Gaya's own cultural centre

GAYA: Come March 25th and Gaya will have its own cultural renaissance as the centre for resurrection of art and culture in the region becomes operational. The brain child of the writer couple — Sanjay and Durba — the centre aims at discovering talent in the region and provide an opportunity to the young art lovers to improve their faculties, appreciate the nuisances of different art forms and develop the appetite for good art.
In a way, the cultural centre aims at disinfecting, and if possible immunising, the future artists and performers from the Bollywood bug.According to Sanjay Sahay and Durba Sahay, trustees of the Renaissance, an offshoot of the Sushila Dayanand Charitable Trust, preliminary selection of pro-mising youngsters, most of them school students, have already been done and they would avail the facilities at the cultural centre at least for one year to develop their faculties and sharpen their skills in different fields including music, drama, painting and creative writing.
To provide the right kind of environment and tools to equip the young and promising art lovers, a 103-seat air conditioned auditorium with stereophonic speech application system, designed and installed by BOSE, the most established and authentic brand name in the field has been made. An exclusive library having no take out provisions and a cafeteria are also part of the cultural centre.
Designed by Rajan Saklani, head of the Bhubaneshwar-based Creative Design Group, the Renaissance complex takes the lookers back to the architectural design of the now forgotten good old days. The auditorium, besides providing an opportunity to the Renaissance inmates to have audio-visual exposure to some of the best films made in the last century in different parts of the world and in different languages, including French, Russian, Italian and German, will also be used to have interactive sessions with specialists specially invited at the centre from different parts of the country and abroad. The Renaissance inmates will also be shown Indian classics like Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam and Shatranj ke Khilari.
A three-day cultural menu has been prepared by the Renaissance torch-bearers for the inaugural celebrations of the cultural centre. Writers, critics and producers of good cinema, the virtual who’s who of the Indian literary scene would be there in Gaya to play midwife to the birth of the Renaissance. The list includes names like Namwar Singh, Rajindra Yadav, Asghar Wajahat, Gautam Ghose and Anwar Jamal, the last two being makers of quality cinema.
The cultural menu includes an Indo-jazz fusion to be performed on March 26th evening by the Australia-based Andre Gracius and lectures on cinema appreciation by Gautam Ghose and Anwar Jamal. The other items of the three-day long inaugural show includes workshops on western music, Indian literature and Hindustani classical music.