Arts/Literature

In Jawan, Shah Rukh Khan makes us an offer we can refuse

In Jawan, Shah Rukh Khan makes us an offer we can refuse

Cast of Jawan Shah Rukh Khan: Hindi-speaking North Indian Rajput army-man Vikram Rathore and his son, the ‘casteless’ policeman Azad Nayanthara: Hindi-speaking upper caste (Bhumihar, Brahmin or probably Rajput given the arrange marriage scenario between Azad and her), head of special forces, Narmada Rai Vijay Sethupathi: Corrupt industrialist Kalee Gaikwad, Maratha by name but generic South Indian by accent, played[Read More…]

by 26/09/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Breadcrumb

Breadcrumb

For millennia Truth was the supreme task Beauty was mere consequence But what if the first is impossible? Should we, therefore, discard the second? Beauty is felt not proven It is a joy to humans given And although no animal admires a painting Birds swoon I suppose when listening to their songs And whales intricately dance to their compositions in[Read More…]

by 23/09/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
A still from "Dear Jassi"

Three Indian Movies win TIFF 2023 Awards

As the breeze of September ushers in the season of change, Toronto City’s ‘festival of festivals’ in the form of the international film festival came to a close yesterday. In the heart of the city, on 23 screens, nearly 300 films were screened throughout the day and night, accompanied by various musical performances, trade pavilions and eating outlets in King[Read More…]

by 23/09/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Tolstoy’s Dilemma

Tolstoy’s Dilemma

Art It is the tiny pink rose Behind the ear of God I place mine there Not because I rage against death I a short interval between the not yet And the forever gone I place it there lightly I accept the near perfect weightlessness that I am I place it there Because the infinitesimally small time that I am[Read More…]

by 22/09/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Toronto International Film Festival Starts on 7th

Toronto International Film Festival Starts on 7th

There’s a whiff of winter wind all over Canada. And it’s the time the school year begins. The most sought-after summer starts moving into the rearview mirror of the year. The Toronto International Film Festival, otherwise known as the Festival of the Festivals due to its worldwide participation and strength, is a few days away from happening. It enters the[Read More…]

by 03/09/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Love is a Revolution, Love is Liberation

Love is a Revolution, Love is Liberation

                                                                              Love is interpreted by philosophers with different variations Love is romanticized by the poets, who have their own narration Love is[Read More…]

by 02/09/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Remember Lahaina

Remember Lahaina

  Those with holes instead of eyes do not see. They are blind.   Those with holes instead of ears do not hear. They are deaf.   Emotionally numb devoid of empathy they are sleepwalking. The walking dead.   Remember Lahaina (island of Maui): hurricane winds Hawaiian drought climate- fire and the seaside town, now but ashes of memory.  [Read More…]

by 22/08/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
When Marlon Brando Refused Oscar award

When Marlon Brando Refused Oscar award

Fifty years ago Marlon Brando refused to accept the Oscar protesting against the portrayal of native Americans in Hollywood. He sent a native American female actor Sacheen Littlefeather to make a speech on his behalf voicing the protest. She was booed by a section of the white supremacist audience, John Wayne, the so called star of many films portraying native[Read More…]

by 21/08/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Oppenheimer film reviews  did not notice its  injustice   to victims of the bombing and the test

Oppenheimer film reviews  did not notice its  injustice   to victims of the bombing and the test

Shamefully much of the writing on the film Oppenheimer  fails to grasp  the film’s blatant failure to show the suffering  of the people in Japan or  of those living  on the site of the tests in  the U.S. Clearly, the Japanese are deeply hurt and the film has not been released  there yet ..The  Los Angeles Times makes it clear.[Read More…]

by 13/08/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Oppenheimer (2023) review: A transcendental cinematic experience

Oppenheimer (2023) review: A transcendental cinematic experience

Wars change the course of human history – not only the present and the future, but also the past. The consequences of the two major world wars of the twentieth century are not unknown to us. One of the most infamous instances of the destruction and degradation of humanity took place, ironically, with what essentially brought an end to the[Read More…]

by 11/08/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
My Yellowed Loves

My Yellowed Loves

Yellowed loves Come The punctured gutters of God Open The veins of silent gold In the lazy mouths of mocking youth Fountains overflowing with first sun A flock of oaths dreaming of a secret park Open, you sweet promise Death is the tunic of spring Death is in the heart Death burns our mouths With mordant bites of silver moths[Read More…]

by 31/07/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Barbie Pathologies: It’s All About a Doll

Barbie Pathologies: It’s All About a Doll

As the ancient Greeks reminded us, bone cold definitions as starting points are essential in any discussion.  One current discussion, insignificant to posterity but amusing for advertisers and the presently bored, is the ludicrous reactions to a plastic doll rendered into celluloid form.  And as a doll, it can be no other.  Mattel’s Barbie has become, courtesy of Greta Gerwig,[Read More…]

by 29/07/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Theatre performance reminding us of Manipur situation

Theatre performance reminding us of Manipur situation

The current events in the troubled state of Manipur remind me of a very powerful Manipuri play Draupadi I saw at Prithvi theatre in Mumbai more thana twenty years ago. A man sitting next to me was taking down notes. I thought he was a theatre critic but since I had not seen him as a critic earlier I asked[Read More…]

by 28/07/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
An Oppenheimer Review Through the Lens of an Anti-War Activist 

An Oppenheimer Review Through the Lens of an Anti-War Activist 

The ground-breaking movie Oppenheimer, despite its unsympathetic protagonist, packs a powerful anti-nuclear punch that makes it hard, if not impossible, to sleep after watching the film. For this reason alone, the movie should be shown on the floor of Congress and in the White House as required viewing by all in DC bent on spending $1.7 trillion over the next[Read More…]

by 26/07/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Barbie (2023): Ken, Men and Patriarchy

Barbie (2023): Ken, Men and Patriarchy

Every film has a target audience. Even the films that are “for everyone” are produced with a primary audience in mind. It can be said that the primary target audience of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie are women, given the titular character’s influence and popularity amongst the female demographic. It is not strictly a children’s film, which was established early through the[Read More…]

by 25/07/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Pain

Pain

Pain contracts to a Nation when they stripshow somebody’s daughter, wife and mother walk them down the streets and go home to meet their women in their eyes and shut their doors to sleep for all is well. When you walk a woman bare you strip her of her soul she dies then you lead her body through the streets.[Read More…]

by 23/07/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Warrior’s Choice

Warrior’s Choice

Within discipline to become: an eco-person within an eco-person soul within soul humility within humility courage within courage empathy within empathy fire within fire dignity within the prayer of dignity desire within desire voice within voice power within power perception within perception choice within choice place where Earth Warriors stand.   Stand in the Grounding Dimension stand in the strength[Read More…]

by 23/07/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Lullaby

Lullaby

Lullaby- A song by Akhu Chingangbam. Akhu Chingangbam is a famous musician from #Manipur. He has shared this song about the crisis in his state. 

by 13/07/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
An ode to embodied resistance

An ode to embodied resistance

She sits by the river bearing the scars of a lifetime, Each scar reminding her of a struggle that she now embodies. She knew she has intuition and empathy that feeds into a collective intelligence pool to shift the world towards kindness and love. She learnt this wisdom from her ancestors, who visited her on some quiet and lonely moon[Read More…]

by 11/07/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Placing the Ambani Cultural Centre In context

Placing the Ambani Cultural Centre In context

Rohini Hattangady, Mukta Barve , the entire all woman cast of the acclaimed feminist Marathi play Char Choughi recently vociferously praised the municipal drama theatre in Vashi in Navi Mumbai for its good facilities. It is named after Vishnudas Bhave, the pioneer of Marathi theatre. This happened because though there is a thriving theatre movement in Maharashtra as nowhere else[Read More…]

by 10/07/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Taika Waititi’s ‘Next Goal Wins’ to Premiere at TIFF 2023

Taika Waititi’s ‘Next Goal Wins’ to Premiere at TIFF 2023

New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi’s latest comedy ‘Next Goal Wins’ is the first film selected for this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. For the first time, the organizers have announced the name of a film during the selection process for the festival, which will be held from September 7 to 17, 2023. The complete list of films will be released[Read More…]

by 05/07/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Dependence Day

Dependence Day

July 4th, we call “Independence Day.” Each day, in fact, is our dependence day. We need the other creatures of the Earth, beginning with the first day of our birth. If our own mother’s milk is not enough, we get from mother cows the same good stuff. We take the eggs of hens who would be mothers. We take the[Read More…]

by 05/07/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Resistance

Resistance

It is in this way that the rebel…says yes and no simultaneously. Albert Camus, The Rebel   No nukes and no thermobaric weapons no unregulated AI no child pornography no sex trafficking and no slavery no to tyranny rule of the gun and no to racist hate based ideology no to consumerism hoarding, polluting endemic desecration destroying the planet no[Read More…]

by 02/07/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Why we think that the ‘problems’ in Adipurush are deliberate choices

Why we think that the ‘problems’ in Adipurush are deliberate choices

The past few months have been a topsy turvy ride for the Hindi cinema with several films falling like nine pins and at the same time few films taking everyone with surprise. But this article is not supposed to cater to analysis of the box office mechanism, but rather deal with the political climate that is defining and shaping the[Read More…]

by 28/06/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Naseem 1995 in India 2023

Naseem 1995 in India 2023

PM Modi said in a press conference that the religious minorities in India do not face any discrimination and that India’s democracy remains faultless during his infamous visit to the US. However, it is common knowledge that the scenario in India could not be more different. Despite being a secular state, India as a nation has not lived up to[Read More…]

by 27/06/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Akram Khan, modern dancer, draws in a big way from traditional dances

Akram Khan, modern dancer, draws in a big way from traditional dances

Akram Khan is an internationally renowned dancer who performed at the opening ceremony of London Olympics. Listening to him at G5 A theatre last evening one realised he is such a good thinker. This is probably because he has imbibed multiple traditions, influences, he is trained rigorously in Kathak and Bharata Natyam and is now mainly a modern dance performer,[Read More…]

by 21/06/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Teaser of Film on Savarkar: Lies Galore

Teaser of Film on Savarkar: Lies Galore

Currently as the rightwing wing ideology is gaining ground many a films have already come to promote divisiveness, to glorify the icons of communal nationalism or to demonize the particular communities. In recent times we have seen films on these lines, be it Padmavat, or one on Prithviraj Chauhan, ‘Gandhi Virudh Godse’, ‘Kashmir files’ and ‘Kerala story’. Many of these[Read More…]

by 05/06/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
 And We Are Much More Than Our Uterus. (In Solidarity With the protesting wrestlers)

 And We Are Much More Than Our Uterus. (In Solidarity With the protesting wrestlers)

Don’t cry. Pity this nation which knows about your medals not your pains and wounds. They clip your wings and celebrate your blood spilled journey with sugar-coated smiles. Words are always the creations of power – We must remember that.   Be enraged. Here, silence is celebrated and the voice is always despised.   We are merely unlucky in our[Read More…]

by 03/06/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Now I Am Ravana’s Head

Now I Am Ravana’s Head

 My first reaction to the book that Rajiv Malhotra, from America, published on Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib, Shashi Tharoor, Ramachandra Guha, Sheldon Pollock, Wendy Doniger, Devdutt Pattanaik, Kancha Ilaiah, Audrey Truschke and Michael Witzel,with a title “Ten Heads of Ravana”’. The chapter on me is entitled as Kancha Ilaiah—Bharat Vikhander There is team of intellectual Ksatriyas They say I am[Read More…]

by 28/05/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Waheeda Rehman

Why Phalke Award Has Eluded Classic Hindi Cinema Heroines

The 20 years after independence constituted the most creative phase of Hindi cinema when some of the best films were made. The leading actors of this era had an enduring impact which continues to this day. Four of the best and most popular heroes, with very wide impact on society (Ashok Kumar, Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar and Dev Anand) have[Read More…]

by 27/05/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
‘The Kerala Story’ – A flawed narrative by an uninformed filmmaker

‘The Kerala Story’ – A flawed narrative by an uninformed filmmaker

Sudipto Sen, Director of ‘The Kerala Story”, in his unrestricted arrogance and egotism, claims that his film has “awakened civilization”. This claim is erroneous to its very core! How can a film whose issues must address root questions of colonialism, and plunder by the West be assigned in the hands of an un-researched propagandist. The film is virtually a hotchpotch[Read More…]

by 24/05/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Nita Ambani Cultural centre is opulent but not professional

Nita Ambani Cultural centre is opulent but not professional

The website of the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre claims that the Grand Theatre is technologically most advanced in India, is magical and meticulously designed. But what is the reality? Many in the audience have complained of serious problems. After spending thousands of rupees for one seat, you find that the bar in front of your seat makes it hard[Read More…]

by 17/05/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
The Day Arrived

The Day Arrived

The day (once more) when the world as we know it stopped the Doomsday Clock, barely in the nick of time, stood still the power of political death over individual life ended, the civilization of greed and ego and violence collapsed returning to dust.   Not because somebody, supernaturally, descended from the clouds, not because the sea miraculously parted. The[Read More…]

by 16/05/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
‘ISHANOU’: One question – One answer

‘ISHANOU’: One question – One answer

Joshy Joseph : “The poem is a muscular and composed thing. It moves like a wave, dissolving the literal. We participate in its flow as it moves from the eye to the ear, to the inner ear, the inner eye.” Poet Edward Hirsch’s lines bring the temporal, physical yet spiritual aspects of cinema, to my mind. Sir, what are your[Read More…]

by 15/05/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Harry- My Heart is Down, Lost in Kingston town

Harry- My Heart is Down, Lost in Kingston town

Tribute to Harry Belafonte- A true giant, a voice for the voiceless, who walked here in my lifetime Your life, every aspect of it, was like the mythical Philosopher’s Stone- The Paras Pathar, as we call it in India, and on which our own Creative giant, Satyajit, made a film, cast in black and white, as does Your life story,[Read More…]

by 15/05/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
The Háifoss waterfall in the heart of Iceland. (Photo: Moyan Brenn/flickr/cc)

There Is No Escape From Telling

By the lake’s lapping shore above the town and the railroad tracks, my wife and I stopped and marveled, struck stone silent by two dazzling Baltimore Orioles, clawed together as they tumbled, wrestling in the green morning breeze above our heads.  They perched upon a branch and sang a morning hymn, an ode to joy and the spring’s morning glory. [Read More…]

by 11/05/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Letter from a Feline Friend

Letter from a Feline Friend

Well, hello human! It’s me, your feline friend, and I am here to school you on a thing or two today. You see, I’ve been observing you for a while now, and I can’t help but notice how lonely you all seem to be. It’s a shame, really. And what’s worse, you seem to project that insecurity onto us cats,[Read More…]

by 04/05/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Is Michelangelo’s David obscene?

Is Michelangelo’s David obscene?

I didn’t know whether to be amazed, amused, bewildered or shocked when I came across the news report of how the principal of a Florida school was forced to quit her job because a parent complained after students were shown Michelangelo’s iconic “nude” statue of David. Apparently the statue was considered “pornographic” by a parent. Ideally, the parents ought to[Read More…]

by 03/05/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Pinpricked Hands

Pinpricked Hands

On the occasion of International Workers’ Day,  here are three poems by Maliha Iqbal. The poems are a reminder of the hardships workers face. They cover a range of workers- from coal miners, garment industry workers to brass band workers and highlight the common thread of exploitation under capitalism. Pinpricked Hands She embroiders the Most beautiful patterns Her leathery hands[Read More…]

by 01/05/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Reconciliations….

Reconciliations….

Indian Grandala birds, perched on thin, gray branches, against a gray-green background-sky– something like a mountainside; male and female, one supposes, wondering what songs they make, what harmonies their colors make– visual and audible. What lessons, too, they might inspire in fellow creatures, reaching higher– humans reaching from the mire of endless wars and desolation…? Can we reach beyond the[Read More…]

by 01/05/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Why do I not want to watch ‘The Kerala Story’

Why do I not want to watch ‘The Kerala Story’

Inspired by ‘Kashmir Files’ a new breed of films and filmmakers are on the rise. A government which wants to hide and close ‘Gujarat files’, ‘Godse files’ wants films such as ‘Kashmir files’, ‘Kerala story’, ‘Delhi files’ and ‘Razakar files’ to come out. The film titled ‘The Kerala Story’ is to be released on 5th May. The film is directed[Read More…]

by 29/04/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Edward Abbey

Edward Abbey

Edward Abbey park ranger desert solitary author – avatar of beautiful traumatized Earth wrote to us with a pine needle with tip of the tail of a gopher snake, “there is a kind of poetry, even a kind of truth in simple facts.”   a pinyon jay on shaded ground a chickadee on a swaying branch a leaf, a bud[Read More…]

by 25/04/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Why Dadasaheb Phalke Award Eludes Manipuri Master Aribam Syam Sharma?

Why Dadasaheb Phalke Award Eludes Manipuri Master Aribam Syam Sharma?

When it comes to the regional cinemas of India, one of the most illustrious industries is located in Manipur. Releasing about one hundred films a year, the Manipuri film industry is not only productively consistent, but is also entirely self-sufficient – a result of the Manipuri films’ cultural specificities that help them with their regional popularity. Also, with the absence[Read More…]

by 24/04/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
The Me of Me

The Me of Me

1. I went searching for the me of me!   Who is it?  What is it?  How will I know? Is it unchangeable—a hyper-essence? If I found it, would I know God— In the infinitesimal form of me?   I went to “Impeccable Dry-Cleaning.” “Can you take out this stain?” I wondered. “This is the stain of my living. This[Read More…]

by 23/04/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Lament of the Yellow Rose

Lament of the Yellow Rose

I am a yellow rose lovingly cared for by an old man Who planted me in his garden I am in full bloom now but he doesn’t come to admire me. I can see part of him from here His hand is sticking out from the pile of rubble That was once his house. No one has come to his[Read More…]

by 16/04/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
EO: Three Hooves up in High Heaven

EO: Three Hooves up in High Heaven

Films featuring animals as screen filled protagonists, often in an imperfect, callous human world, have been made before.  There was Robert Bresson’s 1966 Au Hasard Balthazar, which introduced audiences to a saintly donkey subject to the terrible things human beings are so often prone to inflict. In recent times, the documentary black-and-white film Gunda, directed by Viktor Kossakovsky (executive producer[Read More…]

by 14/04/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
An asteroid named Aribam Syam Sharma

An asteroid named Aribam Syam Sharma

                        There is a very famous story which I had repeated recently at the North East film festival conducted by NFDC at Mumbai. Noted filmmaker from Sikkim Mr.Santen Bhutia was a fellow panelist who had narrated an incident which had happened to him just the other day at Gateway[Read More…]

by 13/04/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Truth is Radical

Truth is Radical

A Prose Poem or Ecosophic Meditation Look: Civilization ended in a post-midnight place named Auschwitz; with the terminal moment of anti-event, at the irreversible dropping of The Bomb on Hiroshima.  The ultimate supermall of death.  The ultimate militarization of ideological and scientific progress. There has been, of course, throughout the history of human crime, much deception, betrayal, atrocity. Suffering has[Read More…]

by 10/04/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
A doubtful American Invention

A doubtful American Invention

“I don’t understand why India looks up to the Oscars… Audience is my Oscar.” – Mira Nair, quoted in The Telegraph, Kolkata, December 1, 2012 On April 23, 1992, a man died. A tall man once blessed with broad shoulders, a headful of dark, well-set hair, and sharply chiseled features; a man who touched several art forms, enriching whatever he[Read More…]

by 31/03/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
“…I want poetry to be detonated like a bomb!” -Nathalie Quintane

“…I want poetry to be detonated like a bomb!” -Nathalie Quintane

 Nathalie Quintane is among the most known experimental poets of France. To quote her from what she writes about herself in the French government’s publications website, this is what she writes- “My name is still Nathalie Quintane. I have not changed my date of birth. I still live in the same place. I am few in number but I am determined.” Nathalie[Read More…]

by 27/03/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Demystifying   the  halo  around   `Naatu  Naatu’     and  RRR

Demystifying the halo around `Naatu Naatu’ and RRR

The  bagging  of  the  coveted  golden  statuette  by  the  musical  score  `Naatu  Naatu’  at  the  Oscars  Academy  Awards  ceremony,  has  quite  predictably  set  our  people  dancing  in  ecstasy,  and  united  both  the    ruling  and  the  Opposition  politicians  in  flaunting  the  award  as  a  symbol  of  India’s  superior  status  in  the  global  cultural  arena.  As  Anurag  Thakur,  the  Information  and  Broadcasting [Read More…]

by 18/03/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
A Film A Day Won’t Keep the Doctor Away

A Film A Day Won’t Keep the Doctor Away

Attending a documentary film pitching forum in 2014, I found myself being criticised not only for the film I had made, but for the level of privilege I was assumed to have, my shoes being in the shots, the type of home I lived in and everything that had nothing to do with my subject or craft. Given the nature[Read More…]

by 16/03/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
“Mother’s Day”

“Mother’s Day”

In honor of International Women’s Day, March 8, 2023 If we could see a Mother’s Day All around the world, Where mothers lived a day of joy, Where mothers felt their worth,   Then what exactly would we see So moms could realize That their lives are important and Their own perspectives wise?   The women in Sudan would not[Read More…]

by 06/03/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
The Ten Essential Powers of Great Literature

The Ten Essential Powers of Great Literature

What makes a work of literature great? Why, to name but a few, are Hamlet, The Iliad, The Divine Comedy, War and Peace, The Flowers of Evil, Don Quixote, Faust generally considered outstanding examples of world literature? What makes one work of literature superior to another? Why is some literature read for centuries, even millennia, while others languish in scholarly[Read More…]

by 04/03/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
1963: death of a poet

1963: death of a poet

It is 1963, I am recording live the last moments of Sylvia’s life. She invites me as she doesn’t understand livecast.   “Have a cake” she says, “Baked in my own oven,” her eyes twinkle. She takes me to check on her kids. Frieda has her arms around Nicholas sleeping secure. I livecast the sleep.   Returning to the warm[Read More…]

by 24/02/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
February: The Month of Deaths

February: The Month of Deaths

1 18th February 1983 Thanks to God(?) History doesn’t stink. Or else it could have still stinking the flesh, dust and blood of that six hours – the insane hours of carnage in the village of Nellie. I wasn’t born then Or maybe I was born that day. Does it really matter? I am the name February had called in[Read More…]

by 24/02/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
The incredible story of how East African culture shaped the music of a state in India

The incredible story of how East African culture shaped the music of a state in India

The term Siddi refers to Afro-Indians – Africans who mixed with Indians through marriage and relationships. Africans crossed the Indian Ocean and arrived in India during the 1200s, 1300s and 1400s. They were transported by Islamic invaders and Portuguese colonisers as enslaved people, palace guards, army chiefs, harem keepers, spiritual leaders, Sufi singers, dancers and treasurers. Today, the majority of Siddis are found in the west[Read More…]

by 05/02/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
LA VIE EN ROSE

LA VIE EN ROSE

They wanted love. The young. The desire was inside them. A candle in the night. A match in a bedroom of fireworks.   They wanted to tumble in pairs into the prayers of another world – hot unions of bodies and souls.  To smell, to taste, to touch, to feel, and to experience (as if dreaming together) the light of[Read More…]

by 05/02/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
 Ennu Swantham  Sreedharan – A Moving Tale of Examples that Go Over Precepts

 Ennu Swantham  Sreedharan – A Moving Tale of Examples that Go Over Precepts

Ennu Swantham Sreedharan (With Love, Sreedharan), a movie directed by Siddik Paravoor, is a true depiction of a real-life story of a family in Nilambur, Northern Kerala. It’s a must-watch movie in the present society where sectarian strife and conflict still exist. It’s a great movie-watching experience – the best movie I watched in the past 12 months. While drawing[Read More…]

by 03/02/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Lay Red Roses

Lay Red Roses

February, the month of love, is now coloured by incarnadined cries from battlegrounds.   Irrawaddy has turned red. Dneiper weeps ashes and blood. Yet, red roses will distribute love bought in supermarket splendour.   Bombings in Beirut, Peshawar. Ring the bells for love till bombs are incapacitated to hate. This February, ring the bells.   Lay red roses on graves[Read More…]

by 01/02/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Why success of the movie ‘Pathan’ matters?

Why success of the movie ‘Pathan’ matters?

Recently the movie ‘Pathan’ was in the news primarily for two reasons. One was around being its supposed anti-Hindu content for usage of saffron colour in a song scene and two in the past Shahrukh Khan had made a statement about growing intolerance in the country referring to increasing incidents of lynchings. The fact that he belongs to a minority[Read More…]

by 29/01/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Sarcasm

Sarcasm

nothing is more important than the colour of a bikini nothing is more important than to be against ‘love jihad’ supposedly being represented on screen nothing is more important than if a scene in a movie was removed or not ban it burn it or kill them all let the small girlchild continue eating from the garbage can foraging in[Read More…]

by 14/01/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
 The poet, writer and social commitment

 The poet, writer and social commitment

Charles Dickens,  the celebrated 19th century  novelist,  earned  good money  through  public reading of his works in  England and the U.S.to wipe  out  his father’s   and his own debt. His parents and younger brothers had been carted off to debtors’ jail. Only 12-year-old Charles stayed behind, working in a blacking factory to pay their bills. Those long miserable months,an obsever [Read More…]

by 01/01/2023 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
For Sasi

For Sasi

For the first time He was at my place coming straight from Kandhamal !! Do you know where Kandhamal is? He asked me. A man from Kerala is asking a man from Odisha- Do you know where Kandhamal is? I look at his bearded blank face We knew, Kandhamal begins where Gujarat ends The blood and the fire In Gujarat[Read More…]

by 29/12/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Unpublished Cartoons of K.P.Sasi

Unpublished Cartoons of K.P.Sasi

Here are a few cartoons of K.P.Sasi who passed away recently. They are not really unpublished. It only means that they are being published on the web for the first time.        

by 29/12/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
The Death Of An Activist – For K P Sasi

The Death Of An Activist – For K P Sasi

A narrow room without a number, and a door without your name. Under a crimson blanket, your knees drawn up, mouth open And eyes shut, you have anonymously exited from the only game. * The much trampled road, all stops done, ends tamely at your bed. In wayside lodges where keys hang from nails, old debates on capital And labour[Read More…]

by 29/12/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Seeing Like the State: Eyes Right

Seeing Like the State: Eyes Right

Tanaav, a series, that released on an online platform, last month, tells a tale of human conflict. It is the tale within the tale that is worrying. Last month India’s International Film Festival, held annually in Goa, brought together quality cinema, film-makers and audiences, to a celebration of how to speak truth to power, and say it well. The Golden[Read More…]

by 28/12/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Doctorhood, Mosquitos and the Adivasis: How DAMaN obfuscates the politics of public health in Odisha

Doctorhood, Mosquitos and the Adivasis: How DAMaN obfuscates the politics of public health in Odisha

When there seems to be a growing recognition of regional cine industries in recent years, the fanfare around Odia film DAMaN probably marks Ollywood’s resurgence with a strong populist overtone. Besides its off-centred storyline around public health, the film garnered a staggering response at the box office and beyond for its virtue signalling on ideal doctorhood and developmental statecraft in[Read More…]

by 23/12/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
How theatre can deal with a repressive State

How theatre can deal with a repressive State

During a visit to the FTII campus in Pune last week, I found that it looked more like an army camp. There were policemen in army-type uniforms all over. One was followed everywhere by a jawan. Even a visitor to Pakistan is treated with more discretion, I found that during a visit there to attend a peace conference 20 years[Read More…]

by 21/12/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Antonia Facciponte

“To Make a Bridge”: An Interview with Antonia Facciponte

Antonia Facciponte’s 2021 debut poetry collection is a tender dance for her Italian-Canadian heritage. Her poems sway through melodies of family memories and memorabilia – recipes, letters, cabinets of souvenirs – and delight readers with their playfulness regarding translation, deferring the usual poignancy for things-lost for the magic of awakening, recognition and listening. What is useful or inspiring to you[Read More…]

by 21/12/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
‘Our Home’- A call to preserve community-based society

‘Our Home’- A call to preserve community-based society

Romi Meitei has made 40 feature films and short films. His well-known movie Eikhogi Yum( Our Home ) was screened in the international competition section of the 27th International Film Festival of Kerala. The film won Fipresci international award and a jury mention of NETPAC at IFFK 2022. Does the film “Our Home” depict the real-life situation of fishermen in[Read More…]

by 17/12/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Farha

Farha

The woman who viewed my life on-screen, said, she cried in class retelling it. She asked me, have I at any time smiled thereafter ! She is from India. On the final evening of my life, I walked away from home in the direction of Syria. I coaxed my legs, assuring it of meeting a father somewhere. I walked towards[Read More…]

by 11/12/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Dinner Guest

Dinner Guest

Death Sits at the dinner table with me He has Impeccable manners Never touches anything Never talks out of turn Truly A somewhat amiable chap Except He has the nasty habit Of compulsively looking At his watch And then grinning at me His knife and his fork Mesmerizingly glistening In his bony white fingery traps While kicking me under the[Read More…]

by 09/12/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Arrival

Arrival

I searched long for You In the infinite fields Of Being I followed the myth Of your laughter I composed What I thought Was the heart Of Your Song I kept my ear Close To the coming Of any wind That might reveal The stealth Of your sudden approach But as I wandered A life spent In the concept Of[Read More…]

by 04/12/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
HE STANDS on the ROCK

HE STANDS on the ROCK

He stands on the Rock the beautiful rock beside the flourishing Tree of Life.   He stands on the Rock on the beautiful rock beside the flowing river of light.   He raises his arms like wings of lightning two beacon-flames of luminous fire.   His voice goes out with the strength of a ringing bell with softness of a[Read More…]

by 03/12/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
40th anniversary of ‘Gandhi’ movie by Richard Attenborough 

40th anniversary of ‘Gandhi’ movie by Richard Attenborough 

This movie produced by Richard Attenborough which was released 40 years ago on November 30th, 1982, was classic in it’s own right. Ironical that it took an Englishman to embark upon the making of a film on this legendary figure. I can’t visualize a better pictorial portrayal of Gandhi’s life or an actor getting in the skin of the character[Read More…]

by 30/11/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
In Memory of Harold Bloom

In Memory of Harold Bloom

How shall I climb When the ladder Is not mine? How shall I reach Thine ear When such is not my speech? How shall I engender Words When diction, close, In other bosoms sleep? I am a madhouse Closed to the weeping I am a tempest Whose eye is not his I am a whisper of a Man I cannot[Read More…]

by 24/11/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
First Love

First Love

[My tribute to the immortal love poems of my favorite poet of Bengal, Sunil Gangopadhyay.] My first love was a foggy blur Over my familiar world of twenty springs. He stretched over, with his eager eyes, His moving lips, his thrusting loins Eclipsing everything I thought, was my own terrain, Yet, I could never touch the contours of his desires,[Read More…]

by 22/11/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Kantara: a triumph for Indigenous Knowledge System

Kantara: a triumph for Indigenous Knowledge System

“And then both of them disappeared?!” – the kid asked his father with utter amazement. The father didn’t reply, only a strange smile spread across his face. The movie ended. The audience got up from their chairs but still, there was no humming inside the theatre. Everyone spellbound. The legend got us all. I entered the movie theatre with enough[Read More…]

by 22/11/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Dark Mystery

Dark Mystery

The Flesh on the Cross It is a great meditation It is a great Truth Of the World The nails of our traitors Slowly bore into us As we call out our mad pain Into the Cold Nothing As our betrayed heart exhausts Itself In the callous hands Of an unseen God Dan Corjescu teaches at the University of Tübingen’s “Studium[Read More…]

by 19/11/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
The Anti-Caste Pen Force

The Anti-Caste Pen Force

One who practices caste is a devil That devil has to be driven out of India India must be made a country of equality. The tiller must sow the letters of English Our soil must become a global knowledge power Caste has cultivated mindlessness The anti-caste pen will have to change India. Nationalism is not casteism Caste and race were[Read More…]

by 18/11/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Papillon

Papillon

They chained you Made you know Inside and out What it is like To be rock They taught you The secret hardnesses of time The Gorgon Face Of the clock You made love To the death of hope And a little water And a little bread Was given To strengthen you Into the shrill mockery of the sea You count[Read More…]

by 18/11/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Las Vegas

Las Vegas

The Gangsters were all waiting for me Their uninvited guest Their cigarettes were all lighted Their black ties were all straight I owed them without knowing And now had to pay them with my fate There was nowhere I was going Without their golden licence plate My life was theirs from the beginning There was no hand that I could[Read More…]

by 15/11/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Poise

Poise

Young with the wisdom Of an elder Unfair. No childhood. That’s your life   Not allowed ever To be angry Not allowed to raise Your hands   Smile through it Take it well Extend your love Never act   Poise Is a cage Poise Is torture   But that’s what you want from me.

by 15/11/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
In Memory of Leonard Cohen

In Memory of Leonard Cohen

Do you think that love is waiting Do you think that someone’s there There are only the hounds retreating There is only a ghost going up the stairs Now all the cafès are empty Now all the waitresses have faded There’s no one to take your order There’s no rendezvous that’s fated You can pack your last suitcase You can[Read More…]

by 14/11/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Photo by John Vetterli

Eternal Command

Stand at attention All you dogs And make fire for me Do not take the white branches From under the sea Leave me the Winter’s song On my tired breast Make nice with the West wind As the children run me down Cackling To the River There is an angry march Coming Red battalions of Revenge Flooding All your neat[Read More…]

by 12/11/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
No Poet

No Poet

I’m not really a poet I’m anti-gravity I’m stale mashed potatoes and gravy I’m what’s left out After your last pay check I’m the last words your wife says Before she kicks you out I’m the bum you most want to avoid Nah, I ain’t no poet I’m the lamplight the city always Forgets to fix I’m smallpox I’m aphasia[Read More…]

by 11/11/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
The Curses of Patriarchy

The Curses of Patriarchy

Patriarchy cursed me, I laughed and move on They said you are a female, your birth is a burden I survived and thrived, flourished and bloomed Confronted their stereotypes and challenged their misleading notions I vowed that I will not accept their false binaries or phony divisions I will keep demanding equal rights and opportunities to be a human That[Read More…]

by 08/11/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Dali Land, another movie with Kingsley’s travelling talent

Dali Land, another movie with Kingsley’s travelling talent

Be it the protagonist in ‘Gandhi’ or Darwan Singh, the instructor in ‘Learning to Drive’ or Itzhak  Stern, the Polish-Jewish Holocaust survivor in ‘Schindler’s List’, Ben Kingsley is a different persona to have in his extraordinary way when it comes to Cinema. It’s not different from earlier when he appeared as Salvador Dali, the most renowned mercurial Surrealist artist the[Read More…]

by 05/11/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
For M.M. 1992/2022

For M.M. 1992/2022

Stretching into love again After a hiatus of years Lips need old lips To see past new tears Our hands hung In Time’s hammock Patiently waiting For a rose Moon To lift moist memory From its quiet Garden Though lovers’ love is past And youth’s blind passion Now splashes in the hurrying verse Of loving recollection Your warm words have[Read More…]

by 03/11/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Democracy

Democracy

All the chicken heads Are hung against the wall And in invisible velvet rooms Choice chokes on power And the stupid dance Of commanded wraiths Processes its time Declares victors’ empty victory Only the machine is glorious Structure is Caesar While the plebeians play dice Under a Lotto Number Soaked in blood Dan Corjescu teaches at the University of Tübingen’s “Studium[Read More…]

by 01/11/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
You are not a great poet

You are not a great poet

You are not a great poet The swan does not stir No flower bends No mouth opens for more breath The universe remains steadily in place All the clocks tick The crows cabal The evening doesn’t give a fig All masters are at ease You will not swim to any distant shore The red banner is not lifted And freedom[Read More…]

by 31/10/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Kantara: Film around Human-Nature conflict

Kantara: Film around Human-Nature conflict

In the human and nature conflict debate, conservationists argue for expansion of wilderness and wildlife and those advocating tribal rights advocate for increasing access of tribal rights over land, water and forests. Forest department is often in conflict with local communities who are often seen as encroachers, while for the tribal communities’ forests are a part of their life, culture[Read More…]

by 24/10/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Review: The King of Laughter

Review: The King of Laughter

The Italian film festival which has opened in various cities of India from October 12, 2022, has brought with it a slew of interesting works by Italian directors which include Mario Martone, Michaelangelo Frammartino, Guieseppe Bonito and others. This is part of an effort to bring about a cultural communion between the two countries and to showcase new works in[Read More…]

by 17/10/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
The Kaali Poster Row Vis- À -Vis Sadhak Ramprasad’s Perception of Kali

The Kaali Poster Row Vis- À -Vis Sadhak Ramprasad’s Perception of Kali

A large section of the Hindu Right and the Hindu-not-so-right are ready to quarter, slice and cook  film maker Leena Manimakalai on a hot oven for using a poster of her documentary film Kaali as a smoking and smiling Goddess stating that this is a violation of Hindutva that tends to vilify the Hindu image of Kali in public space.[Read More…]

by 14/10/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
 Death of the Moth: A Requiem

 Death of the Moth: A Requiem

[Dedicated to the fiery, undying spirit of the phenomenal modernist author Virginia Woolf (January 25, 1882-March 28, 1941)] ‘They are hybrid creatures, neither gay like butterflies nor somber like their own species. Nevertheless the present specimen, with his narrow hay-colored wings, fringed with a tassel of the same color, seemed to be content with life.’ –The Death of the Moth[Read More…]

by 13/10/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
To Anjali

To Anjali

You are not just a name on the ballot. You are more than that. A flowing stream. A shady tree. A roaring ocean. A breeze of fresh air. The song of a hummingbird. The sound of the cricket in my backyard that gives me hope of a living earth. Your fight isn’t yours alone. You are an embodiment of a[Read More…]

by 10/10/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Best Songs of Majrooh Sultanpuri

Best Songs of Majrooh Sultanpuri

Majrooh Sultanpuri ( 1919-2000) was a highly talented lyricist of Hindi cinema who also received the highly coveted Dadasaheb Phalke Award for lifetime achievement. What is less known is his involvement in the Progressive Writers Movement and his strong leftist views as reflected in some of his earliest poems. In fact due to this he was imprisoned in 1949, just[Read More…]

by 04/10/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Against the Adanis and Ambanis of the world

Against the Adanis and Ambanis of the world

I’ve seen the faces of those who work for you Your money is made on the backs you broke Of their blood, sweat, and tears And cheap labour I have seen the agony on their faces Smelled the cheap liquor they are forced to imbibe to forget As their women struggle and their children grimace As they lay down for[Read More…]

by 02/10/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Neo-Realist Films on the Lingering Impact of War Devastation

Neo-Realist Films on the Lingering Impact of War Devastation

Charlie Chaplin called this the most beautiful Italian film he had ever seen, but then this is also an extremely tragic film. Based on the life of a family in post-Second War Berlin, ‘Germany Year Zero’ (1948) is not a film you can forget easily. War is over, but its devastation lives on in the life of so many people.[Read More…]

by 01/10/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
PBS Spurious Narrative of America and the Holocaust

PBS Spurious Narrative of America and the Holocaust

Introduction to a Spurious Narrative Excessive attention to the 80 year old World War II Holocaust prompts questions: “Why have constant reminders of  the World War II Holocaust failed to halt contemporary holocausts; has the attention distracted from careful watching of ongoing genocides, and has it enabled Israel’s destruction of the Palestinian community?” Public Broadcasting’s documentary, The U.S. and the[Read More…]

by 30/09/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
The AGE of FLOWERS

The AGE of FLOWERS

I am of flowers. I came out from the butterfly. I came out from the bee, the dancing bee – the hummingbird’s feathered breast.   Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, the face of life was a flowers’ face. Flower perfume recited out song. Flower petals inscribed our naming across deserts and grasslands.   At a time[Read More…]

by 26/09/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
A Peep into the spirit of China

A Peep into the spirit of China

Review of Ascension (2021) directed by Jessica Kingdon.   Firstly, the prospect of an American documentary about China arouses too much speculation; additionally, it draws one’s interest to know how the director juxtaposes Chinese ideology with the American counterpart. Ascension by Jessica Kingdon is solely about China, and how China ascended into the top echelons of the world economy. One[Read More…]

by 25/09/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
 Singing in the Shadows

 Singing in the Shadows

Do they have a choice — all these unfledged young hands that crumble under the   weight of guns— not to fight a war that is not theirs? Could his army choose to disobey Sauron?   The world watches as they decimate towns, cities, humans in the name of a cause that grew out   of a debt-ridden soul, a[Read More…]

by 23/09/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Truth to the Powerless: Newly Released Critical Docuseries on Canada’s Foreign Policy

Truth to the Powerless: Newly Released Critical Docuseries on Canada’s Foreign Policy

Truth to the Powerless: An Investigation into Canada’s Foreign Policy is a six-part docuseries which takes a critical look at the role Canada’s foreign policy plays in the international arena.  The docuseries features extensive interviews with academics such as Noam Chomsky, Tyler Shipley, and Justin Podur as well as extensive interviews with politicians such as Canadian defense ministers  Bill Graham,[Read More…]

by 22/09/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Ravish Kumar of NDTV

Two Indian Documentaries Find Place in TIFF 2022- Winners List

When the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF2022) winds up its 47th season on Sep 18, Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical creation, ‘The Fabelmans’ has bagged the prestigious People’s Choice Award. Sunday morning has witnessed the wrapping up of the 11-day festival along with the award ceremony followed by a number of free screenings of the Spielberg movie for the City of Toronto at various screening[Read More…]

by 20/09/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Ode to myself

Ode to myself

Looking inward Found arrows Shot to forestall my growth. Trying to dismantle the chain, Threw back the arrows, Culminating in a painful war, Where the loved one Stood amidst. Looking outside, Found number of errors, Where a woman is mocked for her irrationality, Labelled as “immature” for her actions and being Questioned of her whole existence, Conditioned and crushed for[Read More…]

by 04/09/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Trauma

Trauma

House: house made of wood is on fire. Fiery winds blow our ashes away. Burning forests and the grasslands.   House: house made of clay. Raging waters wash towns away. Death by drowning the epic ooze.   House of storms house of stars without a roof without foundation. Children of thirst frail with hunger. Dreamers not dreaming the haven of[Read More…]

by 02/09/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
September is the Cruelest Month,Babu

September is the Cruelest Month,Babu

September is the cruelest month, babu We are daily labourers We are kiln workers We are domestic maids We are casual agricultural hands It is a lean season, babu And we are pushed to the walls Of seasonal hunger and recurring wounds We sell pots and pans And keep our empty stomachs at bay It is the month of diarrhea[Read More…]

by 31/08/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
TIFF 2022 : An Exciting Lineup of Worldwide Features

TIFF 2022 : An Exciting Lineup of Worldwide Features

When the Toronto International Film Festival 2022 stands just around the corner, the preparations for the fun and excitement are well underway. King Street West, which is known as the Festival Street for Torontonians, is fully embarked on the surprises it has to offer. The street will stop its traffic for the first three days (Sep 08 – 11) of the[Read More…]

by 31/08/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Cartoon by Li Feng

#Let’sRaiseHell

On the day India was born eleven demons were let loose. A great celebration ensued Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah! India won the match again! The match is always fixed. A man versus woman Bilkis versus eleven Satans played in broad daylight. A great uproar, carnal pleasure, proud chest, thumping victory: Bilkis: Zero, India: Eleven. It’s always the same match . India[Read More…]

by 25/08/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Kandhamal  online film festival from August 23 to 31

Kandhamal  online film festival from August 23 to 31

 The 14th Anniversary of Kandhamal Day is due on August 25, 2022. Though the violence continued for months, the main violence on the Christians took place during the last week of August, 2008.  Justice for the genocide of the Dalit Christians and Adivasi Christians is still not provided. Several organizations in Odisha and outside the state worked hard for this cause. [Read More…]

by 22/08/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Love, Hope and Domestic Violence: Revisiting the Netflix movie ‘Darlings’

Love, Hope and Domestic Violence: Revisiting the Netflix movie ‘Darlings’

The movie ‘Darlings’ has recently received a lot of backlash and its storyline has been critiqued as a “pseudo-feminist” revenge of domestic violence. It has also been called vengeful and guilty of portraying men in the wrong light. The task that the movie leaves us with, however, is much more nuanced than the concerns of male representation. Underneath this basic[Read More…]

by 21/08/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Kaleidoscopic Images of a Culture

Kaleidoscopic Images of a Culture

Joshy Joseph’s “Laparoscopic Cinemascapes” featuring the veteran Aribam Syam Sharma – now in his 80’s – is actually a kind of a full encounter with the rich and complex dimensions of an oral culture, Manipuri to be specific, and a wise, enlightened soul nourished and nurtured by it emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. The mellow wisdom of an entire culture spreads[Read More…]

by 18/08/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
A ‘holy’ conspiracy? Not quite

A ‘holy’ conspiracy? Not quite

Saibal Mitra’s film  A Holy Conspiracy is a definitive document of some of the important ideas competing for India’s soul today.           In a little town called Hillolganj, the science teacher in a church-run school is suspended from his job. The school/church management believes he had disobeyed a vital injunction: not to teach the biology class Darwin’s theory of Evolution[Read More…]

by 17/08/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
India

India

My head, the Kanchanjodga, aches. My eyes shed tears as Yamuna Washing the feet of the Taj. Satpura, my chest, chokes. The saline breeze of Point Calimere Brings murmurs of pain. Satkoshaia’s solemn silence Froze into greater depths. The elephants of Silent Valley Suspended entwining their trunks. The extinguished Sabarmati Languishes in her grave. The Great Indian Hornbill chick Fears[Read More…]

by 15/08/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
How easy it is to be a patriot

How easy it is to be a patriot

How easy it is to be a patriot All I need is a pic of a flag and a frame given free on FB and when I go out to wear white or ethnic and pin on a flag put it in front of my house for all to see and on my car or scooter/bike Say Bharat Mata ki[Read More…]

by 14/08/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Opposition to Laal Singh Chaddha is because its story doesn’t fit into BJP’s divisive agenda  

Opposition to Laal Singh Chaddha is because its story doesn’t fit into BJP’s divisive agenda  

The latest Bollywood film brings a breeze of fresh air at a time when India faces a growing threat of Hindu extremism, under which space for pluralism and diversity is constantly shrinking. Laal Singh Chaddha is the story of an autistic Sikh man who is in love with a Christian woman. The two become friends at a school where Laal[Read More…]

by 14/08/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Ideas

Ideas

Ideas are hard to curb even if voices are silenced. Ideas will float in the air, waft on a sunbeam till they   embed themselves in more minds. Ideas will find wedges in time and ride over tides of violence, intolerance   forced silences and crimes. They will invade dreams till the magic of stardust blows sandstorms of love.  [Read More…]

by 13/08/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Painting by Sorei Kesang

What’s that decisive moment in art and life?

“History has become a catechism. You are given a question; you are given the answer. You stick with that question and you stick with that answer. Don’t ask another question and don’t look for another answer”, said Historian Romila Thapar in an interview about contemporary India. I should admit that while attending an online seminar organized by the Visva Bharati[Read More…]

by 13/08/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Many lives of creative artists

Many lives of creative artists

There is a river inside all of us, a free flow of ideas, thoughts, borne out of our active minds, everyday attempts to catch the liminal spaces we inhabit. In the souls more attuned to inner life this river bellows, tumbles wildly, splaying tendrils, tasting forbidden fruits, unabated. Yet, in fertile minds this river becomes a source: of life-force, beauty,[Read More…]

by 08/08/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
A still from Shekhar Kapur's "What Love Got To Do With It?"

TIFF 2022 Announces A Few of the Special Presentation Titles

It’s time for Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) fans to get spoiled for their choice of movies after two years of pandemic-inflicted restrictions. While the 47th edition of the film festival is just a  month away, the organisers have planned a wonderful line-up of events, making good of the lost festivities. TIFF 2022 will run from September 8 to 18 without any of the[Read More…]

by 01/08/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
A play in the life of upper caste liberals: A review of Ek Mamooli Aadmi (An ordinary man)

A play in the life of upper caste liberals: A review of Ek Mamooli Aadmi (An ordinary man)

Dir. Arvind Gaur Written by: Ashok Lal Presented by Asmita Theatre Group in Sri Ram Centre for Art and Culture on 29th July 2022 The black t-shirt wearing and exceedingly soft-spoken young volunteers we encountered outside the venue exuded such an intense awareness of the injustices of the world that I wanted to pat them on the shoulder and tell[Read More…]

by 31/07/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Hindi Film Songs Which Reflect the Spirit of the Freedom Movement

Hindi Film Songs Which Reflect the Spirit of the Freedom Movement

As India celebrates the 75th Independence Day, it is interesting to look at those Hindi film songs which have best reflected the spirit of the freedom movement in the years following the freedom of India from colonial rule. The coverage here is restricted to about two decades following freedom. First of all, there are songs directly dealing with films made[Read More…]

by 31/07/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Documenting a Story of Change

Documenting a Story of Change

The end credits to the Slumdog Children of Mumbai, a 2010 documentary made by Nick Read roll on my screen at 3:00 am. Yes, I am guilty of watching documentaries at odd hours and losing track of time. As I’m looking for more heartfelt documentaries to watch, I chance upon the trailer of the documentary, titled Right Forward, that’s based[Read More…]

by 26/07/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Leena Manimekalai

To Leena Manimekalai

In a very holy land In a very pious place One hundred thirty crore people live Sensitive, religious, courageous and non-sensuous. We get hurt And rightly so When a polymorph smokes And a strange man named Zubair Says the truth We are very decent people We kiss in private We kill in public. We worship our goddesses. We are fine[Read More…]

by 11/07/2022 1 comment Arts/Literature
Debajyoti Misra

Debajyoti Misra on his music for Aparajito

Debajyoti Misra does not need any introduction. He is one of the most multi-faceted, talented, a bit eccentric and trained music composer in India whose fame reaches beyond Indian borders. His music for Anik Dutta’s recreation of the making of Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali has spread like wildfire among music lovers and the media. Music and orchestral performances across the[Read More…]

by 05/07/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Happy B-Day USA

Happy B-Day USA

I love my children. I love my grandchildren. And have deep concern for the youth of the Earth. Who and what do you love? What we value defines who we are. Who we are is shaped by what we love. My doctor and I are talking about despair, depression, hopelessness and the upset of constant stress.  I say, “I am[Read More…]

by 04/07/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Some pious deeds

Some pious deeds

While razing the house of a Muslim family and setting them on fire with kerosene the man was thinking of the Buddhist monastery he planned to visit in Bhutan. It was his long drawn wish to meditate on the mountains where the air was thin.   Meanwhile the wails of the hapless family floated back to his ears and he[Read More…]

by 02/07/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
In The Name Of Hate

In The Name Of Hate

Enough Enough is enough Now mourn that we have killed our Prophet’s Words. Isn’t the Prophet an epitome of love? Hang your neck in shame You have lost both worlds. Sorry, my brother Kanhaiya. We all are victims of hate. The looters have given fire in the haystack We, the poor fellows, are now being charred in the flame. Sorry,[Read More…]

by 29/06/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
For Teesta Setalvad

For Teesta Setalvad

You are Teesta What does it matter You have been born in Sikkim Or in Gujarat! From the rush of your flow hope takes birth from your magnanimity a thousand houses become bright Taking a thousand storms in your bosom thousand dams on your way you change course sometimes ripping out the rocks and sands When Narmada was red in[Read More…]

by 27/06/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
The Sanctity of Life?

The Sanctity of Life?

A victory For life’s sanctity? But not for the living. Black Lives were not sacred Gun-dead children neither Hungry kids- -freeloaders War-dead deserved it Snowflakes if seeking help Desperate mothers in a synthetic jail Beating our hearts to death Hated the moment born Lumumba in the Trunk The Sanctity of Life The Big Lie works When you believe it

by 27/06/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Anamika Haksar’s Experimental Film

Anamika Haksar’s Experimental Film

Few people have such a privileged and unique background as Anamika Haksar whose experimental film Ghode Ko Jalebi Khilane Ja Riyan Hoon was released in a few cities in small theatres on June 15 She is the daughter of P.N. Haksar, one of our most respected administrators and an ardent Communsit in early days . She worked with Badal Sircar[Read More…]

by 23/06/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Some glimpses of old Bollywood in Kashmir

Some glimpses of old Bollywood in Kashmir

Usually, the Kashmiris think & believe that “Mainz Raat”/Mehndi Raat  ( in Kashmiri, 1964) was the first movie produced by Hindi Cinema on Kashmir  & that it was followed in 1972 by “Shayiri Kashmir Mehjoor”,  movie in Urdu & Kashmiri . The first movie produced by Hindi Cinema on Kashmir was “KASHMIR HAMARA HAI” in 1948. The name of the[Read More…]

by 21/06/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
In front of the firing squad

In front of the firing squad

I watch you from afar, you stand with your back against a wall, and a firing squad in the front! The first shot is fired… …but no instant death, It was at your name! The second shot also doesn’t kill, it was at your attire! Next one was at your meal on the table! And the next one at your[Read More…]

by 16/06/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Black American cinema vis-a-vis Dalit Indian cinema

Black American cinema vis-a-vis Dalit Indian cinema

If being ghettoised within the mainstream and slotted in the category of “outcasts” in society, then Blacks in America and Dalits in India perhaps face the same kind of discrimination in their respective societies. While the Dalits are born into it by virtue of their caste determined by social and cultural history, the Blacks are discriminated against on the basis[Read More…]

by 16/06/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
For Afreen Fatima

For Afreen Fatima

I can see your ribs cracking and the bones bleeding within. Your eyes are numb tears frozen. I can see your hands shaking your legs heavy. Your heart is pounding breath rushing. I can see you standing alone watching a bulldozer ravaging memories, warmth and prayers, the favorite tea pot ammus’s prayer room. I can see the tumbling of your[Read More…]

by 14/06/2022 1 comment Arts/Literature
Address: Habitat…Earth

Address: Habitat…Earth

Save…Save…Save Every life Every water drop Even every broken vessel All can be mended Even those ripped apart Nurturance Empathy Compassion   And so She would ceaselessly Murmur As the timeless brook Of centuries Old in years But an adolescent dreamer Holding on To revival Resurgence Resurrection     The grand lady Of an age-old manor Mother…grand mother Of so[Read More…]

by 14/06/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
A Smell to Remember

A Smell to Remember

Standing frozen in a dark pond of shit Filling my neck with stink and puke I looked around to see many others breathing With their heads above the dark liquid shit Souls filled with fear to look around or down. Then I saw a reflection of light twinkling Penetrating the shadows of the leaves Of a mango tree of hope[Read More…]

by 11/06/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
A still from the movie

Manipur Mindscapes: A film by Joshy Joseph

The Films Division under the Government of India’s Ministry of I&B has a certain genealogy that has been in a constant search of cinematographic forms that would make the body of the films handsome and at the same time accessible to the audiences at large. Right from its inception soon after India’s independence, the Films Division has been very interestingly[Read More…]

by 03/06/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Shame

Shame

The burden of absence savages the heart. How to give voice to the horrors of grief? In the valley of tears rivers from Eden run red with the salt of blood. In this Promise Land parents and prayers are exiled by violence. Each day an angel is fallen. The naming of victims! In gardens of hatred the flowering of graves.[Read More…]

by 01/06/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Images That Control

Images That Control

The images that I saw on screen Could never compete with the images in real life The magic lantern never had The magic of real life. Stories were too many To blast any troubled brain With experiences and ideas unlimited. In an attempt to reduce life in frames The creation of images became superior To the creation of life itself.[Read More…]

by 31/05/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Beyond Wars

Beyond Wars

The battle rages on For reasons little known War and hunger Symbiotic One nourishing the other Fiercely…   Women clutching their offspring And in their clasped palms The seeds of sunflower As roots cling soil For an identity For survival…   The nightingale’s plaintive song Across drooping branches of willow Across all barrenness To the Creator… Dr. Supatra Sen, Associate[Read More…]

by 29/05/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Three Great Poems by Narayan Surve – Poetic Portraits of Repressed and Helpless Women

Three Great Poems by Narayan Surve – Poetic Portraits of Repressed and Helpless Women

Three great poems By Narayan Surve, which take leap into the Inner Psychic – Mental World and expresses the Inner turmoil of the Toiling, Repressed, deprived, outcast Women who have lost everything. The Poetic narrations have deep impact on Listeners and readers and profusely disturb them. Narayan Surve (15th October 1926 to 16th August 2010) can be counted as one[Read More…]

by 25/05/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
A Phallic Country

A Phallic Country

(A Dystopian Nation) Under the rubble of a whole nation we have only phalluses billions of phalluses nothing else where history is edited and the future is smoky phallus rules everything. Everything for phallus phallus for everything. Every hour four women are raped Innumerable vaginas tattered Millions murdered Some burnt alive Deep inside me a phallus rules my anatomy threatens[Read More…]

by 25/05/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Great Bigots Think Alike: Indian Muslima to the Establishment

Great Bigots Think Alike: Indian Muslima to the Establishment

For the Turban-headed Orthodox I am their headline of meets and seminars Yet, they keep me out of every stage And gloat about Islam’s Equality age   For the self-serving Extremists I am the trump card of revolution They appropriate my name and form To escalate their identity game   For the liberal Agnostic I am the eternal victim Of[Read More…]

by 11/05/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Saikat Majumdar talks about his new novel – The Middle Finger

Saikat Majumdar talks about his new novel – The Middle Finger

 Saikat Majumdar is no new name within contemporary Indian writers writing in English. I was introduced to his writing by a very young friend who is a noted food critic. Firebird, Saikat’s second novel was amazing in the way he structured his story opening with a small boy shocked by the cremation of his mother even when it was a[Read More…]

by 11/05/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
The Return

The Return

The fervour of coming back, and the inbuilt resilience of the exiles, to mould from the debris, that was whatever, that forced us back ahead the end of war.   Even the coming back to a defeated homeland was enthralling, we built tall dreams en route, clinging to mirages, as though, nothing came about, and sought ways to wipe out[Read More…]

by 01/05/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Bound Together

Bound Together

Air and water both flow And mix and merge Neither lives But give life   Noises echo Voices carry Smells and sounds Join us together   Colors can run If they touch Languages mesh At meal time   Not yours Not mine Not his, hers or theirs We are bound together

by 30/04/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Divisive Politics: Alarming Scenario – Film Kashmir Files’ Negative Role

Divisive Politics: Alarming Scenario – Film Kashmir Files’ Negative Role

The incidents from Ram Navami to Hanuman Jayanti have more than shaken the nation. The ‘bulldozer of Hate’ demolished not only several households but also our Constitutional values. Backing up on this now loud speakers in Mosque is being made an issue by divisive politics. While most Muslim groups are for abiding by the instructions of Courts, the BJP-MNS (Raj[Read More…]

by 30/04/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
How Not To Write A Poem

How Not To Write A Poem

No No Muslim was killed in Gujarat No Muslim is being killed now The vendor* was not selling fruit No one vandalized his cart in Karnataka   No No bird is dying from drying rivers The rivers are not being throttled to die The Yamuna is not full of toxic foam   No No politician is spewing hate Yati Narasinghanand[Read More…]

by 27/04/2022 1 comment Arts/Literature
Reading the Divisive Agenda of ‘Kashmir Files’

Reading the Divisive Agenda of ‘Kashmir Files’

Abhinav Kumar (Misreading the Kashmir Files, IE, 16th April 2022) takes on the liberals with gay abandon. As per him the secularism in India faces a grave challenge from Islamic fundamentalism of which the conflict in Kashmir is the most egregious example. He ardently defends the film Kashmir Files. Kashmir Files is in the media and social scenario in a[Read More…]

by 25/04/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
A Song for Our Mother

A Song for Our Mother

What songs can we sing for you O Mother, on this Earth Day?   Intercontinental missiles fly. You lie wounded by bombs. Wombs emptied into tombs of soldiers weep, decimated by the monsters of war.   What songs can we sing for you O Mother, on this Earth Day?   We should have sung of flowing fields, and waving trees[Read More…]

by 22/04/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
War

War

written on the eve of Earth Day, 2022 i spit an iron ball at you i spit a ball a meteor of fire… i spit into your eyes i spit into your ruptured heart on puddles of your interrupted blood into your splattered brain, onto your speechless tongue i spit on the splinters and charred ruins that before were houses[Read More…]

by 22/04/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Image by NirmalSarkar

Ode To Turmeric!

Turmeric, turmeric– coppery-golden spice! Rubbed on fish, rubbed on chicken– it’s finger-lickin’ good! Add it to rice, drink it in tea– a little bit goes far! It can save your life, chase the blues away, reduce the stress and strife! Shake it out and give a shout– you’ve found a true elixir! Let the military band retire, let War and[Read More…]

by 16/04/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Stonehenge Sonnet

Stonehenge Sonnet

What was it that they thought to own? Decades, centuries kept intent intact. And, still it calls us, stone by stone, To eke out meaning from mere fact. Observatory, temple, some Cheops’ whim, Or shaman’s riddle in which power hid? To appease the gods—or find them? They worshipped trees; dancing, they understood. We are mute questioners–beguiled; Token pilgrims properly impressed.[Read More…]

by 12/04/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Great Love Songs Created Space in Popular Culture to Challenge Forces of Social Conservatism

Great Love Songs Created Space in Popular Culture to Challenge Forces of Social Conservatism

by Bharat Dogra and Madhu Dogra 21 Most Memorable Songs of Immortal Love in Hindi Cinema Love and romance being the eternal theme of Hindi films, it is not surprising that we have so many great love songs here, but by songs of immortal love we refer specifically to those songs which speak of love as a very deep lifelong[Read More…]

by 06/04/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Jhund: Nagraj Manjule’s engrossing drama

Jhund: Nagraj Manjule’s engrossing drama

Cesare Zavattini, a screenwriter, film theorist and proponent of Italian Neorealism, writes cinema should penetrate more and more into the manifestations and essence of reality. Nagraj Manjule’s Bollywood debut film Jhund is precisely trying to assert this. The film starts with a woman scolding her husband for irresponsibly drinking, simple yet engrossing, camera pans and we see Don, Ankush approaching.[Read More…]

by 04/04/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Lines, water and beyond

Lines, water and beyond

The aim of art is not to represent the outward appearance of things but their inward significance – Aristotle When you illustrate a novel, what you should do – illustrate some special moment or happening in each chapter of that work, or imbibe the comprehensive thematic landscape portrayed in it? Either way, it should have a distinctiveness that is attached[Read More…]

by 01/04/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
The Kashmir Files is nothing but an attempt to silence voices of dissent  

The Kashmir Files is nothing but an attempt to silence voices of dissent  

  The recent Indian movie on the conflict zone of Kashmir can be best described as a propaganda tool of apologists for the ruling Hindu nationalist BJP government in New Delhi. Directed by Vivek Agnihotri, who is known for his pro-BJP stance, The Kashmir Files is not really a true and complete story of Kashmiri Hindus, who were forced to[Read More…]

by 01/04/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Why RRR is not a Hindutva propagating film

Why RRR is not a Hindutva propagating film

The recently released movie ‘RRR’ is being received well across the country. The movie is based on two revolutionary tribal leaders namely Alluri Sitaramaraju and Komaram Bheem. While both lived in different geographies and had never met, the movie builds on the assumption of what would have happened had both lived at the same time, met and fought together. A[Read More…]

by 31/03/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Medea in Hell

Medea in Hell

A Short Philosophical One-Act Play The Place: Hades (World of Shadows) Medea: In that eye within which I saw a world reduced I engendered a treacly venom so strong that love itself was sick with weakness and fear for the sipping of it Jason: It was not your love for me that caused you to eternally burn and to presently[Read More…]

by 30/03/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Putin…& ….

Putin…& ….

1. Putin! Putin! There’s really no disputin’! You’re a liar and a louse And you look like a mouse! Get out of our House! This House we call “Earth”! That’s ours from our birth! Don’t kill the babies With your kind of rabies! We’ve been thru this before— This plague we call “War”! The generals praise… While Earth rots and[Read More…]

by 29/03/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Rampurhat

Rampurhat

The entire city is smelling of burnt human flesh all are smelling same – the flesh of the children, pregnant women and newly wed couple. We learnt today fire does not know how to differ bones It burns all – old bones and young bones in the same vigor. In an auditorium in Kolkata the city of the Babus all[Read More…]

by 27/03/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
“Kashmir Files”-Half Truths and falsehoods galore

“Kashmir Files”-Half Truths and falsehoods galore

Major weapon of sectarian nationalism is to spread misconceptions and create hate against the religious minorities. This process which has been going on since long has now got a new tool, a film, “Kashmir Files”. As such misconceptions against minorities are based on half truths, selective truths, lies and this film is another addition to that. The slogans-misconceptions against religious[Read More…]

by 27/03/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
A MORALITY of SUNFLOWERS

A MORALITY of SUNFLOWERS

  The angel of death with a man’s face; the mother of life comforting children.   Here is where we are a planet shaken by war.  People riven.   We come to a turning point in the guilty history of crime.   We gather to listen to witnessing voices of blood and corpses.   Every one of us, deliberately or[Read More…]

by 24/03/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
To Mahatma-ji

To Mahatma-ji

(Mahatmajir Proti) Sukanta Bhattacharya (1926-1947) Translated © 2022 from the Bengali by Monish R Chatterjee   Of our teeming 400 million, I too am one, I know Abruptly in the airwaves I’ve heard the pronouncement – The great moment in my life has arrived, instantly wiping away All apprehension and cowardice.  The drumbeats of exultation Ring out in my bloodstream: [Read More…]

by 24/03/2022 1 comment Arts/Literature
Appropriate Portrayal of Youth on the Margins through Sports and Uproar – Unheard Expressions

Appropriate Portrayal of Youth on the Margins through Sports and Uproar – Unheard Expressions

by Rishikesh Nagdawane, Kanad Jambhulkar and Vicky Nandgaye The film is inspired by the former sports teacher Vijay Barse from Hislop College. It is a socio-pic (see Mangesh Dahiwale’s wall[1]) because it combines Vijay Borade’s (Amitabh Bacchan) life and mission with the lives and sufferings of city-slum young people. As a result, it can be viewed as a socio-pic. The[Read More…]

by 17/03/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Why I do not want to watch Kashmir Files

Why I do not want to watch Kashmir Files

The movie ‘The Kashmir Files’ by Vivkek Agnihotri is being propagated by the BJP supporters. BJP run state governments is encouraging people to watch the movie. It is being depicted as one which shows the pains of the Kashmiri Pandits. The movie might be well made technically and actors might have lived to the characters. Commentaries on factual errors has[Read More…]

by 16/03/2022 2 comments Arts/Literature
Love & Shukla  – Through a Gender Lens

Love & Shukla  – Through a Gender Lens

The setting – A 12 by 12 all-purpose one-room rundown chawl in a crowded suburb of Central Mumbai. The residents – An auto rickshaw driver, Manu Shukla, and his parents. The milieu – A crowded, dark, noisy, smoky bar where Shukla and his friends hang out late evenings after a hard day’s labor, to bond over beer and banter.  Conversations[Read More…]

by 12/03/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Jhund: An upper-caste movie review

Jhund: An upper-caste movie review

ONE I was shown Nagraj Popatrao Manjule’s Fandry for my course in media and cultural studies at TISS and then I went and watched Sairat with my friends in a theatre. It was impossible for me to get my family to watch either of these movies. One of the reasons was that these movies were in Marathi while my family[Read More…]

by 09/03/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
EUCHARIST of WAR

EUCHARIST of WAR

Eat this. There is not much time for eating. We fight and food is scarce and getting scarcer.   Maybe this is our last supper? Perhaps the world is ending?   This shattered bone-bread is bodies of our people – fallen, falling bread crumbs and scattered black seeds of sunflowers.   Citizens who are dismembered sleep now, never to waken[Read More…]

by 05/03/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
We Had But Only Grandfathers

We Had But Only Grandfathers

That was at what time, our mother said, “we were working out on a journey with friends and relatives.” We were joyful. We departed by picking lonesome paths, that carried eerie charge. I was but eight.   Mother said, people walked all the way through wars. It was in contrast to whatever we conceived it to be. We did not[Read More…]

by 04/03/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Saudi Arabia's War in Yemen Has Failed - Council on Foreign Relations

Oh Yemen

Oh Yemen, I’m sorry That No one remembers you That You are not White That You are not Christian That You were attacked by the “good guys” I know you have solidarity With the people Of Ukraine Even if No one remembers you

by 01/03/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Your Foster Child!

Your Foster Child!

Nights are on the panics, you filled your gun with bullets; Nights are dreadful, you shield and polish your weapons with great pride. Pride – your pride costs how many lives? You caress your pride like a baby, your only child is your weapon. Time has come; you’re ready to take charge, Your baby is well prepared- your gun is[Read More…]

by 27/02/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
The Russian predator/War Never Ends

The Russian predator/War Never Ends

The Russian predator by Ra Sh Once again, there is blood on Neruda’s streets. Once again, there are those sickening images of mothers grieving for their sons, of families looking for their bread winners, of little girls picking blood splattered flowers, of airplanes bombing housing colonies. Once again, war photos will fill pages. One will get the Pulitzer prize. Many[Read More…]

by 26/02/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
In Memoriam —

In Memoriam —

Let us write poetry in memory of peace. Let us write poetry of love in times of war.   Erasing the anger, the hate, let us sing love songs for skies without warplanes,   horizons without clouds of mushrooms. Let us with love deluge, fill human hearts with   hope for the war to end, an ability to transcend walls drawn by[Read More…]

by 25/02/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Tired Propaganda Bandied as History

Tired Propaganda Bandied as History

Review of Munich:  the Edge of War|Netflix, 2022 When I first saw an advertisement for Munich:  The Edge of War appear on my Netflix search screen, my blood pressure rose palpably.  I knew that I had to watch it and that parts of the movie would be objectionable, from a historical and moral point of view.  I avoided watching it[Read More…]

by 22/02/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
It’s February again……

It’s February again……

The sunlight dazzles in the breeze sparkling its way through the window The rays of the sun touch my brow and embrace the body in full splendor The roses you loved, the magnolia you planted, the jasmine you potted The roses have withered, magnolia stands tall, the jasmine blooms in all its charm The breeze is slow, birds are silent,[Read More…]

by 16/02/2022 1 comment Arts/Literature
Film on Godse’s Killing of Gandhi: Falsehoods Galore

Film on Godse’s Killing of Gandhi: Falsehoods Galore

The film has “Why I killed Gandhi” was recently released. It is an attempt to glorify Nathuram Godse the killer of Mahatma Gandhi. One of its clip, the one related to Godse’s Testimony in Punjab High court is doing rounds in the social media. In the long clip Godse unabashedly falsifies the events and gives them a communal slant. It[Read More…]

by 11/02/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
An autofiction Manifesto

An autofiction Manifesto

I was making all kinds of films all these years, but mostly non-fiction films. The idiom of story-telling  in my  films were  more or less indebted to a fictional tradition.  I pushed the boundaries to such an extent that it  becomes invalid after a point if I could hook my viewers. In some  films,  obviously a viewer –  friendly  idiom[Read More…]

by 08/02/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Shopping Mall or Shocking Mall

Shopping Mall or Shocking Mall

Eight farmers have taken their own lives. The death certificate is crystal clear. It’s suicide not murder. The potatoes they have to sell in zero profit are in shopping trolley with a tip – top price tag. The wife of paanwala Ramu stands by roadside every night She tucks in some ragged clothes inside her bra to makes her breasts[Read More…]

by 06/02/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Song of the Himalayas

Song of the Himalayas

Stretching far beyond the distant horizons is a mountain where trod the gods on their way to heaven, where mankind prayed for redemption, for a broader vision, for union   with universal, infinite energies. The peaks tower snow white — stretch out an awning. Long ago, these were not there. The ranges birthed as two ancient land masses embraced.  [Read More…]

by 21/01/2022 2 comments Arts/Literature
JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass by Oliver Stone

JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass by Oliver Stone

A Film Review Two of the greatest speeches ever delivered by an American president bookend this extraordinary documentary film.  It opens with President John F. Kennedy giving the commencement speech at American University on June 10, 1963 and it closes with his civil rights speech to the American people the following day.  It is a deft artistic touch that suggests the brevity of[Read More…]

by 19/01/2022 1 comment Arts/Literature
Silence

Silence

A sword pierced my soul, the day I heard the calls For genocide against our Muslim nationals – What makes it still more chilling and sinister Is the loud silence of all those who matter. We who speak can say that silence speaks louder, It echoes in ears it reaches and further; It beats up a drum roll of tacit[Read More…]

by 18/01/2022 1 comment Arts/Literature
FREEDOM: a Poetic Declaration in Two Movements

FREEDOM: a Poetic Declaration in Two Movements

Part One: inspired & freely adapted from a poem by the French lyric poet Paul Eluard On every door at every gate in every doorway on all the windows, mirrors of all the world   I write your name.   On every road with every step in the wide meander and the sand on the straight and narrow and around[Read More…]

by 18/01/2022 1 comment Arts/Literature
The Battle at Lake Changjin: An Anti-war War Film

The Battle at Lake Changjin: An Anti-war War Film

For decades, Hollywood has produced a plethora of films extolling American military prowess in warfare. Aside from Oliver Stone films and a few others, e.g., Casualties of War, usually these Hollywood films depict the United States as a force for good defeating fascists and other evildoers. Never-ending US militarism has provided a cornucopia of potential war scripts for Hollywood. Currently[Read More…]

by 15/01/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
They search from door to door

They search from door to door

They search from door to door. Asking questions shaped by hate and suspicion. They want to know how Christ entered those homes. Did he enter brandishing weapons that struck terror? Or did he wheedle his way into those homes? Using guile and deceit. They are brokers in the market place where power is sold to those, Who can pay the[Read More…]

by 09/01/2022 1 comment Arts/Literature
I Am A Muslim Woman

I Am A Muslim Woman

I am a Muslim Woman And I am not for sale I sacrifice my life for freedom struggle I stand against the British rule I am Shaheen bagh I am the voice you are afraid of In kashmir, In Manipur I stand against the oppression I call out your name In Jamia, In Aligarh I am the history You want[Read More…]

by 07/01/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Ten Great Songs of Hope from Hindi Cinema

Ten Great Songs of Hope from Hindi Cinema

by Madhu and Bharat Dogra Songs of hope are always good but these become even better and more relevant in difficult times. This may thus be a good time to remember some of the greatest songs of hope from Hindi cinema. These became hugely popular at the time of their release and are still remembered and hummed by a very[Read More…]

by 01/01/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
How A Boy Called Christmas converted me to the politics of greed

How A Boy Called Christmas converted me to the politics of greed

This was the Christmas my young daughter finally cornered me into admitting that Father Christmas doesn’t exist. I felt a small pang of regret that she had taken another step towards graduating into the less colourful world of adulthood, but also a larger sense of relief that I could now stop lying to her. What a few years ago seemed[Read More…]

by 31/12/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
I’m also hurt

I’m also hurt

My heart is strong but not a stone. I have emotions that are hurt. I have feelings that can be shattered. If you are angry you can shout or say anything. If I do the same it’s blasphemy. Or even I’m not supposed to be angry! If I cry,  it’s a drama. If I’m sad,  it’s a show. You even[Read More…]

by 30/12/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Tears

Tears

I am speaking with you. We are talking together, speaking of ordinary things, using ordinary words. It is good talk too. The everyday is as much at risk as the light of the sky and as angels, robed in feathers, of heaven. On that note, I wish to speak with you in soul-talk, to talk in my native tongue, to[Read More…]

by 29/12/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
A Marxist Analysis and Critique of “Don’t Look Up”

A Marxist Analysis and Critique of “Don’t Look Up”

Capitalism is a form of life riddled with social antagonisms. Every Marxist knows this well. Most have been using the effects these antagonisms produce to predict the fall of capitalism for the last century and a half. However, like the weebles wobble toys from the early 2000s, these contradictions have wobbled capitalism, but have yet (in the West at least),[Read More…]

by 29/12/2021 1 comment Arts/Literature
My Eco List

My Eco List

  This is not lifeless Saturn or Jupiter, the Moon, Venus, or Mars. Because a neighboring planet is named for a Roman goddess does not mean that women originate there as if from an unearthly temple of extraterrestrial love. Because another is named for a Roman god does not prove that men are hard wired and destined for war.  [Read More…]

by 08/12/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Cardboard Houses

Cardboard Houses

How sad the rain sounds On the cardboard roofs How sad that my people live In cardboard houses   The worker is coming down [from the hills] Almost dragging his feet From the weight of suffering Look how much he suffers Look how much the suffering weighs   Above he leaves his pregnant wife Down the hill is the city[Read More…]

by 26/11/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Witness: Poetry of Dissent

Witness: Poetry of Dissent

WITNESS: THE RED RIVER BOOK OF POETRY OF DISSENT, 2021, Edited by NABINA DAS RED RIVER, an independent poetry press run by the intrepid Dibyajyoti Sarma has spearheaded recent poetry publications in India – of diverse tenor and fine aesthetic value. Red River has very recently published this staggering anthology of ‘dissent’ poetry to counter the tyranny of our system,[Read More…]

by 23/11/2021 Comments are Disabled Book Review, Arts/Literature
MeeLord! I am seeking justice as a citizen!

MeeLord! I am seeking justice as a citizen!

She hesitated and fumbled, vacillated and dithered, When the Magistrate announced, “go for ADR, counseling and mediation”, MeeLord, he promised he will not beat me when my parents intervened, she squeaked, Though I may be naïve and inept to speak, yet I must tell you, He assured he will not hit me when the neighbors intruded, but violence never stopped,[Read More…]

by 20/11/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Five Great Solidarity Songs from Classic Hindi Films We Can Never Forget

Five Great Solidarity Songs from Classic Hindi Films We Can Never Forget

Great solidarity songs never die. There will always be more struggles where these will be hummed and sung to strengthen resolve and unity. This is certainly true of the five great songs from classic Hindi films we discuss here. Decades after these were created, these songs still continue to inspire. Songs of solidarity often tend to be sung together and[Read More…]

by 14/11/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Jai Bhim- A review

Jai Bhim- A review

  In recent years, the Tamil cinema has seen a flurry of films mainstreaming Dalit narratives that bare the underbelly of a regressive caste driven society. As Dr. Biju, the Malayalam director of “Veyil Marangal” fame had posted on Facebook that the Tamil filmgoers, unlike their Malayalam counterparts, receive anti-caste narratives with great fervour and essential gravitas. Written and directed by T[Read More…]

by 13/11/2021 1 comment Arts/Literature
Dulce est Vivere

Dulce est Vivere

Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori*   It is never sweet to die. Death ends all. There is no sweetness in dying. Sweetness is only for the living. Is there a Heaven? Was there ever a Heaven? Or, is this all a make- believe by those who seek the ultimate gift from mankind, their lives, to perpetrate hate and[Read More…]

by 12/11/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Jai Bhim: Movie Review

Jai Bhim: Movie Review

In a society divided along caste and class lines, violence against the marginalised groups either does not attract the attention of society at large or the oppression per se tends to be seen as normal. The pattern of silence is in favour of the dominant groups. There is no abnormality seen in violence perpetrated by the dominant groups either directly[Read More…]

by 09/11/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
BURNING : Eva Orner’s Distress Call to Action

BURNING : Eva Orner’s Distress Call to Action

Eva Orner, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker for her movie Taxi to the Dark Side comes up with a burning issue this time through her latest documentary, Burning. That’s about the recurring bushfires happening in Australia which no longer can’t be ignored. The film that had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival -2021 last month will certainly spark[Read More…]

by 06/11/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
A different tale of ‘COP26’

A different tale of ‘COP26’

One day, some animals — Tigers, lions, jackals, Zebras, monkeys, camels,…. — Decided to meet and exchange Views on climate change! Tigers and lions said, ‘let us all be united In these times of crises And devise ways To stop deterioration Of our environment condition!’ Each one spoke at length With unabated breadth On the subject for long Till late[Read More…]

by 05/11/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Poppies’ Song

Poppies’ Song

The climate is changing. Clouds thunder protests for trees turned to paper. Lightnings throw bolts   on vehicle-filled roads. Viruses clog veins with fear, fear of what is to come. Life as we knew   is threatened. Poppies whisper from weapon strewn fields: No point complaining. The climate   is changing. The climate is changing. Ice caps are melting. Floods[Read More…]

by 01/11/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
The Real Meaning of Squid Game

The Real Meaning of Squid Game

You’ve either seen the Netflix show Squid Game, considered watching the South Korean series before giving it a pass because of its violence, or read about it and wondered what all the fuss is about. You know, therefore, that this global hit is about hundreds of indebted Koreans competing against one another for a huge jackpot. The competitions are children’s games[Read More…]

by 30/10/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Divided Rivers:  Twin Teardrops upon Mother’s Face

Divided Rivers:  Twin Teardrops upon Mother’s Face

Riverine nostalgia in post-partition Bengali music  Since river valleys and riverbanks have perennially been the life-giving source of all flourishing human civilizations around the earth throughout history (Indus-Ganges, Nile, Tigris-Euphrates, Mississippi, Amazon and a great many more), it is quite natural that when politically and colonially engineered partitions of the homelands of people residing generationally on those riverbanks occur, beyond[Read More…]

by 30/10/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Yours is not to Reason Why

Yours is not to Reason Why

I have transcribed much words spoken by the survivors of holocaust before writing this. I did this exercise not to gather information but to recognise in my flesh that I am incapable of speaking about what has happened at Auschwitz, the largest concentration and extermination camp. The place of “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”. ‘Where inmates were killed in[Read More…]

by 24/10/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Van Gogh And His Prolific Creativity   

Van Gogh And His Prolific Creativity   

It was Tuesday, August 4, 2009 in the Europe Tour. Before that I only knew a little about Monet, Leonardo Da Vinci,  Vincent van Gogh, Rembrandt, Pablo Picasso, but I was very happy today because we went to see the world-famous Vincent van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. We got there in the morning. As usual, there were crowds of tourists[Read More…]

by 23/10/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
There is an elephant in the room

There is an elephant in the room

Can you see it, right here, inside swaying the tusks dripping blood? Do you see it, drunk in adulation the peak of its head held high still climbing with every cheer from the boisterous crowd?   Are you seeing it- the large microphonic ears flapping on himself like a decorated fan?   Those distrusting eyes penetrating through you in quiet[Read More…]

by 20/10/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Letter to a dissociated self

Letter to a dissociated self

Well now you know how time flies, Like a bird caught in a whirlwind, Like a serpent shedding skins, Like a roadside bench being abandoned again and again. And it has been said before And maybe even before that, That these are worlds of our own making, A translucent lucid facade of falsifications Of hopes and of dreams and of[Read More…]

by 17/10/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Why has Squid Game resonated with a global audience?

Why has Squid Game resonated with a global audience?

Squid Game, a Korean survival drama series written and directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk, has become an international phenomenon. On Tuesday, Netflix reported that it had officially become the most widely viewed series ever for the platform, with more than 111 million viewers worldwide. It is currently the top show on Netflix in at least 90 countries, from Argentina and Australia,[Read More…]

by 15/10/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Sudeesh Yezhuvath’s Photo Exhibition on Auschwitz

Sudeesh Yezhuvath’s Photo Exhibition on Auschwitz

Artist’s note A chilling question entered my mind one cold morning in October 2011 and it shook me to the core. I was standing in the attic of the house in which Anne Frank had lived in hiding. Ever since I had read her book, I had wanted to see for myself, the place where she lived and wrote her[Read More…]

by 14/10/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Documentary on Farmer’s Movement by Rajkumari Asthana

Documentary on Farmer’s Movement by Rajkumari Asthana

Independent film-maker Rajkumari Asthana has produced a documentary on the ongoing farmer’s struggle in India. It is the first episode of a series called Jab Tak Raat Baki Hai, planned as a people’s history of the farmer’s movement. Anand Patwardhan’s Vikalp@Prithvi showed the film last weekend. This is an independent, completely non-commercial effort.

by 06/10/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
75 Years of ‘Neecha Nagar’

75 Years of ‘Neecha Nagar’

A film on struggles of slum-dwellers, won the first top international award for India Much before the advent of the new wave in Indian cinema, during the decade of the 1950s several films of great social commitment which reflected the ideals of the freedom movement. However what is even more remarkable is that even before independence, braving the even higher[Read More…]

by 30/09/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Every little girl has a dream, a dream that will not die….

Every little girl has a dream, a dream that will not die….

                                                                         Every little girl has a dream A dream to study, a dream to play, A dream to dance, a dream to fly, A dream[Read More…]

by 27/09/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Let Chocolates Fall from the Sky

Let Chocolates Fall from the Sky

Let us go there, you and I, hoping chocolates fall from the sky.   Let us go into a hilly terrain, where flows the ancient Amu Darya, where Marco Polo watched sheep graze on the grass of Pamirs. Do they still browse or is it tamam shud with a rat-a-tat-tat?   Has the river turned red? Incarnadined, gaze ghosts unwounded[Read More…]

by 21/09/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Documentary on Kandhamal by K.P Sasi released on YouTube

Documentary on Kandhamal by K.P Sasi released on YouTube

This year there was international outrage when a frail 84-year-old Jesuit priest with Parkinson’s disease, Stan Swamy, died after being held in an Indian jail in inhumane conditions, on flimsy charges. When he was eventually moved to hospital, he tested positive for Covid and went on to suffer a cardiac arrest. He had devotedly served the poor and defended their[Read More…]

by 17/09/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature, Editor's Picks
A Story Poem about Climate Change

A Story Poem about Climate Change

Is this climate change? I asked as rains lashed out. Oh, that is a subject for experts, the bald man with a goatee said. We stood on the clouds and watched   the water slowly submerge — seeping through the marshes rising, rising till it covered the fields, the houses. The cattle — did they swim? The cats and dogs?[Read More…]

by 16/09/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature, Climate Change
Karnan: A cinematic resistance to caste system

Karnan: A cinematic resistance to caste system

Southern superstar Dhanush’s Tamil film ‘Karnan’ has been released on OTT platform on Amazon Prime Video. The film had earlier been released in cinemas. The film, which was screened in Corona, is getting huge response from the audience. The most interesting thing is that breaking the linguistic wall, the film is being favored from south to north. This has been[Read More…]

by 12/09/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
‘Surveillance’ Monkey

‘Surveillance’ Monkey

A monkey came to our home. It saw plenty of space to roam! Elated, it went from room to room Looking nook and corner It saw my computer … The shining screen caught it’s eyes It sat on the table, looked here and there twice! Scanned the keyboard Began to type word after word. Finding the sounds odd, It went[Read More…]

by 08/09/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
The contribution of Ancient Greek culture to the Modern Age 

The contribution of Ancient Greek culture to the Modern Age 

With the discovery of fossils, artifacts, and ‘destroyed’ cities, archaeologists and historians have uncovered the hidden mysteries of events and cultures that preceded society. Ancient Greece (Greek: Romanized Hellas)  was a similar ancient culture dating back to the 12th century BC (9th century BC) to the 9th century BC (600 BCE). The Greeks made significant contributions to the four fields[Read More…]

by 05/09/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Nithin Lukose Film, Paka (River of Blood), Makes it to Toronto Festival

Nithin Lukose Film, Paka (River of Blood), Makes it to Toronto Festival

As the City of Toronto is less than a week away from the ‘Festival of Festivals’ Indian Cinema has nothing much to write home about except two movies, although the total number of films selected for screening is one-third of its usual strength. And that too not from the major filmmakers. Nithin Lukose’s PAKA (River of Blood) and Ritwik Pareek’s[Read More…]

by 03/09/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Resurrecting The Memories of “The Kid” in the centenary year

Resurrecting The Memories of “The Kid” in the centenary year

This year in January we commemorated the centenary of Charlie Chaplin’s1st motion film ‘The Kid.’ No doubt such a film would be outdated today, in the days of high tech,artificial intelligence, mechanisation or  automation. However it still has significance when the forces of globalization are tightening their noose in every sphere of life and putting a stranglehold on all democratic[Read More…]

by 31/08/2021 1 comment Arts/Literature
Parables, flying scrolls and fiction: What is evil?

Parables, flying scrolls and fiction: What is evil?

It is easy for derivative theoreticians who cannot creatively comprehend the deconstructive nature of creative texts to dismiss creative processes and their decentered layers and structures by highlighting a single element of a creative text, ignoring the fact that there are innumerable elements in the texts that act on each other to produce multiple levels of meaning and experience. ‘Walking[Read More…]

by 27/08/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Somen Chanda

Riot: A Short Story by Somen Chanda (1920-1942)

A man was crossing the platoon-fields fast. Up ahead lay the level-crossing. He was aiming to cross the railway yard adjoining the level crossing. Perhaps, he had thought that he would be safe once he reaches the Nazia Bazaar area. No one can be seen near or far away. Everything is empty, like a desert.  At a distance lies a[Read More…]

by 25/08/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Art of the Oppressed: Politics of Existence

Art of the Oppressed: Politics of Existence

Why Sarpatta Parambarai holds an important place in Tamil film history? It not only has convincing arguments for Dalits and women but raising questions against the dominant images and ideas.   A Tamil film, Unnal Mudiyum Thambi  (‘you can do it brother’ ) released 33 years ago,   directed by a prominent dialogue writer cum director K.Balachander, who directed hundred films[Read More…]

by 18/08/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
“Bol Diyan Unma”: A Commentary          

“Bol Diyan Unma”: A Commentary          

     Lopsided development in Uttarakhand has increased the pace of outmigration of local villagers. More than 1000 villages are entirely abandoned, making them ‘ghost’ villages (Upadhyay, 2018). According to the Rural Development and Migration Commission of Uttarakhand, the reason for this mass exodus ranges from an inability to diversify livelihoods to lack of educational and healthcare institutions. Global climate[Read More…]

by 15/08/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Three Great Stories Which Reflect the Perception of Smaller Children

Three Great Stories Which Reflect the Perception of Smaller Children

Most of the great works of literature have been written from the perception of adult characters. It is seldom that a story with a small child as the main character finds a secure place in world literature, and it is even more rare to find the entire story being told from the perception of a small child. This is all[Read More…]

by 11/08/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
I got a little tired of believing

I got a little tired of believing

I got a little tired of believing that the man who died during demonetisation while standing in a queue of a heart attack was any less important or not gold-medal deserving than the man who can throw a javelin further than others with the help of an Australian coach and a German or two for good measure I got a[Read More…]

by 09/08/2021 1 comment Arts/Literature
Nomad America?  

Nomad America?  

Director Chloe Zhao has created a somber, almost tragic look back, look now and look to the possible future for many of us working stiffs. The film is called Nomadland ( 2021) starring Frances McDormand as Fern, a 60 something widow forced out of her previous life and onto the road. The town where she had lived with her late[Read More…]

by 09/08/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Immortal Nightingale –an ode

Immortal Nightingale –an ode

Wandering here and there Among adivasis everywhere Singing like active Nightingale Inspiring local people She explored people’s lives Offered succor without any avarice She was a darling To the folks who were listening And applauding One day, uniformed dragons came Choked her throat without shame Mutilated her body To frighten everybody Then mercilessly draped Her with some dress readymade And[Read More…]

by 05/08/2021 1 comment Arts/Literature
To Danish Siddiqui

To Danish Siddiqui

Trans: Ra Sh He opted for humanity, Got abandoned by humans.   With a third eye that unbinds borders he danced to the wingbeats of a migratory bird within  the range of a tele lens.   He sported a beard like an anonymous guru. He had no disciples. He did not frame butterflies or rivers or trees. All of them[Read More…]

by 04/08/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Dalits’ fury in Tamil Cinema

Dalits’ fury in Tamil Cinema

The recent development in Tamil movie has received much appreciation among the intellectuals for portraying Dalit character as protagonist and bringing caste realities onto the screen. It has elevated Dalits from a stereotypical passive receiver of others sympathy to an active agent seeking justice. However, it is also criticized for merely replacing the social location of the typical hero in[Read More…]

by 03/08/2021 2 comments Arts/Literature
ATTEND to GAIA the LIVING EARTH

ATTEND to GAIA the LIVING EARTH

Look. I am before you. Now I am here: I am making a statement proclaiming a truth nothing less than an outcry.   Listen. I am speaking truth crying out. Listen: Earth is dying one-only Earth. Earth is dying ravaged, abused. Not dying from old age not expiring by the will of God but perishing through serial extinctions from human[Read More…]

by 01/08/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Sherni and the ‘Hunting Tale’

Sherni and the ‘Hunting Tale’

You would have gone to the forest 100 times, but could spot a tiger only once. But, be rest assured, the tiger would have spotted you 99 times. In the midst of a recent conversation, Malayalam writer and film maker Unni R. asked if I had seen Amit Masurkar’s OTT-released Hindi film Sherni. Unni asked this question in the context[Read More…]

by 30/07/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Sarpatta Parambarai – A straw drawn from the Children of Ghetto

Sarpatta Parambarai – A straw drawn from the Children of Ghetto

Watching Sarpatta Parambarai is a social necessity and celebration.  The primary message conveyed here is don’t turn back from things that are real and painful to you. Perseverance is the life of Untouchable to taste success. India has produced and silver screened only two type of movies since independence.  They are of two categories namely: Caste mongering movies Caste ignoring[Read More…]

by 27/07/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
The vacant chair

The vacant chair

The chair you left with me is an asylum of fear. Whenever it swings, the pungent aroma of your Cuban cigars pervades the breeze and my room fills with spiraling rings of smoke. When it swings, I can compile a thousand poems on solitude and hear your slogans rippling in the air. The vacant chair you left with me is[Read More…]

by 23/07/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Scene from Dear Evan Hansen (Courtesy: TIFF)

TIFF Releases its 2021 Gala & Special Presentation Titles

Following the announcement of the Canadian federal government to keep the US border open to the fully vaccinated US citizens and permanent residents as of August 9, 2021,  and to the rest of the world as of September 7, 2021,  Toronto International Film Festival {TIFF) is much hopeful of conducting its main business, as planned earlier. Last year. TIFF had[Read More…]

by 22/07/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Progressive laws in a Regressive Society

Progressive laws in a Regressive Society

 The Hansal Mehta directed biopic “ Aligarh” is possibly the most stark of the recent films made that shows homophobia at its most brutal. The imagery of Manoj Bajpayee as the lonely and socially isolated Professor Siras, finding solace behind closed doors in endless pegs of whisky and melancholic Lata Mangeshkar songs will not easily leave you. Professor Siras has[Read More…]

by 20/07/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Cancer…… Colostomy bag

Cancer…… Colostomy bag

Cancer Is not just a zodiac sign Like a crab its effects are not benign…. It is malign Life threatening Physical and mental taxing Deadly disease Will not leave body with ease…. It seeps into the system Like corruption in society And all the healthy cells cease To exist like virtues Demolished by vice …. Colostomy bag Hangs like a[Read More…]

by 14/07/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Afghans through the lens of Irani cinema

Afghans through the lens of Irani cinema

Afghanistan is making the headlines again. The anxieties have increased following an irresponsible and a rushed withdrawal of the US troops. If it is any indication of things to come, the Bagram base was ransacked after US troops left in the dead of the night, leaving Afghan army and civilians to themselves. Commentators have been projecting a deadly picture of[Read More…]

by 10/07/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
The Great Indian Kitchen

The Great Indian Kitchen

India’s Hindi film industry produces the largest number of films in the world, but they barely tackle the question of gender justice while women characters in cinema are almost always peripheral. In the last few years, however, things seem to be changing. There is now a growing number of films that focus on gender justice. Women-centric films such as “Pink,[Read More…]

by 07/07/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Ray and the Question of ‘True Adaptation’

Ray and the Question of ‘True Adaptation’

Jean Luc Godard very rightfully claimed, ‘It is not where you take things from- it is where you take them to’. Reading this quote in the light of the recently released Netflix series Ray and its criticism that followed brings up a lot many questions. Ray, divided into four episodes, is based on Satyajit Ray’s stories. The world crafted by[Read More…]

by 06/07/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Dilip Kumar, The Doyen Of Bollywood

Dilip Kumar, The Doyen Of Bollywood

In the history of Hindi film industry no actor ever took intensity to such mythical proportions or regions as Dilip Kumar. In full flow Dilip Kumar could create the impact of an inferno or Tsunami .His acting possessed that rare quality of a genius, literally sculpting a new dimension to acting. No superstar looked as natural as Dilip Kumar, as[Read More…]

by 06/07/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Environmental Ethics 

Environmental Ethics 

I   A Kingly creature; now creatureless King An Empire out of breath while breathless doing Air, water, land all three commanded to remain in place and serve They wilt under the lash of gentle commerce whilst jolly plenty stumbles along in filthy blindness All living things now cringe at the gross summons of Man Yet meanwhile Gaia gathers up[Read More…]

by 30/06/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Waheeda Rehman: Grace Personified

Waheeda Rehman: Grace Personified

Actress Waheeda Rehman exuded grace in realms of the divine, reminiscent of a Greek Godess.Rarely has any Hindi film actress expressed such a degree of sensitivity, innocence, purity or simplicity. I hardly can find an adjective conveying how natural she was on screen. Her acting gave vibrations of reflection of moonlight in water or the twinkling of a petal of[Read More…]

by 27/06/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
IN THE COURTRTOOM Second case of SEDITION (Treason) against Lokmanya Tilak 1908 

IN THE COURTRTOOM Second case of SEDITION (Treason) against Lokmanya Tilak 1908 

Facilitator: – The decision of Lord Curzon to partition Bengal on 16 October 1905 provoked a great deal of public discontent and in 1908, it generated wave of public outrage. Lokmanya Tilak wrote two articles against the government on 12 May 1908, ‘The country’s misfortune’ and on 9 June 1908, ‘These measures are not sustainable’. Incidentally on April 30, 1908,[Read More…]

by 26/06/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Tragedy Queen: Meena Kumari

Tragedy Queen: Meena Kumari

Meena Kumari was without doubt one of the most sensitive, creative and impactful actresses ever to have flashed on the Hindi silver screen. Sadly she left the world too early, not even living half of a complete life. The story or theme of her life was all about tragedy. I place her amongst the greatest Hindi film actresses ever, in[Read More…]

by 21/06/2021 1 comment Arts/Literature
Nizhal: In the Shadow of the Surreal

Nizhal: In the Shadow of the Surreal

In whodunnits, two universal patterns can be seen as emerging. First, The murderer is suggestive of the vicious society at large; that s/he is part of the system that normalises killing. Then, the killer’s vengeance was not indeed aimed at the victims, but at the world which has already symbolically murdered him or her. These patterns, subtly different from each[Read More…]

by 19/06/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Indian government fails to make it to Venice Biennale

Indian government fails to make it to Venice Biennale

It is surprising India does not figure in the Venice architecture biennale exhibition, perhaps the most important architecture international event. It is on currently, it opened last month. With all its aggressive posturing on the Central vista project, the Indian government should have showcased the project to the world. Even small countries are participating ,ranging from Albania to Uzbekistan. Our[Read More…]

by 14/06/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
On Simon O’Rourke’s Hand-In-A-Tree

On Simon O’Rourke’s Hand-In-A-Tree

The tree reaches…the way a hand Reaches–towards the sky, sunlight, rain, the moon; Towards all things known…and yet to be. Upward, Outward…towards our better selves…and others’ Better selves; towards new and old “realities”– What may be, and what has been. We can’t grasp All there is to grasp…but, open-hearted, We can reach all that is attainable. Wales’ tallest tree had[Read More…]

by 07/06/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Why Do We Find Vittorio De Sica’s Great Films So Relevant Even Today

Why Do We Find Vittorio De Sica’s Great Films So Relevant Even Today

When I saw Umberto D. recently I was so complete engrossed in it that I completely forgot where I was for some time. What is it that makes a senior citizen in India today identify so completely with the elderly character of  a film made in Italy and that too about seven decades back in 1952? I may be at[Read More…]

by 06/06/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
The TRAGEDY of LEAR acts 3 thru 5

The TRAGEDY of LEAR acts 3 thru 5

He is an old man, truly a very old man, and the sudden crashing into splintered smallness of his life is playing out on a tightrope, a fraying tightrope, sawed at along a razor’s edge.  Tense he is and dread-beset between vulnerable tears and collapse and imploding rage. He is an old man clutching his palsy hands, with a broken[Read More…]

by 05/06/2021 1 comment Arts/Literature
A Cataract, Irreparable!

A Cataract, Irreparable!

I have never before detested a character like Sudhakaran in THIMIRAM (Cataract) in my movie-watching experience! And, that’s irreconcilable by all means. Actor K K Sudhakaran confuses the audience by calling the lead character the same name through a film, THIMIRAM, recently released on an OTT platform, NeeStream. K K Sudhakaran is not an actor new to Mollywood movies but[Read More…]

by 04/06/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Naseeruddin Shah: One of India’s Greatest Actors Ever

Naseeruddin Shah: One of India’s Greatest Actors Ever

Without doubt Naseeruddin Shah is one of the greatest actors ever to have set foot on Bollywood silver screen, arguably close to the very best. This year we celebrate his 70th birthday. There were many more attractive or charismatic actors but few surpassed the ability of Naseeruddin Shah to meld into a character in such depth, or give it as[Read More…]

by 28/05/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Conversations in Shroud

Conversations in Shroud

No way! I wont leave without her seeing me one last time! But they said she will not be coming, But why, I wanted to ask. I wanted to scream. And what about him? My best pal. Will he too not come? There are whispers that he won’t come either. Come on! They are kidding me. He will come. I[Read More…]

by 26/05/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Shabana Azmi is the ultimate connoisseur amongst Hindi film actresses taking art to surreal regions

Shabana Azmi is the ultimate connoisseur amongst Hindi film actresses taking art to surreal regions

In the modern era no actress has gone into the skin of a character in such magnitude of depth or given as much justice to a role as Shabana Azmi.,who turned 70 last year. She may not have embezzled the beauty of an Aishwarya Rai or Madhuri Dixit ,of the liveliness or joie de vivre of Kajol or Sridevi.However none[Read More…]

by 25/05/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Bob Dylan, even at 80, offers “Shelter from the Storm”

Bob Dylan, even at 80, offers “Shelter from the Storm”

With singer-songwriter Bob Dylan turning 80 on May 24, it seemed like an appropriate time to reflect on the artist’s enduring relevance. Writing furiously at his typewriter, cigarette in his mouth and the legendary Joan Baez by his side or in the background, a prolific young Dylan tapped into the spirit of a burgeoning counter-culture with his folk-inspired work. Performed[Read More…]

by 24/05/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature, Life/Philosophy
RVs as Lifeboats; Cathartic Community of Nomadland

RVs as Lifeboats; Cathartic Community of Nomadland

Nomadland raises critical concerns about the economy, lifestyle and perceptions of happiness In Nomadland, the analogy of a motor home is that of a lifeboat. The economy is Titanic, unstoppably sinking thanks to the wreckage. The sinking could be slow, too slow to notice or acknowledge, but it’s inevitable. When Bob Wells, the charismatic vandweller and minimalist who plays himself[Read More…]

by 17/05/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Tagore, The Renaissance Poet and Philosopher: Literature and Legacy

Tagore, The Renaissance Poet and Philosopher: Literature and Legacy

 [Analyzing the philosophy of Nobel laureate of Bengal, Rabindranath Tagore reflected in his literary works, on the occasion of his 160th birth anniversary.] “I have become my own version of an optimist. If I can’t make it through one door, I’ll go through another door—or I’ll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.” Nobel[Read More…]

by 14/05/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
A Ghazal for Palestine

A Ghazal for Palestine

Walnut chairs of yearning are rocking on their own – in Palestine Blood-stamped graves are speaking to olive trees – in Palestine Ceramic cheeks of age-old homes are cracking under combat boots Is anything stable – in Palestine? Pores of soil are filtering the white shroud of martyrs What has befallen the people – in Palestine? Marbles of memory line[Read More…]

by 13/05/2021 1 comment Arts/Literature
Walking Over Water

Walking Over Water

My father Ashim Ray (1927-86) is considered an exceptional novelist and short story writer who has left a major contribution to serious Bengali literature. However, in his lifetime his contribution was not  recognized and he never  got any major award. He could carry on his serious writing only because my mother was super supportive of his work. She even copied[Read More…]

by 12/05/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Tribute to Balraj Sahni commemorating 75th anniversary of his screen debut 

Tribute to Balraj Sahni commemorating 75th anniversary of his screen debut 

Balraj Sahni took art of acting simply to another dimension in his time, reminiscent of a Michelangelo. It is hard to find an adjective to do justice to his sheer sensitivity which reached spiritual depths or realism in his characters. He did not make the impact of Dev Anand,Raj Kapoor or Dilip Kumar but in championing or portraying the common[Read More…]

by 12/05/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature, Life/Philosophy
Five Great Film Songs That Challenge Communal Forces

Five Great Film Songs That Challenge Communal Forces

Written by Bharat Dogra and Madhu Dogra Hindi film songs have often played an important role in articulating important social messages and taking them to a very large number of people. This may be a particularly opportune  time for recalling those songs which have challenged communal forces in bold and effective ways. In this context perhaps the most popular song[Read More…]

by 11/05/2021 Comments are Disabled Communal Harmony, Arts/Literature
Patriotism & Rabindranath Tagore

Patriotism & Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore was far far away from what we popularly call patriotism. Our problem is that more we have been able to erase his ideals and ideas from our everyday life; more we have been able to be ‘Rabindrik.’ It is indeed sad to recognize this bitter truth. Our understanding of Rabindranath is confined to a mere recitation of his[Read More…]

by 09/05/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Azad ; The poet of revolution

Azad ; The poet of revolution

Alam ha kari yaad Azad Azad (Abdul Ahad)               kuni saate wuchte yaad pawayi madano. The world will frantically search for Azad. The time will come when  you will recollect, my love! What prompted the tall turbaned school teacher to brag about his personality ? When one meanderers through the life history, achievements and the literary work he accomplished ,one[Read More…]

by 08/05/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature, Life/Philosophy
Hurricane alert!

Hurricane alert!

A storm gathers fast on the distant horizon, dim but visible. Murky skies and bloated gray clouds mesh into terrific beauty—and rumble of thunder that cleaves the day-gloom with a dazzling light and deafens. The earth shudders uneasily. Trees sway violently, birds are in flight, circling. The powerful wind flattens the solid things on its way, in fury. The burning[Read More…]

by 04/05/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Tribute to the genius of Satyajit  Ray on birth centenary who gave art of filmmaking a new dimension  

Tribute to the genius of Satyajit  Ray on birth centenary who gave art of filmmaking a new dimension  

Today we celebrate the birth centenary on arguably India’s best film maker ever, Satyajit Ray. For sheer art of film making or portraying film making or weaving a plot to create a realistic film no artist surpassed Satyajit Ray. He simply took the art of film making to a new dimension. With the simplicity of stream water he could convey[Read More…]

by 02/05/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Scorching bon fires

Scorching bon fires

This summer is unlike any other. It burns hole in the Mind and heart—and scalds the tiny veins of skin. There is death in the air and smoke hangs heavy. The dead are piled up in sheets, waiting—while the undead walk the deserted streets, benumbed; streets under curfew, joy gone out of lives. Wailings of the sirens of the ambulance[Read More…]

by 02/05/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
The Great Success of Zindagi Gulzar Hai is  Rooted in the Quest of People to Reconcile Tradition and Modernity

The Great Success of Zindagi Gulzar Hai is  Rooted in the Quest of People to Reconcile Tradition and Modernity

Zindagi Gulzar Hai ( Life Blossoms Like A Garden ) , the 26-part TV serial from Pakistan just keeps going from success to success. After breaking popularity records when first shown on Hum TV in 2012-13,  the serial had to be repeated. It went on to become hugely popular  in India and Bangladesh. This was followed by repeated shows in[Read More…]

by 01/05/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
A Human’s Song

A Human’s Song

The pain of man wrings stories of pain from my pen I cannot write of happiness as the world weeps, weeps   on pyres and graves with smoke spiralling up the scape; as bodies in desecration lie in bags and cardboard boxes;   as democracy asserts amidst the chaos of dead bodies and unsensitised souls that have lost their conscience[Read More…]

by 30/04/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
It is not enough !

It is not enough !

It is not enough that you have eyes and ears You must see and listen It is not enough that you see and listen You must think also It is not enough that you think You must act also It is not enough that you act You must sustain your actions also It is not enough that you sustain your[Read More…]

by 29/04/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
The best Hindi films ever projecting the role of a Man as a crusader for a social cause

The best Hindi films ever projecting the role of a Man as a crusader for a social cause

This is my list of best Hindi films portraying the struggle for a social cause in order of merit. Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyu Aata Hai (1980) A plot is superbly woven without any element of melodrama to reveal the life of the Bombay Industrial workers and the mechanism or machinations that revolved around their day to day lives. In[Read More…]

by 27/04/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Did the New Wave Cinema Realize Its Full Potential?

Did the New Wave Cinema Realize Its Full Potential?

It seems so long ago when ( in the 1970s)  the new wave cinema was promising to shake up the film scene leading to wider possibilities of  more durable improvements in the overall quality of cinema. Certainly the high expectations were not confined to just Hindi cinema, although predictably this was talked about more. I remember travelling a long distance[Read More…]

by 27/04/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
The best Hindi films ever projecting role of a woman as a liberator or crusader for a social cause

The best Hindi films ever projecting role of a woman as a liberator or crusader for a social cause

My best films portraying women as a liberator or crusader against injustice, selected in order of merit. Mirch Masala(1987) How relevant this movie is today is expressed with rapes taking place regularly in India in every nook and corner. Oppression of women has reached a crescendo in the era of globalisation, masking itself as development.Mirch Masala literally hits the nail[Read More…]

by 26/04/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
The Statue of Unity weeps

The Statue of Unity weeps

Standing at 597 feet And being declared the tallest statue I felt I could feel pride and watch the beautiful things around However, find it to be only a misfortune   As I watch miles and miles away from me I can only see the suffering and pain around The pain created by those Who have only tried to build[Read More…]

by 26/04/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Friends

Friends

If you do not have A friend from another religion Oh, how wretched ! If you do not have A person from another political thought In your friend list Oh, how wretched !   If you are not willing For a dialogue with anyone But you and with yourself If you call someone with a different opinion As Sanghi, Kongi,[Read More…]

by 25/04/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Sparsh

Sparsh

‘Sparsh’ is the ultimate classic or best ever Hindi film portraying the blind and amongst the best Hindi films ever. Energy of the blind taken to mystical  proportions with touches of genius ‘Sparsh’  made in 1980 is possibly the best ever Hindi film in my view championing the blind or of any handicapped person. It makes us understand that morally[Read More…]

by 24/04/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
A Prayer from a Science Fundamentalist in Kerala

A Prayer from a Science Fundamentalist in Kerala

Oh God of Science and Reason Protect us from these activists We are only performing our missionary role To promote scientific thinking Even if the entire world bans Endosulfan Our bishops and priests of science have said that it is necessary Even if the whole world goes back on nuclear energy Our bishops and priests of science have said that[Read More…]

by 23/04/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Earth Day 2021

Earth Day 2021

To care, Nurture and Cherish till Death do us part —   A day to celebrate the Fecundity Fertility and the Rites of the passage of Time.   Make the Earth Green again. In darkness bathed, Starlight speckles out a Welcome — to the distant Nebulae that stream across the skies   Celebrating the dimming of electric lights.   Today,[Read More…]

by 22/04/2021 1 comment Arts/Literature
Joji – A Brilliant Peek Across the Kerala Village Lives

Joji – A Brilliant Peek Across the Kerala Village Lives

Spending too much money on big-budget productions is not advisable when the film industry, by and large, sleeps as an after-effect of the present pandemic. As a result, micro-budget movies have been conceived, shot and released worldwide in different genres. That’s how the films like SEE YOU SOON, THE GREAT INDIAN KITCHEN, IRUL, WOLF etc came out in Malayalam through[Read More…]

by 21/04/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Hindi Cinema’s Contribution to Human Rights, Though Rare, is Still Significant

Hindi Cinema’s Contribution to Human Rights, Though Rare, is Still Significant

Hindi cinema is not exactly known for any consistent contribution to human rights. Nevertheless some outstanding films have been made from time to time which have proved to be of enduring value for advancing various aspects of human rights and civil liberties. In V. Shantaram’s Do Ankhen Barah Hath the cause of jail reform is so important for an idealist[Read More…]

by 20/04/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Our Hearth

Our Hearth

Defaced by a virus, the Earth stands all alone. Humanity — will it survive the crackling of the coronal core? Write, write   of the masked men. Faces forgotten. Lipsticks abandoned. How long will it last? Few frightened haggard monied move towards an exodus   to Mars. Waterlogged, virus-worn stands the home, the hearth. Frightening in desolation, abandoned. But what[Read More…]

by 20/04/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Rising Garden Film Festival reaches wider audience virtually amidst pandemic

Rising Garden Film Festival reaches wider audience virtually amidst pandemic

When the fourth segment of the Rising Garden Film Festival, hosted by Sangat feminist network and the Kriti Film Club, as part of the One Billion Rising South Asia’s 2021 campaign, comes to an end on Monday, the filmmakers, organisers and viewers together say that the film fiesta became a global phenomenon, amidst pandemic. Gamze Ineceli, an active viewer of the festival[Read More…]

by 18/04/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
 ‘Sholay’ was a landmark film but not a classic with a social theme

 ‘Sholay’ was a landmark film but not a classic with a social theme

 ‘Sholay’ was a landmark film, directorial masterpiece and greatly entertaining movie but not a classic with a social theme  Without doubt Sholay was the most impactful film ever made in the history of Bollywood.No film ever influenced or penetrated the Indian psyche as much as ‘Sholay’  .Few scenes of films ever flash memories ,with such degree of intensity like ‘Sholay.’It[Read More…]

by 18/04/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Hindi Cinema Has Not Properly Tapped the Potential of Social Thrillers

Hindi Cinema Has Not Properly Tapped the Potential of Social Thrillers

The social thriller movie can be a very effective and useful genre of cinema. Social thriller movies are those thriller films which make a more conscious and emphatic effort to raise some important issues of social concern or to convey a strong socially relevant message. These are an important means of taking socially relevant messages to film viewers. Unfortunately this[Read More…]

by 16/04/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
POEM to the EARTH

POEM to the EARTH

  i have sought to love you unworthy that i am   i have sat in the tall grass looking out over water watching a setting sun   and i have sought to love you unworthy that i am   i have walked poetic the meadow a red tailed hawk circled above   i have traveled the narrow quiet path[Read More…]

by 16/04/2021 1 comment Arts/Literature
Can Dacoit Films Convey A Message of Non-Violence?

Can Dacoit Films Convey A Message of Non-Violence?

Many dacoit films have been made in Hindi cinema, against the background of Chambal region and also in other contexts. But most of these do not go beyond violence, revenge and romance. In fact some of these with the exaggerated importance these give to seeking revenge as well with long drawn-out violence sequences  can have quite a negative impact on[Read More…]

by 15/04/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
A bird came down to rest

A bird came down to rest

A bird came down to rest on a rocky perch. Turned his head this way — that way. It looks familiar, he thought. the cerulean skies the trees with foliage on tall, slim trunks the large red flowers in bloom. The river gushed white roaring its way down from its birthplace. Through rocky mountains and green hills it cascaded unstoppably.[Read More…]

by 06/04/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Hindi War Films Which Also Give A Message of Peace

Hindi War Films Which Also Give A Message of Peace

War films can easily degenerate into war propaganda and narrow nationalism. However there are other war films which vividly bring out the inherent pain and destructiveness of war in sensitive ways and hence, whatever their story content,  also convey a message of peace. It is true that war films made in any  country are often aimed at bringing out mainly[Read More…]

by 06/04/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Resistance in translation

Resistance in translation

India and the world has seen a lot in the recent past, and these poems from the past mirror the importance of resistance when the times are tough. The purpose behind translating these three different poets was a common underlying humanitarian theme of their work which believed in democratizing the political space. I personally feel that these three poems can[Read More…]

by 06/04/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Why you should see “Shtisel” Now

Why you should see “Shtisel” Now

The Pandemic has locked us in our homes for almost a year now. Most of us are bored, some have found one or the other vocations to spend at home. I resorted to my own- exploring Netflix to the point of exhaustion. There were plethora of movies and familiar sitcoms, until I came across a series, I thought I should[Read More…]

by 05/04/2021 1 comment Arts/Literature
Why Raj Kapoor is Much More  Than Just the Greatest Showman  of Hindi Cinema

Why Raj Kapoor is Much More  Than Just the Greatest Showman  of Hindi Cinema

Raj Kapoor is often called the greatest showman of Hindi cinema. This is of course meant to be a tribute, but this doesn’t quite do complete justice to the many-sided contributions of this great film-maker of exceptional talents. A very interesting aspect and important aspect of Hindi cinema is how within the constraints of commercialism, several film-makers could reach out[Read More…]

by 05/04/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Fifteen most realistic Hindi films in order of merit

Fifteen most realistic Hindi films in order of merit

I am here selecting my top fifteen Hindi movies in terms of portrayal of social reality. My criteria is not entertainment or idealism but level of doing justice to realism. I must particularly complement the likes of Shabana Azmi and Smita Patil for championing so many roles portraying realism. 1.DO BIGHA ZAMEEN In a most artistic manner it reveals the[Read More…]

by 04/04/2021 1 comment Arts/Literature
Do Bigha Zameen is the best Indian movie ever portraying social reality at the very core

Do Bigha Zameen is the best Indian movie ever portraying social reality at the very core

 To me ‘Do Bigha Zameen’ is the best movie ever made in India and the most relevant even today. In a most artistic manner it reveals the oppression of feudalism or capitalism, brilliantly weaving a set of characters into a plot. The film contains no  element of melodrama or fantasy but still hits the core of your soul. Enacting character[Read More…]

by 03/04/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Insha – Malayalam movie with an inspiring message

Insha – Malayalam movie with an inspiring message

Dr Siju Vijayan is passionate about his new film, Insha, which is a story that is true to this world that we live in. This is the reason why Insha is a trailblazer because stories about disabled people are not often told and are not often told with this much authenticity. Dr. Vijayan’s impetus of his debut film – Insha,[Read More…]

by 03/04/2021 1 comment Arts/Literature
Remembering Devika Rani for her iconic role of an untouchable girl in the movie Achhut Kanya

Remembering Devika Rani for her iconic role of an untouchable girl in the movie Achhut Kanya

Devika Rani is the name of that legendary figure who not only ruled Hindi cinema in the decades of 1930s and 1940s, but also gained fame as the first actress of Hindi cinema. She was not only a star or actress but the one who later became a filmmaker, gave legendary actors like Madhubala and Dalip Kumar to Hindi cinema.[Read More…]

by 01/04/2021 1 comment Arts/Literature
CHOICES (a partial list)

CHOICES (a partial list)

If we must choose between civilization and barbarity we must choose civilization. But only if the injustices and atrocities of civilization do not exceed those of barbarism.   If we must choose identity between eco and ego we must choose eco and celebrate the global planting of trees and enacting an end to forced mass extinctions.   If we must[Read More…]

by 31/03/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zamin is so relevant During the migrant crisis

Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zamin is so relevant During the migrant crisis

Bimal Roy is one of our most loved film directors and his legacy will continue to live on on the basis of his work. Luckily, we have amidst us his daughter Rinki Roy Bhattacharya who has done so much for us to further understand, appreciate his work by organizing numerous screenings of his films, running an active organization in his[Read More…]

by 29/03/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Holi

Holi

“…the destruction of what you people call evil, is less just and desirable than the conversion of this evil into what you call good…”  — The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov We play with the colours of dawn, spraying the world with spring, with happiness, with birds that are willing to   sing. Liturgies lace our lives with absolutes.[Read More…]

by 29/03/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
The Hero With Idealism Is Much Less Visible Now in Hindi Cinema

The Hero With Idealism Is Much Less Visible Now in Hindi Cinema

The post-independence years are regarded by many as the golden age of Hindi cinema. The idealism of  the freedom movement was still alive and this was reflected well in the films of those days. Since many Hindi films tend to be more dominated by heroes or the male lead roles, the idealist film hero  figured significantly in many films and[Read More…]

by 29/03/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Social Myths, False Values and Commercial Cinema

Social Myths, False Values and Commercial Cinema

In any society myths play an important role. For various reasons a society and its many members have a tendency, a weakness or liking, for certain myths and want to cling on to these myths, in fact may feel a strong need to do so. Although the word myth generally has a negative connotation, to a limited extent  and in[Read More…]

by 27/03/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Enjoy Enjaami: A call for ecological and social justice

Enjoy Enjaami: A call for ecological and social justice

Enjoy Enjaami, a Tamil new music-video album released early March 2021, is gaining popularity on several fronts. A rap song by Dhee ft Arivu and music composed by Santhosh Narayan and directed by Amit Krishnan is a product of Maajja, a new platform for independent artists founded by A. R. Rahman and company. The power bank of the video is[Read More…]

by 27/03/2021 3 comments Arts/Literature
Is Hindi Cinema’s Creativity for Promoting Relevant Social Change Drying Up?

Is Hindi Cinema’s Creativity for Promoting Relevant Social Change Drying Up?

While surely the main concerns of the Hindi film industry have always related to entertainment as business, nevertheless there has been generally a significant space also for taking up and promoting issues of high social concern. Such a space may have been more in the early post-independence years and may have decreased with the passage of time, but surely such [Read More…]

by 27/03/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
75

75

1. 75… and still alive! Just live to give; just yearn to learn! “To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.” But, can we be kind? Can we still build? Nourish… and flourish…. Take delight in a new insight? Recall old rhymes from childhood’s times? Can we be serious, not deleterious? Dialogue, not monologue? 2. 75 years Leak[Read More…]

by 26/03/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Why Pyaasa Remains the Most Defining Film for Idealists

Why Pyaasa Remains the Most Defining Film for Idealists

Idealist persons are a steadily decreasing component of the human species and in fact are  seen is such small numbers these days that  they can almost be called an endangered component of the human species. Nevertheless, and this  needs to be emphasized, even in their small numbers they retain their very important role in society as they keep reminding of[Read More…]

by 24/03/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Environmental Ethics II

Environmental Ethics II

The Peculiar Human Gnaw has overtaken all of life Or was it always to be so? In more Halcyon days Every hunger was checked by another Until Consumption reduced nature’s maw into a tiny red sack of paroxysmal fury The First Commandment: Feed Naked Ape Even the Sun must be brought down, ever closer For the warmth of Gaia only[Read More…]

by 23/03/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Picasso’s Early Years

Picasso’s Early Years

                       “Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”                       –Pablo Picasso 1. First, he mastered the masters: From his earliest sketches at his father’s knees, Through Rembrandt, Velasquez and Goya. (El Greco and Goya he loved Almost as much as his father.) They stalked his[Read More…]

by 19/03/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Environmental Ethics

Environmental Ethics

A Kingly creature; now creatureless King An Empire out of breath while breathless doing Air, water, land all three commanded to remain in place and serve They wilt under the lash of gentle commerce whilst jolly plenty stumbles along in filthy blindness All living things now cringe at the gross summons of Man Yet meanwhile Gaia gathers up her furious[Read More…]

by 15/03/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Tribute to late superstar Rajesh Khanna commemorating 50th anniversary of release of classic film ‘Anand’  today 

Tribute to late superstar Rajesh Khanna commemorating 50th anniversary of release of classic film ‘Anand’  today 

   On March 12th today, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the movie Anand ,made in 1971.Without doubt the film was amongst the finest, most touching or soul searching movies ever to have flashed the Bollywood screen..In my view late Rajesh Khanna as ‘Anand’ gave one of the finest performances ever on the silver screen. His co-actor Amitabh Bachchan as[Read More…]

by 12/03/2021 1 comment Arts/Literature
The Witch Finder’s Army

The Witch Finder’s Army

Left and Right. The witch finder’s army hunts each night. In stealth, the army seeps   prowls, creeps under floorboards. The army, hooded and masked, takes tiny ants to task   when they bite. Each bite costs the ant its Life. The witch finder’s army parades, drills.   You better take sides. If you are not Left or Right, you[Read More…]

by 10/03/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Cartoon  by K.P. Sasi

Marx Goes To Hell

When Marx died, he went to hell. He started organising the suffering people in hell. They started revolting. It became a big problem for the Gods. The gate between the hell and heaven were very close. The security guards of Hell and Heaven used to exchange beedies (Ganesh Beedi) and share their views on Hell and Heaven. When the Gods[Read More…]

by 07/03/2021 2 comments Arts/Literature
JatiIndia Flag of Atrocities Caste, Present and Future: The Farmer We See and the Farmer We Don’t

JatiIndia Flag of Atrocities Caste, Present and Future: The Farmer We See and the Farmer We Don’t

The new farm laws will make it more difficult for farmers to earn an income, said R.S. Amaresh, a 65-year-old farmer from Renukapura village in Challakere taluk of Chitradurga district. ‘It is very difficult to survive as a farmer. There is no value for our crop. We have given up hope on agriculture. If it continues like this, a day[Read More…]

by 06/03/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Love Haikus: The Brass Ring

Love Haikus: The Brass Ring

  1 My world in your eyes Just a stirring inside me Finally we meet 2 Gentle spring breeze floats Open hand invites rest here Love blooms like a rose 3 Beginning to know There is something elusive Where are you hiding 4 Loving you is sweet Conning me is such great fun Laughing all the way Harriet Huddle grew[Read More…]

by 03/03/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Supreme Violations

Supreme Violations

Because they couldn’t kill me before I was born they try to throw me off every cliff, into flames and push me into deranged arms Blame me for straying too near the edge Praise me to high heavens when I am defeated/broken/ dead Decorate my rotting corpse with candlelight vigils Call me their favourite warrior names for losing the fight[Read More…]

by 03/03/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
‘Final Solution’ by Rakesh Sharma is free for viewing until March 31 on Vimeo

‘Final Solution’ by Rakesh Sharma is free for viewing until March 31 on Vimeo

‘Final Solution’ – an award winning, must watch documentary film by Rakesh Sharma made in 2004 is streaming on Vimeo for free until March 31. The film is about 2002 Gujarat carnage and the rise of the then Chief Minister Narendra Modi. The film maker keeps this film open for public view at Vimeo at free of charge till March[Read More…]

by 01/03/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Future

Future

The tree, shimmering in a puddle, ripples as a bird pauses for a drink. The sun peeps from behind the grey lined with silver.   The river mirrors the sky replete with clouds and sunshine. Water drifts over a lifetime spanning your story and mine —   narratives of our Times, of an eon that sweeps the Earth, mankind’s own[Read More…]

by 01/03/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Left Right Left

Left Right Left

You wave. The street splits into two The wrong turn is you An obsessed nostril sniffs out intentions Kisses are always political I want to stop and breathe out the years without you. The wind fleeing on a bird wing leaves me a feather The left is a body with an unwashed feel to it; It reeks of desire, of[Read More…]

by 22/02/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
The Devil

The Devil

When I met the Devil last night I told him that `God is within you’ `I have no God,’ he said `I am the Devil’, said the words From his wisdom teeth `That’s ok, bro’, I said `We have something in common But you have God within you’. `What the F*#@*%&<?’. Jumped the angry Devil in front He tried to[Read More…]

by 15/02/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Love

Love

If I tell you that love is a reality, You may call me a romantic. If I tell you that love is an abstraction You may call me a confused idiot If I tell you that love is God You may call me immoral If I tell you that love is revolution You may call me an anti-communist If I[Read More…]

by 12/02/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Not my India

Not my India

Why is it so difficult? To be bold and fearless In a world which is cruel and vicious To speak against injustice To seek fairness, equality and peace To be aware of the governments games and tricks To state the facts as it is. To be an accomplice of the ‘anti-nationals’ To question the government and be rational To never[Read More…]

by 08/02/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Farming Memories

Farming Memories

If they are terrorists Then why do they feed us? If they are disruptors Then why do they make the world work? You might hit and insult You might tarnish and blur You might push them against a wall But before doing so Perhaps think of this- That you consume their toils That your dreams, they power That verdant life[Read More…]

by 08/02/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
First, They Came For Our Masks

First, They Came For Our Masks

First, they came for our masks! Then they came for our muzzles! But… we’d been masked for so long We all felt naked without them! We’d been muzzled for so long, We couldn’t find our voices! Naked and voiceless, we wandered in darkness. “Didn’t there used to be a sun?” someone wondered, Pointing…. “Didn’t there used to be a moon?”[Read More…]

by 31/01/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
The somnambulist

The somnambulist

not that i sleep and walk or walk and sleep or read and sleep or sleep and read not that my head nods when a tractor collides headlong with a police van parked beyond barbed wire not that i stand outside a tent and peep on a langar where slogans and rotis roast on a large griddle treat me as[Read More…]

by 30/01/2021 1 comment Arts/Literature
 Freedom

 Freedom

Freedom —   All the while, they talk of freedom. What has freedom rendered them?   Has it given them the ability to soar? To fly? Has it given voice to their inner souls?   Has it helped them rise? Has it got rid of diseases? Has it got rid of prisons that bar the mind — of human constructs[Read More…]

by 23/01/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Our Sister

Our Sister

Our sister has been taken Another sister taken Cruelly Violently She leaves behind Sadness Distress Anger She leaves behind Children Sisters, Brothers Friends All with work to do They will not let These feelings Take control and Overwhelm them They will harness them Employ them And with determined minds Continue her unfinished work In this way She will not be[Read More…]

by 21/01/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Photo by Ratan Luwangcha

Camels, Angels and Needle head of Cinema

The quest for the new and the undiscovered has driven mankind all through its existential evidence on the planet. At some point the discoveries and the load of knowledge going with them were categorized into different faculties such as science, arts, history and many more. Even the broader faculties had to be further sub-categorized into finer branches for the sheer[Read More…]

by 20/01/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Tunnel

Tunnel

In this journey through the dark tunnel Many beautiful people travelled with me Some took different lanes and disappeared Some landed up again in the same tunnel This love for a walk in darkness Kept us moving in a constant high All I know is that there is a light behind And a light in a distant front I know[Read More…]

by 20/01/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Budhan Theatre: Art As An Expression Against Oppression

Budhan Theatre: Art As An Expression Against Oppression

Founded in 1998 by Prof. Ganesh Devy, a well-known critic and linguist and Smt. Mahasweta Devi, a Magsaysay awardee and noted Bangla Author, Budhan Theatre is an Indian Theatre Group that is composed of members of the Chhara tribe. The name of the theatre is taken from Budhan Sabar, a tribal man who was labelled a criminal and murdered by[Read More…]

by 20/01/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Why Albert Einstein Went to Meet Mahatma Gandhi in Heaven?

Why Albert Einstein Went to Meet Mahatma Gandhi in Heaven?

This is the third in a series of heaven-based stories, written as fantasy but very relevant to our times. The first story titled Mahatma Gandhi Returns to Earth was published in Countercurrents.org on December 11 2020 while the second story titled Mahatma Gandhi Meets Shahid Bhagat Singh was published in Countercurrents.org on January 16 2021. It was a nice relaxed[Read More…]

by 17/01/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Premature Death

Premature Death

Crossing the street A brush with death A thousand times Alive A door held A waiting elevator Stop Signs Back then front A stopped heart With sirens Beating again No papers exchanged Breath Deadly breath Turn away Thank you, Please, Sorry A set table Four chairs Three pieces The knife’s busy Romi Mahajan is an Author, Marketer, Investor, and Activist[Read More…]

by 17/01/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
The Light That Fell On The Finger

The Light That Fell On The Finger

India; It’s true.   I draw you with my toeless feet. My fingers fell out as I passed your skin. Drops of blood became your body. Parliament ; Taj Mahal; Charminar; Rashtrapati Bhavan Everything in your pride is my bloodstain. I cannot explain it without fingers. But a poem can do.     Dispassionately I closed my eyes. The divided[Read More…]

by 16/01/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Covid-19 lockdown: Confronted with hardships, 15-year-old Sania chose to rap

Covid-19 lockdown: Confronted with hardships, 15-year-old Sania chose to rap

Written by Arun Kumar & Jonita Colaco   ‘Will there be singing in the times of darkness Yes there will be singing about the darkness’                                            — Bertolt Brecht   Par kabhi socha hai Jo Govandi mein rehete hain Unka kya hota hai Vote dene wala Har ghareeb rota hai, kyun? This is an excerpt from 15-year-old Sania Mistree’s rap[Read More…]

by 08/01/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Give Praise Whenever You Can

Give Praise Whenever You Can

“A constant sacrament of praise….”             –Wallace Stevens Give praise whenever you can! Praise: Sunrise on snow-capped mountains; Sunsets on marigold fields; Every act of kindness and solicitude; Children smiling in beneficence. Praise: The hard-earned wisdom of the old; Every great artist who ever lived; The almost-great who failed to fulfill their dreams The color green; amber; bees making honey;[Read More…]

by 07/01/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
 The Mexican Wall

 The Mexican Wall

The breaking news of the day was that Carlos Lopez, the notorious Mexican drug dealer, was under United States Border Patrol custody. Carlos was reportedly picked up from an orange orchard near the Rio Grande, which serves as a section of the Mexican-American border. They come across extremely hazardous conditions by swimming by swimming across. Many families, including children are[Read More…]

by 05/01/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
C.R. Park, Delhi: Winter

C.R. Park, Delhi: Winter

A girl walks on her house terrace In the transient sunlight in winter Talking to a bird. On the border, an old peasant in the make-shift camp Shivers in the wind’s chill. A cloud climbs down to cover him with a white blanket.   The light green of the new-born leaves of a lemon tree Asks the breeze to whistle[Read More…]

by 02/01/2021 1 comment Arts/Literature
Ram Aur Shyam

Ram Aur Shyam

Farmers on tractors and battalions behind barbed wire shoot “nayi saal mubarak ho” at the stroke of midnight while nursing their injuries and preparing for the first battle of 2021.   Langars are aflame with the heat of the protests as women cook with men for the foot soldiers of rebellion. Makki ki roti and sarson ka saag heal tired[Read More…]

by 01/01/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
A Dalit and a Brahmin

A Dalit and a Brahmin

“I hear the lower castes are finding this lack of monsoons rather difficult for their crops,” droned Aashka’s father at their lavish supper (as usual), in the midst of her father’s normal dull conversing with the other Brahmins. The table was long and elegant and filled every night with rich Brahmins, such as Aashka’s family.  Most of them were reserved[Read More…]

by 29/12/2020 1 comment Arts/Literature
50th anniversary of Raj Kapoor classic ‘Mera Naam Joker’

50th anniversary of Raj Kapoor classic ‘Mera Naam Joker’

Epic movie that resurrected Charlie Chaplin and immortalised the Joker who made the world laugh while weeping within Today we commemorate the 50th anniversary of the release of the epic classic of Raj Kapoor,’, ‘Mera Naam Joker. ‘Arguably it was the most defining or touching film ever directed or enacted by the legendary Raj Kapoor.Raj Kapoor enacts the character of[Read More…]

by 18/12/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Farmers In The Short Run And The Long Run

Farmers In The Short Run And The Long Run

K.P. Sasi is a film maker, Cartoonist and a writer SIGN UP FOR COUNTERCURRENTS DAILY NEWSLETTER  

by 17/12/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
In Conversation with Aruna Chakravarti

In Conversation with Aruna Chakravarti

A woman who weaves stories from the past, from history, from what has been and makes them so real that they become a part of ones’ own existence – this has been my experience of Dr Aruna Chakravarti and her writing. A winner of the Sahitya Akademi award for her translation of Sarat Chandra’s Srikanta, Vaitalik award and Sarat Puraskar, Chakravarti was[Read More…]

by 16/12/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Oh! These kisans!!!

Oh! These kisans!!!

These kisans are an ungracious lot. What a bunch of ignorant fools! We give them concessions. They say they need rights. We offer Ambani’s bazaar. They prefer mandis. We offer Adani warehouses. They prefer MSP. We pass bills without asking. They pass resolutions that jolt us. We praise Kisans are good for country. They troll us in wedding songs. We[Read More…]

by 14/12/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Kim Ki-Duk and the Legacy of ‘New Wave’ cinema

Kim Ki-Duk and the Legacy of ‘New Wave’ cinema

In less than a few weeks since the celebrated Argentine filmmaker Fernando Ezequiel Solanas—a legendary figure in Latin American cinema—died of coronavirus in Paris, another internationally admired filmmaker, Kim Ki-Duk, fell prey to the rage of the pandemic in Latvia. The South Korean ‘new wave’ fame Kim was reported to have arrived in the Baltic state a few weeks ago[Read More…]

by 13/12/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature, Life/Philosophy
De-housed for Me

De-housed for Me

You did not know did you? That my house gives me rights. You did not know did you? That my house gives me virtue. Food, Clothing, Shelter I demand that you are not naked But not full or warm I won’t offer you sleep Not on my lawn Or even in a park Not here, I say Brooms and authorities[Read More…]

by 13/12/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Partly Truth and Partly Fiction – Totally Genius: Kris Kristofferson

Partly Truth and Partly Fiction – Totally Genius: Kris Kristofferson

“He who binds to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy; But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity’s sun rise.”          – William Blake, Eternity Great songwriters, like great poets, are possessed by a passionate melancholic sensibility that gives them joy in the telling.  They seem always to be homesick for a home they can’t define[Read More…]

by 12/12/2020 1 comment Arts/Literature
I Proudly Say My Roots Are In The Farms

I Proudly Say My Roots Are In The Farms

They didn’t raise their voice And we called them under privileged By our own choice Do you eat food? Of course, from when you were born But today you are being unjust With the ones that provide. A doctor, a teacher and even a parent, We need them but not all the time, A farmer, we just cannot do without.[Read More…]

by 09/12/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Listening to the Silence with Don DeLillo

Listening to the Silence with Don DeLillo

In 1997, Don DeLillo, the author of seventeen novels, published what many consider his masterpiece, Underworld.  It was a prophetic book in many ways, especially with its focus on the World Trade Towers and the way the book’s cover, front and back, pictured the towers shrouded in smoke or clouds with what seemed like a large bird approaching it at[Read More…]

by 08/12/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
We Shall Overcome

We Shall Overcome

This is a six-part novella about the struggles of young people to save their endangered housing complex, symbolic of the much bigger efforts needed to protect the badly endangered life nurturing conditions of our planet. Here fact and fantasy are combined  to create interesting situations which are  symbolic of the  wider critical issues of our times.  1 The Inspector from[Read More…]

by 08/12/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
his and his

his and his

A journey is forgotten once it is made, these days the journey goes on, continuously on like seasonless serials on internet tv journeys his and his theirs, same these men who come to us in photographs as moments of their worlds, captured in reel, more than one cared to know, now it sends a chill down our spines, now real[Read More…]

by 06/12/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
We, the farmers of this country…

We, the farmers of this country…

You shove us, you beat us, you bury us alive. Yet we, the farmers of this country are reborn like that one resolute corn plant. You cringe, you grin, you plead for our votes and notes. If WE made you win, WE can make you fall too! We’re the fields, we, the crops, then why are we the prisoners of[Read More…]

by 04/12/2020 1 comment Arts/Literature
 A Day in 2071 –  Chapter- 5 :  Dream

 A Day in 2071 –  Chapter- 5 :  Dream

A novelette by Bharat Dogra Introduction–How different will be the world 50 years from now? If the tendencies of domination and exploitation which are a major cause of distress even today get aggravated greatly in the future conditions of escalating climate change and other serious threats, how will life shape up then, and where will humanity then search for hope?[Read More…]

by 03/12/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Why we need a Bunker Roy in Literature?

Why we need a Bunker Roy in Literature?

With the farmers marching out to demand their rights in India, with more consciousness of the need to close gaps between the privileged and non-privileged worldwide, with climate crisis becoming a major force to redefine our thinking, perhaps the time has come to rethink how literature can be moulded to serve the needs of the masses. That we wake up[Read More…]

by 03/12/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
A Day in 2071 – Chapter 4: Battle

A Day in 2071 – Chapter 4: Battle

 A novelette by Bharat Dogra Introduction–How different will be the world 50 years from now? If the tendencies of domination and exploitation which are a major cause of distress even today get aggravated greatly in the future conditions of escalating climate change and other serious threats, how will life shape up then, and where will humanity then search for hope?[Read More…]

by 02/12/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
 A Day in 2071 – Chapter 3- Revolt

 A Day in 2071 – Chapter 3- Revolt

A novelette by Bharat Dogra Introduction–How different will be the world 50 years from now? If the tendencies of domination and exploitation which are a major cause of distress even today get aggravated greatly in the future conditions of escalating climate change and other serious threats, how will life shape up then, and where will humanity then search for hope?[Read More…]

by 01/12/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
A Day in 2071 – Chapter 2- Conflict

A Day in 2071 – Chapter 2- Conflict

A novelette by Bharat Dogra How different will be the world 50 years from now? If the tendencies of domination and exploitation which are a major cause of distress even today get aggravated greatly in the future conditions of escalating climate change and other serious threats, how will life shape up then, and where will humanity then search for hope?[Read More…]

by 30/11/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Apu, Ekshan, Ikebana and being Bengali- Renaissance, uninterrupted – Remembering Soumitra Chatterjee

Apu, Ekshan, Ikebana and being Bengali- Renaissance, uninterrupted – Remembering Soumitra Chatterjee

I was then 14, maybe 15, between studying English and science Spending seemingly interminable days waiting for the variety Of Puja Varshikis; back on our 3rd floor, waiting for that magic Moment for the day’s Ananda Bazar to drop in a corner Of the verandah, launched from the street.  And no sooner than The thud was heard, rushing to get[Read More…]

by 30/11/2020 1 comment Arts/Literature
 A Day in 2071 – Chapter 1

 A Day in 2071 – Chapter 1

Introduction How different will be the world 50 years from now? If the tendencies of domination and exploitation which are a major cause of distress even today get aggravated greatly in the future conditions of escalating climate change and other serious threats, how will life shape up then, and where will humanity then search for hope? This is a day[Read More…]

by 29/11/2020 1 comment Arts/Literature
For an Artist

For an Artist

Behind a screen of pastel petals That seem to make A dreamy, windchimes’ sound, She finds herself emerging in a world Where clashing cymbals echo all around, And yet… in peace, she stands her ground. Within this world of dissolutions, She holds vast secrets in her well-like eyes; Beyond the realm of disappearance, She abides; And, more than that, hides[Read More…]

by 26/11/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Fear–A Parable For Our Times

Fear–A Parable For Our Times

Once upon a time there was a village called Jaampur. This  village was dominated by a few powerful persons, the headman and some moneylenders who took away a big part of the produce of the hard work of people. Whether it was farming or forests or quarries , these few big men were dominant everywhere. However more recently people fed[Read More…]

by 23/11/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
I’m the beggar

I’m the beggar

I was simply down the street. The broken stones of the road whisper unspoken messages, of how many human feet have crossed the road. Of how many broken wings would have fallen off this road; Babies crying for milk people starving at the signal stories of so many people stretched before my eyes. I’m the beggar who owns the flute[Read More…]

by 20/11/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
I Am Greta isn’t about climate change. It’s about the elusiveness of sanity in an insane world

I Am Greta isn’t about climate change. It’s about the elusiveness of sanity in an insane world

Erich Fromm, the renowned German-Jewish social psychologist who was forced to flee his homeland in the early 1930s as the Nazis came to power, offered a disturbing insight later in life on the relationship between society and the individual. In the mid-1950s, his book The Sane Society suggested that insanity referred not simply to the failure by specific individuals to[Read More…]

by 19/11/2020 3 comments Arts/Literature
‘Rekhankit Maifilee’ And ‘Patchwork Paintings’ By Shripad Shankar Savale

‘Rekhankit Maifilee’ And ‘Patchwork Paintings’ By Shripad Shankar Savale

 Music Concerts Captured in Lines- A case study of – Creative Artist and Process of ‘Positive Transference’. ‘Rekhanit Maifili’, literally it means “Live concerts of Artists captured in Sketches or in Lines”. The first sight of the Book made me curious since pages after pages of the Book; exhibited classical beauty and Modeling of Characters captured in sketches and more[Read More…]

by 14/11/2020 2 comments Arts/Literature
Food, Touch and Desire: ‘Aamis’ through my Gastronomical Lens

Food, Touch and Desire: ‘Aamis’ through my Gastronomical Lens

Food stories have always attracted me, be they about the everyday available homely food, meat barbeque by a group of friends en route an adventurous camping or exquisite high-class dining. I believe each of these stories has its own share of bitter-sweet plots and characters. Motivated by my love for food and themes around it, I decided to write about[Read More…]

by 09/11/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
A Suitable Boy: Mira Nair’s chronicle of the 1950s

A Suitable Boy: Mira Nair’s chronicle of the 1950s

In the history of Indian societies ‘marriage’ as an institution has garnered a special place and has been ubiquitous in all sections and classes of the society. Within this finding a groom is a very seasoned activity. Mira Nair’s newest web series ‘A suitable boy’ is an adaptation of a novel by the same name authored by Vikram Seth in[Read More…]

by 08/11/2020 1 comment Arts/Literature
Razak Kottakkal: A Walk Through The Memory Lane

Razak Kottakkal: A Walk Through The Memory Lane

Razak Kottakkal is identified with artistic photographs. Almost everyone ~ living or otherwise ~ connected with Malayalam literature insisted on accompanying their works with photographs taken by Razak. Writers grew old but they continued to use pictures taken in their youth. Their age was frozen by Razak forever. Razak’s black-and-white pictures of the greatest Malayalam writer (according to me), Vaikkom[Read More…]

by 07/11/2020 1 comment Arts/Literature
Annabhau Sathe – The Organic Intellectual of Oppressed And Enslaved: Birth Anniversary – 2020

Annabhau Sathe – The Organic Intellectual of Oppressed And Enslaved: Birth Anniversary – 2020

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”- ― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment.  Tukaram, alias, Annabhau Sathe is known to us as a Dalit Literati, mass awakener and Working class activist from Mumbai. It was he, who discovered Folk poetry as the[Read More…]

by 06/11/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
The Artist In Forlorn Terrritories: Ghatak 95

The Artist In Forlorn Terrritories: Ghatak 95

Ritwik Ghatak was born in 1925 in Dhaka and died in 1976 in Calcutta. Almost his entire adult life was spent working for the stage or the screen in some capacity or the other. It is perhaps inevitable that success – as most of us understand it – should have refused to come to him, considering the kind of man[Read More…]

by 04/11/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
“Cinema is a Sycophant to literature” – Part – II

“Cinema is a Sycophant to literature” – Part – II

My feeling that a poet, who called cinema a sycophant of literature would have approved Aravindan, a director who explored the medium’s possibilities, lends courage to me. This is uncannily similar to the feeling that Tagore, for a moment was stunned by what Wilfred Owen’s mother had revealed to him. I’m sure Tagore would have dumped the NBT calendar. It[Read More…]

by 31/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Widowhood revisited in a television drama

Widowhood revisited in a television drama

During recent Durga Puja celebrations, RTV drama special titled Shada Megher Mon (A silver lining in the cloud), revisited the widowhood of a young woman in the context of Bangladesh since independence. Though some of the key components of the television are changing, it is still perceived as a social medium. Television always plays a social function as viewing of[Read More…]

by 30/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature, Patriarchy
Film & Family – Partition & Thereafter

Film & Family – Partition & Thereafter

The idea of ‘return’ holds different meanings for different people caught in different circumstances. Calcutta-based Supriyo Sen’s Abar Ashibo Phirey (Way Back Home, Bangla with English sub-titles, video, colour, 120 mins, 2002) is a wrenching and liberating journey into the heart and soul of an elderly Bengali couple – the director’s parents – as they go back in time, space[Read More…]

by 29/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
A Purple Poem

A Purple Poem

there is a purple poem on my mother’s neck that my father writes for her every full moon night instead, most poets write on paper but my father writes on mother’s skin she smiles, she says she doesn’t mind says, the purple poem is truly a thing of pride and beauty yet, she keeps it covered, carefully with the ends[Read More…]

by 28/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
“Sugar Bones” - Original painting by Luke Spooner

“Sugar”

Sweet apocalypse in the blood! Stephen-King nightmare in the brain! Mortar rounds at synapses! Invader of our personal stash! SweetSweet as Delilah’s lips!   Cooing with the voice of Mom— Bubela, Bambino, come home, come home To peaches and cream and castles of fructose, To sugared hot cocoa and honeycombed words In hives of endearments buzzing on eardrums; To plaudits[Read More…]

by 28/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Innocence Lynched

Innocence Lynched

Oh God! End this, the young man begged, As he lay on earth covered in mud, Streaks of hot blood pouring down his form And limbs that lay battered and numb.   He knew he had done nothing wrong, He hadn’t snubbed or brought disdain. Yet they called him a “filthy sinner” As they struck his head with intense wrath.[Read More…]

by 26/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Film & Family–Woman As Provider, Men As Parasites

Film & Family–Woman As Provider, Men As Parasites

In 2014, Joshy Joseph directed a long documentary called A Poet, A City & A Footballer which won him the Special Jury Prize at the national awards. The film is about juxtapositions, like night and day, abundant life and impending death, energy amidst decay, and silence that shouts to be heard. The film is a meditation on death, but it[Read More…]

by 25/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
“Cinema is a Sycophant to literature” – Part – I

“Cinema is a Sycophant to literature” – Part – I

The Symphony  No 5 was inside Beethovan’s brain, when he first conceived it. A group of musicians invoke that experience, aurally, from the atmosphere every time they meet to perform. And a sound, non-existent before, suddenly acquires tones of flesh and blood. The cinema, like music, is an art of time, film makers have said. Rabindranath Tagore called it an[Read More…]

by 24/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Redemption Song

Redemption Song

Through the panic, through the fear. I felt you there, you were near. Every message, every call. Every time I hit a wall. Every time the road would bend, Every time it was the end. I heard your voice through the noise. I heard you say that I would rise. Some drove by, left me to die. Some jumped in[Read More…]

by 23/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
The Woman in Me

The Woman in Me

Don’t tell me You’re ‘like’ A mother to me A sister to me A daughter to me  Or compare me To a deity Like Durga, Lakshmi, Saraswathi   My heart beats Because of me Because I am my own Identity   Shailaja Rao, Core Member, Dhanak of Humanity (NGO) SIGN UP FOR COUNTERCURRENTS DAILY NEWSLETTER  

by 22/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Sex & The City – Two Shorts, Long On Meaning

Sex & The City – Two Shorts, Long On Meaning

Laal Juto (Red Shoes, Bangla, 23 minutes, 35 mm, colour), adapted from a short story by the iconic Bengali writer, artist and intellectual Kamal Kumar Majumdar, is about 15-year-old Nitish who goes to a shoe shop to buy shoes for himself. What Nitish had not bargained for is a self-discovery leading to a change in his feelings towards Gouri, his[Read More…]

by 19/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Erasure

Erasure

The untouchable body is touched until it can be touched no more, touched so often and in so many ways, just to purge you of fears She is powerful for she is woman, you make of her an anthem, her breasts are in mourning, her tortured cries haunt your ripped manhood’s Her sisters are bodies draped over mango trees, gargoyles[Read More…]

by 19/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Between Marx and Christ

Between Marx and Christ

This essay is dedicated to the example of Father Stan Swamy, S. J. Briefly and simply put, Liberation Theology is a school of thinking which proclaims that methods of direct action are at times necessary for the material and spiritual liberation of the poor and powerless; that prayer and persuasion have to be occasionally accompanied by frontal assault to produce[Read More…]

by 17/10/2020 1 comment Arts/Literature
Prof M N Vijayan

 In cinema, naked feet are not assigned sounds, but they gain them in poems

It’s better to stay away from poetics to present in prose someone who wrote in verse that his poems have no forewords, critical studies or words of adulation. My patron saint in this endeavour is Malayalam writer N S Madhavan, who dribbles with words when he writes on football,a style interspersed with quotes and blows of vuvuzela. One can take[Read More…]

by 16/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Akkitham: An Exemplar of humanist-aesthetic

Akkitham: An Exemplar of humanist-aesthetic

When once for my fellowmen I shed a drop of tear, The hale of a thousand suns Arises in my soul When once for my fellowmen I expend a hearty smile, A full –blown moon of purest ray Forever floods my heart But all these days I knew it not, This ineffable Joy; And brooding over that heavy loss I[Read More…]

by 15/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Film& Family-Making The Face

Film& Family-Making The Face

From the life and times of the State executioner, Nata Mullick (which was the subject of an earlier documentary, One Day From A Hangman’s Life), the Calcutta-based Films Division filmmaker, Joshy Joseph, transported us to the life and times of a young Manipuri named Tom Sharma, by means of Making The Face, a shorter film but which nonetheless took a[Read More…]

by 15/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Back on the Stairway to Heaven: Led Zeppelin Wins Over Spirit

Back on the Stairway to Heaven: Led Zeppelin Wins Over Spirit

In March, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeal upheld an original jury finding that Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven did not infringe copyright in Spirit’s 1968 song Taurus.  Michael Skidmore, who had filed the suit in 2014 as trustee of the estate of the late Spirit guitarist Randy Wolfe, was hoping that the US Supreme Court would take time[Read More…]

by 11/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Unemployment

Unemployment

meditation preparing for unemployment what I would say to anyone who asks me what I say to myself thoughts on Louise Glueck’s short speech on being congratulated for receiving the Nobel Prize for her poetry she said the driver is waiting, he has to earn his living, let me go — preparing for unemployment prepares us for unemployment provided we[Read More…]

by 11/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
God’s Own Fools

God’s Own Fools

These are all very Kolkatan in nature and you really won’t get to see or hear them in any other parts of the country. What? Some years back a national daily carried an interesting photograph in their ‘City Lights’ column. It said that at Bowbazar police station, some paintings of Pablo Picasso were replicated and some of the painter’s quotations[Read More…]

by 10/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Migrants

Migrants

The mass migrants to Mars stood poised to take their first step. The Red Planet crimsoned further by the blood of scientists who realised the vision of a musky monied man odoured with fame, made into godhead. Out of deep freeze, led by the god who saved them, stood more monied men.   They had left a planet in turmoil.[Read More…]

by 09/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Remembering Edward Van Halen

Remembering Edward Van Halen

Edward Van Halen (EVH) was my favorite guitarist of all-time. As a disciple of what is now called “classic rock,” it’s disconcerting for me to be living through this current time period when the guitar is not a major factor in popular music. After all, I can still play note-for-note air guitar to all of EVH’s solos. The following collection[Read More…]

by 08/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Film & Family-Revisiting Thampu

Film & Family-Revisiting Thampu

“I planned Thampu as a documentary feature. It was shot in Thirunnavaya on the banks of the Bharathapuzha. I came to this village with ten to fifteen circus artistes who had already left their circus company. We did not have a script and we shot the incidents as they happened. What we did on the first day was to call[Read More…]

by 08/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
To A Young Woman Who Will Not Become Old

To A Young Woman Who Will Not Become Old

Your dreams won’t die They can’t kill them They killed you They brutalized you They lied But your dreams won’t die   A people Who pride themselves On their spirituality… What spirits indeed Invade their Addled brains?   What opiate Suggests such acts? What sickness Can endure? Their bodies, their limbs Are what’s really aflame   Your dreams won’t die[Read More…]

by 05/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
It is the caste, silly

It is the caste, silly

Why we Indians are so different, Why we still follow tradition, In looking for a spouse Why is horoscope-matching so important, It is our culture, you say But it is the caste, silly   Why is love-marriage still taboo Why is honour-killing still practiced When all over the world no marriage gets ‘arranged’ It is our tradition, you say But[Read More…]

by 05/10/2020 1 comment Arts/Literature
Photo by John Vetterli

For the freedom of every girl

Though corona is born Though earth revived. Though nature gained it power Though families are together. Though schools are closed Though markets are shut. Though we are at home Though we are free. But I am still the same The same girl, Covering my head with a burqa or a dupatta Only able to see my curious eyes. When will I get freedom?[Read More…]

by 05/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Mistaking Cut-Glass For Diamond

Mistaking Cut-Glass For Diamond

Sairat(2016) was a huge commercial success that is still being much talked about. But, whichever way you look at it, Sairat is a far cry from Nagraj Manjule’s debut film, Fandry, which deservedly enjoyed much critical support. Sairat is tailor-made to seduce the younger generation of viewers, meaning roughly those in the age-bracket of 15 to 30. The film’s mounting[Read More…]

by 05/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Dalit lives matter

Dalit lives matter

For generations have we suffered Without any meaningful change in our lives Humiliation and oppression Which has seen no end The world has changed And adopted equality as its universal value Yet a world divided on caste Continues to be the world determined by you An oppressed population rising up Is the thing you do not want A population living[Read More…]

by 04/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Image courtesy: The Statesman

Let the country awake from enemies

When the demolishers go scot-free And a demolition is celebrated When the inflictors are adored And the victims are hated Where violence is celebrated In the name of the majority And resistance is suppressed In the name of minority Where marginal lives are crushed And upper lives uplifted Where highs only rise further high Where lows only dip further low[Read More…]

by 02/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Exiled: A Prose-poem

Exiled: A Prose-poem

It is a miracle, isn’t it? In a cluttered space with books, with the marijuana of remembrances, with misplaced rage, the exiled poet keeps birthing poems. Worn-torn memories reopen their scarred flesh. They bleed raw with coagulated chunks of rape, maiming, bombing in a motherland fresh with familiar faces, and recycled anguish. The heart races back in time, all those[Read More…]

by 02/10/2020 1 comment Arts/Literature
Netflix’s The Social Dilemma tells only half the story

Netflix’s The Social Dilemma tells only half the story

If you’re wondering what the hell is going on right now – the “Why is the world turning to shit?” thought – you may find Netflix’s new documentary The Social Dilemma a good starting point for clarifying your thinking. I say “starting point” because, as we shall see, the film suffers from two major limitations: one in its analysis and[Read More…]

by 01/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
World Translation Day

World Translation Day

Today, September 30 is celebrated as World Translation Day. Translators can be called unsung heroes and heroines of communication. Even when people enjoy reading translations of great works in foreign languages, we rarely notice the translator’s name and even when we do it is rarer still we register them or know anything about them. So it is good to celebrate[Read More…]

by 01/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
 Slash & Burn

 Slash & Burn

I watch with my lips sealed Watch each girl burn burn the stains of Predators’ Hands till their life is done   I watch with my ears closed Watch rancid hands leap and lustfully Immolate last night’s Fun Clear the mess. The job is done.   Unemployed, porn-ridden mobiles watch, watch with closed eyes the horror, horror of a life[Read More…]

by 30/09/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
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