Bright Lights Big Buddha: A Graphic Novel
About this ebook
About the author
Anil CS Rao (Born: 3 September 1964) lives with his wife and twin high school age boys in Ellicott City Maryland - but maintains a residence in his city of birth Hyderabad India.
Hiro Comics is what can be considered, given the time and resources required - and hence due to the heavy opportunity costs, a very expensive hobby. Despite the fact Rao finds the activity to be engaging, he acknowledges that this "hobby" is unsustainable from a financial perspective, Rao has been creating comics since 2009 - and in 2012 he attended the first India Comicon held in New Delhi’s Dilli Haat venue - and where three of his initial forays placed on FHM India magazine’s Top 17 Comic Books of 2012.
Khadi "Homespun" from a New Perspective :
Around 2003 - he started an LLC in The States in 2003 - the ‘Emma Dress’ - the aim of which was to manufacture and import “khadi” (homespun) cloth based woman’s garments along with indigenous Indian accessories into The States from India. Specifically, the “khadi” was sourced in the small scale silk mills in the village of Pochampalli outside Hyderabad.
In 1991, he had attempted part time study at FIT in the Fashion District of Manhattan NYC while employed as an engineer by the City of New York - but due to lack of time given a full-time daytime job - and hence - lack of the repetitive practice in sewing and draping muslin to create patterns to sew from - in this trade he concluded only hundreds of iterations would yield marginal progress - he found himself in the failure zone towards the end of that initial semester - and decided it best to ‘abandon ship’ at that juncture in time.
More than a decade later he resurrected this interest from his younger days - and in 2004, he did in fact design garments himself and in collaboration with NIFT Hyderabad students - and employed local Hyderabad small-scale businesses - tailors, seamstresses, etc. - to manufacture them to his specs. All the materials for the accessories were also local to Hyderabad - including black pearl necklaces, silver surfing themed jewellery, etc.
The ultimate plan was actually inspired by his readings of the Mahatma Gandhi and EF Shumacher - to rent a small stall or store on the Boardwalk at Ocean City, Maryland during summer months in America - and return to his place of birth in India - to work on new designs the rest of the year.
Unfortunately, because of bad logistics - and unfavourable import quotas in place by the United States’ government customs authorities - the business was shuttered after a year of struggle to stay on course.
1988 - 2004
From February 1988 to 2004 - he was employed by the City of New York (MTA), the State of California (CALTRANS), the City of Alexandria (Metro Washington DC) and many private consulting firms in between as an engineer specializing in COMM systems, Computerized Traffic Signal Systems and fiber optic and copper-based WAN/LAN Network design. He also worked in an IT role prior to the New Millenium on the Y2K “bug” for consultants to the government of Washington, DC, and the US Federal Bureau of Land Management.
In 1980 - after graduating a year early from the Boy's Latin School of Maryland - he travelled to Bombay, India to seek admission at the government FTII - only to be turned away due to a closure caused by the Institute's proximity to the Pune Ashram of Osho - which was annexing many of its students into its fold.
His father CVG Krishna Rao's elder brother - Hindi film producer CVK Sastry - found work for him in the interim as an apprentice to Bombay cameraman Dharam Chopra - and after waiting 6 months for the Pune Film Institute to reopen - decided to call it quits to return to his native Maryland to pursue his college studies at the University of Maryland - and later Pratt Institute in New York - where he completed a BEng in Electrical Engineering in 1988.