Word: thakur
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...close, Rajashree Thakur makes a terrible ugly duckling. Her face is a flawless ocher, punctuated by ebony eyes and framed by jet black hair, and in the light of the setting sun, she glows. Thakur plays the lead in India's new hit soap Saat Phere ("seven circles around the fire," a Hindu marriage ritual), which, between riveting digressions into the lives, loves and secrets of a Rajasthani family, is the tragedy of Saloni, too unfortunate-looking for love. "It's not that Saloni isn't beautiful," clarifies Thakur, a former model. "It's that she's dark. Because...
...notion that Thakur's skin color could qualify her as unattractive is hard to fathom. Hers is a universal beauty, and in the West, despite concerns about the sun's rays and skin cancer, people spend billions of dollars trying to duplicate her café au lait tone. But Asia, from its geishas to its Ganesha gods, has always prized the pale. And in India the desire is a national obsession. You see it in the personal ads, which range from the general ("Whitish girl invites match") to the pinpoint specific ("Suitable alliance invited for ... fair, smart, only daughter having advanced...
...powers to take charge of monument preservation. And Tourism Minister Renuka Chowdhury has vowed to clean up India's 26 World Heritage Sites and exploit their business potential so that they pay for themselves. Tourism Joint Secretary Amitabh Kant is perhaps the only person in India more outspoken than Thakur about heritage. "Encroachments have been terrible," he says. "Upkeep is awful." To a great extent, he blames Indian officials for what he calls a "total lack of civic governance and discipline." In a plan that delights Thakur, Kant says all shops, hotels and stalls built on historic sites will...
...Thakur sees her 120 disciples as another vital component of India's nascent preservation movement. These devotees include Golden Temple expert Gurmeet Rai and Taj Mahal specialist Meetu Sharma Saxena, who says of her mentor: "We are all her children." Declares Thakur: "If I need inspiration, I just need to look at them and see how inspired they get." Watching these heritage advocates in action, it's easy to see why Thakur hasn't abandoned hope. On a recent day-trip south of New Delhi to check on the Taj Mahal, Saxena tenderly strokes some new cracks she's spotted...
...Amazingly, Thakur has retained this same sense of urgency and outrage even in the face of decades of disappointment. Taking her latest class of students on a tour of Mehrauli recently, she showed them the mosques, bath houses and orchards of the last Mughal Emperor and a tomb that British resident Sir Thomas Metcalf converted into a summer house and terraced garden. "Oh, God, oh, God," she repeats softly at the sight of one poorly executed renovation after another. "We've lost so much already," she laments. And yet, as always, Thakur determines to keep fighting. "It's a fantastic...