Randhir Khare
Biography of Randhir Khare :
Born in Kanpur in 1951 of Irish, Spanish, English and Indian origins, Randhir Khare was educated in St. Xavier’s College in Calcutta and grew up in the creative turbulence of West Bengal, sharing in the literary, theatrical and artistic excitement of the late 60s and 70s.
Poet & Writer
During his early creative years, his poetry began to appear in literary journals and papers in Calcutta and he was often invited to read his work at gatherings. Some poems were even translated into Bengali and used in theatrical performances. His work gained wider acceptance by the time he was in his early 20s and he began travelling around the country, reading his poems in various towns and cities, building up a readership uniquely his own.
His poetry has been used in creative arts and educational workshops in Ireland and England. These include: projects and exhibitions for one world week, self development workshops for women, professional workshops for teachers, cultural education courses in colleges of education, creative projects with minority groups and refugees, education classes for traveller education support groups.
Readings of his work have taken place during lecture presentations on India, exhibition openings and arts festivals in Dublin and rural Ireland.Randhir Khare\'s fiction and essays have been dominantly concerned with minority and marginal communities struggling to survive in times of change. His work has been published in leading journals, newspapers and magazines and has appeared as books.
Theatre & Creative Education
His theatre involvements started when he was still in Calcutta. He was actively a part of the Anglo-Bengali theatre scene, writing, producing, directing, set designing and painting, light designing, choreographing and performing in plays in the city, winning innumerable awards at festivals.
His creative education work then went on to include children and youngsters from socially and economically deprived areas. This brought him in touch with street children at the National Society For Clean Cities\' Children’s Complex in Bandra, Mumbai. At the Complex he worked for over a year with deprived children and helped them shape their own musical play, build and paint the sets, evolve and execute face and body painting designs, make and paint animal masks and create their own music.
Extending his creative education approach nationally, he went on to work in Delhi with the Times Of India\'s programmed called Newspapers In Education. As part of the programme, he worked creatively with children and young people from 60 schools in the Capital. He also worked on multi-art programmes with municipal schools children and teachers in the city.
In Bhopal, he worked with 30 families of traditional puppeteers, developing with them, new scripts, designed and painted new sets and evolved new approaches to lyric writing.
He became a member of the National Institute For Design\'s (Ahmedabad) Visiting Faculty and conducted creative writing and communication workshops with undergraduates at the institute.
Randhir was also Professor of Literature in the Post-graduate Dept. Of English of the Nowrosjee Wadia College in Pune from 2004-2006.
His books:
Biren’s trip to Calcutta to crack a writer’s block turns into an obsessive journey of self-discovery. He gets involved into a web of relationships that is set deeper than family and community. It is a journey which balances perilously between living and dying, waking and dreaming, losing and finding, until he is drawn over the edge and falls into his real self. The book’s about finding when not searching, about arriving even when you think that you have not set out.
A Fusion Of Literature, Music & Art (fiction)
The novel was released by an avid group of post-graduate students of Nowrosjee Wadia College on September 16, 2006. "This programme by the students is an effort to encourage an interest in books and literary and artistic issues. I tried my best to support their initiative. Three students have actually written extensive papers. One is on William Faulkner\'s novel The Sound and The Fury and the second is on my novel Over The Edge," explained Randhir.
Call Of The Blue Mountains (Travel)
These essays have grown out of the author’s real life experiences among tribal communities scattered across the Indian subcontinent, culminating in the Nilgiris in Tamil Nadu, among the hunter-gatherer, artisan and pastoral tribes of the region, partnering a silent movement for tribal empowerment that has been happening in the blue mountains. Colour photographs heighten the experience.
Written as a travel narrative, accompanied by photographs, the book eloquently captures the true-life stories of ship builders, mariners, potters, craftsmen and craftswomen, musicians, nomadic herdsmen and people from all walks of life. Myth, legend, popular history and everyday colour weave the past and present into a magical tapestry of Kutchi tradition.