Pensha

Interviewed Swati Raje of Bhaashaa Foundation. --- Swati Raje, founder-president of Bhaashaa Foundation, will be awarded for her work in language preservation, in Los Angeles, in July. She talks about her work and the initiatives that she has introduced. I asked a group of Marathi-speaking youngsters the meaning of this sentence —- Gurakhi pava vajavto. Many of them professed ignorance about the word ‘pava.’ Some thought it to be pao (bread slice), others thought it to be a synonym for clapping. The word actually means flute. It is the loss of cultural expressions like this, witnessing mediocrity, and the reliance on audio-visual images more than words, in my 15 odd years of journalistic career, that propelled me to start Bhaashaa Foundation — The Centre for Preservation and Enhancement of Regional Languages, in Pune. We cannot do away with English, nor can we complain about hegemony of other languages, so it makes sense to strengthen and enrich our regional languages. When i...

Had reviewed this movie for the print publication I work for. After a long time, I felt a movie deserves a repeat watch. Again and again..till I have my fill of the blue, green seas. Hdg: A Journey Guhagar, the coastal town in Maharashtra, is a perfect holiday spot for those residing in Pune, Mumbai and Kolhapur. Sun and sand is what people are looking for, and that’s what the coastal towns are known for. In Killa, however, you are treated to the gloomy, stormy, choppy, placid waters, the rising and ebbing of tides and the sinister palms swaying in the twilight. Avinash Arun (who is also the cinematographer) morphs the Konkan into an unknown entity. It’s achingly, hauntingly beautiful and fearsome, all at the same time. The rolling waves and the pouring rain sum up the feelings of a fatherless 11-year-old, who has been uprooted from his family, to be planted into a different soil. Chinmay Kale (Archit Deodhar), who moves from Pune to Guhagar, after his mother (Amruta Subhash) g...