Culture

That 2010s Show: How a TV Series Brought Teenagers Home to Indian Audiences

'Gumrah', a show that aired in the early 2010s, brought to television the worries and optimism about adolescents in the post-Liberalisation decades. Its concerns and unaddressed tensions…
▶11-Oct-2024
Nidhi Kinhal

Indians and their Selfies

‘The selfie…offers us a window not only to the individual self, but through its deliberate or incidental positioning, allows us to unpack moments in cultural, civic, social, and political life.’
▶24-Sep-2024
Usha Raman

Bombay Stories

Women writing on marriage, divorce, and intimacy in mid-century Bombay provide a unique perspective to the debates raging in the country over the reform of Hindu family law.
▶30-Apr-2024
Urvi Desai
Book
Book Review

What Eating Reminds You Of

When foods become metaphors for human relationships, stories about eating reflect memories of bonding, care, and solidarity.
▶28-Feb-2024
Rituparna Patgiri
Essay

Allahabad that is Prayagraj: The Politics of Erasure

Driven by a yearning to shed the legacy of past humiliation, defeat, and cultural dispossession, we attempt to obliterate traces of that history. Yet, that very past lingers embodied within us. The…
▶19-Feb-2024
Alok Rai

How Does Kabir Still Speak To Us?

The tendency of the human mind, whether fighting for personal territory or fighting for justice, is to create an enemy: self vs the other, us vs them. good vs evil. In our times, which seem more…
▶08-Jan-2024
Vipul Rikhi
Book
Book Review

A Flawed Biography of Vivekananda

It is a poor account of Vivekananda's life that is written without studying the Bengali writings on him, that downplays the Ramakrishna-Narendranath relationship and that pays only little…
▶29-Mar-2023
Rudrangshu Mukherjee

Tiger-Charmers of the Sundarbans

The tiger-charmers of the Sundarbans have been seen by forest guards and scientists as unscrupulous. But the islanders argue that tiger-charmers are able to better communicate between human and…
▶09-Mar-2023
Annu Jalais

Of Speech and Song in the Shadow of Krishna

“Vrindavan devotee publics seem to have relegated desire and descended fully into the sadness of Radha.”
▶20-Feb-2023
Atreyee Majumder

Rise of the Regional Blockbuster

Southern blockbusters have a star playing a man of the masses, spectacular action and song and dance sequences, magnificent sets, and computer-generated imagery. Whether or not they make a profit,…
▶14-Jun-2022
S.V. Srinivas