Parijat Desai on stage

CHENNAI It was born over a midnight cup of coffee shared by dancer Anita Ratnam and businessman and theatre enthusiast Ranvir Shah. Seven years on, as 15 teams from all over the world get ready to gather at Chennai's Chinmaya Heritage Centre, "The Other Festival" seems to have got under the city's cultural skin.

In its seventh year, the festival, which is being supported by The Park Hotel, has dance, music, theatre, and film as well. There is Experimenta, an off-the-wall film festival curated by Mumbai's Shai Heredia. It showcases work by a small group of radical artists in the 1960s and '70s who made use of sound footage, animation and stylised montage to develop their own syntax as an alternative to the documentary films of the Films Division of India.

The cultural festival opens with a specially commissioned work for the event which has both Finnish and Indian players playing to Finnish composer Eero Hameenniemi. Israeli actor, director and singer Gil Alon presents a solo theatrical interlude. There will be contemporary dance from a diasporic perspective with Parijat Desai from the US and Chitralekha Bolar from the UK performing. Also on show will be shadow puppetry from Jean-Luc Penso of France, a modern dance-theatre performance by Canada's Denise Fujiwara, and some cutting-edge theatre from Mumbai's Ramu Ramanathan. Watch out too for a performance by Arjun Raina, a Kathak dancer from Delhi known more for his memorable turn as the perennial student in In Which Annie Gives it Those Ones.

As part of Experimenta, keep the popcorn handy for Xav Leplae's I'm Bobby. Shot directly to the sound track of Bobby, Raj Kapoor's 1973 Bollywood classic, it casts street children, child labourers and drawn puppet figures in place of the grown-up superstars of the original. It won praise at the Sundance Film Festival.

So next time a student volunteer comes up to you to sell tickets for the festival, don't think. Just buy.

At Chinmaya Heritage Centre, December 1-7.

-By Radhika Giri

"The Bubble-gum Girl" was shot in Mumbai in 2001

DELHI They are not quite the quintessential rebels without a cause but the youth captured on Delhi-based photographer Anay Mann's medium format Pentax and Mamiya create an effect that is beatifically stirring and sexy. Shot over three years and at disparate urban centres-Bangalore and Kolkata, Chandigarh and Mumbai, and even the Lawrence School, Sanawar-80 mostly black-and-white shots that comprise "Generation in Transition" are a repository of India's youth culture. Not necessarily revelatory for the urban denizen, the images manage to draw attention for their starkness and unassuming allure, just like the subjects. "I'm not comparing anyone, only showing the changes over time," says Mann, 30, who laboured over his subjects for the right degree of authenticity. "I will continue this project till 2010 to portray the seamless homogeneity of youth in India." At India Habitat Centre, till November 30.

-By Shilpa Rohatgi

Diners at the Jockey Club

BANGALORE The latest attraction at the month-old Jockey Club at the Taj Residency is the Ladies Trio, a band from the Philippines that belts out old numbers from the Everly Brothers to Abba to even Madonna. The ambience invokes the Raj era and the cuisine is continental. An average meal costs about Rs 850 per head. Take your pick from an excellent wine list and a choice of cigars.

-By Stephen David

MUMBAI Watch a Kathak interpretation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet at the Nehru Centre. The music is by Pandit Birju Maharaj and Louis Banks. Choreography by Saswati Sen. Till November 29.

DELHI Few dancers let others grow under their wings. Leela Samson is different. The dance guru and her students are presenting "Margam"-an evening of traditional compositions in Bharatnatyam that exemplify the dance tradition. At Sri Ram Centre Auditorium, November 29.

HYDERABAD Pandit Jasraj has been organising annual festivals here in memory of his late father for the last 31 years. Listen to some masters-U. Srinivas, Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia and Jasraj himself. At Nizam College, November 27-29.

The Agra Fort

DELHI/AGRA Four centuries after they were built, the long-defunct waterways of Delhi's Humayun Tomb once again sprang to life last year thanks to the efforts of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture. The tomb will be the venue for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture on November 27-a much-neglected discipline in India which understands only the baroque. The following day, a special stamp commemorating the monument and awards will be released at the Agra Fort. The Aga Khan Music Initiative for Central Asia and the Silk Road ensemble will perform concerts during both events. A seminar will be held in Agra on November 29 to discuss the winning projects. Here's to a weekend celebrating poetry in stone.

A painting by Kersey

DELHI Following three solo shows in London, modern Anglo-Indian artist Alexis Kersey brings his punctilious signboard-style paintings to Delhi. In "Age of Innocence", Kersey, who returned to India after a traditional British upbringing, has represented two converging facets of India: a post-colonial entity that ripened into a globalised economic power. Splashed with colour and zing, his oeuvre has a playfulness identical to Indian streetside signages. Till December 23 (barring Sundays) at the British Council.

Monga's work

MUMBAI Pink flamingoes amidst steel refineries, stunning emerald lakes in a jungle idyll amidst skyscrapers. Mumbai might still be awash in slums and traffic jams and Delhi might easily score over it in the sheer number of open spaces, but the financial capital still has a trump card. It is the only metropolis in the world with a national park in its precincts, where dozens of leopards prowl and hunt. Naturalist writer and photographer Sunjoy Monga examines this and other paradoxes in his new photo exhibition, "Nature Mumbai". He also hopes this exhibition will be a vanguard for understanding urban nature. At NCPA till December 11.

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