Short Background:
My name is Gopal Narayan and I was born and brought up in the southern part of India. I lived 15 years in Chennai and 10 years in Trichy before moving to the United States. I was introduced to many historical thriller novels written by some of the famous legendary writers like Kalki, Jagasirpiyan and Sandilyan by my mother. As much as I loved reading those novels, I was equally marvelled by the amazing portrait sketches of the characters in these books. In the last 10 years, I also have taken Digital photography seriously and come to the appreciation of how highlights, shadows, dark and whites works. Honestly, this is the closest I ever come to being an “Artist” unless painting my daughter’s bedroom counts.
As an engineer in the mid 90’s took the safest career route and got into IT. For the past 25 years, I have been working for some of the big global IT companies as a sourcing strategist where my role primarily was to act as a liaison between the clients in US and teams in India. One of the key aspects of my job is to make clients understand the “Cross-cultural differences” and how it is unique but why it works. Through this experience, I myself ended up learning a lot and my appreciation to our roots have grown stronger than ever. I am sure many of you, especially when you are far away from home, might have had a similar experience.
Though many of us have taken different paths and live around the world, one thing I find common among parents like us is to provide exposure to our kids about our culture and roots. I have 2 wonderful daughters and a wife and we have all been living in the suburbs of Boston. Including us, many Indian parents living abroad provide an opportunity to their kids in the form of Music (Carnatic, Hindustani etc.,), Dance (Bharadhanattiyam, Bollywood) and instruments (Violin, Flute etc.,). This is our way of giving exposure to our kids. Unfortunately, the Indian Folk arts have not had the exposure it deserves and has been ignored and not been given greater importance among this. There could be many reasons including the difficulty of finding a good mentor and understanding the concepts. When Senthil reached out to me with this idea for creating a platform there was no hesitation at all. I immediately joined hands with him on this journey like a squirrel helping Rama to build the bridge. I see this platform is a great alternate for parents who want to provide exposure to their kids who are not interested in learning Music, Dance or Instruments. We are confident to make a difference.