Legally Hilarious, Grand Temple Opening and a treat for literary fans!
Society with Ruchi
Whew! What a weekend! While dads are still full from last night’s fathers’ day treats I am still recovering from a weekend filled with exciting shows and films. Friday June 17, 2011 the Museum of Fine Arts Houston hosted the second and last series of Rabindranath Tagore and Satyajit Ray’s work followed by showcasing Ray’s most famous work Charulata (The Lonely Wife), based on ‘Nastanirh’ (The broken Nest) a story by Rabindranath Tagore and set in Kolkata in the late nineteenth century when the Bengal Renaissance was at its peak and India was under British rule. The film was Ray’s twelfth feature film and the director’s favorite. It was a stand out amongst Ray’s films that explores the emergence of the modern woman in the upper-class of colonial India. One can not help but draw parallels with Ibsen’s ‘A Doll’s House’.
It was most definitely an evening not to be missed by movie buffs, a Bengali film that spurs Houston’s literary fans. The Tagore Society of Houston and Museum of Fine Arts were pleasantly surprised with the housefull attendance of 300 plus people who thoroughly enjoyed the works of both Satyajit Ray and Rabindranath Tagore.
Downtown at the Wortham Center the lawyers took to center stage for their annual fundraising musical comedy show produced by each city’s respective bar organization. In Houston, audiences enjoyed ‘Star Wars’ characters in the Houston Bar Foundation and Houston Bar Association’s ‘Night Court 2011: Laws in Space’ on Saturday June 18, 2011.
“For over twenty years Night Court has brought laughter and huge donations,” says Dinesh Singhal, an attorney who was playing the character ‘Deepspace Chopra’ and singing and dancing on ‘Planet Bollywood’ to the tunes of ‘Jai Ho’. Project Night Court was quite an amazing show keeping in consideration it was a stage performance written by lawyers and performed by lawyers, with an orchestra and crew full of lawyers.
The show had excellent set building and costumes. Star Wars costumes were very successfully emulated with the perfect attempt to poke fun at each an everyone including lawyers, doctors, educationists, politicians, and outsourcing. The two and a half hour long show kept the packed audience glued to their seats with frequent applause for their fellow performers.
Proceeds from Night Court have benefited charities like STAR Family Intervention Court Program, STAR Drug Program, Houston Volunteer Lawyers Program and helps underwrite a program to distribute 50,000 booklets on legal rights to high school seniors.
Sunday Fathers’ Day was a very special day for the Woodlands area Indian community as they inaugurated a new Hindu Temple. The efforts to build a temple in that area has been on-going since 2005 and finally the deities are installed. Lord Ganesha, Lord Venkateswara, and Lord Shiva were welcomed with the chanting of Hindu rituals. In spite of the hot day the ceremony witnessed a large gathering of devotees.
[galleryview id=64 showPanels=true showCaptions=true showFilmstrip=true panelWidth=565 panelHeight=650 panelScale=nocrop transitionSpeed=800 transitionInterval=6000 fadePanels=true overlayPosition=top overlayOpacity=0.2 frameWidth=60 frameHeight=60 filmstripPosition=bottom pointerSize=6 frameScale=crop frameGap=5 frameOpacity=0.3 easingValue=swing navTheme=dark startFrame=1 pauseOnHover=true]
