For over a decade now, after fulfilling (his) career responsibilities - his company is one of the worlds largest producers of PET films with manufacturing plants in India, Thailand and Turkey with markets across the US, Southeast Asia, South America and Turkey - Sanjiv Saraf has been devoting himself to creating a platform and an ecosystem for the Urdu language that would be sustainable and institutional in nature.
The Rekhta Foundation that he established in 2012 has thus far digitised more than 50,000 e-books that are available online and has taken Urdu to various geographies through a series of events that have opened up a whole new world to the nuances and wonders of the language.
2020: When public events came home through online platforms
NEW DELHI, Dec 31: Greek philosopher Aristotle famously said “Man is by nature a social animal” and much of humankind spent 2020 proving him right quickly adapting to the new pandemic normal of staying indoors but bringing home every kind of social activity through online platforms.
And so, a year that should have seen cultural and social activities being inhibited resulted instead in a packed calendar with events, including festivals, concerts and seminars, going online and reaching out to larger and newer audiences. Online events did not have the magic of live shows, just as a zoom party can never replicate meeting friends face-to-face, but they were the next best thing.