It’s always about more than just turning a page with them. While you might not buy them, but consider it your eternal consumer right to demand them from your nearest store. However, we might rely on mobile phone alarms and digital reminders, calendars are always colourful slices of time that bookmark a month in our memories for the rest of the year. So, as we inch closer towards the year-end, we take a look at some of the calendar themes you might come across.
While girls remain a favourite theme for most calendars, be it various brands like Kingfisher, Peroni, Pierre Cardin or Sports Illustrated, Bollywood stars rank a close second to appearing next to passing weeks. Various B-town photographers pride themselves in launching a year-pad with some never-seen-before shots of our favourite actors. A lot of thought and work goes into their making. Kingfisher even has a TV show to find a girl modelesque enough to appear on their calendar. Atul Kasbekar, the photographer synonymous with everything glamorous says that all girls who are on the top today have been a part of this project. “Be it Bruna Abdullah, Yana Gupta, Pia Trivedi, Deepika Padukone or Katrina Kaif, they all have appeared on the pages of the Kingfisher calendar, which is a great platform for any model,” he tells us. Then there are other calendars, which serve as a stage for photographer’s other side. Like fashion photographer, Rony Koula, whose new calendar is a collection of dream images, based mostly on real people. “We have completely abstained from Photoshop and shown people as they are. Like those monkey-performers who go asking around for money, dressed as colourful simians are a subject too,” he tells us.
Although, there are other visual media too, which make for arty yet office-safe calendar material. Most artists find them as a great platform to display their work. Artist and curator Alka Raghuvanshi’s calendar deals with the subject of light, both as a source and inspiration. “The calendar has my work which shows light as an intrinsic part of life, not just in the physical but also in the more divine and spiritual sense. In fact there are two series, where one half deals with the light of the night and the other with that of the day,” she says. Niladri Paul intends to produce a work on fine art in the form of a calendar. “My entire series on performance art, which was also exhibited recently has been reproduced for the calendar. This makes it special as each page is a replica of my ink and watercolour work,” he tells us. And for the more sedate of temperament, there are always nature-based calendars, which go from the Arctic chill in July to sunny desert in December. Riding on one of the most popular themes of the decade, shoe-brand Woodland has an eco-friendly theme augmenting their message of environment friendliness. MD of the brand, Harkirat Singh says it is in sync with their initiatives of recycling paper and energy conservation.