Saturday, July 17, 2010

Aarohan 2010 - Event 3: Talk and Tabla

- By Girish Mahajan (Gary)

In today's hectic life... we always are searching for that one peaceful moment away from the usual humdrum of work-home balance. We go for a short trip, trekking or to a movie etc. But this time YUVA decided to present opportunity to try something different and the reason for that was the T-Shirt Launch event of Aarohan 2010 (Yuva's 15 year celebrations).

What was earlier supposed to be a casual gathering to launch and give away the T-shirts, now had a different format, with suggestions from Pramod and Sujay to give this otherwise simple event a valuable twist. In last YUVA meeting Pramod suggested his professor for a small talk on “Sustainability” and Sujay had word with Rahul Phopali and entertaining tabla player and a YUVA member. Hence the birth of event number 3 “Talk and Tabala ”

The program was on evening of 19th June, 2010. The program started with a talk on “Our role in sustainability and sustainable development” by Dr. Monto Mani, Assistant Professor at the Center for Sustainable Technologies, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore which later was followed by Rahul Pophali's performance.

The talk was a small attempt to reveal a great thought about life that a normal person normally doesn't think of. He emphasized the number of thoughts on different aspects of life. A person can learn a lot if he/she fulfills the desire as per the western philosophy but eastern culture says person can be happy and developed without any desire. He explained prominence of life with real life examples. One should change his attitude towards life, is the solution to make life more sustainable.

Rahul Pophali is one of the most versatile tabla player in today’s younger generation. A dazzling performer and an incessant innovator,He progressed to advanced training in the Punjab gharana style under Pt. Nishikant Barodekar (senior disciple of Ustad Alla Rakha Khansaheb). Rigorous training by Nishikantji and occasional guidance from Ustad Zakir Hussain over last ten years shaped Rahul into a promising tabla player. It was amazing experience to watch Rahul perform. He also explained the meaning of different tabla strokes during his performance. So thats entertainment spiced with some Tabla gyan :) Both events made the evening a wonderful one. Thanks to Rahul and Monto sir from YUVA.

And YES... finally the much-awaited T-shirts were launched too, after all that was one of the main event of the evening. Great work by the T-shirt team!

Some photos from the event: