Talent

I have always admired multi-faceted people, who are good at more than one thing, and if possible one of the very best in their chosen field.

The education that I have had, and my chosen field of work, has kind of meant limited interaction with people outside the domains of engineering and business schools. Make no mistake, I know a number of truly outstanding individuals, who would be big names (if they are not already) in the fields of technology, biotechnology, finance, consulting and in general being great contributors to the society (Teachers, Social workers..).

I met someone quite recently, a co-worker of mine, who is a learning master of Kathak, Bhawai, Kalbeliya and various other folk dances. She is just out of college, and is just like any other lively young gal, learning her way in to this professional life. It was like a regular office interaction at first, and I could not suppress the surprised look on my face when she first mentioned about this. (She is modest, as are most of the talented people)

I guess I have a soft corner for people who are good at fine arts, music and related fields, as I always have been the worst in all these finer things of life. And as I said before, we have pretty limited interactions with people outside a few specific domains, so it is even more of an experience when you come across such talented people. When we got the following news, I was probably as happy as her family.

‘Aditi Sharma’ has been awarded the prestigious 'Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar - 2007' by Sangeet Natak Akademi, the apex state-run organisation for music, dance and drama in the country.
Named after late Shehnai player Ustad Bismillah Khan, who was honoured with the country's highest civilian award, Bharat Ratna, the Akademi instituted the awards in 2006 with the aim of identifying and encouraging outstanding young talents in diverse fields of performing arts.

Aditi is folk dancer of international repute, who has received 50 other national and state awards, and has given over 1000 stage performances across the world. She has also been awarded for her performances at Bordeaux and Brantome, France; ‘Giffoni Film Festival 1999’ in Italy and ‘Edinburgh Mela 2000’ in UK.

Take a bow!

p.s. One of my engineering batch-mate did do a villain’s role in a Kannada movie, but I think I would leave those details to be described by Raconteur.