Tag: Dharamshala

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Independent cinema and more: Dharamshala International Film Festival 2018

What’s the best time to visit Dharamshala?

I’d say all through the year.

But if you ask me to pick my favourite time of the year, then it has to be autumn. October – November is when Dharamshala is at its picturesque best; the town is buzzing but not as crowded as in the summers. The weather’s perfect; days are pleasant and the nights – a bit chilly, giving everyone and particularly the tourists from the temperate parts of our country a chance to wear their jackets and the light woolens.

It’s also the time when the Dharamshala International Film Festival (DIFF) comes calling. An annual affair since 2012, DIFF is an amazing opportunity to gain exposure to independent films. It’s also a place where you get to meet and know people you wouldn’t have otherwise had the chance to interact with.

With its massive outreach, the film festival has put our town on the creative map. In fact, even within India people are pretty confused about Uttarakhand and Himachal. And though places like Shimla and Manali are quite well known but Dharamshala not so much. It’s due to events such as DIFF and international cricket matches that Dharamshala is getting more noticed.

Volunteering @DIFF

Not much of a film buff, and not by a long shot, I got into volunteering at DIFF just by chance. In a small town like Dharamshala everyone knows everyone else, quite literally. A couple of years ago Ritu and Tenzin, founder and festival director of DIFF, were looking for community partners to help them with the festival. That’s when we chanced upon each other. I vividly remember our first meeting, with Ritu sharing her ideas, which got us all excited.

Organising a film festival that too an international one, as you’d probably expect, is a lot of work.  Volunteers are the backbone of such events. Also, considering that finding sponsors for a film festival into alternate and independent cinema is tough and this makes the role of volunteers all the more critical.

The festival is a huge event for the local community and in a way the entire town comes together to make DIFF a success. As a localite it made sense for me to pitch in whichever way I could. A few of our team members at Development Logics have been volunteering since 2012, but 2016 was when I volunteered for the first time and then again this year.

I was involved in operational aspects of the festival such as orienting volunteers, overseeing logistics and co-ordinating with between teams.

DIFF 2018

Attending DIFF has always been a great experience, and this year was no different. Despite the harsh weather, the turnout was very good and we also received good support from sponsors. Several celebrities were part of the festival this year. The ones I must mention is Manoj Bajpayee, who is one of my favourite actor.  

Manoj Bajpayee is a Bollywood actor known for his powerful acting and unconventional roles. He came across be a very approachable and down to earth person no airs. Also, DIFF being a festival of independent cinema the entire atmosphere is quite different. It’s all about watching good films, participating in discussions and masterclasses, and importantly having a good time. It doesn’t have any of the red carpet glitz and glamour.

My favourite movies this year

This year I managed to catch up on a couple of films. One was the movie Pashi by Siddharth Chauhan.  Another was Hamid by Aijaz Khan starring Rasika Dugal, Vikas Kumar and Talha Arshad Reshi in major roles.

I particularly enjoyed Hamid and would recommend everyone to watch this sensitive movie. The movie is about an unlikely friendship between a CRPF jawan and a Kashmiri boy trying to cope with his father’s death.

All in all

This year was DIFF’s 7th edition. Over the past years it has become one of India’s leading independent film festivals and draws audiences from across the world. The event also offers an unique opportunity for people to volunteer and be a part of the amazing experience. The event receives volunteers from across India and some from abroad as well.

I can vouch for the fact that of all the things required to run a successful film festival the most important are dedicated volunteers. And volunteering is not all work and gruelling schedules. It’s incredibly rewarding. It’s also a lot of fun.

You get to meet interesting people, the chance to network with professional filmmakers and media practitioners – especially relevant for those interested in getting into the creative arts, and pick up some important skills along the way. Ofcourse you also get to watch some great movies, attend workshops, spot celebs and stars.

And if you decide to volunteer for the Dharamshala Film Festival, you could also go trekking in the Dhauladhar ranges, do some adventure sports or get acquainted with Tibetan culture.

You will love the overall experience and for sure will return the next year!

I would love to hear your views. Please feel free to share your comments below.

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What led to starting up a tech venture in Kangra valley?

There is something very different about growing up in the mountains. For me, having lived all of my childhood and adolescent years in Dharamshala, it’s almost as if the towering Himalayan ranges are an inseparable part of my life. And when I am away from the landscape, I carry them with me.  

Despite this unexplainable bond with our land, most of us ‘pahadis’- as we are commonly referred to – end up migrating to the cities for ‘good’ education, career and more importantly a ‘better life’.

We grow up listening to stories of people who’ve made it big after moving to the cities and are constantly led to believe – if you wish to become successful, you must leave. And like so many before me, I too followed suit. A good part of my professional education and career was spent in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Delhi.

But clearly I wasn’t cut out for the city life or I’d rather put it as I couldn’t see myself living away from the mountains. Life around the mountains is pleasant in so many ways. The beautiful environs, cleaner surroundings, good air and water, helpful people, and a calm, peaceful life. What is life without these?

The Baramasa series of Kangra miniature paintings from early 17th century, depict how woman is asking her lover not to leave her. Men had to leave their families behind for work or fighting a war.

The mountains are calling and I must go

The lure of a big paycheck can be hard to beat, nevertheless even during my college days, I used to constantly wonder about the need to move away from a place so beautiful for the sake of a job. The two questions constantly on my mind were – Why aren’t there any opportunities for us to do well professionally and live a decent life in places like Himachal? What can I do about it?

Just fresh out of college, life in the early 20s is confusing enough yet this seemed like a worthy adventure to pursue. Friends from engineering college and later management school would remember our conversations about this dream.  At this juncture, I had decided that I will find a way to move back. How? Well, this was something I had not figured out fully then.

In 2001, started my first business, when I was 20 and studying engineering. This was the first cyber cafe in Dharamshala. Lost my mother’s hard earned money in this one.

First steps towards building a career in the mountains

In 2007, after completing my PG diploma in rural management, I took up an assignment as an ICT4D (Information and Communications Technologies for Development) consultant in Himachal. The role involved rolling out 3000+ e-Governance kiosks (Common Service Centers) across the state.

The main purpose of these centers is to provide government services to people in rural areas. To me this assignment was more than a job, it allowed me to travel across the state which is something that I enjoyed thoroughly. The project ended after 3 years, but moving out of Himachal was not an option I wanted to exercise.

The beginning of an entrepreneurial journey

By then it was clear to me that I had to start up on my own in this very place. Though I wasn’t very sure of how things would pan out, I was absolutely determined to embark on this journey without worrying too much about the destination. Meanwhile, I had gotten married to Shilpa, my longtime girlfriend, who stood by me through this decision. Finally, in 2011, we decided to take the plunge. Since I had experience in the IT consulting domain, we decided to start a venture in IT services. When deciding on the location to set up our venture, we looked at several places across Himachal to finally zero-in on Dharamshala, headquarters of district Kangra in Himachal. The fact that Dharamshala is my hometown definitely played a part, that aside the decision was driven purely by business considerations.

How Dharamshala happened?

The city has a very cosmopolitan outlook and, being host to His Holiness the Dalai Lama it has a significant population of expats giving the place a global feel. Infrastructure-wise, it has the only functional airport in the state and is well connected by road to important cities such as Chandigarh, Amritsar and Delhi. Overnight train services from Pathankot are an added plus.

The many educational institutions present in the city ensure a steady stream of talent, while the verdant valleys inspire many others to make it their home. In hindsight, the decision seems to have paid off for us with the town being upgraded to a municipal corporation and making it to the Indian government’s flagship Smart Cities Mission.

Passengers embarking on a flight at Dharamshala airport.

7 years and counting

It has been more than 7 years since we moved here. The small ‘big’ idea with which we came here has sustained itself despite all the challenges and given us quite a few sweet triumphs. We hired locals with little experience of IT services who are now delivering best-in-class technology services to clients across the globe.

Our start-up has created more than 100+ IT jobs in this city. We have diversified into other businesses. It may sound boastful but we have actually taken internet services to regions where nobody wants to go. Besides business, I am actively involved in the revival of the Kangra miniature art tradition and initiatives such as setting up the Global Shapers hub of the World Economic Forum for leadership development and social engagement of the youth in the city, among others. Conducted workshops on technology, cybersecurity, entrepreneurship and personality development for thousands of students over these years.

More recently I have joined the board of governors at Catalyst, a business incubator at IIT Mandi. My goal is to help more entrepreneurs in our state, to take their ideas to reality. Meanwhile, I have also had the opportunity to travel internationally to gain exposure and network to raise resources for our venture and the causes I support. Another high in this journey was being selected for the Professional Fellowship, last October, sponsored by the US State Department.

New batch of interns at our Dharamshala office.

The best part about the decision to base our start-up in Dharamshala is that we have managed to do all this at a place where people either run away from or go to take a break from work!  

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Kangra paintings exhibition at Children’s Science Fair, Dharamshala

Artists from Kangra Arts Promotion Society exhibited their paintings at the Children’s Science Congress in Dharamshala.

Unlikely place for an art exhibit ain’t it. Well this was part of an initiative promote awareness about Geographical Indicators amongst the young students.

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Through initiatives of KAPS AND Council for Science and Technology, Government of Himachal Pradesh, Kangra Paintings will soon receive their own Geographical Indicator.

We are expecting that GI for Kangra paintings will help increase awareness about this art and recognition for the artists practicing this tradition against all odds.

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Two years of being an entrpreneur

Its been a while since I updated about my activities and experiences. Having moved to Dharamshala, the only negative I see for myself is the rare opportunity of meeting friends who have come to stay in bigger cities of the world. At the cost of being termed narcissistic, let me share some updates and insights of what I have been upto in the last 2 years. With this, I hope to start a thread with like minded individuals who would be interested in associating with us, spreading the news about the work being done by our group and sharing more information about their entrepreneurial journeys.

To begin with, I quit my last job (with IL&FS) in June 2010 with an idea of setting up an enterprise in Himachal. An enterprise which will help create livelihoods opportunities in the mountains. The business had to be clean, environment friendly and should have the potential to scale. We experimented a lot by trying out multiple options in dairy, tourism, handicrafts and IT. The first 6 months just flew, with no idea hitting the ground. Probably the idea was too grandiose and we were too short on cash. I still remember a chance meeting with an alumni at Jabli (on the way to Shimla) and his talk about focusing as an entrepreneur.

By January 2011, we had moved our base from Shimla to Dharamshala (my hometown) and were fast burning whatever little cash we (also my wife) had saved. Thanks to the generous support offered by some of my close friends, we survived for another 6 months. It is in this period, that I decided to focus on my core strength which is managing IT and stop work on all other ideas. We decided to setup an IT company in Dharamshala and started operations in April 2011. By October we were a team of 8 people and in a year’s time we have grown to be a 21 people team.

So what do we do ?

We are a technology company with focus on building robust, scalable and reliable web based solutions for our customers. Currently our team specializes in building websites, e-commerce portals and web- applications using open source CMS’s like Drupal and WordPress for customers spread across time-zones.

Besides being an IT company, our business has a social angle to it as we are the first real software engineering company to set-up base in Dharamshala and sustain it. Those familiar with this place will recognize Dharamshala as home of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, identify with the beautiful stadium which hosts IPL matches or imagine jumping of the cliff while para-gliding. Technology is something which probably does not even occupy any mind-space amongst the natives or people who come visiting.

It is our endeavor to make Dharamshala an IT destination and a melting pot for creative kinds, intellectuals, geeks and entrepreneurs from all over. We have a co-working office space, where people, remotely linked with our work can come and do their own gig, as long as they are ready to share their knowledge and skills with our people and the community around us. We also throw in a bit of free filter coffee, if they like.

Our team is deeply involved in helping youngsters from colleges in and around Dharamshala improve their skills, exposing them to latest happenings in the technology space by organizing sessions, workshops, hackathons, internship programs etc. At any given point of time we have atleast 5- 6 interns from colleges around Dharamshala and other parts of India working with us.

Hello Drupal Camp at Dharamshala College on 15th Sep 2012

Besides this, we throw our office open to individuals from various walks of life to come and interact with our engineers every Friday talking about Environment, Music, Films, Communication, Time management, Personality, Human rights etc. We have had the pleasure of hosting Entrepreneurs, Geeks, Artists, Activists, CXOs, Bureaucrats and Politicians and look forward to meeting more interesting people going forward.

Since the technology business is always about building an eco-system, I am also helping few other start-ups and established companies setup offices in this town. We have got cheap and highly reliable electricity, pensioners willing to rent out places on cheap rentals, plenty of engineering and management colleges around, good internet and physical connectivity with other cities in the India.

What else ?

Besides technology business, I volunteer with a non-profit which is trying to revive the Kangra miniature art. Like other traditional art forms this art was also dying a slow death and was almost on the verge of extinction with no next generation artists taking to this art. We set-up  “Chitera”, an art institute in collaboration with the district administration and have helped train about 15 youngsters so far in this art. A group of 6 senior artists from our first and second batch continue to work from a small studio and our non-profit helps market their work. If nothing else, the studio is worth a visit during your next visit to Dharamshala. Our artists can share interesting insights about the paintings, how they are made and their life in journal when you visit them. You may like to read more about our work here at www.kangraarts.org

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Trek to Kareri lake

Continuation to our trek to Kareri village, 9 members of our team trekked upto the lake. Situated at an altitude of about 9600 feet, the Kareri lake is about 13 kms from the village. We started early in the morning and were there at about 10:15. Spent a good time lazing around the lake and off-course dipping our feet in its freezing water. The walk back was quite tiring as we moved quite fast and wanted to reach Kareri village by 3pm and then Ghaira village by 5pm.