Sonepur Mela: At the Festival of Beasts
Photo Essay: 13 years ago, Siddharth Jain visited the largest animal fair in the world in Sonepur (Bihar), discovering the contrast of mythology and trade, and life and death, under the auspicious full moon.
social isolation blues
A poem by Karan Madhok: “i have time to ask why i have time, / to contemplate this sudden nothingness.”
Living Memories: A Glimpse of the history at Landour Bazaar
Photo Essay: Amidst the gorgeous Himalayan backdrop in the hamlet of Landour (Mussoorie) Gopala Krishna finds strange beauty in the old Bazaar, where history has long stood still for the local community.
Golchakkar: Open Your Eyes—Poetry’s Response to Climate Change
Contributors to the anthology Open Your Eyes Vinita Agrawal, Gayatri Chawla, Alex Josephy, and Sudeep Sen, join us in a panel for the Golchakkar Series to discuss what it means to use poetry and literature as a response to climate change.
Maha-India: Revisiting the brave complexities of Shashi Tharoor’s The Great Indian Novel
Why Shashi Tharoor’s satirical 1989 masterpiece The Great Indian Novel—which married India’s recent history with The Mahabharata—is as relevant as ever in today’s polarising times. - by Atulya Pathak
Mental Health in India: Capitalism, Productivity and Mental Health Distress
How a for-profit society creates not just joblessness, productivity cults, and work anxiety, but also other forms of inequality, leading to a mental health crisis in the country. - By Sadaf Vidah
Scandal, Sex, and Skeletons: Aashram and the predictable villainy of on-screen godmen
The MX Player web-series Aashram (2020) follows a similar blueprint in tackling India’s fascination with seductive, flawed godmen—mysticism, sex, violence, and masala—without daring to truly examine the deeper roots of society’s discontents. - by Harshita Murarka.
Hanging on to the Trapeze
The pandemic threatens to be the last nail in the coffin for many of India’s great circus troupes. By taking their act online, Rambo Circus hopes to keep an acrobatic balance for the show to go on. - By Barkha Kumari
Stepsons and Foreigners: An Interview with Aruni Kashyap
Writer, translator, and editor Aruni Kashyap discusses his remarkable short-story collection His Father’s Disease, building the shaky bridge from Assam to Delhi to America, and the indissoluble bond between the personal and the political in literature.- by Karan Madhok.
The Crumbling Fourth Pillar
In recent years, journalists have been attacked, intimidated, and the likes of Gauri Lankesh and Shujat Bhakari murdered. Nikita Chatterjee explains how violence, government pressure, paid news, and more have shackled India’s press freedoms and landed a major blot upon our idea of democracy.
A Voice that Crossed Over; A Voice of a Generation
S.P. Balasubrahmanyam’s iconic voice and plethora of soundtracks marked the multilingual singer as one of the most essential artists of his time. Jamie Alter recalls the impact of the crossover artist in the Hindi film industry.
The Machines are Learning. Are the People, Too?
In his urgent and timely novel The Machine is Learning (2020), Tanuj Solanki confronts the rise of artificial intelligence with the complexities of 21st century humanity - by Kiran Bhat.