What Passion Does

Ramli Ibrahim

Ramli Ibrahim is a muslim male from Malaysia. The profile does not quite make it conducive to take up a dance form like Bharatnatyam as a career option. Ramli had to fight against many odds - ridiculed froms friends, discouragement form the government and no support from Indian schools that taught Bharatnatyam. But Ramli went ahead with his calling and lernt not just Bharatnatyam, but also Odissi, Ballet and western dance forms.

But today Ramli Ibrahim is recognised world over as an accomplished dancer in ballet, modern, and Indian classical dance, and is cultural icon. He has performed internationally for more than three decades now and in 2009, was honoured at the Nartaka Dance Festival organised by the Natyanjali Trust. Last year The National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA), in Mumbai presented a spectacular evening with Ramli Ibrahim called "Vision of Forever"

In Vision of Forever, Ramli had chosen an Odissi repertoire from three major gurus of this tradition: Durga Charan Ranbir, Gajendra Kumar Panda and Deba Prasad Das. The performances brilliantly exemplified works of the late Odissi pioneer Guru Deba Prasad Das. It unleashed powerful images from the Shaivite and Tantric traditions, bringing out the macabre and terrifying beauty associated with the repertoire of his late dance guru. 

Ramli today has established his open school - SutraDance Theatre, where he nurtures new talents. Ramli has choreographed stunning works and has single-handedly established Odissi as a widely appreciated dance form in Malaysia.

A Pack Of Lies

A Pack of Lies is a refreshing new offering from the house of Westland Publishers who in the past one year has given such best sellers like The Immortals of Meluha by Amish and Ammi by Saeed Zafri. A Pack of Lies  tells the story a poor little rich girl effectively abandoned, and now suddenly hungry. Ginny is an unlikely heroine and her story is filled with with sensual pleasures of food and the fabulous excitement of fame, that we almost miss what is, at heart, a novel about loneliness, a primer on lust, and most of all, an extraordinary window on the secrets of a young woman for whom resistance to gendered rules becomes a source of jeopardy, and yet, eventually, of salvation.

Urmila Deshpande is kbnown to readers of the blogosphere as one who writes regularly on food, cooking, women, relations and even sex. Her wide writing experience must have shaped her book. She writes her with an insouciance and almost savant honesty that will make you laugh, cry and think. Her prose is simple and yet vivid, her characters are complex, and she has an uncanny ability to familiarise us with them in one deft description. Both searingly poignant and heartbreakingly funny, one can read this book with eyes but feel it with one's heart