Macmillan India is looking for future scientists

With an innovative initiative to encourage and develop scientific talent in schools across India, Macmillan is launching the annual accolade The Springer Nature Upcoming Scientist award, which aims to expand scientific literacy in India and promote research and innovation for sustainable development.

The announcement comes after an education conclave organized by Springer Nature in New Delhi in October to discuss strategies and evolve solutions to challenges in science education in the years ahead. The new award intends to be a first step to encourage students to engage in scientific learning and follows reports which indicate that India could develop into a hub for scientific research and development if concomitant investments in educational infrastructure, resources and pedagogy were made. Although recent trends in students’ performance have been not been encouraging, India is showing improvements in the volume of high quality scientific research published and the Indian Government has recently indicated an increased commitment to both education and research and innovation.

Entries for The Springer Nature Upcoming Scientist award will open on National Science Day (28 February 2017) which is held annually to mark the discovery of the Raman effect by Indian physicist Sir C. V. Raman. The award will be open to all students in India from ages 12 to 16 years.

The award will be given to the student found to best exhibit intense curiosity and the application of scientific thinking in response to a real challenge (health, environment or resources) in the student’s own environment, for example finding a solution to discourage junk food consumption by school children, or reducing paper consumption in schools.

is based on Eugene O’Neill’s play called

Set in the rustic Uttar Pradesh, it’s a tale of longing and desires of three people who are brought together by familial bonds. Vishnu Tiwari is an old farmer living on his self made property with his three sons one of which is a foster. How things change when a woman arrives in the house. It’s a story of love, vengeance, greed, hope and desire.

I read the original text three years back, and it took me an year to write the Hindi adaptation. Then I started narrating it to various people so I could get some finance but nothing happened. Initially the work started as improvisations on our terrace. Over a period of time, the rehearsal process got so intense that it just felt like a movie in the making. So it was a spark that got some air and turned into a raging fire. There was no dearth of passion and enthusiasm and we had fairly experienced people in the team. We funded the initial amount from our own pockets and started working on the film. We met many more passionate people and we finally had a team of 13 people onboard ready to kickstart this film. We could not afford to shoot at real locations. It took us more than a month to create a village house on our terrace. And that too without any professional help, as we were short of funds. It was like living in a story, so many sleepless nights, surviving on eggs and bread for over a month, shooting for hours in the peak winters wearing only vests or single sari. It was magical. After concluding the shoot, came the biggest obstacle. We realised that we had no money left for post-production. We can’t hire any editing studio and cannot do it ourselves as we don’t have the equip- ment. We’ve been working on this film for five months, and have arrived at the next leg of the project. We are left with editing, dubbing, music, sound and other post-production work and we need funds for the same.

Well we were shooting a rural film in the city on the set so the ambience was never appropriate so we struggled with sound, and of course after a day’s shoot we had to think about the money we needed for the next day. Otherwise it was a smooth and enriching experience.

My father was really interested in films, always took us for movies on holidays. Fascinated by the art of storytelling as a kid, I was always curious about filmmaking. Having been a theatre artist for a long time now, I wanted to explore filmmaking so I moved to Bombay and started assisting in ads and feature films. I worked as script supervisor, casting director, and second assistant director on

directed by Robby Grewal, and

directed by Garry Grewal. Also worked with Ram Madhvani, an ace ad filmmaker. After working as second assistant director for some years I got the chance to be the associate director of the film called

directed by Veena Bakshi, another well known name in advertising, where I worked on every aspect of filmmaking. I Also worked with well-known casting director Abhimanyu Ray as dialogue writer, for his directorial venture and as associate director on

directed by Ajay Bahl and produced by Tonga Talkies Productions. Recently, I acted in

(2016). Simply, I just can’t think beyond telling good stories. As an independent filmmaker I could not wait for financiers to appear from somewhere, so we started with our own money. We stayed at the location for 45 days’ shoot so we don’t spend a penny on ourselves. but days came when we were short of cash. But I don’t know how we never stopped shooting. People understood and gave us equipment for free. The same thing is happening post-production too, nobody is getting paid as of now, that’s my only concern. I want to give them their dues.

Anand Gandhi, Ajay Bahl, Q., Neerah Ghaywan, Kanu Behl, K. D. Satyam, Raam Reddy, Sanjeev Sharma and so on.

I am working on two stories since a long time now, one is a musical Bollywoodthemed comedy and the other is an intense teenage drama. Can’t say much about it right now as both the projects are in the process.