Design your History! Yes, you can :)

        For the History of Design course for the Industrial Design students at the National Institute of Design, Vijayawada, we strapped ourselves tightly and zipped onto a roller coaster time travel... yeaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh, like a virtual reality experience, especially customised for your personal choice 🙂 don't believe me??? then read on... One lazy...

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What makes Indian Textiles so exquisite?

    A wide variety of beautiful textiles ranging from embroideried, woven, printed and painted comprise India’s rich textile heritage. For most of us, there is a familiarity with most of the textiles coming from all parts of India – like Banarasi, Baluchari, Chikankari, Kalamkari, Kanthas, Kanchivaram, Ikat etc. The skill of Indian weavers is...

Button Masala talks to the soul

Sukol, Derrida and Solitude It’s been a year that Sukol took his life, and his dreams and ambitions with him. A year in which we discovered his desperation to belong to a society he believed in. A poor Santhal tribal dark complexioned boy in his late teens who stood at 5 feet height had been...

#projectinterpret’s 3rd quarter

  In the months of July - September, #projectinterpret explored new avenues of Access through live coverage of talks, apart from the usual heritage, history, museums, arts and culture visits, explorations, workshops and postings. Knowyourcity challenge: started on VarnikaDesigns Instagram and Facebook social media profiles in the last quarter, this game continued with insights across...

Ganesha: the Elephant God

Lord Ganesha or ‘Ganapati’ denoting the Lord of the Ganas, is also known as Ekadanta, Gajamukha, Lambodara. The eldest son of Lord Shiva and Parvati, he is considered the ‘manas’ or mind if Shiva is ‘atman’ or the soul. He is worshipped for his various qualities in the beginning of all religious rituals as he...

Love, Pyaar, Amor @Bombay to Barcelona Library Café

The World Summit for Social Development (Copenhagen 1995) declared that an inclusive society is a “society for all in which every individual, each with rights and responsibilities, has an active role to play”. 13 years later, this definition was changed by the Expert Group Meeting on Promoting Social Integration, Helsinki, to: “An inclusive society is...

ArtEast articles: special issue on Museums

I am attaching 3 articles written for ArtEast, a contemporary art journal by the eminent artist Jogen Choudhary, as an extension of his initiative ArtEast. This special issue focuses on Museums. He was very keen to create an awareness on the dynamism in the Museum world, and its impact and need in India. I was...

The world’s nest at Santiniketan

India's first Nobel Laureate, Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore wrote in 1929: I was brought up in an atmosphere of aspiration, aspiration for the expansion of the human spirit. We in our home sought freedom of power in our language, freedom of imagination in our literature, freedom of soul in our religious creeds and that of mind...

#projectinterpret’s 2nd quarter

In the 2nd quarter of #projectinterpret, apart from the guided tours some new initiatives have taken root. These are: Knowyourcity challenge: photographs are regularly uploaded on the VarnikaDesigns Instagram and Facebook accounts to quiz on some historical monuments/sites/buildings to help people connect to the architectural landmarks of a city. Most of us have passed these...