Rubbing shoulders: Aung San Suu Kyi, Abbas Kiarostami, Gayatri Spivak

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is an Indian literary critic, a theorist, and a University Professor, the highest honor for professors at Columbia University, where she is a founding member of the school's Institute for Comparative Literature and Society. Professor Spivak was speaking at a seminar at Dhaka University, organised by Naya Krishi, a farmers' cooperative in Bangladesh. ?: Shahidul Alam/Drik/Majority World

She was witty, connected, caring and sharp. Seamlessly moving between colloquial Bangla, bhodrolok Bangla and English, Spivak mesmerised, but did a few ticking offs too. All in her charming style so it took you a while to work out that a steam roller had gone over you. It was standing room only in packed seminar room at Dhaka University. Spivak was one of five visiting speakers, but clearly the one they had all come to see.
I was lucky as I had just returned from Tehran, when Rahnuma told me of the event, and Chulie and Yan managed to get my 100mm macro lens to me in time and I pedalled off to Dhaka University.
A couple of days back, I had made my way to Chiraz Square in Tehran to meet up with my old friend, the brilliant film maker and photographer Abbas Kiarostami. I returned with an arm load of books, including his early masterpiece, Snow White. Here are a couple of pictures from the book:
From the book: Snow White. Photo: Abbas Kiarostami

 
From the book Snow White. Photo: Abbas Kiarostami

The meeting earlier with Aung San Suu Kyi, in Myanmar was opportunistic. But hey with people like that, one doesn’t care how it works out šŸ™‚
 
 
 
 

Chance meeting

An old student Zin Myoe Sett had set up a meeting with the big wigs of the Myanmar Photographic Society. Christophe Loviny had briefly dropped in to give me an invitation to thier opening at the France Institute of the show?”Aung San Suu Kyi, The Burmese Way to Democracy”. They say the rains in Yangon start on the 20th May. The clouds had obviously not read the script.

Burmese opposition?politician and General Secretary of the?National League for Democracy?(NLD) in Myanmar Aung San Suu Kyi (born 19 June 1945) at the French Institute in Myanmar where she was inaugurating the photo exhibition "Aung San Suu Kyi, The Burmese Way to Democracy". Photo (c) Shahidul Alam/Drik/Majority World