Basanta Utsav is held each year in the month of March on the Full moon day of Falgun. Spring is welcomed through music and dances. It literally means the ‘celebration of spring’. The beautiful tradition of celebrating spring festival in Bengal was first started by Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, at Vishwabharati Shantiniketan, the University founded by him. Actually, Basanta Utsav[Read More…]
The cow is held as a sacred animal by a section of Hindus. But in the cases of lynching, it becomes a political animal with which to browbeat and even murder the minorities and the Dalits. Ziya Us Salam, Lynching Files (2019) The cow was never used for spiritual elevation. In the 20th century everybody used the cow[Read More…]
Introduction In almost all myths, the low-born non-Aryan characters, from Bali to Barbareek to Eklavya to Karna, are presented as generous to the extent that none of them cry foul at being robbed of their life. In fact they willingly give it away. What does their lack of protest say? What kind of consciousness does it reflect? The essence of[Read More…]
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…]
Set in an unnamed southern town amid lush plantations of pepper, bananas, coffee, rice, and narrated in soliloquy Annie Zaidi’s 184- page novel, Prelude to a Riot is a brilliant, bold, honest, critical commentary on contemporary India. “Abu doesn’t want to work the land. He says it’s pointless because we cannot take the land with us when we leave”. Abu,[Read More…]
Moumita Alam’s debut poetry collection The Musings of the Dark is a powerful poetic assertion of dissent. Dissent against what? Against state sponsored violence against Kashmiris, violence against anti-CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) protesters at Shaheen Bagh, violence against migrant labourers, daily labourers during Covid 19 pandemic. She also voices her dissent against structural violence of casteism, fascism, violence against women[Read More…]
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…]
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Our beloved K.P.Sasi is no more. Filmmaker, cartoonist, writer, mentor, friend and above all tireless activist championing the cause of every underdog, Sasi breathed his last, mid-afternoon this Christmas day – after battling a medical condition for months. I remember the last time I met him, almost exactly a month before he passed away, at the ayurvedic healing center in[Read More…]
