Sudha: ethnic elegance It happened when Sudha Pennathur turned forty and asked herself what she was doing at the top of the ladder in corporate America but earning a six figure salary. That's when she decided to blend the passionately Indian’ element in her with her American experience un! began to design jewellery for the western market based on Indian patterns. Some of the lustre has rubbed off on Sudha, She holds a sparkle in her eye, sheen in her hair and a radiance in her smile. An American magazine called the elegant jewel designer ‘an Indian princess”. But Sudha brings a good bit of ‘America with hergelf: 1wo MBA degrecs, in Business Administration (New York's Columbia University) and another in Computer Science (University of Washington); a computer scientist husband who has taken her name-and calls Borate of Madras himself Edward Pennathur Messerly; and cool professionalism with the accent on quality and punctuality. The first 21 years of her life Sudha spent in Madras. The nest 22 in the American business world, winding ap as Director 0 Business Information Service of Levi Strauss after being with Carson Pirie Scott & Co and Carter Hawley Hale. Now on her | own, visiting India seven times a year, Sudha is “at home in both the cultures’ and she brings them together on sirings of amethysts and garnets, “Phat was abook-end from Rajasthan, now it is an earring," she says of a motif. The plebian shamiana and mat weaves inspire Sudha as much as do minature pajntings and antique jewellery, “Jewelry by Sudha’ is designed by her and crafted by artisans $ Krishnaswamy: crying foul of Rajasthan and Delhi (and soon of Madras) out of Indian raw material; itis exhibited in museums and sold in big departmentals like Saks and Macys Though business is booming Sudha is sure of one thin “+1 will never let India down. Never mass produce or compromise on quality. As you whizved below the Anna Flyover last fortnight, its pillars, normally draped in graffiti touting Love and Sex or Enga Chinna Rase, held a surprise. Fisming ge and ultramsaring blue posters showed a heaming K Balachander, Bhacatiraja or Bhagyaraj beside a man with an endearing smile and the words ‘GV for Great Victory’. The posters expected you to know GV is G Venkateswaran, a chartered accountant who wound up practice to become a successful producer as head of Sujatha Films and ‘Great Victory’ to be his election as President of the South Indian Film Chamber of Commerce, What the posters didn’t want you to know was that GV’s charm was not enough to win a consensus vote and for the first time in the Chamber's history it was a bitter contest and the ‘Great Victory’ is to be challenged jn court on at least three counts. Portynine years ago the moneybags of Kodambakkam, the nucleus of South Indian film industry, decided to form a | box office club — the South Indian Film Chamber of Commerce — extending membership (0 producers, distributors, exhibitors and anybody who had anything to do with films and money. ‘Today its 2681 members, from Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra, as | a body look after the { business side of the industry, fighting for tax reliefs and protection from video piracy among other things. The chamber helps the individual members to acquire raw film, safeguards his film's title and gets it censored. The powers'of the Chamber cannot be ignored, with two matinee idol chief ministers in the South and any number of politicians’ nexus with reel life. Fortyseven years the governing body (35 members) was elected by consensus, with each state taking its turn at the helm If there were other contestants, they developed | cold feet and withdrew | quickly. If it was felt that the big distributors were