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BENGALURU HABBA

It's that time of the year when the silicon city of Bangalore overnight transforms itself into a painter's grand canvas celebrating art, craft and culture. The annual city arts festival, Bengaluru Habba is back. In its seventh year, the Habba this December promises to bring more colour than ever before. We decided to chat up Nandini Alva and Padmini Ravi, the dynamic duo behind the festival, on the Habba's many moods this season.

Airtel Bengaluru Habba 2009 will feature over 50 performances across eight different venues over a period of 10 days. The Habba is, perhaps, one of the only festivals of its kind that offers people from all walks of life, the opportunity to experience performances by state, national, and international greats free of cost.

This year, the Habba is touted to be an "aspirational event." Padmini explains, "There must be an aspiration to understand the new. This year, we have handpicked, handcrafted, and hand-curated the Habba to get the aspirational crowd. So we included many other elitist genres that a common man may not have been exposed to."

The list of such events include fashion shows by international brands, Indian labels like Rohit Bal and Anamika Khanna alongside city designers at the UB City, a Jazz Festival featuring Gerard Machado Trio and internationally renowned Dana Gillespie and The London Blues band from UK, a Children's Film Festival at Inox and photography workshops besides art, theatre and folk dance festivals that will take

place at various connoisseur venues.

However, a new event that has Nandini excited is the creative writing workshop. The Habba is getting writers from across the world to conduct writing workshops in schools. "Communication is so important in today's computer-savvy age. The youth need to write emails, resumes, and reports and even sms. Creative writing is as important as dance and music but unfortunately, our education system has no room for it," she sighs.

The key events to look forward to this 2009 are classical music concerts by Pandit Jasraj and Dr Balmuralikrishnan, theatre performances by Naseeruddin Shah's Motley, Yakshagana performances and dance performances by Shobhana and Aditi Mangaldas. A visual arts festival hinting at the five senses with five well-known art galleries are also on the Habba menu. A performance by Pakistani rock band ?Strings', playback singer, Shreya Goshal and a world-famous Sufi group will mark the finale of the festival, scheduled to take place between December 11 and 20.

But the key attraction that beckons all, year after year has been the crafts mela, with colourful stalls dotting the boulevard on M.G. Road where craftsmen from the remotest corners sell art, craft and trinkets. But with the Metro rail construction, out went the boulevard. So which is the new venue for the craft mela? Nandini says, "It will be held at the Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath with 100 stalls." To which Padmini adds, "When we used to have the mela on M.G. Road, we were mistakenly thought to be government-funded. But we are an NGO which runs on corporate funds." Calling it the ?Karan Syndrome,' Padmini discusses the relevance of the festival by turning the pages of history. "Karan from the Mahabharata was an excellent warrior, well-educated and a good human being. His only problem lay in the fact that he didn't know his parents and therefore was confused about his identity. Twenty years from now, when the great artists are no more, our kids will be as confused. We have lost an entire generation to television in the last 20 years. Not any more." - SMITA BALRAM KUMAR