Urdu ardour

His profession and passion may be different. But that hasn’t stopped Satya Narayanan R., founder of CL Educate, an education company, from pursuing both with equal zeal. Narayanan has penned a collection of Urdu poetry that was launched as a book along with a CD recently. The book, Shayad Yaheen Se Ho, is dedicated to his Urdu teacher, the late professor Akhlaq Mohammed Khan, an Urdu poet who wrote under the pen name Shahryar. Perhaps taking a cue from the teacher, the debutant poet, who is also an IIM alum, writes under the pen name Muasir. “Learning Urdu was a passion and writing poetry in the same language was like giving life to my expressions,” says the polyglot, who has mastered seven languages.

Animated wonder

Super K, India’s first full-fledged animation film to be released online, collected another feather in its cap when it won the Best Feature Film Award in the animation category at the Dada Saheb Film Festival Awards last week in Delhi. And it’s a feat being lauded widely in the country’s growing animation industry. “We are glad that our contribution to the animation industry has been recognised on a prestigious platform like the Dada Saheb Film Festival Awards,” says Smita Maroo, producer of Super K. The 95-minute film, released last November on Yahoo!’s online movie channel, Movieplex, has also made a mark at international events such as the Animabassuri – Animassia – Spain, Cairo International Film Festival For Children, Annecy Film Festival and Hiroshima Film Festival. That’s super news from Super K.

In memoriam

It’s exactly a year since Badal Sircar, the legendary playwright and theatre director died. To pay tribute to the late maestro, Shapno Ekhon, a New Delhi-based theatre group, will stage his plays Baki Itihaas and Bagh on May 24 and May 25 at Tapan Theatre in Calcutta. The group has already performed the two plays in Lucknow and Delhi to rave reviews. A four-day festival, called Badal Sircar Smaraney, to remember the late dramatist is also on the cards. It’s a fitting tribute to one of the finest modern dramatists of Bengal.

It’s catching!

First Bollywood plagiarised from the West. Now the “inspiration” seems to be coming from closer home. Saif Ali Khan’s home production Agent Vinod is in trouble for using a track from a Rajinikanth film Thalapathi. A Bangalore-based audio company, Lahari Audio, which has the legal rights to the label, says no permission was taken to use the track and plans to sue the movie’s bosses. But by now Saif must be quite used to such allegations. Recently, music composer Pritam Chakrabarty and the makers of the film were accused by Iranian band Barobax of lifting the tune of the title track Pyar ki Pungi from their album. Clearly, allegations of copyright violation know no boundaries.

Guru speak

N.K. Sharma is one unhappy man. The Delhi-based theatre director — whose group, Act One, has produced such Bollywood luminaries as Ashish Vidyarthi, Manoj Bajpai, Vishal Bharadwaj, Imtiaz Ali and Shoojit Sircar (in pic) — is being inundated with calls he doesn’t want to take. After Vicky Donor became a runaway hit, Sircar, the film’s director, told a newspaper that he and other ex-Act-One directors got their scripts vetted by their Guru. If he abused them, they knew they were on the right track; if he kept quiet, they feared there was something wrong. Sharma’s crib is that ever since the interview, people have been calling him up, urging him to go through their scripts. “How much do you charge,” one director asked him, much to his disgust. Guess Sharma should train his theatre members on the merits of silence.