Japan Habba 2014

Ripples (Andrew Hudson?)

Japan Habba 2014

Japan Habba is the annual cultural festival of the Japanese community in Bangalore (or Bengaluru). This year, the Habba was held at Mount Carmel College, unlike the last two years.

With Mr Sastry of Kolar.

I, Mr Sivasankara Sastry, and SM Huseini were invited to exhibit our skills at the Japan Habba. Mr Huseini is a Kirigami expert, and he was demonstrating making a simple paper mask.

Mt Sastry, who is employed in a bank in Kolar, is a man of multiple talents. He has been dabbling in Origami and Kirigami for more than 30 years. His current passion is to use Origami to teach mathematical concepts. These days he is continually traveling across the country, conducting workshops for teachers, etc. He was exhibiting his life-size kirigami insects cut from ordinary magazine paper. These insects look so life-like because of the intricate details and choice of appropriate colour. I decided to make a few models using curved folds as the theme.

While it had no particular connection to Origami, the Conway Pencil Model (seen
in the above picture with Mr Sastry), made from 72 red and black Nataraj pencils, was a major attraction at my stall. The other item that created a lot of interest was the very simple 'Ripples' model, which is simply a series of identical curved folds radiating out from the center.

Mr and Mrs Hata stop by my stall

There were a couple of other Origami stalls too. One was by Nikhil Sharma, and Engineering student, who displayed a fabulous array of dragons, birds, animals, modular objects, and so on. The other one was by a very young school student.

Apart from the paper craft, I really enjoyed the Taiko drums in the huge auditorium at Mount Carmel college.

There was also the usual Tea Ceremony, kimono wearing, etc. and a lot of stalls selling Japanese stuff such as Manga comics, food, and even Chef's knives! So now we have wait for one more year for Japan Habba 2015!

Energetic Taiko performance at Japan Habba