Fine Arts Career in India: Institutes, Job Opportunities, and Top Skills to Develop

 Do you enjoy being creative - painting, sketching, singing, sculpture, or performing on stage or on screen? But have you always been discouraged because it's not viewed as a good enough professional option? Well, we are about to give you all the details you need to make a viable career out of it - where you can study, what you can study, what jobs you should look at and what skills to hold on to, practice and nurture. Read on for all the details…

Institutes for Fine Arts degrees

While creativity is the spark that will take you far, a certificate, diploma, or degree can be the stepping stone you need to further refine your skills and sensitivity, which will eventually make you more successful. In addition to the above, a number of postgraduate and PhD programmes in Fine Arts are also available for those wishing to specialise. These courses usually range in duration from 1 to 5 years. Here is a list of the top colleges across the country that offer UG, PG & Doctorate degrees in Fine Arts:

Bachelor of Fine Arts & other undergraduate programmes

• College of Fine Arts, Thiruvananthapuram
• Amity University, Mumbai
• Jawaharlal Nehru Architecture & Fine Arts University, Hyderabad
• Jamia Milia University, Delhi

Master of Fine Arts & other postgraduate programmes

• Visva Bharati University, West Bengal
• Amity School of Fine Arts, Noida
• College of Arts, Delhi University
• Sir JJ Institute of Fine Arts, Mumbai

PhD in Fine Arts

• Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh
• NIU, Greater Noida
• Royal Global University, Guwahati
• Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune

Career Opportunities in Fine Arts

Having a degree in the arts widens your perspective and also gives you deeper insight into what career you would like to pursue. These professions range from entrepreneurship to self-employment. However, to give you an idea of the kind of options you should consider while pursuing a degree, we bring you a list of professions one can pursue with a degree in Fine Arts below:

• Artist: An artist could be working with any medium - painting, sketching, sculpting or even the performing arts. Their main vocation is to create art that their audiences like to see and own(in the case of creative arts) or observe or listen to (in the case of performing arts).

• Illustrator: Professional artists who draw and sketch for a living are called illustrators. For print and digital media, they could be creating digital art or clicking photographs. For more mainstream media, they could be commissioned to create specific illustrations or murals following certain guidelines or styles.

• Fine Art Consultant: A fine art consultant is an expert in their chosen field of art. They work with customers, helping them find and buy art for their homes, workspaces or galleries. In addition to having the sensibility to identify good art from the rest, they also conduct research, build relationships with artists and collectors, and evaluate the wants and needs of their customers to deliver the best results.

• Art Therapist: An art therapist is a certified and trained professional. They offer clinical therapy and counselling using art as a medium of expression.

• Art Teacher: An art teacher, as the name suggests, uses their artistic abilities to encourage others' creative development. They can teach students of various ages and will usually cover the basics, the use of various mediums, and the theories behind the art form.

• Gallery Manager: A manager of an art gallery is someone who is in charge of the day-to-day running of the gallery, but more importantly of selecting artwork and artists to exhibit. They also hire art experts to be employed by the gallery and communicate with suppliers, artists, historians, and vendors to plan the transfer, journey, or acquisition of display artworks.

• Art Framer: A custom wall hanging expert is an art framer. They work with clients to maintain and display artwork, and their everyday responsibilities include creating beautiful frames with their hands, sourcing supplies and interacting with customers.

Skills Required in Fine Arts

Fine artists create works of art for aesthetic, commercial, and ornamental consumption. Some of the most fundamental skills that a fine artist must have are perseverance, dedication and creativity. But beyond these, particularly for visual artists, there are a few other skills that they must possess:

• Realistic Drawing: The capacity to create art that accurately depicts actual life is a key skill that artists should possess. By mastering this ability, one can produce lifelike portraits, landscapes, and object-based art.

• Constructive Drawing: Fine artists practise constructive drawing as a means of representing their intent using simple lines and shapes on paper. Creating a rough outline of what the artist would sculpt, paint or draw later is one such example.

• Knowledge of art materials: When you become an artist, you first select one or a few mediums that you enjoy working with. To maintain your own distinctive style, it is essential that you learn how to work with the materials of your chosen medium. This is a skill that comes from learning and constant practice.

• Imagination: Whether you work on commissions or create art for exhibitions, having the imagination to create something out of nothing - and to be able to depict something in a style that is uniquely your own, imagination is an absolute must. Particularly for artists working in the surrealism or fantasy school, this skill is a basic building block.

• Understanding of Perspective: A viewer's perspective describes how they might view a work of art. To bring variety to their work, artists should be aware of numerous points of view and be able to create artwork from them. Other significant elements, such as shading and sizing details, are also affected by the artist's understanding of perspective.

Strong emotional convictions and an urge to create, along with a connection to canvas, pencil, or colours, are the usual traits on associates with someone wishing to pursue fine arts. A person's love of art can inspire and urge him to use that love to paint his environment. Fine art education is a tool to encourage, nurture, and lead young, passionate art aspirants in the right direction. With the right set of skills, a place to study and employment in hand, one can definitely achieve success in fine arts.

Source: The Telegraph, 10/08/22

Storm shelter: The battle for the Ideas of India

 Sometimes, when I think of India on the day it was born, August 15, 1947, I have the image of people starting to erect a huge,open-sided tent over a large mass of suffering human beings. The tent is made of patchwork, from whatever material is available, with all sorts of colour, all kinds of texture, being sown together. To stretch over so many people,this covering material needs supports,both at its edges and in the middle, and these supports too are made from diverse material and are of different heights.The people who have volunteered for the job of erecting the tent have no choice but to work together, work in concert as well as attentively in sequence: Section B needing to wait for Section A to complete its task before it can begin its own, with Section C and D waiting their turn and so on.

At minimum, the covering is meant to protect people from the heat and the rain. From the glare of exploitation, the long drought of scarcity, the drench of widespread disease. No matter what the apologists of the British Empire now tell us, let us never forget that a smallish country halfway across the planet made itself the most prosperous on earth on the backs of our labour and our resources for nearly two hundred years. Let’s remember that it then abandoned the million sit had squeezed dry to continuing poverty and the aftermath of the mass violence triggered by its precipitate withdrawal.In 1948, the year after the British left India, despite the great depletions of the Second World War and the loss of their largest colony, they could institute and fund the National Health Service,which provided health coverage to every Briton, no matter how rich or poor. The government could re-target tax money and deploy it to this end with conscious,educated mass support because of the education system that had been put in place over the previous century, a system which was, like everything else,funded by the spoils of Empire. After the shocks of the Depression and the War in the late 40s and 50s, the United States of America, Britain and western Europe delivered access to university education to a wider section of their populations than ever before. This meant that capitalists were paying taxes that funded the education of many youngsters who used that knowledge and chose to become some shade of liberal, socialist or communist,young people who would spend the rest of their lives fighting to instal some checks and balances against rampant,profit-making corporations.

In the meantime, in India, the problem in erecting the tent was the matter of sequencing: you could not have basic education without basic health but,equally, you could not have basic health without a modicum of education; you could not allow entrepreneurs a free-run towards profit in an obscenely unequal society but there was no way of creating a more equal society without giving private industry some opportunity to grow(the limitations of the Soviet Five-Year plans were evident even as we copied them to some extent); economically, you could not shut yourself off from the rest of the world, yet there was no question of pawning the country’s resources to the multinationals backed by the big Western powers (the examples of what was then happening in Iran, Congo and South America were vivid and bloody). Nehru, Patel, Azad, Rajaji and other leaders navigated the young, vulnerable Republic through these sharp, contradictory rocks but in this they were hardly alone — helping to erect and shore up different sections of the tent was a whole army of labourers, farmers, dedicated administrators, politicians, social activists,military servicemen, intellectuals and artists.

History continuously redacts itself.Most of the people who were alive in those first formative years of Independence have now passed on. The ones who were then kids — or just born— now rule over us, even as they themselves stand on the exit ramps of life. In the intervening years, one of the main struggles that has developed within the nation is the battle for memory, a war over what is to be forgotten and erased,over what is to be remembered and how it is to be remembered.

Even as this and other struggles have enlarged underneath it, the enormous and complex task of erecting that basic tent has never been completed. It has been ongoing, stopping at times, starting again, stalling again. At times, segments of the covering have been brought down by gales and storms from the outside;at other times, bits of the tent have collapsed when internal supports have broken down or have been deliberately removed; some areas have had firm covering for long periods, while others have remained exposed to the elements. After seventy-five years, this partly secure,partly ramshackle, leaky but colourful patchwork held up by an assortment of poles and supports is what we call India,Bharat, Hindustan, desh, watan, mulk. This trembling, uneven structure maybe kept together by a whole variety of jugaad, but it is also vast and has a sort of miraculous togetherness, which is different from any rigid ‘unity’.

In the warren of substructures that have come up below the larger covering,often people in one corner have no idea what others are doing in another pocket.From time to time, we’ve seen ‘leaders’,politicians who’ve managed to work themselves to the very centre, attempting to push other people to the margins and even out of the sheltering cover of the tent. In striving to do this, they can be seen hacking away at the strongest supports, tearing holes into the strongest covering. We can see that if these people continue, they will shortly bring the roof down on everybody and not just on the sections of the populace they have labelled the enemy.

After seventy-five years, it should be clear that there are not just one or two ‘Ideas of India’ but multiple competing ideas of what our country should be. We need to interrogate each of these with cold-eyed urgency. Within a few years, roughly 20 per cent of all the humans on this small, troubled planet will be looking to shelter under the tent we call India. As ethnicities and genetic groups increasingly mix with one another,our species is moving towards multiplying micro-diversities rather than any overarching homogeneity. The people we call Indians are centrally apart of this — in a hundred years, people will hopefully shun any ideas of purity,whether regional or religious or caste identities; there may not be any Bengalis or Gujaratis, any Hindus or Muslims,any upper or lower castes as we understand these categories today. Climate change, global warming, ecological crises, whatever your preferred codification,will need large masses of people living adjacently to work with rather than against each other. Therefore, we must ask: which idea of India provides succour and safety to the widest variety of people? Which idea is most accommodating of difference, whether ethnic,racial, religious, of sexual orientation,of differing practices of living? Which idea will ensure the fairest distribution of increasingly scarce resources? Which processes of completing, repairing and shoring up the loose tent that was begun 75 years ago will provide the best quality of life to the largest number of people?

Ruchir Joshi

Source: The Telegraph, 9/08/22

Quote of the Day August 10, 2022

 

“The tragedy of life doesn't lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.”
Benjamin Mays

“जीवन की त्रासदी इस बात में नहीं है कि आप अपने लक्ष्य तक नहीं पहुंचते हैं। त्रासदी तो इस बात की है कि आपके पास प्राप्त करने के लिए कोई लक्ष्य नहीं है।”
बेंजामिन मेअस

Study in UK: Application process begins for Chevening scholarships, fellowships; check details

 

The Chevening Fellowships on offer this year are: Chevening India Cyber Security Fellowship; Chevening Research, Science, and Innovation Leadership Fellowship; Chevening Gurukul Fellowship for Leadership and Excellence; South Asia Journalism Fellowship.

The application window for the UK government’s flagship Chevening scholarship and fellowship programme is open. The programme offers full financial support for a one-year master’s at any UK university and for 8-12 week professional development courses, respectively.

Chevening scholarships include tuition, living expenses and travel cost for a one-year master’s. The last date to apply is November 1, 2022 while for the Chevening fellowship programme, the deadline ends on October 12, 2022.

The Chevening programme in India, as per the British High Commission, is the largest in the world, benefiting over 3,500 scholars and fellows since 1983. The number of awards on offer in India has further increased with the Adani Group co-sponsoring 15 additional scholarships in artificial intelligence over three years.

The Chevening fellowships on offer this year are: Chevening India Cyber Security Fellowship; Chevening Research, Science, and Innovation Leadership Fellowship; Chevening Gurukul Fellowship for Leadership and Excellence; South Asia Journalism Fellowship.

Chevening alumni in India include Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal, G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Anupriya Patel, Global CEO for Tata Steel TV Narendran, and the former Chief Secretary of Tamil Nadu Girija Vaidyanathan.

Source: Indian Express, 11/08/22

InterGlobe Foundation introduces HERITAGE Fellowships

 New Delhi:  InterGlobe Foundation (IGF), the philanthropic arm of InterGlobe Enterprises, launched InterGlobe HERITAGE Fellowships today. Through these fellowships, the InterGlobe Foundation aspires to encourage a community of researchers, journalists, architects, and other individuals to bring previously undocumented aspects of Indian culture to light and help raise awareness of our heritage.

Since 2014, InterGlobe Foundation has impacted thousands of lives by partnering with the best NGOs. Some of the heritage restoration projects include the scoping, conservation and cultural revival of Abdur Rahim Khan-I-Khanan’s Mausoleum in Delhi; cultural mapping and documentation of ten Indian cities; the restoration of stepwell “Indra Kund” in Delwara; and research on Qutub Shah Mausoleum in Hyderabad and Lal Bagh Palace in Indore. The InterGlobe HERITAGE Fellowships are a step to further strengthen the foundation’s heritage conservation work.

These fellowships are available to students and faculty of liberal arts, researchers, journalists, architects, and freelancers. The work done during this program will help bring forth innovative ideas for the restoration of heritage landmarks and will be judged by an esteemed jury comprising of Swapna Liddle (Historian), Ratish Nanda (Conservation Architect, CEO (India), Aga Khan Trust for Culture), Vaibhav Chauhan (CEO, Cultre) and Rohini Bhatia (Chairperson, InterGlobe Foundation).

The Fellowships will focus on presenting a comprehensive vision for the preservation of lesser-known facets of Indian heritage, communities, and practices. It will encourage fresh perspectives on India’s heritage, amplify local voices and conditions to help understand heritage-driven development, and explain how community development initiatives and tangible and intangible heritage in a certain area are interconnected.

 

Rohini Bhatia, Chairperson, InterGlobe Foundation, said: “InterGlobe Foundation (IGF) is focused on preserving and promoting the culture and heritage of India. The foundation believes in joining hands for conserving India’s tangible and intangible heritage and in raising awareness in communities through multiple partnerships; the HERITAGE Fellowships are a step in this direction. IGF is committed to investing in our nation, its citizens and its heritage. Our vision is to build pride in communities by supporting sustainable livelihoods, conserving the environment and promoting heritage and culture.”

The application deadline for the fellowship is August 31, 2022. The jury will select four applicants for the program, and the fellowship will last for three months starting November 1, 2022. For more details on the fellowship program and to apply, please visit www.interglobe.com/the-interglobe-heritage-fellowships

Source: indiaeducationdiary, 4/08/22

Wetlands must form part of biodiversity framework

 I n August 2022, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) added ten wetlands to the List of Wetlands of International Importance (also called Ramsar Sites) within the framework of the Ramsar Convention. The number of Ramsar Sites in India is now an incredible 64, equal to that of China and the highest in Asia. With additional sites under consideration, the network is likely to increase to 75 sites in the 75th year of our Independence. India ratified the Ramsar Convention in 1982. Keoladeo National Park (in Rajasthan) and Chilika (in Odisha) were the first two sites to be placed on the Ramsar List by the Government of India. Till 1990, only four more sites were added to the list, and another 19 over the following two decades. Since 2012, Ramsar Site designation has received a significant policy push from the MoEFCC, and 38 wetlands have been added to the list since.

The network of Indian Ramsar Sites currently covers 1.25 million ha, which is approximately 8 per cent of the known wetland extent of the country. The Ramsar sites in India are highly diverse. The sites range from Himalayan high-altitude wetlands (Tso-Moriri, Tso kar complex and Chandertal), to lakes and marshes (Wular, Hokera, Renuka, Keoladeo, Kabartal, Nawabganj, Loktak, Deepor, Rudrasagar, Sandi, Saman, Keshopur-Miani, Sultanpur, Nalsarovar, Sasthamkotta, Pala, NandurMadhmeswar, Kanwartal and Pallikarnai), river stretches (Upper Ganga River stretch, Beas Conservation Reserve, Kanjili and Satkosia), crater lake (Lonar), salinas (Sambhar), mangrove swamps (Sunderbans, Bhitarkanika, Pichavaram and Point Calimere) and lagoons, estuaries, and near-shore marine areas (Chilika, Ashtamudi, Vembanad-Kol and the Gulf of Mannar). Water storage areas (Pong, Harike, Bhoj, Surinsar-Mansar, Bhindawas, Sur Sarovar, Asan, Wadhvana, Thol, Ranganthittu, Udhayamarthandapuram, Vedanthangal, Nanda, Sirpur and Vellode) and assemblages of sewage-fed fish farms (East Kolkata Wetlands) have also been included in the list by the Government of India.

While the smallest Ramsar Site is just 19.75 ha in area (Vembannur), the largest, the Sunderbans, spans 0.42 million ha. Ramsar Sites are one of the three pillars of the Ramsar Convention (the other two being working towards the wise use of wetlands and cooperating internationally on transboundary wetlands, shared wetlands and shared species). Ramsar Sites form ‘an international network of wetlands which are important for conserving global biological diversity and sustaining human life through the maintenance of their ecosystem components, processes and services. The international significance of these sites is indicated by their fulfilling at least one of the nine criteria set by the Convention. With 2,455 sites spanning 255.8 million ha, the Ramsar sites represent the world’s largest protected area network. The contribution that Ramsar sites make to biological diversity can hardly be overemphasised. A recent compilation of faunal diversity of 42 Indian Ramsar Sites by the Zoological Survey of India enlists 6200 species.

For several of the faunal groups, these wetlands represent a significant share of the known diversity (for example, over one-third of recorded mammalian species, one-fifth of reptiles, and about two-thirds of known bird species). Chilika is known to support a population of over 1 per cent of the known biogeographical population of over 40 waterbird species. The lagoon also maintains a healthy population and, is one of the only two lagoons in the world inhabited by the Irrawaddy Dolphin. KeibulLamjao, a floating national park south of Loktak, is the only known natural habitat of globally endangered swamp deer. The globally vulnerable Black-necked crane breeds in the region around Tso-Moriri. The Sunderbans are famed as the world’s largest single chunk of contiguous mangroves and an abode of the globally endangered Bengal Tiger. Spectacular flocks of flamingos can be seen at Sambhar and Point Calimere, whereas hordes of Bar-Headed Goose regularly visit Pong. The diversity of waterbirds visiting Keoladeo and Harike during migration often crosses over 100 species.

In 2008, Dr Asad Rahmani and Dr Zafar-ul Islam identified 160 wetlands which met at least one of the nine designation criteria of the Convention. The Ramsar Sites make vital contributions to lives and livelihoods. Deepor, Pallikarnai, Bhiatrkanika and Point Calimere provide critical flood and storm buffers, whereas Bhoj and Sasthamcotta are principal water sources. The backwaters of Kerala, of which Vembanad is famed, are the state’s prized tourist destination. Over 260 shallow fish ponds in the EKW receive over 900 MLD pre-settled sewage from the Kolkata Metropolitan region through a network of locally excavated secondary and tertiary canals, used to produce annually 20,000 MT of fish, 50,000 MT of vegetables and irrigate 4700 ha of paddy lands.

The rich fisheries and tourism in Chilika form the livelihoods of 0.2 million fishers. Designating wetlands to the Ramsar Site network affirms a national government’s commitment to wise use. While the Ramsar site designation is a much-celebrated event, what happens after the designation holds the key to whether the very purpose of the designation is fulfilled. Delivery of Ramsar commitments is predicated on designing and implementing effective management actions that can secure the global values of the sites. Since 1986, the MoEFCC has been implementing a national scheme (presently known as the National Plan for Conservation of Aquatic Ecosystems) to assist state governments in preparing and implementing integrated management plans for Ramsar sites and other priority wetlands. Ramsar sites receive legal protection under Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2017. Each Ramsar site needs to have a management plan which outlines the pathway to wise use.

A diagnostic approach for developing such management plans has been prescribed by the Ministry. In June 2022, the Ministry also formulated the ‘Sahbhagita Guidelines’ outlining an “all of society” approach and governance framework for wetlands conservation in the country. Several Ramsar sites are reeling under immense development pressure. Active waste dumping continues in Deepor Beel, East Kolkata Wetlands, and Pallikarnai marshes. Changes in water regimes due to the construction of Ithai Barrage have threatened the habitat of globally endangered Sangai deer. Illegal salt mining in and around Sambhar has led to a drastic reduction in inundation regimes. Pollution is rampant in several sites, with extremes in Harike, Kanjili, Vembanad-Kol Ashtamudi and others. Of the existing list of Ramsar Sites, a majority are designated Protected Areas. The management of these sites is largely governed by the needs of species and habitats and does not leave much space for accommodating wise use. However, there is much scope for augmenting the current management by taking into basin-scale land and water use change and risks induced by climate change.

Ramsar sites need to be accorded a special status in the national wetlands programme so as to ensure that their management meets international standards, financing is embedded within the state budgets as well leveraged by building convergence with ongoing conservation and development sector programmes, and systematic monitoring enables capturing status and trends in ecological conditions. In November this year, countries will convene in Montreal Canada, to set the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework under the aegis of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. The draft, unfortunately has clubbed wetlands within the terrestrial for land and sea, a trend which has continued since the previous Aichi Targets.

This does not augur well for wetlands as these vital parts of landscapes are left at the margins of policy making and programming. The Global Biodiversity Framework is a vital window for the global community to set a nature positive path – with significant impacts on plans, programmes and investments at all levels. Putting wetlands within this framework would be an important policy signal from decision-makers that they recognise the criticality of wetlands in halting and reversing biodiversity loss and are prepared to act on it. We must therefore do everything in our power to make sure the importance of wetlands is recognised in Montreal later this year and beyond.

RITESH KUMAR

Source: The Statesman, 11/08/22

Change is constant

 The mobile phone wins hands down — from communication to storage, from entertainment to learning, it is all on your phone

Some of us were more disturbed than impressed when we read a poem in The New Yorker written by an Artificial Intelligence bot. The last two lines of the poem on cryptocurrency are chilling: “Of inventing money, just like that,/ I ask you, is nothing sacred?” The AI, code-davinci-002, had been ordered to write the poem in the style of Philip Larkin and it was written in less than a second. “We are being replaced by a button,” a friend remarked ominously. Is the time imminent then that our students will produce an essay or a poem with a quick ‘command’ and we teachers will be reduced to teaching them how to give the right prompts? We don’t really know, but we can certainly try to understand the implications of the signs of the times. 

The toddler rushes to the door every time the bell rings, hoping it is ‘Amazon Uncle’. He has never been taken shopping because of the pandemic, not even to a glittering mall. No worries. All his toys and clothes are delivered to the door.

Attendance in some schools is through biometric devices. I doubt that we will see the old school register with students’ names laboriously handwritten in alphabetical order very much longer and the familiar response, ‘Present, Sir’, will not be heard. I also see the disappearance of the greetings ‘Good morning’ and ‘Good evening’. It is being gradually replaced with ‘Hi’ or ‘Hello Ma’am’ — the teachers’ responses to this are mixed. Talking about forms of address, first names are used these days without so much as a ‘by your leave’ but caution is exercised where gender is involved. No longer is one limited to ‘he’ or ‘she’ as some prefer the inclusive word ‘they’. The Bengali term, ‘aapni’, is hardly used by young people — the informal, ‘tumi’ or ‘tui’ are far more prevalent. I think that this indicates a preference for an informal conversational style rather than a lack of respect.  

How do the young of today relate to books? Many kindergarteners would much rather look at their tablets than go through their static but colourful books. Even senior students admit that they find it difficult to ‘process’ their text or reference books or type-written documents. According to them, moving images, sounds, animation, and movie clips, along with bulleted points and handy notes (as seen in many YouTube lessons) make studying much easier. School libraries have begun to house digital material in the form of audio books, films, podcasts, and video lessons. Recently, I happened to view the digital collections in a public library exhibition entitled Treasures and indeed they seemed as valuable as the old manuscripts on display.

Tasks are executed differently too, with Siri or Alexa serving as a useful helpmate. (Worryingly, they even serve as companions to some lonesome youngsters.) For various assignments, screenshots of the design or plan are prepared in advance and then the finished product is presented. Practice sessions of programmes are video-filmed and played back for comments and advice. Students in drama and elocution classes not only learn to throw their voices but are also taught how to modulate them while using microphones. Sport is becoming increasingly fine tuned and those inclined towards games and athletics select their respective areas of specialisation early in life. Sadly, we hardly find children playing a sport for sheer pleasure.

The late Sir Ken Robinson, one of the greats in education, once stated that the young don’t wear watches any longer as they are ‘single-function’ devices. This is not true now: we find more and more young people sporting Fitbit watches to keep track of their fitness regimen — incidentally, these watches tell the time too. But as the most useful device, it is the mobile phone that wins hands down — from communication to storage, from entertainment to learning, it is all on your phone. These are some of the signs of our times. Whether we like them or not, changes will keep coming fast and furious. I have had to adapt to these changes so rapidly in recent years that there was no time to ponder on the good old days. But if I live a little longer, I hope to dwell deliciously on a slower and more intelligible time.

Devi Kar

Source: The Telegraph, 11/08/22