The next time you find yourself hungry in Brisbane, Australia pay a visit to Mint, the Indian restaurant founded by Varun Khanna (481-TA '93). The restaurant was recently featured on OurBrisbane.com who said, " Mint Indian Gourmet takes a fresh new look at Indian dining with authentic cuisine and modern décor. The menu brings a new interpretation of north Indian cuisine to the city's discerning diners."

Posted at 1:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The DSOBS has launched an ICICI Bank Credit Card for all doscos. Everytime you spend money using this card, a small contribution is made to the DSOBS by ICICI Bank at absolutely no cost to you. It's a Visa Gold card that's free for life with a rewards program. And of course, it carries the Doon logo and is only available to doscos! Email dsobs@vsnl.com to learn more and sign up.

Posted at 1:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

He is working with the credit ratings agency ICRA Limited (an associate of Moody's Investors Service) as a consultant in their Banking and Finance division based in New Delhi. He can be reached at karansingh@gmail.com or 9810850517.

Posted at 12:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mr. Shomie Das is a former headmaster of The Doon School and the grandson of the school's founder, Satish Ranjan Das. In a recent interview with Doon Online, he talked about his days at Doon, how Doon is evolving and education in India. When asked about his achievements as Headmaster of The Doon School, Mr. Das replied, "I think I was able to liberalise the general atmosphere greatly and also raise the academic standards without putting additional pressure on the boys. I was often accused of being too liberal!"

1. What made you join The Doon School? And did you enjoy Doon?
Doon was the only school I was registered for because I believe of the family connection. Until then I was taught at home. Interestingly I was admitted against an unexpected vacancy 10 days after school started.

2. Tell us a little bit about what life was like for a dosco when you were in school.
Life was full of learning and fun both inside and outside the classroom. The teaching was largely open ended (no rote learning) and often made interesting by straying from the syllabus (a luxury not permitted today). Some instances of this I can recall are listening to Wagner during an English class with Holdy or naming a bird sitting on the window of our classroom during a class test. Sundays were rarely days of rest – it was either cycling to Tunwala or going rock climbing or working in the art school or workshop or making up the fourth in a bachelor master’s bridge game! There was also the now defunct quota work where in order to get school colours we had to exceed our allotted labour quota over a number of years. There really was a rich programme of learning that kept us busy and taught us skills and attitudes that made us feel responsible as citizens.

3. What do you remember most about your time as a student?
It would be difficult to recount all the many memories – one usually remembers the happy ones and ofcourse what one recounts when friends are around is not the same as when one is writing for an interview. But it was the fun I had at school that made me choose school mastering as a career.

Did you enjoy being headmaster of Doon? What is your fondest memory of that period?
I enjoyed it enormously but always regret that I was not younger. There was a tendency in those days to think that Doon required an older person. Considering I had become Principal of Mayo at the age of 33 I feel I was ready for Doon at least 5 years earlier. Once again it would be difficult to pinpoint a single memory that I could recount but the general interaction with staff and students was a very relaxed one and made it easy for me to cope with problems. The general intellectual level of boys was high which was another plus point.

5. What achievements as headmaster are you most proud of?
I think I was able to liberalise the general atmosphere greatly and also raise the academic standards without putting additional pressure on the boys. I was often accused of being too liberal!

6. If you could be headmaster for another year, what would you do or change?
I would have changed the regime for the seniors so that their role in the school would be
a more responsible one and their attitudes more mature – the prevailing idea of seniority and its privileges tends to encourage physical violence towards younger boys considered as “juniors”. The plans were already there but I needed to convince my Governors.

7. Do you feel you made any mistakes while being headmaster? If so, what would you count as a mistake?
I think my error of judgement was being too trusting of staff and boys and therefore frequently having a feeling of being let down. But I believe and always will that’s erring on the right side!

8. How do you feel the community in terms of the students teachers, parents, old boys, administrative staff support the school and the headmaster?
On the whole they were very supportive.

9. Do you have any suggestions or thoughts on how the Doon community can be made stronger and how we can each support the school more?
There are very few schools that have such a supportive Old Boys community.

10. Do you feel Doon School lives up to the ethos and value system set forth by the founders of the school especially your grandfather?
On the whole Yes. Look at the objectives: Espirit de corp, teamwork, no caste or creed, fair play, freedom of speech, courage to stand up for what is right and honourable, spirit of tolerance, questioning mind and so on.

11. You’re now recognized as one of the foremost experts on education in India. Given that, do you think Doon still deserves the reputation it has of being one of the best schools?
I am flattered by the description of me but let me say that among all the schools I was associated with including the ones in the UK I found the Doon School to be the best for the kind of education these schools set out to impart.

12. How do you feel education in India can be improved and what do you think are the most pressing priorities?
I believe we require the entire learning-teaching method to be more open ended where students construct their own knowledge and teachers act as facilitators and not as knowledge givers. Apart from the skills of the 3R’s all other learning must be based on students learning to collaborate with each other and their teachers to analyse, synthesise and communicate. The teacher’s role is key to this and requires enormous changes in prevailing teacher education courses.

13. What do you think are the most important ingredients for a school to succeed? Does Doon still have those qualities?
Good facilities, good teachers and dynamic leadership and a vision. Doon certainly strives for these.

14. Do you have any suggestions, thoughts or pieces of advice for doscos of today?
I wish more would join careers in science and technology and administration.

15. And finally, any suggestions or thoughts about Doon Online?
It’s a real labour of love - I don’t know how you do it. Keep it up.

Shomie Das
165 H Class of ‘51

Posted at 11:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Headmaster Kanti Bajpai has written an opinion piece for Outlook magazine on why the movie Rang De Basanti is bad for the country. To quote the article which is titled, The Film Will Encourage Cynicism Dr. Bajpai says, " It is attractive in its stylishness, cast, acting, music and locale. Its politics, though, is not attractive. And if this is a clarion call to the Indian public—especially to those who are under 25—then we should be worried."

Posted at 12:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A few days ago the New York Times published an article on Vikram Seth (250-J '68) and his new book, "Two Lives." The article explored Vikram's own life and what it took to write that book. It used the book to talk about Vikram Seth and gave readers a peak into his life. The book has been shortlisted for the National Circle Award. Visited the Doon Online spotlight on Vikram Seth to learn more about him. Also view the other spotlights. Special thanks to our friends at "Zatak" who found this article. Vikram Seth in Delhi. His new book, "Two Lives," is his most personal.

From the New York Times
NOIDA, India — Vikram Seth has a house of his own. He just prefers to live in his parents' house, a few doors down. His father's study is his crash pad. His mother's study, connected by a door, can be invaded at any time. His parents' bedroom, with windows that overlook a small, tidy garden, is in effect the family room, too: before anyone goes on a journey, it is here, on the large square bed, that the family sits and chats. The upstairs quarters belong to Mr. Seth's brother and his wife. Nearly every day, a meal is eaten together, either upstairs or downstairs. What's the point, Mr. Seth asks, of being sequestered in your own house down the road?

"This way, we wander through each other's life, and it's much nicer," he said.

His books are likewise known for wandering through domestic life. His 800,000-word tome, "A Suitable Boy" (1993), chronicles the twined lives of four families in midcentury India. "Golden Gate" (1986) a novel in verse, meanders through a family of five friends in California. The latest, a memoir of sorts called "Two Lives," published by HarperCollins in November, tells the story of two misfits in marriage: Mr. Seth's great uncle, Shanti Seth, and Shanti's German-Jewish wife, Henny, and their lives before and after World War II.

"Two Lives" is also an autobiography, in a manner of speaking. In it, Mr. Seth comes as close as he ever has to being honest about himself. (It has been nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, in the autobiography category; the winners are to be announced next month.) More to the point, if "Two Lives" draws daylight on his own kin, it also reveals something about the danger of having a storyteller in the family. (Mr. Seth's family has several; "On Balance," by his mother, Leila Seth, is an unusually candid family memoir of loss and belonging.)

What Mr. Seth turns up about Shanti and Henny, through letters and interviews and finally a will, is both poignant and painfully revelatory. The letters, he concedes, were private — "eyes-only letters," as he puts it. But for a writer, they were also a find. And their discovery presented twin obligations to story and family. "There's a duty to the living not to hurt them," Mr. Seth explained. And "there's a duty to write things as they are."

Mr. Seth got his first glimpses into the lives of his great uncle and aunt when he lived with them in London as a young man. They were far removed from the intimacy — and the stifling heat — of the extended Seth family in India. Henny's mother and sister were killed in the Holocaust. She did not speak of that part of her past.

Mr. Seth gleans Henny's story largely from her letters. He gleans his great uncle's largely from interviews he conducted with Shanti in 1994, after Henny's death. And then, in Shanti's death came a new and wrenching puzzle about Shanti's own relationship to family. It is not a riddle that his nephew, the writer, can solve. "I couldn't have written about Shanti Uncle and Aunty Henny when Uncle was still alive," he said.

In the Seth family house here in Noida, an upmarket suburb of Delhi, the downstairs dining room exists in the shadow of Leila Seth's law books; Mrs. Seth was the first woman to be named chief justice of a state high court in India. Black and white portraits of the family hang above Mr. Seth's parents' bed. A narrow glass bookshelf in what Americans would call a living room (in a house like this, it still ought to be called a drawing room) contains "Two Lives," sandwiched between Nelson Mandela's "Long Walk to Freedom" and V. S. Naipaul's "Magic Seeds."

"Two Lives" is the most tender of Mr. Seth's works. It is also the only book in which he directly engages the idea of growing old.

"It's probably the most personal of my books," he said. That too was somewhat of a duty, he added, for there would be "an element of falsity in keeping an artificial distance."

In the 1930's Mr. Seth's great uncle signed up to study dentistry in Germany and ended up joining the British troops during World War II. Henny lived in Berlin, where Shanti Seth was a boarder in her family home. She fled to London during the war. In Mr. Seth's rendering, it is unclear whether and how they fell in love, only that there was a kind of love between them. "Beset by life, isolated in the world, in each other they found a strong and sheltering harbor," Mr. Seth writes.

To peer into a relationship, even for a writer whose métier is to peer into relationships, cannot yield a full portrait. Mr. Seth is the first to admit it. But to peer into two lives that intersect at such a formative historical juncture is the strength of Shanti and Henny's story. Mr. Seth opted not to write a novel based on their lives. He said he wanted the real to be revealed.

"I did feel one had to get not just the facts, but the emotional underpinnings," he explained. "You could say it's a study of love, relationships, courage, psychology and moral decisions under incredible pressures."

The Indian imagination has been riven by war since the birth of the nation in 1947: three wars with Pakistan, one with China, many conflicts since pitting Indians against themselves. But World War II was of vital importance to Indian history. There were Indian soldiers in the British Army. There was the Indian independence leader, Subhas Chandra Bose, who sought Hitler's assistance in ousting the British. Not least, during the war years, there was the awakening of Indian ideas of freedom. In 1939, as Mr. Seth writes, Britain declared war on behalf of India, without so much as consulting Indians. In 1942 Gandhi began the Quit India movement, which culminated with independence. "Two Lives" can also be read as an Indian claim to World War II.

Mr. Seth today divides his time between Britain and India, with a house of his own in each country. He is fond of crediting his parents for having allowed him to live off them — "sponged" is the word he uses — for the many years it took to write "A Suitable Boy." Part of the payback is in making sure that his royalties guarantee a lifetime supply of books for his mother and whiskey for his father. He has sponged off his family aesthetically too, as writers are wont to do. By his own admission, some of the characters in "A Suitable Boy" are thinly disguised proxies of relatives, and they are not altogether flattering. "Time passes," is all he will say about whether he has been forgiven.

The idea of "Two Lives" came from his mother over a decade ago, at a time when Mr. Seth was scratching around for something to write about. "Stop making a fuss," he recalled her saying. "There's Shanti Uncle."

"The family," as he said, "is at my heart."

By SOMINI SENGUPTA

Posted at 12:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Latika Katt (260-H '66) recently held an exhibition titled, "Salt of the Earth" at the Anant Art Gallery in Defence Colony, Delhi. She has had solo and joint exhibitions in India and abroad and is recognized as one of India's leading artists. Lalita currently heads the Department of Fine Arts & Art Education at Jamia Millia Islamia University, Delhi. Her father taught at Doon.

Meals Ready: In a Piece of Sculpture
by Maitreyee Handique, The Indian Express

You don’t call friends home to snack on sweet rice and rotis on a piece of sculpture, but it would make artist Latika Katt happier if you interact more freely with her art. The bronze sculptor has created an oversized thali, an imaginary knock-off of the famous Manikarnika ghat in Benaras, complete with miniature figures of piled-up corpses, a brooding widow and a halwai perched on a ladder — watching you while you eat. There’s even a provision for a water drain to hose-wash the crumbs off this unwieldy 34-by-34 inch aluminium cast plate.

‘‘The idea is to remind ourselves that we are all united in death. So we must share everything that we have,’’ says Katt, who has vivid memories of visiting her grandmother’s house in Lucknow being swept clean after a Muslim entered.

But Katt’s macabre metaphor in Manikarnika Ghat Thali is a one-off theme in her recent exhibition titled Salt of the Earth. It would be more correct to say that Katt, a former head of Jamia Millia Islamia University’s arts faculty, sees the world with a taxonomic eye. Among the 40-odd works on display are bronze landscapes bristling with banana trees, ariel views of rice fields, drowning cities, and a plate that looks like a blob of a choppy sea.

The artist works in various media from papier mache and bamboo to ceramics but she says she learnt her first lesson on nature from her botanist father, who taught at Doon School. Katt was also one of the first girls to storm the all-male bastion and attend school at Doon with classmates like Union Minister Kamal Nath. But it was those long walks around the hills and the study of the shapes of leaves and roots that has left a lasting impression on her.

Her bronze and ceramics box (Deforestation) depicts a felled forest, making tree stumps look like smoking chimneys. And sometimes, it works like one, serving the dual purpose of both aesthetic and utility. ‘‘You can burn camphor inside it,’’ offers Katt. Forest, her other work, shows gnarled tree roots; basically what it would be like if the top soil disappears. Unlike most sculptors who tend to mould images straight up the ground, Katt stretches her canvas horizontally, like a flat terrain; Fields is a large patina-tainted topography of cultivated land she saw while flying over Patna.

For art’s sake, Katt’s has also researched on X-rays of TB patients and termite hills and has photographed burnt milk and moulding bread with a microbiologist’s zeal. She made a sculpture of the innards of a mauled dog she found lying on the road near her home in East Delhi, and the organic growth of jhuggi clusters of Sarai Kaale became her inspiration last year. ‘‘I am always interested in how things begin taking shape from the beginning,’’ she says.

Posted at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sudhanshu Saria (20-OA '02) was recently featured in an MSNBC article on a national film competition that requires all participants to make a movie with their camera phones. Read the article at MSNBC.

He was also featured in other newspapers around the world for his work on the Cellflix Film Festival, including ABC's Good Morning America! show. He is also heading into production on his first feature length film, I, Love, and You. He is looking to get in touch with Doscos interested in filmmaking both in the US and in India. Email iamsuds@gmail.com to learn more.

Posted at 11:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Money needs to be raised to support the Art School and the DSOBS has a new innovative iniative to help. Prestigious Indian artists are being commissioned to produce works of art that will be sold to the Dosco community at deeply discounted prices. The earnings will go to the art school. Be sure to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity to get some good art and benefit the school!

Dear DOSCOs,

Even though belated…..wishing all of you a very HAPPY NEW YEAR….!!!

I take this opportunity to highlight DSOBS’ initiative in March 2006…the Art Show/Auction Ensemble…

In the past years, and after due deliberations by the IPSS, it has now become quite evident that a lot of structures in our school require to be refurbished and in many cases completely rebuilt…amongst these (and very dear to us) are the Rose Bowl and the Art School…

The DSOBS has at all times been sensitive to, emotional about and, as a result, proactive towards our alma-mater’s sublime existence. To say that our brethren has endorsed (to the gratifying point of divine indulgence) any project(s) executed to facilitate/uplift(in all humility)/reinforce The Doon School’s vision, is in all senses, an understatement. To enumerate our fraternity’s demonstrable bequeathals and underplayed largesse would also go against our very grain i.e. to remain low-profile, behind-the-scenes benefactors…

The Rose Bowl’s required refurbishment (including extension and renovation) required a sum of money… I must, however, confess that though the idea of raising funds for renovation of the Rosebowl was very much the brainchild of the Executive Committee of the DSOBS, it originated during the tenure of Nitan Kapoor (151-J ’66), former President, DSOBS whose request for contributions (for this) was his last official act prior to relinquishing office in October 2004….and thus evolved The Doon School Choir and Orchestra Ensemble tour to Delhi/Dubai in April 2005, a Fund Raiser for Renovation/Extension of the Rose Bowl…. Our Concert in Delhi and soon after in Dubai gave us the opportunity of presenting a considerable variety of the School’s musical output, giving valuable exposure our young musicians. The response was overwhelming at both venues. The boys (and girls) from school gave outstanding performances and were the toast of all. Amidst standing ovations, encores, emotive speeches and interaction was the knowledge that the effort to renovate/extend our beloved Rose Bowl emanated from the boys themselves. Parents & Old Boys at Dubai and Delhi just gave a helping hand.This Fund Raising Effort has accumulated approx Rs 25.00 lakhs to be utilized for the Renovation/Extension of the Rose Bowl. This project in The Doon School will thus, be funded entirely by the Doon School Old Boys' Society. Without the involvement of the school children and immense assistance provided by our patrons, parents and Old Boys, this could not have been possible.

The Art School requires complete rebuilding… In this tone and theme of magnanimity and philanthropy, we humbly embark on another noble venture…a fund-raising endeavour to rebuild our Art School…tentatively titled…

“THE DSOBS ART SHOW-AUCTION ENSEMBLE”…on Friday, March 10th, 2006 at the Imperial Hotel, New Delhi…

This envisages collecting at least Rs 125.00 lakhs required for the Art School’s rehabilitation…

In a manner typical of our demeanour and desire to acknowledge and enrich the inherent aesthetics and cultural sensibilities within us, manifested in the patronage of the fine arts, we hope to design and execute our venture to so capture the spirit required.

As such, we have managed to request/cajole/commission a range of 40/45 eminent artists (Jatin Das, Suhas Roy, Annu Naik, Balu Sadelge, Bulbul Sharma, Dhiraj Choudhry, Surya Prakash, Abani Sen, Niren Sengupta, Laxma Gouda, T Vaikuntam etc) to unleash their heart and soul and provide (at a very nominal charge, of course…given the charitable cause) us with at least an array of 150-200 works …at the same time, we have selected, with the assistance of established curator(s), at least 100-150 paintings from a assemblage of over 4000 paintings the school has accumulated over the past 70 years…and coordinate a selection of 3 sets of combinations/collages (each having 1-2 paintings of eminent artists plus 1-3 school paintings)in ascending order of value

i.e Silver, Gold and Platinum at Rs 1.00 lakhs, Rs 1.50 lakhs and Rs 2.50 lakhs respectively…the respective selections would be displayed in a glossy 70-page brochure (to be brought out in Feb 2006) to facilitate an appraisal before the auction…our USP would be to ensure that the pricing of eminent artists’ works would be much below the normal market; clubbed with the opportunity (and unabashed sentiment) to possess exemplary work of Doscos done over the years.

The balance paintings would be part of a gallery viewing where prices would be placed accordingly.

To ensure a minimum revenue, the DSOBS requires patrons such as yourself and your contemporaries, who would be requested to pledge an amount of Rs 2.50, 1.50 lakhs and/or Rs 1.00 lakh depending on the selection and thus ensure their presence at the auction as well as provide them with the opportunity to acquire an ensemble of works of immense artistic talent and intrinsic value.

I, on behalf of the DSOBS, request you to be a patron and/or identify patrons for the Platinum, Gold and Silver selections…..

This would go a long way in helping the project and ensuring its eventual success….

With warm regards,

Anoop Singh Bishnoi

President,

The Doon School Old Boys’ Society

Posted at 11:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

He has recently taken up an opportunity with Deloitte Consulting India Pvt. Ltd and is currently based in Hyderabad. He would like to get in touch with all dosco's in and around the area and can be reached at rohit_lall@hotmail.com or +91-9885013060.

Posted at 9:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

He is currently studying Instructional Design and Cognition Sciences at the University of Freiburg in Germany and would like to get in touch with Doscos in the area. He can be reached at mohitpaul_arora@yahoo.co.in.

Posted at 9:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Gaurav Saklani (472-KB '87) and his wife Richa were recently blessed with twins, Gayatri and Dev. Gaurav can be reached at gaurav@idiscoveri.com.

Posted at 9:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

He has just moved to Palo Alto, California, USA. He is looking to get in touch with Doscos in the area and can be reached at ankit_manglik@yahoo.com

Posted at 9:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The DSOBS is organizing an inter-house cricket match next month at the Central Secretariat grounds, Chanakya Puri, New Delhi. May the best house win!

DSOBS INTER HOUSE CRICKET ON MARCH 4, 2006.

VENUE: Central Secretariat grounds, opp Nehru Park, Chanakya Puri, New Delhi

DATE & TIME: March 4, 2006. Reporting time 9 a.m.

FORMAT: 20 overs a side with a game in the morning and one in the afternoon. Coloured clothing, White balls, black sight-screens.

Drinks and Food available on the ground. Cricket will be followed by the Delhi Chapter dinner (details will follow). Those interested in participating should contact the following house captains/reps:

TATA HOUSE:
Donny (Raghuvinder) Singh, ph: 98100-10847, e-mail: galloping@sify.com / donnysingh@vsnl.net
Indu Shekar Singh, ph: 98100-07021, e-mail: shekhar@vistasintl.com
Asheet Lanba, ph: 98116-06437, e-mail: asheet_lanba@rediffmail.com

HYDERABAD HOUSE
Arun Khanna, ph:98110-37071, e-mail: digiflex@giasdl01.vsnl.net.in
Amitoj 'jhonny' Singh, ph:98997-07776, e-mail: amitojsingh40@hotmail.com

KASHMIR HOUSE
Raghav Mallik, ph:98100-56334, e-mail: raghavmallik@dishnetdsl.net
Vivek Narain, ph:98183-80019, e-mail: viveknarain1@yahoo.com

JAIPUR HOUSE
Sandeep Chandra, ph: 98111-72183, e-mail:sandeepc@bol.net.in
Uday Bawa, ph: 98688-88854

OBEROI HOUSE
Nalin Khanna, ph: 98100-28127, e-mail nalink@vsnl.com
Asheet Lanba, ph: 98116-06437, e-mail: asheet_lanba@rediffmail.com

Posted at 3:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)