The actor, who is busy prepping for her Tamil action film, says networking exists, but ultimately it comes down to auditions.
Shubra Aiyappa is busy honing her skills for her upcoming Tamil action film Aaganya.
The actor, who is learning martial arts from a Russian expert, says, “I’ve always been a fitness enthusiast, doing yoga and weight training, so thankfully the foundation is decent. We are going to start shooting soon in Chennai and I’m very excited.”
She shares that the film was offered to her two-and-a-half months ago when she was travelling. “The script sounded so fantastic on the phone that I flew down, auditioned and I was like hell, yes, I’m doing this.”
This is the actor’s first project since the lockdown.
She was shooting for Ramana Avatara when things came to a standstill. “The lockdown was an eye opener for me, professionally. I feel, as actors, we are very rigid that we can just be actors. Maybe it’s an egoistic thing (laughs). I realised that you can be so much more. I had a myopic way of looking at things, and that changed.
My mother is a wedding planner and when things opened up, I curated 10 weddings!” she says.
“Personally, I got to spend time with my family in a long time. I left home at 16 for modelling. I was in New York for a year and then in Mumbai. The lockdown turned out to be a blessing as I could be with my family in Bangalore,” adds the Vajrakaya (2015) actor.
source: http://www.hindustantimes.com / Hindustan Times / Home> Entertainment> Tamil Cinema / by Neha Sharma / March 23rd, 2021
Harshika Poonacha, who is gearing up to make her Bhojpuri film debut shortly, is set to make inroads in that industry.
The actress, we hear, has signed up for two more Bhojpuri films that she will start shooting for after the release of her debut. “My first Bhojpuri film is complete and is ready for release. I will start shooting for my two new projects thereafter,” says Harshika, adding that after a rather lackluster 2020, she is looking at this year with a lot of positivity.
“I am grateful that things are happening for me. I just had two very rough years, first with losing my dad and soon after with the pandemic and, now things are slowly back on track,” she says. Her Bhojpuri films apart, Harshika is also looking forward to her two Kannada projects , in which she says she has challenging roles.
“I have bagged two Kannada film projects and both are romantic thrillers.
Om Prema will see me as a boss lady who is the CEO of a company and gets the job done. She knows how to succeed in the corporate world and take care of her employees,” she says. The other yet-to-be-titled project has her playing a journalist who is extremely critical and curious by nature. Speaking about the character Harshika says, “I play a journalist who looks at every morsel of information with microscopic precision and has a very inquisitive nature. The script has been written well and I have already shot for a few days for the film,” she says. The actress will resume shooting for this film in April.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> News> Entertainment> Kannada>Movies / by Joyeeta Chakravorty, TNN / March 21st, 2021
Kumar worked with adivasis in Andhra’s Araku Valley for decades, grew coffee of the highest quality and took it to Paris in 2017. On March 19, Araku Coffee opened its first café in India in Bengaluru. Kumar wants to replicate the Araku model for other crops as well, he tells us how
Cafe L’Orange
In the late 1990s, the late Kallam Anji Reddy, founder-chairman of pharmaceutical company Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, appointed developmental economist Manoj Kumar as the head of his NGO, the Naandi Foundation. Kumar’s brief was to foster sustainable livelihoods in rural India.
One of the many projects Kumar embarked on in the early 2000s was to get adivasi farmers in Andhra Pradesh’s Araku Valley to grow specialty coffee, which, simply put, is organic and sustainably grown coffee of the highest quality. To many people, it appeared to a quixotic endeavour. Araku was not a traditional coffee-growing region. Kumar, who grew up in Kerala drinking kattan kaapi, the traditional home-brewed black coffee, had no real knowledge about coffee; and the Araku Valley had been riddled with Naxal insurgency for decades. Kumar worked with, and lived among, the tribals for over a decade and through biodynamic farming and the formation of an adivasi cooperative, one of the world’s largest fair-trade and organic certified cooperatives, he achieved the seemingly impossible.
In 2017, Kumar opened the first Araku Cafe and store in Paris and about a year later, Araku Coffee bagged top honours for the best coffee pod at the prestigious Prix Epicures OR awards in Paris. On March 19, Araku opened its first cafe in India. The 6000 sq ft, two-level flagship cafe in Indira Nagar in Bengaluru features, among others, an in-house roastery, the country’s first Specialty Coffee Association-certified Coffee Academy, a book store, and food that is sustainably procured.
In an interview to Moneycontrol, Kumar talks about the growing interest in specialty coffee in India, its transformative potential, and about replicating the Araku model in other parts of the country. Edited excerpts:
How do you see Araku’s flagship cafe take the specialty coffee story forward in India?
By and large, the production of specialty coffee in India has so far been almost nil, barring a few micro estates. We have been a notable exception. Our success has made coffee growers realise that it is possible to get much higher value and definitely profits if they can elevate their coffee to the level of a specialty coffee. I’m hoping that this desire to excel will be infectious to the community of coffee growers in India. They could learn to look at coffee as being more than just an average-to-poor-quality mass-produced commodity, which is neither financially rewarding nor sustainable. We are blessed to have the climate and topography to grow coffee. Europe and most of the coffee-drinking nations don’t grow coffee. I see our cafe in Bangalore as a place where people can interact and learn more about the power of specialty coffee. And we would want to take it beyond producers to policy makers and to everyone through a consumer movement to inculcate a certain pride in the opportunity we have to make coffee a profitable Indian-origin commodity and revive India’s agriculture to an extent. Araku is not a traditional coffee-growing region, and yet we have grown world-class coffee there. So, you can imagine the potential of places such as Chikmagalur and Coorg…
Tamagoyaki Toastie is on the menu of Araku’s café in Bengaluru.
Have you met people from the coffee-growing community who want to get into specialty coffee?
Absolutely. When we started the Araku journey, we had only between 10 percent to 20 percent of farmers whose coffee could be rated as specialty coffee. Today, I have 80 percent of my farmers all growing specialty coffee. I have requests from many small estate and large estate owners, and even people who are into wine now want to know if we can help them with the same regenerative agricultural practices that made our coffee world-class.
Araku Coffee co-founder Manoj Kumar
You’ve been to specialty coffee hotspots across the world. How have your experiences shaped the flagship store?
Scandinavia inspired me a lot. The quality of service there was based predominantly on knowledge. Every brewer, roaster, and barista I met had a completely different level of knowledge and that knowledge was shared with the customer. A relatable example would be going to an Apple store for the first time and discovering that every staffer has an in-depth knowledge about the products. So, one of the things I took away from there was that our team had to be knowledgeable about what they were selling, even if it meant setting up a coffee school at the cafe. Our team is not just selling a random service, they are selling coffeeology. And our prices are extremely competitive. Somebody even mentioned that a lot of the coffee we serve is, more or less, the same price as the coffee you get at Starbucks.
The Naandi Foundation has been at work replicating or adapting the Araku model in other parts of India. How has that worked out?
The Naandi Foundation is now massively expanding its agricultural footprint. We are now in a large way expanding into Wardha and the Vidarbha region, replicating the Araku model with other crops. We started off with pomegranate and that is very much on track but we are also exploring or expanding into other portfolios. Turmeric in that region is world-class, and it has a Geographical Indication tag. Then, we looked at red gram and other pulses. The idea is to have a bouquet of produce for the farmer to get it to be profitable and to identify one or two which become unique to that region. I think the winners here will be turmeric, pulses, and organic cotton. We are also looking closely at working in Meghalaya and Kerala and the Konkan belt.
You first went to the Araku Valley in 2001. Looking back, which was the turning point of your journey?
I’d think earning the trust and respect of the tribals was the turning point. I had started with just 1,000 farmers, and I would tell them that one day their land would produce a coffee that would be world-class. And they would always tell me that they wouldn’t let me down. That kind of love and trust from their end really made all the difference.
MURALI K MENON works on content strategy at HaymarketSAC.
source: http://www.moneycontrol.com / MoneyControl / Home> News> Trends> Features / by Murali K Menon / March 20th, 2021
The following newly elected Directors of the Mysuru, Chamarajanagar and Kodagu District SC/ST Industrialists and Goods/ Equipment Supplies and Marketing Co-operative Society Ltd., Mysuru, have been appointed as the Convenors and Co-Convenors of the respective districts, according to a press release from the Society President Vijayashankar:
Chamarajanagar: Convenor – D. Eshwar; Co-Convenors – C.S. Akshay and M.S. Chandrashekar; Kodagu: Convenor – Y.T. Paramesh; Co-Convenors – M. Honnaiah and M. Chandra; Mysuru City: Convenor – P. Nanjundaswamy; Co-Convenors – M. Chandrashekar and Theinmozhi; Mysuru Rural: Convenor – Shivanna; Co-Convenors – Dr. P. Shobharani and B. Kalavathi.
source: http://www.starofmysore.com / Star of Mysore / Home> News / March 21st, 2021
Members of this group have a secondary metabolite used in colon cancer: Expert
Researchers of western Assam’s Bodoland University have recorded a new plant species that may go a long way in fighting cancer.
The species, named Ophiorrhiza recurvipetala, has been found at 675 metres above mean sea level in central Assam’s Dima Hasao district. It has been classified under the Rubiaceae family of flowering plants, to which the plant yielding coffee belongs.
Recurvipetala means petals curved back.
The finding was published in the March 2021 issue of the Nordic Journal of Botany.
“This is a new species to plant science and may be a potential anticancer research candidate. All members of this group have a secondary metabolite called Camptothecin used in colon cancer,” Sanjib Baruah, assistant professor of Bodoland University’s Department of Botany said.
He co-authored the study with research scholars Birina Bhuyan of Bodoland University and Selim Mehmud of Guwahati’s Cotton University.
“It is now our turn to find the Camptothecin content occurring in this novel species. There is a possibility to cultivate this species as a promising medicinal plant for the northeast, but its agrotechnology is not known,” Dr. Baruah told The Hindu.
The researchers had spent a few months in the hilly areas of Jatinga and Haflong in Dima Hasao district to locate a few plants on a wooded mound. “The new species is restricted to this area where it grows in moist shady places,” he said.
Ophiorrhiza is a predominantly herbaceous genus distributed from eastern India to the West Pacific from South China to northern Australia. According to the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families, 2017, it is a notably species-rich and taxonomically complicated genus with about 318 species worldwide.
In India, 47 species and nine varieties have been recorded and among them 21 species and one variety are from the northeast.
The Ophiorrhiza recurvipetala is a perennial herb with a maximum height of 60 cm and is branched. It yields a creamy white flower.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> National / by Rahul Kamakar / Guwahati – March 19th, 2021
Using social media as their tool and selfie culture as a weapon, this couple is urging the residents across the state to keep aside a bowl of water for the birds during this summer season.
‘Hakkigondu Gutuku’ (a drop to the birds) campaign is receiving an optimistic reaction from many residents across the state including children. (Photo | EPS)
Madikeri (Karnataka):
A couple in Kodagu has started a unique campaign to protect the non-migratory birds during the peak summer season.
Using social media as their tool and selfie culture as a weapon, this couple is urging the residents across the state to keep aside a bowl of water for the birds during this summer season.
‘Hakkigondu Gutuku’ (a drop to the birds) campaign has started from March 10 by Gautham Kiraganduru and his wife Sumana, which is receiving an optimistic reaction from many residents across the state including children. Known for their social works, the couple established ‘Namma Pratishtana’ firm in the district and is promoting various eco-friendly activities.
“Birds are an important part of the ecosystem and they ensure balance in the environment. There is a need to promote and preserve the bird species. Hence, to protect the birds during the summer season, we have started this initiative where we have requested the participants to set up a DIY arrangement to feed birds. The residents have to keep some water and grains for the birds and then click a selfie alongside this setup. We will pick the three best pictures and honour the winners with prizes,” explained Gautham.
The initiative that is making noise across social media has gained attention from not just the residents of Kodagu, but also from the residents across the state including Davanagere, Uttara Kannada, Dharawad, Bellary, Hassan, and Shivamogga among others. “We have received numerous selfie photographs of people setting up the bird feeders. Also, international kickboxer Girish R Gowda has extended support to this initiative,” added Gautham. He explained that numerous trekkers are also participating in this initiative and are setting up feeders across several spots.
Last year, this couple had gained attention after they signed up for body donation during their wedding ceremony. Instead of distributing wedding invitation cards that have low shelf-life, they printed Kannada books with works of unrecognized writers and shared them as wedding invitations. They had also grown over 1,000 different saplings and distributed the same as wedding gifts to the guests.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Good News / by Prajna GR / Express News March / March 18th, 2021
Princess Gouramma depicted in Indian dress and rich jewellery, leaning on an Indian table. She is holding a Bible, an allusion to her conversion to Christianity. (Franz Xaver Winterhalter)
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Snapshot
The short life of princess Gowramma of Coorg serves as a reminder of the potential detachment and loss of identity a fiercely Western education can ensure.
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Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s recent interview with Oprah Winfrey has brought to fore the tumultuous relationship the British monarchy has with all things concerning race. Markle alleged that a member of the royal family had expressed concerns over how dark their baby Archie’s skin would be.
Notably, the Duchess of Sussex is not the first person of colour to be subjected to royal racism.
The institution’s colonial past is filled with instances of the ‘firm’ ( as Markle calls it) taking upon itself the duty of civilising the ‘coloured’ citizens of the colonies it conquered.
In this regard, the remarkable life of Princess Gowramma, the Princess of Coorg and the goddaughter of Queen Victoria, provides interesting insights into the treatment of people of colour by the imperial echelons of the nineteenth century British society.
Princess Gowramma was born in Banaras, to the deposed king of Coorg — Chikka Veerarajendra Wodeyar, who had been exiled by the British in 1834.
She was the Raja’s favourite daughter and was thus his natural choice when it came to accompanying him on his journey to England, where he intended to demand in court the return of his wealth from the East India Company.
Some sources claim that Veerarajendra conveyed his intent of converting Gowramma to Christianity to gain the good graces of the company, so as to receive permission to travel to England.
Governor General Lord Dalhousie and other directors of the company found the idea of voluntary conversion by an Indian royal quite appealing, especially since it would help improve their sagging image in Britain.
Thus, in 1852, after Gowramma had received an education in Christian mannerisms and scripture, she and her father set sail to become the first Indian royals to ever set foot in England.
Princess Gouramma depicted in Indian dress and rich jewellery, leaning on an Indian table. She is holding a Bible, an allusion to her conversion to Christianity. (Franz Xaver Winterhalter)
Upon reaching the island, the 11-year-old Gowramma was presented to Queen Victoria. The Queen, quite taken by the princess declared that she would become the godmother and even endowed Gowramma with her own name — ‘Victoria’.
The Princess of Coorg was then baptised by the Archbishop of Canterbury, at a private chapel in the Buckingham Palace, in the presence of Queen Victoria, her family, senior officials of the government and directors of the company.
Post the baptism, the Queen gifted Victoria Gowramma a bound and autographed Bible with gold embellishments. She then entrusted the princess to the care of Major and Mrs Drummond, who were to groom her with Western thought and education.
Queen Victoria took great initiative in expanding Gowramma’s social circles. She would invite Gowramma to regularly interact with her children and also bestowed upon her a title that made her equivalent to European princesses.
However, Gowramma, who was made to abandon her traditional Indian clothing for Western wear was depressed. She was cut off from all connection with her father and was instead forced to talk, dress and behave like a British aristocrat.
Unable to cope with the pressures of high society, Gowramma tried running away multiple times. She often expressed her desire for privacy and even stated that she rather live like a servant with the handmaidens than suffer the compulsions of regal life. Her troubles were dismissed by the Queen and her consort Prince Albert as ‘innate oriental weakness’ that seeks to escape civilisation.
Meanwhile, back home in India, the British had defeated Maharaja Ranjit Singh to annex Punjab. They then took his minor son, Duleep Singh, under their care.
Exiled to Fatehpur and kept away from Lahore so as to avoid chances of revolt, Duleep Singh was subjected to a Western education that eventually culminated with his acceptance of Christianity out of his own ‘free’will. He then set sail to Britain in order to formalise his conversion under the Church of England.
The Queen, to whom Duleep Singh presented the Kohinoor Diamond, took an instant liking of the Maharaja and became his godmother. She and Prince Albert in cahoots with the company plotted an alliance between Singh and Gowramma.
The hope was to use the influence generated by the marriage between two Christian Indian royals as a tool for proselytising the Indian population. This idea also had the endorsement of Singh’s English guardians — the Logins. They were firm believers in the European responsibility of spreading the word of the Bible amongst the pagan worshippers of India.
However, upon introduction, Singh was lukewarm in his response to Gowramma. He made it known to the Logins that he considered the princess more an honorary sister than a potential wife.
Gowramma, who had earlier been forgiven by the Queen for her torrid affair with a stable boy and her attempted elopement with an under-butler decided instead to marry a close friend of Singh — Lieutenant Colonel John Campbell, who had served in Bellary and was 30 years her senior.
Meanwhile, Chikka Veerajendra, who had lost a seven-year-long legal battle with the company had died.
Gowramma gave birth to a daughter named Edith Campbell on 2 July 1861. By the time Edith was three years old, Gowramma had developed signs of tuberculosis.
She died from the disease on 30 March 1864 just a few months short of her 23rd birthday.
Lieutenant Campbell, who in their short marriage had either neglected his wife or had persistently pestered her for money, disappeared after her death along with the crown jewels of Coorg that had been in her possession.
It is believed that he had only married the princess for her 1,000 pound allowance, the Queen’s favour and of course the jewels of Coorg.
The tragic life of Victoria Gowramma, a princess who had been alienated from her own land and language, was perhaps the paradigm the Britain had for the citizens of her colonies to follow.
Had Duleep Singh and Gowramma not fell short of the royal scheme envisioned by Queen Victoria, they might have had a significant role in shifting India’s religious history.
After all, colonial rulers did find religious conversion a greater instrument for the control of the colonised than plain force.
Gowramma today serves as a reminder of the potential detachment and loss of identity a fiercely Western education can ensure.
Victoria Gowramma was buried in the Brompton Cemetery, her tombstone bears the epithet composed by Queen Victoria, it contains the poignant words — “Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold” (John X,16).
source: http://www.swarajyamag.com / Swarajya / Home> Ideas / by Adithi Gurkar / March 17th, 2021
The project has been launched for the first time in the country on an experimental basis by the Khadi and Village Industries Commission with support from the management of Ponnampet Forestry College.
Beekeeping equipment distributed to a farmer during the event (Photo | Special arrangement)
Madikeri :
A research project to reduce human-elephant conflict with the help of honey bees was inaugurated at Ponnampet Forestry College in Kodagu on Monday. The project has been launched for the first time in the country on an experimental basis by the Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) with support from the college management.
RE-HAB — Reducing Elephant Human Attack by using Bees — aims at controlling wild elephant movement into villages by roping in honey bees. The success of the initiative will be monitored regularly to launch it across the country. A total of three elephant conflict places have been chosen in Kodagu district including two at Nagarahole Sanctuary and one at Thora village in Virajpet where a total of ten beehive boxes have been placed across the forest fringe. The boxes have been placed approximately at eight feet distance and tied using a fence rope. This set-up will act as an elephant conflict mitigation measure.
The project was launched by KVIC Chairman Vinay Kumar Saxena at Ponnampet Forestry College. “In 2017, the Sweet Revolution was launched in the nation to promote apiculture. Beekeeping has many benefits and a farmer can earn from the bee wax, royal jelly and bee venom apart from the honey extraction. Further, beekeeping enables cross pollination and increases the income of a farmer by 30%,” he said.
Saxena explained that states with high elephant populations are spending crores on solving the human-elephant conflict and added, “Many of the mitigation methods to control the conflict are unscientific. The research project of RE-HAB will be monitored regularly and, if successful, will be implemented across the country.”
He said that the RE-HAB project will create a sustainable employment opportunity in beekeeping while also fighting the elephant conflict ecologically. Dr Kushalappa, the dean of the Forestry College, reckoned that the project will enable integrated farming while controlling the elephant menace.
Alongside launching the project, a total of 50 beneficiaries were given bee colonies and beekeeping equipment by KVIC to promote apiculture in the district. Dr Sudarshan of KVIC said, “We are finding a physical solution to an ecological problem. Nature must work with nature and the RE-HAB will work at a low cost.”
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> States> Karnataka / by Prajna GR / Express News Service / March 15th, 2021
Bharat Ratna for Cariappa, Thimayya: Rashtrapati Bhavan sends letter to PMO
Congress MLC Veena Achaiah’s letter to the President Ram Nath Kovind seeking the country‘s highest civilian award Bharat Ratna for Field Marshal K.M. Cariappa and General K.S. Thimayya has been forwarded to Prime Minister’s Office.
The Rashtrapathi Bhavan has acknowledged the receipt of Ms. Achaiah’s letter dated February 6, 2021, addressed to the President regarding conferment of Bharat Ratna posthumously to both Field Marshal Cariappa and General Thimayya. On March 2, 2021, the Officer on Special Duty, President’s Secretariat, Jagannath Srinivasan wrote to Ms. Achaiah, seeking to bring to her notice that the letter she had sent to the President had been forwarded to the Prime Minister’s Office for appropriate action.
The demand for Bharat Ratna to Field Marshal Cariappa and General Thimayya, both of whom hail from Kodagu district, is pending for a long time before the Centre. Even former Army Chief Bipin Rawat hand endorsed the demand for Bharat Ratna to Field Marshal Cariappa. While Cariappa was the first Indian Commander in Chief of the Indian Army, General Thimayya served as the Chief of Army Staff from 1957 to 1961.
During Mr. Kovind’s visit to Madikeri last month to inaugurate the General Thimayya Memorial Museum, Ms. Achaiah submitted a memorandum recalling that General Thimayya was the only Indian to command an infantry brigade in the battle during the Second World War while Mr. Cariappa belonged to a family of farmers and is one of the only two Indian Army officers to hold the highest and five star rank of Field Marshal.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Karnataka / by Special Correspondent / Mysuru – March 13th, 2021
During a picnic, some students who went for a swim in the Cauvery were pulled by the water currents. Lenin Bopanna managed to save the lives of four students but drowned in the process.
Lenin Bopanna
Madikeri :
A student who drowned saving the lives of his schoolmates was posthumously honoured with the Hoysala Shaurya Award by the Women and Child Welfare department. The award was received by the boy’s parents at a ceremony hosted in Bengaluru.
Lenin Bopanna was a student of Lion’s School in Kalathmadu village near Gonikoppal. In March last year, 39 students of the school from the Scouts and Guides team had visited the popular tourist destination of Dubare Camp for a picnic.
However, a tragic event unfurled as some students who went for a swim in the Cauvery river were pulled by the water currents. Lenin Bopanna managed to save the lives of four students during the incident but drowned in the process.
The son of Madeera Harish and Kavitha of Hysodluru village, Lenin was nominated for the award with the help of state Scouts and Guides Commissioner PGR Sindhya. Lenin’s father Harish said that his son received the award for his bravery following the efforts of Sindhya and the principal of Lion’s School.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> States> Karnataka / by Express News Service / March 10th, 2021
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