Welcome to ‘Nation of Auteurs’, a series composed of critical essays by academics, filmmakers, historians, and cinephiles, to examine the deep diversity of Indian film auteurs and illuminate the country’s wider cinematic landscape. By Ashish Dwivedi
Poetry by Sutputra Radheye: ‘my poems will be drunk, truthful / and blunt like your beauty that cuts / through my skin and draws graffiti / on my bones like tattoos’
Last year, a road-widening project for access to the Kashi Vishwanath Temple upended the lives of many residents and traders in Varanasi’s historic Dalmandi area. On Eid al-Fitr, Karan Madhok visited the alleyways among the rubble of demolition.
In a recent visit to Ladakh, Navjot Khosla aims for a gaze beyond the touristy cliches, to be transformed instead by the sustainable models of growth, natural preservation, and the cultural heritage of the bioregion. By Navtoj Khosla