Father, son and the holy days

We don’t have to wait for Godot anymore, for singer Anjan Dutta is just about to launch his new album — called Ami aar Godot, or I and Godot — with his son Neel. Godot, of course, is Neel’s pet name. The album will feature the father and son singing five Bengali songs each. The theme, says Anjan, is Calcutta — with all the hopes and disappointments that the city has to offer. “Being the older of the two and with the experience I have, I am a little cynical about the city and the path it has taken over the years, whereas Neel is a lot more positive,” says Anjan. The album will be released early next week before Calcutta gets busy with the puja celebrations. “This is our puja gift to the city we love,” says Anjan.

Stitch in time

Who says designing clothes is all about fluff and froth? Some of our designers want to tell the world that their works reflect global concerns. So Gayatri Khanna’s creations, featuring at the ongoing Lakme Fashion Week, will mirror images of climate change. One lot will bear the parched and faded look of flora and fauna, forest fires, dead coral reefs, damaged earth and hurricanes, while another section will celebrate the beauty of nature. Calcutta’s Sabyasachi Mukherjee, meanwhile, has designed clothes that recall Partition — with pyjamas and kurtas in oranges, reds and sepia — and a section with motifs from the communist world. “Every one of us, in our own little way, can make a huge difference to future generations,” says Gayatri. After all, clothes do make the man.

Pulling strings

What on earth could ever link guitar gods such as B.B. King, Jimmy Page, Slash and Warren Haynes to our very own Bilal Maqsood from across the Radcliffe Line? The answer, as is often the case in music, lies in the tools of the trade. Pakistani band Strings, for whom Maqsood wields a mean axe, has just entered into an exclusive endorsement deal with Gibson Guitar Corporation, known to sculpt those mahogany-maple sunburst beauties that legendary guitarists such as the ones mentioned above have long played for a living. That, in short, means Maqsood, in the future, would be seen playing his riffs exclusively on a Gibson Les Paul or a Firebird VII, while the company will go the distance to provide the band with a tour bus of its own, besides allowing it access to Gibson amphitheatres wherever available. Way to go. And to all the other guitarists from this part of the world who have lost out to Maqsood, there’s only one thing to be said. Practise hard!

Trade off

John Abraham knows what the body beautiful is all about. And that’s possibly the reason why — apart from the fact that he draws eyeballs like nobody’s business — the United Nations has zeroed in on him as a campaigner against human trafficking. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has lined up a bevy of beauties — male and female — in its anti-trafficking drive. Actor Meeta Vashisht was spotted sitting through all the sessions of the UN programme in New Delhi earlier this week. Abraham’s contribution, however, was limited to a gala dinner which he attended with Amisha Patel and some other Bollywood actors. Still, the man was there, and that’s a cause for celebration. John, who is not quite coy about exposing his abs and pecs, knows that bodies are not meant for trafficking. However, if you’ve got it, flaunt it.

Verse is better

If you are done with reading your e.e. cummings, you can now see his poetry on celluloid. For the first time, India is going to host a poetry film festival — showcasing shorts from across the world on interpretations of poetry. Organised by Sadho, a Delhi group of writers and artists hoping to promote verse, the Sadho Poetry Film Fest has just had its screenings in the city, and now plans to travel across India. “We have films on the works of T.S. Eliot, e.e. cummings, Sarveshwar Dayal Saxena, Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, Tamil women poets and so on,” says one of the organisers, Kavita Bahl, whose film on Japanese haikus will be a part of the show. That’s a confluence that should please lovers of poetry and cinema. But then, what is cinema but images of words?