Welcome, Krishna Mayur

Beauty of Water welcomes our new publicist and planner, Krishna Mayur from Hyderabad. A professional business consultant with specialty in public relations and communication, he also promotes community events such as blood donations and recycling programs.

Krishna Mayur is passionate about the environment, especially water. He has already come up with immediately actionable ideas for focusing appreciation on water through artistic expression. We are thrilled to have his collaboration in Beauty of Water!

Pongala Festival

Today is Pongala, an annual, sacred festival held in Trivandrum to honor the Goddess. At 5:30am I arose and walked 5k to the home of dear friends Susan and Dr. Raj, who live near Attukal Temple, locus of the event. Most of the 2 million or more women attending, mainly Keralite Hindus, were already in preparation.

Here are two short videos with ambient sound taken on my walk home at 10:00am. The first shows women getting water used in cooking, and the second, taken across from where I live, shows lighting of fires, which happens at an auspicious time. Women line the streets beyond what the eye can see; men stay indoors or serve the devotees in some capacity while they make delicious, sweet, porridge-like payasam.

Update

• I am deep in the throes of grant proposal writing, please wish us luck!
• A very exciting art installation called Lucid has been conceived by Latha Kurien Rajeev and me, with influences and input from many. More on this one day soon!
• There are also signs of growth for Watermark, a show of solo works and performance on the theme of appreciation for water.
• In January I started my journey toward a research-based PhD from the School of Arts and Humanities at Oxford Brookes University, under Shelley Sacks of the Social Sculpture Research Unit.
• It's unseasonably hot in Trivandrum and throughout Kerala! Water is on everybody's minds...

Peace to all.

Primary Water

Stanley Krippner, PhD, of Saybrooke Graduate School and Research Center, has been sending me important articles about water for more than a year, for which I am grateful. It is time to come out of the closet with this GOOD NEWS, albeit controversial, enquiry about water. Please check out this paper about primary water by Robert Gourlay of the environmental consulting business called the Environmental Research & Information Consortium or ERIC. It's not only applicable in Australia.

Beauty of Water Curriculum 01

Beauty of Water has published a curriculum related to the course we offered through Raja Ravi Varma College of Fine Arts. You may download the curriculum here.

If you use this curriculum please drop us a line and tell us about it! The email address to which to send your feedback is in the curriculum document itself. We are also interested in hearing about similar courses, so share your stories please.

Each of the following people played an important role in creating the first course based on this curriculum: N.N. Rimzon, Shijo Jacob, A.P. Sunil, Amal M., Aneesh V., Manjunath K.P., Pavel Suresh, Prajeesh P.P., Shijeesh K. and Shyne K. Antony Caral and his family, V. Sasikumar and Preeti Joseph... thanks all!