The State of Indian Art: How Cultural Freedom Survives Despite Government Control
Some time ago (in September 2024), government-friendly news portals exerted a lot of energy “fact-checking” and, in the process, denied a viral social media post that claimed that the gigantic “Statue of Unity” sculpture of Vallabhbhai Patel had developed “cracks” and was in danger of collapsing. It was also reported
Zakir Hussain: Legacy of a Global Music Revolutionary
A musical titan bowed out too early. For six decades he mesmerised the world with his rhythms and melodies, defying close-minded orthodoxy of traditions, breaking musical barriers, creating new genres, and trying to heal a fractured world the way only a supreme musician can. And what is particularly tragic is
Quiet Dies a Craft: Traditional Bengal Boat Making Documentary 2024
WATCH | Quiet Dies a Craft: Traditional Bengal Boat Making Documentary 2024 | Video Credit: Reporting and narration: Suhrid Sankar Chattopadhyay; Videography: Jayanta Shaw; Editing: Samson Ronald K., Kavya Pradeep M; Team Frontline: Abhinav Chakraborty, Saatvika Radhakrishna, and Mridula V.; Produced By: Jinoy Jose P. In West Bengal’s Shyampur, 74-year-old master
‘The Dystopian Times’ by Appupen
‘The Dystopian Times’ by Appupen Source link
Catfish| A Hindi Story in Translation
They were catfish. Seven catfish thrashing about in a flat tray made of white Styrofoam. Their skin was dark grey and smooth, their moustaches big and black. They were huddled close together, tail to mouth, moustache to back, their movement arrested at the edge of the tray for they could
Book Review: In ‘Nehru’s India’, Aditya Mukherjee Counters False Narratives About India’s First Prime Minister
At a time when the forces of Hindutva are relentlessly denigrating Jawaharlal Nehru’s contribution to the freedom of our country and the first 17 years of nation-building in independent India, the historian Aditya Mukherjee brings welcome clarification to the debate largely by citing Nehru’s own words and expanding on their
INTERVIEW We Now Have Means to Actively Build a Community and Train and Help Emerging Translators: Daisy Rockwell
The creative partnership of Daisy Rockwell and Geetanjali Shree is embodied in Daisy’s moniker, Shree-Daisy. But before her International Booker–winning partnership with Geetanjali Shree, Rockwell had already translated and curated a panorama of epoch-defining Hindi-Urdu novels probing the heart-wounds of the subcontinent. Over the past two decades, Rockwell has brought
Geetanjali Shree Interview: Language as Protest in ‘Our City That Year
Geetanjali Shree’s 1998 novel, Hamara Shahar Us Baras, rendered into English by Daisy Rockwell as Our City That Year (Penguin, 2024), is the story of a communalising city as experienced by a vulnerable narrator grappling with the task of lending language to the self-estrangement of her secular friends. The narrator, who is not
Island Novel About Sentinelese Tribe Draws Criticism for Ethical Concerns
In November 2018, a 26-year-old American missionary, John Allen Chau, made headlines when he ventured into the forbidden North Sentinel Island in the Andamans and got himself killed at the hands of what many call “the world’s most isolated” indigenous people, the Sentinelese. His was a foolhardy mission, disrespectful of
Freedom at Midnight Review: Book vs Web Series-Partition Through Two Lenses
Inside 10 Downing Street, the rhythms of a relentless clock fill the air. “May I have time to think?” Lord Mountbatten pleads, facing the burden of a crumbling empire. “You may,” Prime Minister Clement Attlee responds, “but be warned, Mountbatten—time is the one thing we’re running short of.” The ticking