misiion presents theatre production Yugpurush: Mahatma’s Mahatma. Prendiville Catholic College, 11 Prendiville Ave, Ocean Reef AW.

Deatls Manish Shah 0404 208 127

SEMINAR

ISWA Financial Seminar

Sun 12 Nov (2.00pm-4.30pm) Avoid nancial traps and potholes and don’t let it happen to you. Attend the talk by Jessica Anderson (Estate Planning Lawyer), Todd Campbell (Financial Advisor), Phil Filling (Mortgage Specialist), Steve Gillespie (Insurance Broker) at ISWA Centre, 58 Burrendah Bvd, Willetton. Details 1800 004 792

How to prosper & be peaceful in today’s world

Sun 19 Nov (4.20pm-6pm) Come forward and explore the talk by the founding director of Vedanta Institute Perth, Meredith Forder at ISWA Centre for Arts and Culture, Willetton. Details 1800 004 792

CLUB

Desi Disco Nights

Fri 10 Nov (9.30pm onwards)

Two Fat Indians present Desi Disco Nights starting from 10th November, every Friday at The Rocket Room, 174 James Street, Northbridge WA.

Mooch Party

Sun 19 Nov (4.00pm sharp)

The biggest Movember Mooch Party at Jewel of the Park, East Victoria Park. $500 Cash prize for best Moustache.

DJ Harj, Buffet dinner an dancing at $25 per head. Details 08 9361 1041

Hinglish edition

Fri 24 Nov Catering to the ilks of Indian professionals in Perth: Bombay Velvet presents Bhangrology at 464 Hay St, Subiaco. VIP bottle service and comfy lounges available. Tickets at www.bombayvelvetpert.com

Miss & Mrs Perth Punjaban

Sat 11 Nov SN Productions presents

Miss and Mrs Perth Punjaban 2017 at Kennedy Baptist College, Murdoch. It’s a beauty contest but related to Punjabi culture and tradition. Tickets www.premiertickets.com.au

EXHIBITION

I don’t want to be there when it happens

11 Nov – 24 Dec The Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts presents the exhibition I don’t want to be there when it happens. In tribute to the 70th anniversary of the Partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, this exhibition investigates the psychology of trauma in an era of perpetual con ict. It features artists from both Pakistan and India including Adeela Suleman, Abdullah Syed, Sonia Leber, David Chesworth and Raj Kumar and poets Agha Shahid Ali, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, and Bengali polymath Rabindranath Tagore. PICA Galleries, Perth Cultural Centre, 51 James Street, Northbridge. Details 08 9228 6300 or www.pica.org.au

Compiled by Puneet Anand

To have your event listed, email media@indianlink.com.au

Understanding Australia’s new broadband

By replacing and upgrading parts of the existing phone and internet network, nbn is bringing more Australians access to fast and reliable broadband services.*

Most homes and businesses need to switch

As most existing landline phone and internet services will be disconnected, it’s important you switch a ected services before your disconnection date.^ nbn will notify you by mail once you can switch to a new plan over the nbn™ access network. You’ll then have up to 18 months before existing services are disconnected.^

nbn is a wholesaler

This means nbn does not sell to the public. nbn supplies phone and internet providers with wholesale services they combine with their own network services to deliver your new plan. So you’ll need to contact your preferred provider once you’re ready to switch.

You have a choice of speeds nbn o ers three superfast wholesale speed tiers to providers - 25Mbps, 50Mbps and 100Mbps.* There’s also 12Mbps, which is not considered superfast broadband.* Talk to your phone and internet provider about speed tiers available in your area, as well as the actual speeds you can expect to experience on your new plan (particularly during peak times like the evening).

Factors a ecting your experience

The nbn™ access network and your provider’s network are likely to slow down when more people are online at once. Maximum speeds will also vary based on your modem, Wi-Fi

and other issues.*For more information on how your particular experience will be a ected, speak to your provider.

Important information on device compatibility

Safety-critical devices like medical alarms, fire alarms, monitored security alarms and lift emergency phones, may not be compatible with your new plan at all times.† To help minimise a loss in your services, check with your device provider that these will work on your new plan or whether you’ll need to find an alternative solution. It’s also important you register safety-critical devices with nbn by calling 1800 227 300 or visiting nbn.com.au/compatibility.

Contact a phone or internet provider

*Your experience, including the speeds actually achieved over the nbn™ broadband access network, depends on the technology over which services are delivered to your premises and some factors outside our control (like your equipment quality, software, signal quality, broadband plan and how your service provider designs its network). nbn is a provider of wholesale speeds to internet providers. nbn™ wholesale speed tiers available to your phone and internet provider vary depending on the access technology in your area. ^ Services o ered to phone and internet providers over the nbn™ broadband access network will be replacing phone and internet services provided over most of the existing landline networks, including copper and the majority of HFC networks within the fixed line footprint. Services provided over existing fibre networks (including in-building, health and education networks) and some special and business services may not be a ected. To find out if your services will be a ected, please contact your current phone or internet provider. For more information, visit nbn.com.au/ switcho or call 1800 687 626.† The rollout of the nbn™ broadband access network will involve new technologies, and some existing devices (including many medical alarms, autodiallers and emergency call buttons) may not be compatible with these at all times. You should contact your device provider to find out if your alarm or other device will work when connected to the nbn™ broadband access network and what alternative solutions are available. For more information, visit nbn.com.au/compatibility.

Curry change!for

BY DHANYA SAMUEL

Can a curry change the world?

Maybe not. But a curry can definitely contribute towards putting food on another family’s table. The Great Australian Curry is an annual fundraising campaign by Opportunity International Australia which gives a hand to families living in poverty.

Opportunity International Australia works through a unique system of microfinance, community development, training, local presence, technology and rural outreach programmes in developing countries including India. And the ‘Great Australian Curry’ campaign is a great way by which food lovers like us can contribute in a meaningful manner towards poverty and diminishing its impact.

This year’s campaign was officially launched last month with a spicy cook-off between two teams: Stephanie Rice (Triple Olympic gold medalist) and Courtney Ferdinands (Finalist, My Kitchen Rules) took on Michael Kasprowicz (former Australian Test Cricketer) and Valerie Ferdinands (Finalist, My Kitchen Rules) in this curry contest.

Michael Kasprowicz said, “I recently visited Opportunity’s work in Delhi, India. Seeing firsthand the impact of small loans empowering parents to meet the needs of their children, was so rewarding. Kids can dream of becoming whatever they want in the future, whether it be sportspeople or teachers, because they know their parents can afford to give them an education. It’s the way it should be.”

It’s a great cause and with curry being a favourite at most Australian homes, it’s so easy to organise a small fundraiser in your home or office. Invite a couple of your friends home for a dinner

(plenty of delicious curry recipes on the blog to help you with the cooking) and organise a small fundraiser of your own. Or perhaps arrange a curry potluck in your office where you can pitch in with your colleagues to raise a target amount. Remember that even the smallest amount can go a long way in being a helping hand to those in need.

Robert Dunn, the Opportunity Chief Executive Officer, said that last year the campaign was able to raise $108,000 which was used to help out 1500 families start small businesses and provide a livelihood. “We hope to help even more families this year through the generosity of Australians.”

There are also many exciting prizes up for grabs this year to encourage you to start a campaign. “The first 20 people to set up a fundraiser on Opportunity’s website will receive Rick Stein’s mouthwatering cookbook, ‘India’. There is also a writing competition and the prize is a signed copy of renowned Sydney Quay chef Peter Gilmore’s cookbook Organum

And of course you need a delicious, lipsmacking curry recipe to get your fundraiser started. So here’s a Chettinad style Duck Kurma – absolutely flavourful and fingerlickin’ good!

Kurma is a type of curry preparation that was bought to India by the Mughals. While it has evolved much over the years, it is essentially a rich creamy curry and can be both vegetarian and non vegetarian.

However in the Chettinad region of the south of India, the cream gets replaced by coconut which is blended with poppy seeds, cashewnuts and other spices to form a rich and flavourful curry.

I have veered away from the usual proteins, opting for duck instead of chicken or lamb as it’s a delicious meat that pairs beautifully with the spices and coconut. And also because we get such high quality duck meat in Australia.

Use any meat of choice or replace with eggs or mixed vegetables/paneer/tofu for a vegetarian option.

Duck Korma

Ingredients

Wet spice paste:

2 tbsp vegetable oil

2 tsp fennel seeds

2 tsp cumin seeds

3 fresh green chillies; broken in half

2 tsp white poppy seeds

10 raw cashewnuts

7 garlic cloves; crushed

2 tbsp roasted Bengal gram (split)

1 ½ inch piece ginger, crushed

60 gms fresh grated coconut

For the curry: Whole duck (approximately 1.1kg), cut into curry sized pieces

3-4 tbsp vegetable oil

2 inch piece cinnamon bark

4 green cardamom

1 large onion, nely chopped

½ tsp turmeric powder

2-3 sprigs curry leaves

2 large ripe tomatoes; pureed

2 tsp red chilli powder

Salt, to season

Method

To prepare the wet spice paste: Heat oil in a large pan and add the cumin, fennel seeds and green chillies. Then add the poppy seeds, cashews and garlic; sauté for a few seconds. Next add the Bengal gram, coconut and ginger. Mix well and sauté for a minute or two till the coconut turns a little toasty but not too brown. Remove from heat and allow to cool thoroughly. Blend with just enough water to get a wet paste.

To make the curry: Heat the remaining oil in a large wok/kadhai and add the cinnamon and cardamom followed by the onion. Sauté till the onions are softened and turn light brown.

Next add the turmeric powder, chilli powder and curry leaves; mix to combine.

Add the tomato puree and season with salt. Cook on medium heat till the mixture comes together and you can notice oil appearing at the sides of the masala. Next add the wet spice pasta and mix well to combine. Sauté for about 5-6 minutes on low to medium heat stirring continuously. Add the duck pieces; mix well and cook for 1-2 minutes. Then add 1-2 cups water (depending on how much gravy you prefer) and bring to boil. Turn down the heat and simmer gently till the duck pieces have cooked perfectly and the gravy has thickened. Taste and season with salt if necessary.

For more information about the campaign visit the fundraising website au.opportunity.org/ great-australian-curry

Getting involved in the ‘Great Aust Curry’ campaign

Indian emerginghockey’s talent

Men’s and women’s ‘A’ teams participate in Australian Hockey League

League is Australia’s premier national domestic field hockey competition.

Both the teams and their coaches left India to participate in the league beginning September 28.

BY NISHA JOSEPH

ndian men’s and women’s ‘A’ teams for hockey were in Perth recently to take part in the highly competitive Australian Hockey League.

While there weren’t any Chak De! India-esque miraculous moments, the teams got to experience some pressure hockey and did quite well. The men’s team finished fourth and the women’s team, which took part in the league for the first time, were in ninth place.

The League witnessed ten teams including defending champions Queensland, Victoria, Northern Territory, South Australia, Western Australia, New South Wales, Tasmania, Australian Capital Territory and touring teams: New Zealand Development and India ‘A’ teams. The Australian Hockey

Talking to Indian Link about the men’s team’s performance, the coach Vasudevan Baskaran, an Arjuna awardee and captain of the Indian team that won the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, said that playing against Australia prepared the boys to face any team in the world. “It is a wonderful opportunity for India’s developing players to test themselves against Australia’s best. Perth has one of the best stadiums, infrastructure and strong club competition,” Baskaran said.

Women’s team coach and Olympian Baljeet Saini agreed. “The exposure this team received would definitely go a long way in identifying the next line of talent,” he said.

Vikas Dahiya, goalkeeper and captain of the men’s ‘A’ team, said, “We have a very good mix of young and talented players in the under-21 age group. This league is where they are evaluated and challenged to perform under real pressure.”

Talking about a typical day in the sportsmen’s lives, Dahiya said that nearly 360 days in a year is spent in matches and practice camps. “The team is from different parts of India, yet they leave their families and come together to a common base and rigorously train to coach under intense supervision,” he added.

Before heading for this Australian League in Perth, the men’s India ‘A’ team trained at Sports Authority of India’s Bengaluru centre, while the women practised in Bhopal’s SAI Centre.

Preeti Dubey, the 19-year-old captain of the women’s team, exhibited unwavering agility and stamina. Hailing from Gorakhpur, this small-town girl chased her dreams that took her to Rio for the 2016 Summer Olympics. “The team is very united. About five of us have international exposure and we motivate the rest of the team to perform well,” she added.

While there were no podium finishes, it was the teams’ positive approaches and commitment to give their 100 percent in every aspect that mattered, said Baskaran.

In the first match against Western Australia, India’s Affan Yousuf was declared Man of the Match. “The men have great energy and potential, we need to expose them more often to international standards,” Baskaran added.

Sukhdev Pandher, the hockey coordinator for Sikh Association of Western Australia, said that such matches are fun-filled opportunities for passionate hockey fans to connect and spread awareness about this sport. A player himself, Pandher has been marketing this sport, spreading awareness about Australian Hockey League at cultural events and festivals.

“It’s only through such events that many realise hockey is still a cherished sport,” he said, adding that there are many parents who wish to get their children trained in hockey. There are various group lessons and children as young as six years old get enrolled to play and improve their overall fitness. “This is a game that definitely builds stamina and challenge. While cricket may still be a favourite for most Indians, but as a national sport, hockey still remains a class apart,” he said.

Amazing feet, amazing feat

Some 45 wins in long-distance running over 35 years, and Dipali Cunningham isn’t done yet

positive self-image they carried.

BY GRAHAK CUNNINGHAM

BY GRAHAK CUNNINGHAM

Dipali Cunningham is a great Australian runner. She has lived in the USA for 35 years and has raced almost exclusively in North America but she stills call Australia home. She might be small in size and quietly spoken, but her running achievements are towering by any standards, especially in the field of multi-day running.

A netballer in her youth, Dipali only started running when she was 21, pushed into it by her brother who was dragging her along to a lot of Melbourne races in his own attempts to get under two-and-a-half hours for the marathon. She watched the races from the sidelines and was impressed by the runners’ attitude in general and the

Soon she joined in and started training seriously. “After a while, it became a way of life,” she says. “Running is the best way to start the day.”

When she moved to New York at the request of her meditation teacher Sri Chinmoy, she discovered ultrarunning. Each year, the Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team hosts a 47-mile (75-km) event and Dipali has put her own stamp on this race, winning it 27 times. The race takes place on her birthday and even in 2015, on her 57th birthday, she won the race in 6 hours 42 minutes - which is only about half an hour longer than what she was doing when she was 31. She beat competitors less than half her age. “I think it teaches me that age is in all in the mind,” she says.

Since 1998, she has also won the Sri Chinmoy Self-Transcendence 6-Day Race an amazing 18 times in a row. In 2001, at age 42, she surpassed her own female world record, running 820 kilometres.

Dipali often uses meditation to cope

with the mental and physical challenges of ultrarunning. “I just try to compete with myself, do the best I can and rely on grace.”

True. But Dipali definitely has a competitive streak and extraordinary talent. You have to have those qualities to win so many races.

It was at age 50 that Dipali perhaps ran her greatest race 6-Day Race, running further than any other female had in 6 days - 513 miles (825 km), pushed after an epic battle with an American champion Pam Reed who ran 788 kilometres. Dipali didn’t last the awards ceremony though. She passed out from exhaustion on the dais.

Dipali visited Western Australia recently. She spoke at Bunbury Runners Club on

30 October. The club was supportive and after listening to Dipali’s inspiring talk on ‘never giving up,’ provided a delicious supper for all in attendance. Dipali then journeyed back to Perth on 31 October and shared some secrets on nutrition, injury management, motivation strategies, meditation and running, longevity and love of running to a Perth audience. Regardless of their interest in fitness, Dipali’s stories and life tips were entertaining and inspiring. West Australia was Dipali’s first stop on her speaking tour which is a marathon in itself. She moves on to Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne and New Zealand in the coming weeks.

At age 50, Dipali perhaps ran her greatest race 6-Day Race, running further than any other female had513 miles (825 km)

the BUZZ entertainment

UP-TO-DATE NEWS ON WHAT’S HOT AND HAPPENING IN BOLLYWOOD

SALMAN, KATRINA BACK TOGETHER

There are gun ghts, there’s horse riding, there’s muscle game, mind game, punches and punchlines - the trailer of Tiger Zinda Hai shows Salman Khan back with a vengeance to delight the fans and give a message of peace.

Directed by Ali Abbas Zafar, the movie brings back the Ek Tha Tiger on-screen couple Salman and Katrina, playing Indian agent Tiger and Pakistani spy Zoya.

This time round, they are on a mission to rescue 25 Indian nurses kidnapped by terrorists.

For Salman, message-based cinema seems to be the way to go now (Bajrangi Bhaijaan, Tubelight.)

But the hostage plot in Tiger… reminds us of Akshay Kumar’s Airlift We’ll just have to wait until 22 Dec to nd out.

COMING SOON: SARA ALI KHAN

Get set for the comparisons to Sharmila Tagore and Saif Ali Khan. And probably Amrita Singh and Soha Ali Khan.

Sara Ali Khan’s launch lm Kedarnath will hit the screens in late December. The producers believe the long holiday weekend will give Saif Ali Khan’s daughter the perfect launch pad in Bollywood.

The lm is directed by Abhishek Kapoor and also features Sushant Singh Rajput, is based in picturesque Uttarakhand and is said to be “a tribute to Lord Shiva”. That’s all they’re saying for now!

FIT TO FIGHT: KANGANA RANAUT

GIRL NEXT DOOR

In her 12-year Bollywood career, Vidya Balan has won the heart of the nation with her girl-next-door, sari-clad, smiley-face image.

Well, she’s at it yet again in her next release Tumhari Sulu, in which she reprises that average middle-class woman so suited to her. This time round, she’s your typical housewife – but with an extraordinary natural talent for radio which sees her become a star.

Vidya ruminates that she has never played the teeny-bopper roles.

“The dancing-around-the-trees role never excited me,” she laughs. “I came into the lm industry as a woman at the age of 26!”

Her clever choices of lms may have gotten her her national awards, but perhaps choosing certain kinds of lms is limiting her talent? Or is that giving her more room for experimentation?

“I am experimenting in my way. This year I’ve had three very different lms Kahaani 2, Begum Jaan and now Tumhari Sulu. So yes, I am doing enough experimentation as a performer.”

Born and brought up in a middle-class southern Indian family in Mumbai, Vidya has grown up with traditional values and a very progressive mindset.

“You know, I am the rst Palakkad Iyer girl to join Hindi lms as an actress,” she reveals. “As a community, we are very traditional. Our focus is always on studies, classical dance and music. But I am blessed to be born in a family where my parents gave me and my sister, wings to y. Our upbringing made us emotionally safe and secure. They taught us to do everything to the best of our ability.”

Perhaps that attitude gives her the con dence to say, “I know there will always be some work for me in whichever age I am.”

Tumhari Sulu releases on 17 Nov.

with the #FitToFight campaign.

“I have also been opinionated and I choose to express my views openly. I hope to inspire other girls through my stories of courage, faith and conviction. I truly believe in the limitless potential that every woman possesses to be physically, mentally and socially t. I do hope my story and journey of facing adversities, ghting obstacles and emerging stronger and tter, will inspire other women to be Fit to Fight,” she said.

PADMAVATI’S WOES CONTINUE

With the release date of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmavati approaching, its troubles seem to be mounting as well. After protests by the Karni Sena and also a Brahmin group, now the former royal family of Jaipur has opposed release of the lm “if historical facts are distorted”.

Former princess Diya Kumari in a statement said that no lm should hurt the sentiments of a community by “twisting historical facts”.

Actress Kangana Ranaut, known to speak her mind despite the reactions her words elicit, says it is tough to remain ‘headstrong’ in lmdom.

As a Reebok brand ambassador, she is part of the second edition of the brand’s #FitToFight campaign, which ghts looming gender demons of eveteasing and pay disparity.

Despite the challenges especially of recent days, she claims she herself is mentally tough and t to ght. “My experiences in life, on the personal and professional fronts, have helped shape the individual I am today,” she said on the sidelines of the campaign. “There have been moments in my life when it was very dif cult to continue working in unfavourable conditions. But I fought my way, to make a mark for myself. In our industry, it is important to remain headstrong as you are often judged for not following the status quo. There will always be a segment that will try to make you feel insigni cant, but it is important to channel your strength and con dence and work hard to triumph. It’s important to grow a distinct voice to break the clutter.”

This is what she is trying to promote

Diya Kumari is a BJP MLA.

“The director of the lm Padmavati, Sanjay Leela Bhansali should not wrongly depict the story of Queen Padmavati of Chittor. He should get the facts in the lm veri ed by a forum of historians,” she said in a statement.

Diya Kumari said that “Rajputs will not allow any distortion of the valiant history of Rajasthan and sacri ce of its people in ghting barbarians”.

Bollywood has not often got its facts right in its historical lms. The latest development comes as lm distributors in Rajasthan have expressed unease over releasing the lm, scheduled to hit the screens on 1 Dec.

Raj Bansal, a leading lm distributor in Jaipur, says his company will not buy the distribution rights of the lm till the controversy is resolved. Other distributors have agreed too.

With 300 screens in Rajasthan, and it will be a loss of around Rs 5 crore if the lm is not released in the state, sources said.

The movie tells the tale of Rani Padmavati - the legendary Mewar queen known as much for her beauty and intelligence as she was for her

SALMAN & KATRINA

courage, her husband Maharawal Ratan Singh - a glorious Rajput ruler and a warrior king who fought till his dying breath to defend his kingdom and his wife’s honour and Sultan Alauddin Khilji - an ambitious and obsessive invader.

DILJIT, TAAPSEE IN HOCKEY FILM

The last hockey movie that came out - Chak De India - left us exhilarated. Now, another one is being made on the life of former Indian hockey captain Sandeep Singh. And who better than the dashing Diljit Dosanjh to play the protagonist? This one will be the Udta Punjab actor’s rst solo lead.

Sandeep Singh played as a full back and was a penalty corner specialist. He made headlines when he made a comeback into the game after being injured in an accident.

Taapsee Pannu, who is also acting in the lm and will essay the role of a hockey player, is super excited about the role. Reason? She says she loves sports so much that had she not been an actor, she would have aspired to become a sportsperson.

“I love sports and always feel if I wasn’t an actor, I would’ve aspired to become a sportsperson. But being an actor is very special because you get to live so many lives in one life. Finally, I have got an opportunity to combine the two interests. “I have been pretty

CAPTION

CONTEST

WIN MOVIE TICKETS!

excited about my hockey learning sessions,” Taapsee said.

SONAM’S ‘VILLAINOUS’ DESIRE

Sonam Kapoor says if she is cast in a super-hero lm, she would like to play a villain as they also have great stories to tell.

On scoring 11 million followers on Twitter, Sonam treated her fans to a question-and-answer session.

A fan asked her that if she was roped in for a superhero movie, would she like to be the hero or the villain?

“I think villains also have great stories to tell,” Sonam replied.

She proved her mettle ( nally!) in Neerja, and it’s nice to see her thinking of doing more challenging roles.

One user asked Sonam which character she has played is her favourite. She said: “I can’t choose one.

I love each and every character I have portrayed.”

Sonam said her all-time favourite Hollywood actor is Meryl Streep, and that her favourite lm by her father, actor Anil Kapoor, is Mr. India.

When a fan asked her to describe her Prem Ratan Dhan Payo co-star Salman Khan, she said: “Super hero.”

I WAS REJECTED AS NOT FIT FOR TV: SMRITI IRANI

India’s Information and Broadcasting Minister Smriti Irani says producer Ekta

WHO WORE IT BETTER?

or SONAM KAPOOR in DELPOZO?

Share your views with us on our Facebook page /IndianLinkAustralia

Kapoor chose her to lead the cast of Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi even though Kapoor’s team had rejected her (Irani) as “not t” for television.

Irani spoke at the 17th Indian Television Academy (ITA) Awards where she was conferred the ITA Pride of Indian Television award recently.

“I have been associated with television for over 20 years now. Television gave me a platform to enter Indian political space and I will be forever grateful for that. Also, Ekta Kapoor spotted me among the many young girls who had come for audition and selected me despite her team having rejected me as not t for TV.

“In 2007, when I was the anchor at the ITA Awards, I had invited the then Information and Broadcasting Minister on stage. So life has come a full circle for me to be invited on this stage as the serving Information and Broadcasting Minister.”

Irani, a former Miss India contestant, had risen to popularity as Tulsi Virani, the protagonist of the “saas-bahu” show which was launched at the start of the millenium and had a long run of over 1,800 episodes.

Ekta and Irani, who continue to remain friends, made the most of their time together at the ITA Awards event. Ekta even clicked a sel e with her and posted it on social media.

Memories and sel es. That’s what good friendships are all about!

WHAT TWEETY BIRD TOLD US THIS WEEK

Match the following tweets to the celebs that made them.

Salman Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Deepika Padukone, Twinkle Khanna, Ranveer Singh

And it’s a wrap! Goodbye Alauddin. One year and a few weeks later, I bid thee farewell. May your restless soul nd its peace, Khilji

Tiger is ready to roar

Unwise wisecracks

Honored to stand alongside these amazing trailblazers... #PowerWomen #Worlds100MostPowerfulWomen @ forbes

In love with your #DoTheGhoomar videos!!!

What’s the chitchat here between DEEPIKA PADUKONE and ALIA BHATT?

Send your response to: media@indianlink.com.au

LAST ISSUE CAPTION CONTEST WINNING ENTRY

What’s the chitchat here between VIRAT KOHLI and ANUSHKA SHARMA?

Hetaal Badiyani: Anushka: Keep posing till they get the right angle. I like my side face to look perfect.

Virat: I am trying, darl! Cricket is easier than posing ;) Hetaal wins a movie ticket

Another good one: Raghu Rules: I am always bowled by your spell... You can always sledge me all my life

SONAM KAPOOR

DILJIT DOSANJH

KANGANA RANAUT

cine TALK

CAPTURING RHYTHMS OF METROPOLITAN LIFE

the remarkable portrait of a marriage on the skids in Avishkaar 43 years ago.

Director Raakhee Sandilya’s protagonists are not played by stars and one of them has not been seen on the large screen before. Kalki and Sumeet penetrate the lives of their characters with an incredible alacrity. No time is wasted in bringing their lives as close to us as cinematically possible. We enter their lives without fuss or ceremony and we leave them just as quickly, with no room for farewells.

RIBBON

STARRING: Kalki Koechlin, Sumeet Vyas, Kalyanee Mulay, Neha Iyer

DIRECTOR: Rakhee Sandilya

RATING: ***

HHHHH

And then, something happens. Something awful and irreversibly life-changing happens in this true life portrait of an urban marriage threatening to fall apart under the strain of coping with daily vicissitudes.

Debutant director Raakhee Sandilya uses her two principal actors to mirror metropolitan mores and meltdowns

with masterful vigour and a scrupulous authenticity. The camera is used not to accentuate or glamourise Mumbai’s suburbia, but to simply serve as a functional topography for the lives of the couple Sahana and Karan played with such an absence of bravura and ourish that we forget Kalki and Sumeet are playing characters who don’t exist beyond the lm.

At least not in the way we see them here.

The authenticity instilled into the couple’s lives is comparable with what Basu Bhattacharya achieved with Rajesh Khanna and Sharmila Tagore in

Sandilya strips the lm of all vanity. There is very little background music to highlight even the highest summits of emotions in the narration, so that we get the feeling of an unpolished raw home video. Hurting and hurtful. Kalki plays the more aggressive partner. And why not? Early in the plot (if one may accuse this lm of resorting to plotting devices), Sahana, well, she loses the plot when her seemingly supportive boss turns wary and hostile after she returns from her maternity leave.

The scenes of Sahana’s workplace politics make us inch. Yup, this is what goes on when women workers get too big for their boots.

The sequences where the couple deal with their child’s hired nanny abound in the scent of lived-in familiarity. Every

working couple silently suffers the tantrums of its house help. Ribbon is a subverted upturned take on all the family lms we’ve seen in the 1960s and 1970s. If Jeetendra and Leena Chandavarkar in LV Prasad’s Bidaai were to set up home in Mumbai today, this is what they would have to deal with.

If Ribbon was not such a sharply aligned slice-of-life story, it would be a horror lm, much in the same way that Daron Aronofsky’s Mother is. It is disturbing in its implied critique on the nuclear family where couples choose to keep their parents out. The last 30 minutes of the lm is a separate beast, bound to serve up a wallop of shock disgust and despair in the audience as they watch the couple’s helpless attempts to keep their self-limited world from falling apart.

A lot of the scenes between the couple seem so spontaneous and unrehearsed, almost as if the lead pair walked into situations in the script that they had inherited from a couple who lived there before them. Ribbon captures the rhythms of metropolitan life with such a vehement repudiation of drama that I often forgot I was watching ction.

Ribbon has its share of aws.

So relentless is the focus on the protagonists’ lives that we barely get a glimpse into the lives of the other (interesting but sketchy) characters, like Sahana’s friend or Karan’s father or the babysitter who evidently leads a life as adventurous as her employers, if not more.

But that, some other time.

Subhash K. Jha

MATRIMONIALS

SEEKING GROOMS

Looking for a suitable match for 37-year-old well educated Gour Brahmin girl. Well-settled with a permanent government job in Brisbane. Height 5’3”, slim and fair complexion. Please reply to kumar.sham@bigpond.com

Seeking suitable, professionally quali ed groom for 27-year-old Punjabi girl living in Sydney. Born in England, 5’7”, with a slim build and wheatish complexion. Australian citizen, never married. Soft spoken and gentle, quali ed with a Bachelors in Primary Education and a Bachelors in History. Currently working in a private company in Sydney. Caste no bar. Please call 0412 407 123 or email jskhepar@optusnet.com.au

What shall we be angry about today?

secretly filmed video of someone eating the McDonald’s, er, “foodstuff” with a knife and fork instead of fingers. “It’s so weird,” said one comment. “People who do things like that might be serial killers.”

BY NURY VITTACHI

When you see the shocking, outrageous things people do just to get attention on the internet, it’s impossible not to shake your head and think: why didn’t I think of that?

So this columnist bought a KitKat, a snack consisting of four thin sticks of chocolate. Instead of snapping the individual sticks apart, I left it as a single unit and took a big bite out of the top.

As soon as pix were posted, outraged reactions poured in. “That’s not how you eat a KitKat!!!” said the first. “Man, that is just so wrong,” said the next. “U R one sick dude” said the third. “What is wrong with u,” said another.

This experiment, which I did some time ago, confirmed that a) people love being outraged, and b) the most trivial things create a much bigger reaction than serious but uninteresting things such as the imminent end of the world, the coming nuclear disaster, global Armageddon, etc.

Case in point: in August, police officers reported that a man wearing jean shorts robbed several shops in St Louis County in the US state of Missouri. The public reaction? I found precisely zero comments about the wrongness of robbing stores but vast numbers of angry posts about the wrongness of a male wearing jean shorts.

Police investigators joined in. “His disregard for the law is as offensive as his disregard for fashion trends,” said officer Ben Granda. His team circulated a photo of the man and asked the public (I am not making this up) to report him to law enforcement officers and “the fashion police.”

A couple of months ago, the internet glowed red hot with a report entitled “That’s not how you eat chicken nuggets.” Clicking on the headline led you to a

Reddit and Twitter, meanwhile, were outraged over people who buy hot pizzas and then carry them vertically. “Who carries pizza like that?” said one Tweeter.

“I think I am witnessing a drug deal.”

Modern, liberal internet society HATES non-conformity and loves exposing misfits. Why?

“Historically, humans have always gathered to discuss behavioural morality in religious and cultural gatherings,” a psychologist who did not want her name printed told this columnist via email.

“Now many are missing such forums.”

Professor Ryan Martin, who studies anger, told the New York Times that people are angry on the internet because they are hungry for group validation. When others share their shock, “they feel they’re vindicated and a little less lonely and isolated in their belief.”

The bad thing is that evil, unscrupulous media people can exploit this to get clicks on their own posts.

Mwa ha ha ha ha. Speaking of which, more responses had arrived under my image of eating a KitKat the wrong way.

Mother looking for a professionally quali ed and settled Muslim groom (Australian resident or citizen) for Sydney based 29/5’3”, single, fair, slim, attractive, family oriented Punjabi girl. Well quali ed, HR professional. Only serious candidates should contact with bio-data and pic on ysk.sikander@gmail.com

Match required for my sister, Australian citizen, Hindu Punjabi (non-veg) 5’0”, slim, fair, beautiful, 1988-born, Masters of Professional Accounting, working in Melbourne. Australian Citizen or PR required. Email melbournejodi@yahoo.com

SEEKING BRIDES

People describe this tall, 32-year-old media professional as humble, honest and respectful with a modern mind and traditional values. I am also sensitive and funny and passionate about music, art, nature and spirituality. Seeking friendship leading to marriage. Age, religion, looks and past not important. Honesty and tuning is. Call 0403 800 080

Seeking Gujarati match, either in Australia or abroad, with good family values, for a well settled accountant. Australian citizen, 42, 5’8”, divorced with no children. Vegetarian and non-smoker. Respond with photo and biodata to WhatsApp/Viber 0421 504 058 or email gujiaust@gmail.com

Match required for a handsome Hindu Brahmin boy, 34 years old, 183 cm tall, athletically built. Very honest, down-to-earth and caring. Family well-settled in Delhi and running their own business. Boy living in Melbourne for the past 12 years, Australian citizen, currently working in a major bank. Divorce awaiting, have one little daughter. Caste and age no bar. please contact on 0420 693 449 or melbournegroom764@gmail.com

Looking for a suitable match for a 33-year-old Brahmin boy, well-settled in Australia. Involved in family business. Fair complexion, 5’ 8”. Email at kumar. sham@bigpond.com

Looking for a suitable match for a 33-year-old Hindu Brahmin boy. Australian citizen, good looking, well settled, 6 feet tall. Seeking an educated and good looking girl in Australia. Caste no bar. Please contact on 0422 091 170 or 0431 176 440

A well-settled, clean-shaven 48-year-old (looks only 35) good looking, tall, slim man. Senior manager with one of the four major Australian banks from a Jat Sikh family. Citizen of Australia and USA, good natured, sociable with a blend of Eastern and Western values. Seeking a lady with a view to marriage. Caste and age no bar. Respond to param69@gmail.com

Netizens love to outrage over trivial issues and ignore bigger ones

People are angry on the internet because they are hungry for group validation. When others share their shock, they feel they’re vindicated

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TAROT

ARIES

March 21 - April 19

Aristocratic Aries, you are spirited and spontaneous and it may not be easy for you to slow down for those who may not be at your mental cruising speed or merely unable to appreciate the larger picture that you so clearly envision. So weigh anchor for a bit! The Alchemist asks you to weigh the alternate ways of achieving your goal. Soon you will wear away the wisps of doubt with wit, determination and charisma as only you can, Aries.

LEO

July 21 - Aug 22

Travel is on the cards for you, Leo, as The Chariot wheels itself into your November plans. A planned vacation or an impromptu trip necessitated by a pesky publisher (if you’re writing) or a weekend invite, you’re de nitely packing your bags sometime soon. Zoom away! You’ll be your best Lion-self once rested and will bring new ideas, zeal and commitment to your place of work. You’ll be open to innovations and suggestions which fall in line with your long-term aspirations.

SAGITTARIUS

Nov 22 - Dec 21

Happy changes are coming to you this month which signal a closure to something that has been of grave concern to you in the past. Whether you experienced workplace woes or were harried on the home front, the change that’s coming gives you great relief. You break free of all that and y! Some centaurs may be moving house - perhaps to another state or even another country. You have worked hard and you deserve the change. Settle well, Sagittarius!

NOV

November ushers in warmer days and balmy nights. With a glorious full moon lighting up the skies with its gentle rays on the fourth, this month will be a time of bringing to balance all we may have missed earlier so as to conclude the year with a contented drumroll.

TAURUS

April 20 - May 20

You are strong-willed, Taurus, once you set your mind to something and your sense of purpose is unbeatable. The Magician invites you to edify yourself with in-depth knowledge and to temper your actions with kindness as the universe awaits ripples of your positive energy. A long-standing friendship stands you in good stead and brings you great contentment. You may consider a partnership or collaboration with this person who understands you well. Friends such as these are precious gems.

VIRGO Aug 23 - Sep 22

The Emperor exalts your reading as you orient yourself to tap into the potential of your own mental prowess and the depth of knowledge you have acquired. It is a strong card that resonates with power both internal and external. This becomes a source of joy for you and a friend or partner when you extend yourself a bit and include newbies in your friends’ circle. Who can be better than you, Virgo, in organising a meeting of the minds?

CAPRICORN

Dec 22 - Jan 19

You are at your creative best with The Enchantress stirring up your reading, Capricorn! Copywriting, advertisement, jingles, lyrics or art – you ace it. Like the proverbial mountain goat that climbs the mountain with ease, your personal development goals are easily conquered with the power of the mind. The inner faith with which you motivate yourself each day lends you a magnetic quality and you will revel in meeting people from different creative elds and sharing your brand of creative expression.

GEMINI

May 21 - June 20

The Lovers card appears in your reading and brings you to a point where you have to take an important decision. Your head and heart have a mini tugof-war, Gemini, as you contemplate two paths that appear attractive to you in equal measure. Will long-nurtured ambition win the day or will the option of the easier path beckon? Sometimes it is easier to let others in on your thoughts when decision-making gets nebulous. You need to choose that someone wisely!

LIBRA

Sep 23 - Oct 22

Witty, intellectual Libra, you’ve got sunshine in your pocket this month! Sunrays bring you happy tidings and a ceremony - is it a wedding that’s in the of ng? Or a betrothal, perhaps? It’s de nitely a happy street where you’re taking a walk! Should you turn your hand to a humanitarian cause, you will nd within you resources you hadn’t been aware of previously. Contribution to community welfare will bring you joy and oh, charming Libra, also an ardent fan following.

AQUARIUS

Jan 20 - Feb 18

Surrounded as you are by a lot of love, Aquarius, you may yet feel the need for more of everything, indicates the card of The Devil, which brings devious, sel sh thoughts into your mind. You may want to get away by yourself or spend on a few extras for you alone, which may not go down well with a partner. Ful llment will certainly come your way with the Knight of Cups shining the path to favourable partnership and relationships.

CANCER

June 21 - July 20

Hey, Cancer! Your friends and family are determined to get you out of your shell and it seems you’re in a bit of a quandary about whom to engage with socially. You feel safe within your shell and the thought of people getting you out of it gives you a bit of a shake. The Materialist card assures you of fun if you are willing to go with the ow. So dump that internet sur ng and emerge into magical moonshine.

SCORPIO

Oct 23 - Nov 21

You like going it alone, Scorpio, whether it is thinking, action or decisions. You might make an exception this month. Graced by the Guru card, you have an opportunity to receive the bene t of wisdom from an elder person or a professional that leads you beyond where you would reach by yourself. You stand to gain in terms of a greater cash ow and also, a wider circle of acquaintances. You deserve a pat on the back for being astute!

PISCES

Feb 19 - March 20

A phase comes to a conclusion and another commences with The Tower urging you to prioritize health issues and take a much needed break from your routine. Sensitive to everything around you, Pisces, you tend to absorb energies and get exhausted. Be aware of the energy ow around you but shield yourself and build again your precious inner resources. You feel your best when you explore your talents so dabble in that which fascinates you –painting, poetry, prose or photography.