Daily Drawing Diary

© Rob Pepper

Rob is known for his "Conscious Reflex Drawing". This is about drawing without judgement. He doesn't look at his hand when the pen touches the paper. His focus is on the object /situation before him. This way of drawing "thereby create images that are truly reflective of that moment, recorded in an open and honest way that avoids the revision of the critical eye."


© Rob Pepper

We met couple of years back in London. Since then we have been talking about working together and looks like finally we are coming closer to that. What he started as a visual artist's response to the growing number of 'text-heavy' blogs has now become an artwork on its own. Check out Rob's Daily drawing diary.

© www.robpepper.co.uk

Recommended by The Guardian, (Visual artist Rob Pepper puts up a picture a day on his blog. Curiously, Rob draws without making eye contact with the paper. The results are rather lovely), BBC and The Times, Rob's Daily drawing diary has slowly grown into a conversational space for collaborative artwork. He has been successfully publishing a -limited edition- compendium- of his daily drawings. Available at Tate Modern, this is an absolute collectors delight!

In the Feb 2006 edition of the compendium, Rob had his version of Nila as well :

Bangalore © GP 2007

Nila on the BBC World

Climate challenge is a program The BBC World has started this quarter as part of the Climate watch season. Looking at various concerns including global warming as part of the climate change, the last episode is looking at issues affecting areas including India like River Nila.

When The BBC World team came, they shot for almost two days continuously. The dead river, dried up catchment areas, paddy fields (with surprisingly good harvests), coastal areas where sea water came rising from the earth!, dried forests areas and places that have touched temperates of more than 40 degree Celsius in March in Kerala. Many interviews were done with farmers, fishermen and women in the paddy fields.

I remember seeing Arun's eyes popping out when the Justin told him that the whole shoot will be edited into a 4 minutes program. Wonder how! Anyways, the program is shown globally on the BBC World Climate challenge program on the 28th of this month.

Climate Watch: Your View
Saturday 28th April at 1430 GMT
Repeated: Saturday 28th at 2130 and Sunday 29th at 0430 and 0930 GMT

Check out your local schedule here.



Hope this program will bring in some attention on to our sadly neglected river. Even though we feel that the global warming and climate changes are some of the reasons for degradation of water sources in the river, we believe that one of the major problems for the death of this once mighty river will remain to be human interventions.

Unless there is a change in attitude in the society!




Bangalore © GP 2007

Slow but steady

Finally, the work we kick started is slowly taking shape. After some hiccups and delays of couple of few months, today we had the first meeting of the working committee on Responsible Tourism for Kerala in the state capital. The 40 member state level working group was divided into smaller groups based on the triple bottom line : Economic, Environmental and Social aspects. Four destinations have been identified to implement the process.

Wayanad (hill station and upcoming destination)
Kumarakom (well known backwater destination)
Kovalam and (well known and old destination
Periyar (well known wildlife destination)

The first meeting in the local destinations will start in Wayanad on the 6th of May, followed by 7th in Kumarakom. The idea is to brief all the stake holders (hoteliers, panchayats, civil society organisations, Government organisations etc) about the initiatives taken so far in the "Better Together" workshop and the working committee meeting of today. It will also explore the definitions of Responsibility according to the stake holders in the local areas. In a broader framework, this should also look at setting up the destination co-ordination committees and local working groups of various stake holders. These meetings should be exploring the dimensions of demand-supply gaps that would come across while creating economic linkages to RT initiative.

I know of some of the foreign consultants who have expressed their concerns about these kind of processes being ineffective and time consuming. In any functional democracy that aims to work towards decentralisation of power, I guess this is the way to go forward. Engagement and participation within a broader frame work. Especially when there are not many models to look at implementation.

Not that there is no scope for improvement!

Thiruvananthapuram © GP 2007

Fog

This is all what we could see on the road because of fog on the high way in Wayanad this morning..

Bangalore © GP

Festivals

Procession of 'Kaala" at the Kizhayoor temple festival along Bharatapuzha (River Nila)

Post harvest, it is festival time on the banks of the river. Once the harvest is over, empty paddy fields all along the three districts of Palakkad, Thrissur and Malappuram transform into festival grounds. An old age system of beating the heat by pumping in adrenalin during summer, these festivals bring together people of various communities and religions. Known for its uniqueness and variety of folk expressions, these festivals are still organised in all its vigour by small temples. Spiced up with legends and folklore, we have been taking some of our guests who are ready to brave the heat to these villages.

After one such festival trails, Jean Francois of UCPA commented, ''Your programs have people at its core. The seven day spent with your team on the banks of river Nila was a seven star experience, especially the cultural interaction and festival trails. I am not sure if I would have seen Kerala this way if I had travelled with some one else."

It is quite unfortunate that changes in life style and occupation of local people, has pushed many of the rituals associated with these festivals into oblivion. Some of these were related to the paddy fields, river, the rain, harvest and to the lives of those who toiled the land. While there were rituals to thank the rain Gods, most of the temple festivals were about seeking blessing for a better crop in the coming year.


With the efforts of some small organisations like Vayali, some of these rituals and festivals are being brought back into life these days. They are working towards the empowerment of folk artists and craftsmen associated with these age-old festivals through sustained community participation.

It is when we meet people who work behind organisations like Vayali that we are filled with hopes for a better tomorrow. Rather than waiting for someone else to take the lead, these youngsters have taken the responsibility for doing what they thought can be done by themselves!

Impressive! All our best wishes to Vinod and his wonderful team.


Jane was one of our lucky guests who saw this impromptu performance © Jane Weston

Bangalore © GP

Vindicated

The following post came to my mail box as a comment on "Survey of surprises" and I am taking the freedom to post the message from Marie Preston of the UK

"Though a resident of the UK, I have been in India for the last four years on and off. Since I work with a local NGO in Pune, I have been constantly coming across articles of sexual abuse and one of my interns pointed out to the discussions going on here. And today I have a newspaper report that might be interesting for you all. A news report by Vineeta Pandey in DNA (Daily News Analysis) of the 10th April 2007 says, "Half India's kids are abused"

"I don't know much about the survey methods and all, but when the Government itself comes out with a report that says 53 percent of the country's children are sexually assaulted, it is a matter of concern. But its also highly commendable that Government of India took the initiative to come out with this report. Quite laudable. BTW, considering some of the comments posted, this could also be interesting for your readers, the report says" Contrary to the belief that boys are safer, the survey established that out of the 69 percent of abused children, 54.68 percent were boys"!!So the concerns I see in the above comments about the "percentages" GP mentions is unfortunately vindicated. It could still be a coincidence, but I doubt."

Yes, it is sad to be vindicated on this, well, unfortunately I share my concerns with Marie. Thanks Marie for the posting.

Bangalore © GP 2007

The Namesake

Sheer Beauty! If you get a chance to see this movie, don't miss it. Check the home page here : Namesake

Bombay © GP 2007