Friday, October 10, 2014

A00005 - Kailash Satyarthi, 2014 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

Kailash Satyarthi (born 11 January 1954) is an Indian children's rights activist and a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.[1] He founded the Bachpan Bachao Andolan (lit. Save the Childhood Movement) in 1980 and has acted to protect the rights of 80,000 children.[3][4]
He was awarded the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, jointly with Malala Yousafzai, "for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education".[5][6]

Early life[edit]

Kailash Satyarthi was born on 11 January 1954 in the Vidisha district of Madhya Pradesh. He studied electrical engineering[7] at Samrat Ashok Technological Institute (SATI) in Vidisha and then pursued post-graduate studies in high-voltage engineering. He then taught as a lecturer at a college in Bhopal for a few years.[8]

Work[edit]

In 1980, he gave up his career as a teacher and became secretary general for the Bonded Labor Liberation Front; he also founded the Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Childhood Mission) that year.[9][10] He has also been involved with theGlobal March Against Child Labor[11] and its international advocacy body, the International Center on Child Labor and Education (ICCLE),[12] which are worldwide coalitions of NGOs, teachers and trades unionists.[13][14] He has also served as the President of the Global Campaign for Education, from its inception in 1999 to 2011, having been one of its four founders alongside ActionAid, Oxfam and Education International.[15]
From the expo at Nobel Peace Center
In addition, he established Rugmark (now known as Goodweave) as the first voluntary labelling, monitoring and certification system of rugs manufactured without the use of child-labour in South Asia.[16] This latter organisation operated a campaign in Europe and the United States in the late 1980s and early 1990s with the intent of raising consumer awareness of the issues relating to the accountability of global corporations with regard to socially responsible consumerism and trade.[17]Satyarthi has highlighted child labor as a human rights issue as well as a welfare matter and charitable cause. He has argued that it perpetuates poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, population growth, and other social problems,[18] and his claims have been supported by several studies.[19][20] He has also had a role in linking the movement against child labour with efforts for achieving "Education for All".[21] He has been a member of a UNESCO body established to examine this and has been on the board of the Fast Track Initiative (now known as the Global Partnership for Education).[22] Satyarthi serves on the board and committee of several international organisations including the Center for Victims of Torture (USA), the International Labor Rights Fund (USA), and the International Cocoa Foundation. He is now reportedly working on bringing child labour and slavery into the post-2015 development agenda for the United Nation's Millenium Development Goals.[23]
Satyarthi, along with Pakistani activist Malala Yousufzai, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 "for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education".[24] Satyarthi is the seventh Nobel Prize winner for India and only the second Indian winner of the Nobel Peace Prize after Mother Teresa in 1979.[1]

Personal life[edit]

Satyarthi lives in New Delhi, India. His family includes his wife, a son, daughter-in-law, a daughter, colleagues, and friends.[25] Apart from his social activities, he has been described as an excellent cook.[26]

Awards and honours[edit]

Satyarthi has been the subject of a number of documentaries, television series, talk shows, advocacy and awareness films.[27] Satyarthi has been awarded the following national and international honours:

*****

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Thursday, August 28, 2014

A00004 - Bellur Iyengar, Yogi Who Helped Bring Yoga to the West

B. K. S. Iyengar, Who Helped Bring Yoga to the West, Dies at 95

By 
    PLAY VIDEO|1:43

    Life of a Yoga Guru

    Life of a Yoga Guru

    The New York Times reporter William J. Broad remembers B.K.S. Iyengar, who helped introduce the practice of yoga to the Western world. Iyengar, 95, died on Wednesday in the Indian city of Pune.
     By Carrie Halperin on August 20, 2014.
    NEW DELHI — B. K. S. Iyengar, who helped introduce the practice of yoga to a Western world awakening to the notion of an inner life, died on Wednesday in the southern Indian city of Pune. He was 95.
    The cause was heart failure, said Abhijata Sridhar-Iyengar, his granddaughter.
    After surviving tuberculosis, typhoid and malaria as a child, Mr. Iyengar credited yoga with saving his life. He spent his midteens demonstrating “the most impressive and bewildering” positions in the court of the Maharaja of Mysore, he later recalled.
    A meeting in 1952 with the violinist Yehudi Menuhin, an early yoga devotee, proved to be a turning point, and Mr. Iyengar began traveling with Mr. Menuhin, eventually opening institutes on six continents.
    Among his devotees were the novelist Aldous Huxley, the actress Annette Bening and the designer Donna Karan, as well as a who’s who of prominent Indian figures, including the cricketer Sachin Tendulkar and the Bollywood siren Kareena Kapoor. He famously taught Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, 85 at the time, to stand on her head.
    B.K.S. Iyengar in 2005.Misha Erwitt for The New York Times
    In a 2005 book, “Light on Life,” Mr. Iyengar mused about the vast changes he had seen.
    “I set off in yoga 70 years ago when ridicule, rejection and outright condemnation were the lot of a seeker through yoga even in its native land of India,” he wrote. “Indeed, if I had become a sadhu, a mendicant holy man, wandering the great trunk roads of British India, begging bowl in hand, I would have met with less derision and won more respect.”
    The news about Mr. Iyengar — or “guru-ji,” as many here called him, using a Sanskrit honorific — rippled through India on Wednesday morning. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Twitter that he was “deeply saddened” by Mr. Iyengar’s death and offered “condolences to his followers all over the world.”
    Mr. Iyengar’s practice is characterized by long asanas, or postures, that require extraordinary will and discipline. A reporter who watched daily practice in 2002, when Mr. Iyengar was 83, said that he held one headstand for six minutes, swiveling his legs to the right and the left, and that when he finished, “his shoulder-length hair was awry, he seemed physically depleted,” but he wore the smile of a gleeful child.
    Ms. Sridhar-Iyengar said her grandfather recognized early on that yoga, up until then viewed as a mystical pursuit, “had something for everybody, not just the intellectually or spiritually inclined.”
    “He felt satisfied,” she said. “Even at the end, even a few weeks before, he said, ‘I’m satisfied with what I’ve done.’ He took yoga to the world. He knew that.”
    Bellur Krishnamachar Sundararaja Iyengar was born on Dec. 14, 1918, into a poor family in the southern state of Karnataka. The 11th of 13 children, he was born in the midst of an influenza outbreak. Three of his siblings died before reaching adulthood, and he watched his father, a teacher, die of appendicitis when he was 9 years old. Mr. Iyengar himself contracted tuberculosis, typhoid and malaria; by the time he began studying yoga, at 16, he was painfully frail.
    “My arms were thin, my legs were spindly, and my stomach protruded in an ungainly manner,” he wrote. “My head used to hang down, and I had to lift it with great effort.”
    His first teacher was his brother-in-law, a Brahmin scholar who had set up a school of yoga at the Jaganmohan Palace, and who sometimes denied his student food if his performance was deemed inadequate. Mr. Iyengar, then a teenager, was the youngest member of the Maharaja of Mysore’s entourage, and was asked to demonstrate his ability to stretch and bend his body for visiting dignitaries and guests.
    Mr. Menuhin, who visited India in 1952, heard of his practice and penciled him in for a five-minute meeting, and was so instantly impressed that the session went on for more than three hours. Mr. Iyengar recalled, in an interview with CNN, that “the moment I adjusted him and took him, he said, ‘I’ve never felt this sense of joy, elation.’ ”
    Mr. Iyengar performing yoga at his institute in Pune, India. He credited the practice with saving his life after bouts of illness. Bhaskar Paul/India Today Group, via Getty Images
    The violinist later brought Mr. Iyengar to Switzerland, where he introduced him to other prominent Westerners who became his followers. In his first visit to New York in 1956, Mr. Iyengar said he encountered little interest in yoga. It was not until the next decade that he began to attract crowds.
    “We were just coming out of the ’60s change-your-consciousness thing, and many of us were in our heads, and wanting to meditate, and reach Samadhi,” or enlightenment, Patricia Walden, a longtime student of Mr. Iyengar’s, said in an interview in 2000. “Iyengar was, like, ‘Stand on your feet. Feel your feet.’ He was so practical. His famous quote was, ‘How can you know God if you don’t know your big toe?’ ”
    Were it not for his celebrity in the West, Mr. Iyengar would hardly have gained a reputation in India, said Latha Satish, who heads a major yoga institute in the southern city of Chennai.
    “He was at the right time at the right place; he would not have survived here,” Mr. Satish said. In India, he said, “everybody was interested in Western education; yoga was not so popular.” Mr. Iyengar’s trademark improvisations — like the use of blocks, blankets and straps to assist in holding difficult postures — were adopted “because of the need of students abroad,” he said.
    Mr. Iyengar’s survivors include a son, Prashant; five daughters, Geeta, Vinita, Suchita, Sunita and Savitha; five grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
    Past students recalled Mr. Iyengar as warm and charismatic, but also strict. Elizabeth Kadetsky, who wrote a memoir of the year she spent studying with him, recalled that she was standing on her head in a class when he “took his fingers and shoved them in my upper back, and bellowed, ‘In the headstand, this portion of the back is not straight.’ ”
    As his influence spread, she said, he was fiercely competitive with other leading yoga gurus, and would get cranky when asked about their methods.
    “He demanded loyalty,” she said. “One had to be 100 percent with him.”
    By the time he reached his 80s, Mr. Iyengar had become accustomed to the kind of reception usually reserved for pop stars. As power yoga became a multimillion-dollar industry, he occasionally cringed at the commercialization of the practice, and wondered whether it would survive its own popularity. But the pleasure he took in the practice was unaffected.
    At the end of a session in 2002, he lay on his back, knees bent so that his calves were beneath his thighs, arms out to either side, weights holding him down. He lay still for 12 minutes, perfectly immobile except for the twitch of a pinkie. Asked what he was thinking, he replied, “Nothing.”
    “I can remain thoughtfully thoughtless,” he said. “It is not an empty mind.”
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    Sunday, January 26, 2014

    A00003 - Suchitra Sen, Bengali Cinema Actress

    Suchitra Sen, Actress Famed in Bengali Cinema, Dies at 82

    By HARESH PANDYA





      Suchitra Sen Associated Press
      Suchitra Sen, one of India’s best-known movie actresses, who remained famous more than 30 years after she made her last film, died on Friday in Calcutta. She was 82.
      The cause was a heart attack, said Dr. Subrata Maitra of Belle Vue Hospital, where she died.
      Ms. Sen, who appeared in both Bengali and Hindi films, was in such demand at the height of her fame that the celebrated filmmaker Satyajit Ray scrapped his proposed film “Devi Chaudhurani” because she was not available. Her refusal to act in a film by the great Hindi showman Raj Kapoor made headlines.
      She became a recluse after retiring from movies in 1978 and was often compared to another famous recluse, Greta Garbo. But she continued to be talked about nonetheless.
      “She knew how to create that mystery around herself and how to carry it along with her long after she stepped out of the tinsel world,” the Bengali actress Madhabi Mukherjee said. “Even today, we talk about her, her films and her unique sense of style.”
      Ms. Sen and Uttam Kumar were the most successful romantic pair in the history of Bengali cinema, famous for their passionate on-screen chemistry. They appeared together in 30 films, including the hits “Agni Pariksha” (1954) and “Saptapadi” (1961). 
      Ms. Sen appeared in more than 50 Bengali films and seven Bollywood, or Hindi, films. Her first Bollywood film was Bimal Roy’s “Devdas” (1955), a major box-office success.
      Her most famous Hindi film after “Devdas” was “Aandhi” (1975), which caused controversy because the character she played, an Indian politician, was thought to be based on Indira Gandhi, the country’s prime minister at the time. “Aandhi” was banned for a time during the state of emergency declared by Ms. Gandhi in 1975, although it had already been in theaters for several months.
      Suchitra Sen was born Rama Dasgupta on April 6, 1931, in Pabna, which is now in Bangladesh. One of five children of Karunamoy Dasgupta, a school headmaster, and Indira Devi, a homemaker, she was originally more interested in singing than acting.
      In 1951, she auditioned as a soundtrack singer but was instead offered an acting role by the director Sukumar Dasgupta. Her fourth film, the romantic comedy “Sharey Chuattar” (1953), was her first pairing with Uttam Kumar and her first major success.
      Ms. Sen won many honors, including a Silver Award at the Moscow International Film Festival for her performance in the 1963 Bengali film “Saat Pake Bandha.” She was given the Padma Shri, India’s fourth-highest civilian honor, in 1972. In 2005 she turned down the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, the highest honor in Indian cinema, because she did not want to go to Delhi and collect it in person from the president of India. The West Bengal government gave her the Banga Bibhushanon, its highest award, in absentia in 2012.





      Ms. Sen’s husband, Dibanath Sen, whom she married in 1947, died in 1970. She is survived by her daughter, Moon Moon Sen, a well-known Bengali and Hindi actress, and two granddaughters, Raima Sen and Riya Sen, who are also actresses.

      *****

      Suchitra Sen (Bengali pronunciation: [ʃuːtʃiːraː ʃeːn] About this sound listen (help·info)), born Rama Dasgupta (About this sound listen (help·info); 6 April 1931 – 17 January 2014), was an Indian actress who acted in several Bengali and a few Hindi films. The movies in which she was paired opposite Uttam Kumar became classics in the history ofBengali Cinema.[1]
      Suchitra Sen was the first Indian actress to receive an award at an international film festival when, at the 1963 Moscow International Film Festival, she won the Silver Prize for Best Actress for Saat Paake Bandha.[2][3] In 1972, she was awarded the Padma Shri, one of the highest civilian awards in India.[4] From 1979 on, she retreated from public life and shunned all forms of public contact; for this she is often compared to Greta Garbo.[5][6] In 2005, she refused theDadasaheb Phalke Award, the highest cinematic award in India, to stay out of the public eye.[7] In 2012, she was conferred the West Bengal Government's highest honour: Banga Bibhushan.[8]

      Personal life and education[edit]

      Suchitra Sen was born in Pabna, in the present-day Pabna District ofBangladesh, on 6 April 1931.[9][10] Her father Late Karunamoy Dasgupta was the headmaster of the local school, and her mother Indira Devi was a homemaker. She was their fifth child and third daughter. She received her formal education in Pabna.
      Suchitra Sen married Dibanath Sen, son of wealthy Bengali industrialist Adinath Sen, in 1947[11] and had one daughter, Moon Moon Sen, who is a former actress. Her father-in-law Adinath Sen was supportive of her acting in films after her marriage.[12] Her industrialist husband initially invested a lot in her career and gave her all possible support.[13]
      Suchitra Sen made a successful entry into Bengali films in 1952, and then a less successful transition to the Bollywood film industry. According to persistent but unconfirmed reports in the Bengali press, her marriage was strained by her success in the film industry.[14]

      Career[edit]

      Suchitra Sen made her debut in films with Shesh Kothaay in 1952, but it was never released.[15] The following year saw her act opposite Uttam Kumar in Sharey Chuattor, a film by Nirmal Dey. It was a box-office hit and is remembered for launching Uttam-Suchitra as a leading pair. They went on to become the icons for Bengali dramas for more than 20 years, becoming almost a genre unto themselves.[16]
      She received a Best Actress Award for the film Devdas (1955), which was her first Hindi movie. Her Bengali melodramas and romances, especially with Uttam Kumar, made her the most famous Bengali actress ever.[17] Her films ran through the 1960s and '70s. She continued to act in films even after her husband died, such as in the Hindi film Aandhi (1974). Aandhi was inspired by India's Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.[18] Sen received a Filmfare Award nomination as Best Actress, while Sanjeev Kumar, who essayed the role of her husband, won the Filmfare as Best Actor.[19]
      One of her best known performances was in Deep Jwele Jaai (1959). She played Radha, a hospital nurse employed by a progressive psychiatrist, Pahadi Sanyal, who is expected to develop a personal relationship with male patients as part of their therapy. Sanyal diagnoses the hero, Basanta Choudhury, as having an unresolved Oedipal dilemma. He orders Radha to play the role though she is hesitant as in a similar case she had fallen in love with the patient. She finally agrees and bears up to Choudhury's violence, impersonates his mother, sings his poetic compositions and in the process falls in love again. In the end, even as she brings about his cure, she suffers a nervous breakdown. The film is noted for its partly lit close-ups of Sen, which set the tone of the film.[20] Asit Sen remade the film in Hindi as Khamoshi (1969) with Waheeda Rehman in the Suchitra Sen role.[21]
      Suchitra Sen's other landmark film with Asit Sen was Uttar Falguni (1963). She plays the dual role of a courtesan, Pannabai, and her daughter Suparna, a lawyer. Critics note that she brought a great deal of poise, grace and dignity to the role of a fallen woman determined to see her daughter grow up in a good, clean environment.[22][23][24]
      Suchitra Sen's international success came in 1963, when she won the best actress award at the Moscow International Film Festival for the movie Saat Paake Bandha, becoming the first Indian actress to receive an international film award.[25]
      A film critic summed up Suchitra Sen's career and continuing legacy as "one half of one of Indian cinema's most popular and abiding screen pairs, Suchitra Sen redefined stardom in a way that few actors have done, combining understated sensuality, feminine charm and emotive force and a no-nonsense gravitas to carve out a persona that has never been matched, let alone surpassed in Indian cinema"[26]

      In retirement[edit]

      Suchitra Sen refused Satyajit Ray's offer due to a scheduling problem. As a result, Ray never made the film based on the novelDevi Chaudhurani. She also refused Raj Kapoor's offer for a film under the RK banner.[27]
      Sen continued to act after her husband's death in 1970, but called it a day when Pronoy Pasha flopped,[28] and retired from the screen in 1978 after a career of over 25 years to a life of quiet seclusion. She was to do a film project Nati Binodini, also starring Rajesh Khanna,[29] but the film was shelved mid-way after shooting when she decided to quit acting.
      She assiduously avoided the public gaze after her retirement and devoted her time to the Ramakrishna Mission.[9] Suchitra Sen was a contender for the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 2005, provided she was ready to accept it in person. Her refusal to go to New Delhi and personally accept it from the President of India deprived her of the award.[30]

      Death[edit]


      Suchitra Sen remembrance at Rabindra Sadan, Kolkata. 19 Jan 2014.
      Suchitra Sen was admitted to the hospital on 24 December 2013 and was diagnosed with a lung infection. She was reported to have been recovering well in the first week of January.[31] She died at 8.25 am on 17 January 2014, due to a heart attack.[32][33]
      Suchitra Sen's death has been condoled by many leaders, including the President of India Dr. Pranab Mukherjee, the Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, and BJP's Prime Ministerial candidateNarendra Modi.[34] A gun salute was given before her cremation, as ordered byMamata Banerjee, the Chief Minister of West Bengal.[35]
      Respecting her fierce desire for complete privacy, her last rites were performed at Kolkata's Kaioratola crematorium, barely five and half hours after she breathed her last, with her coffin reaching the crematorium in a flower decked hearse with dark-tinted windows. Despite being Bengal's greatest star, referred to as "Mahanayika", she had consciously chosen to step into oblivion and she remained an enigma till her last, although thousands of fans had converged at the crematorium to catch one last glimpse of their idol. Her entire medical treatment had also been done in seclusion and secrecy.[36]

      Selected filmography[edit]

      Note: Unless otherwise noted, the below mentioned films are in Bengali language.
      YearTitleRoleNotes
      1952Shesh KothayUnreleased
      1953Saat Number Kayedi
      1953Bhagaban Srikrishna ChaitanyaBishnupriya
      1953Sharey ChuattorRomola
      1953Kajori
      1954Sadanander MelaSheela
      1954Ora Thaake Odhare
      1954Grihaprabesh
      1954Atom BombAppeared as an extra in the film shot in 1951 but released in 1954
      1954DhuliMinati
      1954Maraner PareyTanima
      1954BalaygrasManimala
      1954Annapurnar Mandir
      1954Agnipariksha
      1954Sanjher Pradip
      1955DevdasParvati (Paro)First Hindi language film
      1955ShapmochanMadhuri
      1955Sabar UpareyRita
      1955Snaajhghar
      1955Snaajher Pradeep
      1955Mejo Bou
      1955Bhalabaasa
      1956SagarikaSagarika
      1956TrijamaSwarupa
      1956Amar Bou
      1956ShilpiAnjana
      1956Ekti RaatSwantana
      1956Subharaatri
      1957Harano SurDr. Roma Banerjee
      1957Pathe Holo DeriMallika
      1957Jeeban Trishna
      1957ChandranathSaraju
      1957MusafirShakuntala VermaHindi language
      1957ChampakaliHindi language
      1958Rajlakshmi O SrikantaRajlakshmi
      1958Surya ToranAunita Chatarjee
      1958IndraniIndrani
      1959Deep Jwele JaaiRadha
      1959Chaaowa Pawoa
      1960HospitalSarbari
      1960Smriti Tuku ThaakShobha
      1960Bombai Ka BabooMayaHindi language
      1960SarhadHindi language
      1961SaptapadiRina Brown
      1961Saathihara
      1962BipashaBipasha
      1963Saat Paake BadhaArchana
      1963Uttar FhalguniDebjani / Pannabai / Suparna
      1964Sandhya Deeper SikhaJayanti Bannerjee
      1966MamtaDevyani / Pannabai / SuparnaHindi language
      1967GrihadahaAchala
      1969KamallataKamallata
      1970Megh KaloDr. Nirmalya Roy
      1971Fariyaad
      1971Nabaraag
      1972Alo Amaar AloAtashi
      1972Haar Maana HaarNeera
      1974Devi ChaudhuraniPrafullamukhi
      1974Srabana Sandhya
      1975Priyo Bandhabi
      1975AandhiAarti DeviHindi language
      1976DattaBijoya
      1978Pranoy Pasha

      Awards[edit]

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