Lounge Loves: ‘Music By John Williams’, ’Ajji’s’ slang and more
Also featured this week, a life-sized canvas by Waqas Khan and bookstores in Delhi with plenty of titles for children and more
Caught in the swirl
It was a life-sized canvas with a massive spiral shape in red against a stark white background. It immediately catches attention, calling for a closer look, and the magic unfolds. The tiny, wavy and squiggly lines that run through the spiral makes one wonder the number of hours and weeks it must have taken artist Waqas Khan to complete this piece. It is imbued with a meditative essence, much like his other paintings of geometric shapes done with minuscule dots and lines. I discovered the contemporary Pakistani artist at Art Mumbai this month. Another striking work of his that I found online is representative of conflict signified by two kidney shapes attached with broken strings. His minimalist yet detailed approach is influenced by Sufism and miniature Mughal paintings, lending it an enduring quality.
—Jahnabee Borah
Ajji's slang
If you want to learn a little bit of Kannada with a side of loud laughter, head right away to Instagram handle @ruks_avatars. Barely a few weeks old, the page by Bengaluru-based Bharatanatyam dancer and actor Rukmini Vijayakumar has her donning avatars of women you have met at least once if you have lived in south India. But the one who’s raking in all the laughs and fans right now is “Ajji” (Kannada for grandmother). Conservative and opinionated, Vijayakumar’s “Ajji” loves teaching her followers Kannada slang that peppers conversations among Bengalureans like “Goobe” and “Tyiubelite” (Ajji spells it like this only). What makes these short videos delightful is that she also teaches you the various ways you can use each word with the right intonation and facial expressions too. Whatte fun.
—Mahalakshmi Prabhakaran
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Title characters
I spent the weekend scouring for books for kids belonging to two very different age groups—one, a toddler who has exhibited no distinct interests so far, and the other, a pre-teen whose interests change nearly every month. However, I had huge help in the form of the staff at two bookstores in Khan Market, Delhi—Bahrisons Booksellers: Junior and Young Adults, and Faqir Chand and Sons, who went out of their way to recommend titles. All I had to do was tell them about the kind of genre that my pre-teen daughter was most invested in at the moment, the titles that she had read recently, and of her interest in animation, and there I had suggestions ranging from books on the history of Disney to new fantasy titles such as Adam Gidwitz’s The Inquisitor’s Tale.
—Avantika Bhuyan
Keeping score
John Williams is almost certainly the greatest living film composer. He began in the mid-1950s as an arranger in Hollywood and rapidly moved up the ladder. His storied career in film music, dominated by his five-decade partnership with Steven Spielberg, is the subject of a new documentary. Music By John Williams (on Disney+ Hotstar) pays tribute to his indelible work on Spielberg films like Jaws, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Schindler’s List, Jurassic Park and Raiders of the Lost Ark, and ones by other directors such as the Star Wars and Harry Potter series. The director is Laurent Bouzereau, who’s helmed a number of behind-the-scenes documentaries for Spielberg films. —Uday Bhatia
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First Published:2 Dec 2024, 12:02 PM IST
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