India Presented by Armenians

By Inga Petrosyan

Those who love India, who are interested in its life and culture, have the opportunity to witness a small part of it in Naregatsi Art Institute. However this time Indian culture is not represented by Indians but Armenians.

On January 20th Indo-Armenian Friendship NGO presented a group photo exhibition titled “India through the Armenian lens”.
One of the participants is Feliix Gharibyan from Iran who used to study in India for 6 years and came to Armenia 1 year ago. He says. “Those who were able to live in India can live anywhere in the world as India is a quite tough but exciting country at the same time”. Felix has decided to stay and work in Armenia.

Another participant, Paruyr Abrahamyan, says that he will surely visit India again. He was there only for 20 days though even Indians say that a whole life is not enough to travel all over India.

The exhibition presents 51 photos of 11 participants who have been to India and through their photos show the joyful and colorful sides of Indian reality. Although the participants are armatures but according to many attendants the photos seem to be shot by professionals.

The opening ceremony was graced by the ambassador of India to Armenian H.E.  Mr Achal Kumar Malhotra. Mr Ambassador said that we should see not only the outer part of the photos but the inner, spiritual side of them too.  The president of Naregatsi Art Institute stressed. “Both Armenians and Indians are old nations and we need to present Indian culture in Armenia and Armenian culture in India”. Naregatsi Art Institute meets these needs for what it was established, to serve the culture, said Mr Nareg Harutyunyan. 

At the opening ceremony Indian students performed an Indian dance. 19 year old Srinivasan, one of the dancers, who studies at Yerevan State Medical University, has decided to become a neurologist. He says when he goes back to India he’ll take Armenian paintings with him, and being more frankly he would love to take an Armenian girl to India. My interlocutor says that he doesn’t know much about Armenian culture but he managed to visit main cultural destinations in Yerevan and notes that his favorite place is Vernisaj.  In general what he likes most in Armenia is gender equality.

The group photo exhibition “India through the Armenian lens” is organized by Indo-Armenian Frindship NGO in collaboration with the Embassy of India in Armenia. The exhibition is dedicated to the 63rd anniversary of the Republic Day in India. 
 

About the author: Inga Petrosyan is one of the participants of the exhibition. She works at one of  the daily newspapers in Yerevan as a journalist. 

Inga taking an interview from Felix - one of
the participants of the exhibition

The original article in AZG daily