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'It is Our Duty': How Professionals in Odisha's Puri Are Keeping the Art of Pattachitra Alive

As three cars of tourists make their way into the heritage crafts village of Raghurajpur in Odisha's Puri district which is famous worldwide for its 'Pattachitra' art, the villagers display anxious looks. Sitting in the foyers of their houses which are artistically painted, they look up curiously at the visitors in the car before passing a smile. Some turn back to carefully paint the 'Pattachitra' while some welcome the visitors with folded hands........

You Can Now Download 1.9 Million Free Images From the British Museum

To help slow the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, the British Museum will sadly remain shuttered for the foreseeable future. But officials at the London institution are still serving up a daily dish of culture via the museum’s website, which houses a vast repository of digitized items from its collections. A total of 1.9 million British Museum images—280,000 of which are new additions—are now , reports Sarah Cascone for . Released under a , all of these photographs are free........

What Is The Hardest Language To Learn?

After some extensive research on the topic, we discovered that the answer is quite complicated. The complications occur because the answer is largely subjective (opinion), and it also depends on what a person’s native language is. The answer for one individual may be completely different for another. This is true even among speakers of the same native language. One English speaking individual may pick up Korean relatively quickly while that same person may have trouble grasping Japanese. Yet another native English speaker may have no trouble picking up Japanese but find it nearly impossib........

Renowned Malayalam poet-activist Sugathakumari dies of covid-19 complications

Acclaimed Malayalam poet and environmental activist Sugathakumari passed away Wednesday following covid-19 complications at the Medical College Hospital in Thiruvananthapuram. She was 86. For the past one week, the Padma Shri awardee had been hospitalised with severe pneumonia after testing positive for Covid-19. She was on ventilator support after her body stopped responding to medication. Doctors said she was suffering ........

International Gita Mahotsav 2020: 55,000 school students to recite 19 verses from Bhagavad Gita

At this year’s International Gita Mahotsav, a total of 55,000 school students will collectively recite 19 verses from the Hindu scripture, Bhagavad Gita, in the state of Haryana an official statement said on Thursday. The International Gita Mahotsav 2020 will be held from December 17 to 25 this year. The official statement further read that the recitation of Bhagavad Gita verses will be held in online mode in view of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, and will take place on December 25 at 12 noon, ........

How non-translatable Sanskrit words can enrich the English vocabulary

Sanskrit Non-Translatablesis anaudacious attempt at Sanskritisingthe English language by introducing powerful Sanskrit words into English vocabulary without translation, thus enriching it. French words likeDéjà vuandConnoisseur etc are used in English as it is, as there are no equivalents in English for these terms. There many such examples from other languages where words are assimilated it English. However, a lot of words picked from Sanskrit, when translated to English lose the essence of ........

In a bid to lower carbon footprint, a group of Indian designers turns food waste into haute couture

Gautam Gupta loves bananas. The Delhi-based fashion designer always carries one in his car, “just in case a meal gets missed”. So, naturally, when the couturier decided to reduce his carbon footprint, he took the fruit out of his fruit bowl and put it onto the catwalk in the form of a sustainable luxury wedding collection crafted from banana fibre. Gupta is not the only one picking up fibres that would otherwise go to waste. A growing number of Indian ........

Why Mandarin is losing its charm in India

Once a sought-after language, Mandarin is losing its signature spell over Mumbai’s men of enterprise. The decline began in June this year when the economic toll of Covid-19 conspired with the border clash to puncture the enthusiasm of learners. Stoked further by government crackdowns on Chinese apps, the downtrend has upset the language’s erstwhile status as a rite of passage of every entrepreneur hoping to cash in on low production costs in China........

The S. Varadarajan Interview: ‘The harder you work, the more gifted you get. Nothing happens naturally’

In the nine decades since it began, the Chennai Music Season that brought a coveted UNESCO recognition and global attention to the city hasn’t been disrupted once. All these years, the resilience of the Sabhas that organise the music concerts and generations of musicians ensured that Carnatic music was celebrated in its highest quality and in abundance every December. No war or natural catastrophe came in their way. However, for the first time, they have been ch........

Art Meets Cold Heart | Outlook India Magazine

The message was standoffish: vacate your government-allotted homes in Delhi by December 31 or face eviction. The notice was sent to Mohiniyattam dancer Bharati Shivaji, painter Jatin Das, Pandit Bhajan Sopori, Pt Birju Maharaj, Rita Ganguly and Ustad F. Wasifuddin Dagar among others. A PTI report says the artists, dancers and musicians felt harassed and humiliated. ”It seems the powers-that-be don’t value traditional art-fo­r­ms,” says Shivaji, who lives in the Asian Games V........

Sahitya Academy award winner Shaik Khaja Hussain, popular as Devi Priya, passes away

Noted Telugu poet, journalist, scriptwriter, and Kendra Sahitya Academy award winner Shaik Khaja Hussain (70) popularly known as Devi Priya, passed away on November 21 morning. The renowned poet died of a brief illness in Hyderabad. Devi Priya was born in Tadikonda in Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh. Devi Priya bagged the Sahitya Akademi Award 2017, for his book Gaali Rangu. His "Running Commentary" on contemporary politics in Udayam Telugu daily was very popular and thought-provoking. Later, he continued the........

AI 'resurrects' 54 Roman emperors, in stunningly lifelike images

An artist used machine learning to create the photorealistic portraits. Ancient Roman emperors' faces have been brought to life in digital reconstructions; the unnervingly realistic image project includes the Emperors Caligula, and , among others.  The features of these long-dead rulers have been preserved in hundreds of sculptures, but even the most detailed carvings can't convey what these men truly looked like when they were alive. To explore that, Canadian cinematographer and virtual reality designer Daniel Voshart used machine learning........

Beyond Region and Language: SP Balasubrahmanyam's Mother Tongue was Music

There has hardly ever been any playback singer in the history of Indian films who could transcend the borders of regionalities and languages and move millions of hearts with his/her songs like SP Balasubrahmanyam always did. Fondly known as SPB, he sang in 16 different languages, including Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Hindi, and Malayalam. However, his mother tongue was always music. He would often tell his fans, "You all have made me sing in so many different languages and everyone who speaks those languages has always ........

Veteran Singer S P Balasubrahmanyam Passes Away

Popular playback singer S P Balasubrahmanyam, who had been undergoing treatment at a hospital in Chennai after testing positive for COVID-19 on August 5, passed away after a prolonged illness. He died on Friday afternoon at 1.04 PM. He was 74 and survived by his wife, a son, and a daughter. He was admitted to the MGM Health Care hospital with mild COVID19 symptoms on August 5. His condition had deteriorated on August 13. His condition saw much improvement early this month and his son even declared that SPB would soon ........

The movements that betray who you are

While leafing through some old research papers, Hillary Elfenbein noticed something strange about the photographs in one famous study. The research from the late 1980s had asked volunteers if they were able to in the faces of Japanese and Caucasian people. Some of the “Japanese” faces were posed by Japanese-Americans, the rest by Japanese nationals. When Elfenbein herself looked at photographs, . Her collaborator, Abby Marsh, found that she could too. So they ran an experime........

Meet Priyanshi Somani, Human Calculator Who Broke World Records At 11 Years Old

In our school days, one of the most challenging subjects that we had to deal with was (at least for me it was). What started as basic addition, subtraction and multiplication advanced to bringing in geometry and algebra that truly screwed with our minds. In the year 2006, when she was around seven years old, just a year after learning mental maths, she became the National champion in abacus and mental arithmetic competition in India. By 2007, she went international by becoming a champion in Abacus in 2007 at the World Competition held in Malaysia. 2........

Could Singing Spread COVID-19? Yes, Says Study; Advices People to Avoid Loud & Consonant-Rich Singing

In a fight against novel coronavirus (Covid-19), the researchers have found that singing — particularly loud and consonant-rich singing — spreads a lot of aerosol particles and droplets into the surrounding air — increasing the spread of Covid-19 virus. “We have studied the amount of particles we actually emit when we sing — and by extension — if we contribute to the increased spread of Covid-19 by singing,” said the study authors from Lund University (LU) in Sweden. There are many reports about the spreading of Covid-19 in connection with........

Playback Singer SP Balasubramanyam Tests Negative for COVID-19

Playback singer SP Balasubramanyam who has been in the intensive care unit of a Chennai hospital after contracting the COVID-19 disease, has tested negative for the virus. In a video message to his fans, SP Charan qualified it as a significant development, considering that his lungs are healing. The singer has been watching a lot of tennis on his mobile device inside the hospital, and is all primed for the forthcoming short format cricket series IPL. Earlier, Charan had denied a news report that his father was COVID-19 negative, a........

World Photography Day: Remembering Cameras That Advanced the Art Over 130 Years

The iconic Leica M3 (1954), often credited as the forefather of the venerable Leica M-system cameras that are worshipped today. World Photography Day is here, and is likely the first time in living memory where we would all be urged to celebrate from the confines of our home, thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite that, it is impossible to imagine a world today, where taking photographs would not exist. In fact, photography is so taken for granted that e........

Seven Thousand Wonders Of India: An Artistic Pilgrimage Of India's Lesser Known Temples-Part I

How to see a temple - in all its grandeur, glory and artistic magnificence? Here is a series of articles that will take you on a virtual tour of the lesser known temples of this land where the wonders are endless. This is an introduction to equip the reader with tools to undertake the journey with the writer over the next few weeks. “Full many a gem of purest ray serene, the dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bearFull many a flower is born to blush unseen, and waste its sweetness in the desert air.” -........