Jugalbandi beyond music

Both husband and wife hum as they move around their home, but the tunes are mostly light and breezy. The couple is dressed in casuals, and not in the traditional way. At one glance, Sriram Parasuram and Anoorada Sriram defy your concept of the archetypal Indian classical musicians.

The study in their Chennai house has more than a couple of shelves. Again, it is not just music CDs and cassettes, but books — and, most of them, fiction. Including, children’s stuff. Well, primarily a Carnatic vocalist-violinist, Sriram has not just been composing and producing musical albums, but is also closely associated with literature: he works with Karadi Tales, a publishing house based in the city.

Sriram guided Anoorada, a gold medalist from Madras University, more than a decade ago when she was pursuing Ethnomusicology in Wesleyan University while they were both doing advance studies in Connecticut of northeastern United States. That rendezvous led the couple to begin a jugalbandi in life that is proving to be a wonderful marriage of ideas and interests with a shared passion for all things musical.

Full report here New Indian Express

Toy story

Two dinky little toys take their place by the side of Samir Patil, the 39-year-old CEO of ACK Media, at the company’s headquarters in in Mumbai. One is of Suppandi, a square-headed country bumpkin bustling with initiative for things that were bound to fail; the other is of Shikari Shambhu, a hunter whose jungle-time is spent running away from animals. The three-dimensional avatars of the two-dimensional characters from Tinkle comics are Patil’s frontline warriors in his bid to capture a bigger slice of the country’s growing ‘edu-tainment’ market.

Under Patil, ACK Media — owner of decades-old brands such as Amar Chitra Katha, Tinkle and Karadi Tales — has scaled up its ambition. Comics will still be its core business, but there will now be a toy story, too. Fuelling this new venture is an investment by Elephant Capital, a private equity fund floated by Dabur group promoter Gaurav Burman that has acquired a 30 per cent stake in the Rs 75-crore business. ACK’s chief operating officer Ashish Goel says, “The target for this financial year is Rs 125-150 crore.”

Patil’s ambitions go much farther and higher: “I want to be the Walt Disney of India and create the largest family entertainment company. There are three places kids today go to — malls, schools and television. We will be there in all three.”

Full report here Hindustan Times