The Trap of the Comfort Watch
In times of stress and anxiety, why do many of us choose the familiarity of a ‘comfort watch’—of familiar shows, plotlines, and characters? Raj Darji explores a sense of loss among abundance.
Propaganda films force upon us the grand question, writes Sanjay Basak: Are we loudly applauding the breathtaking production on screen, or are we quietly absorbing the idea that someone, somewhere, deserves to be feared, hated, or erased?
Short story by Debi Mukherjee: “Unlike the little girls I see outside temples, draped in their pano bhaju’s stringing garlands of Marigolds, I dare not play with the flowers in our garden. Papa cautions me against the rows of Mogras, Shoe-flowers, Frangipanis and a multitude of others. He says that I must not be lured by a flower’s fragrance.”
In times of stress and anxiety, why do many of us choose the familiarity of a ‘comfort watch’—of familiar shows, plotlines, and characters? Raj Darji explores a sense of loss among abundance.
Set against the landslide-prone terrain of Kinnaur, plagued by environmental collapse and infrastructural neglect, the short film Tenfa (2026) provides a vision of hope through memory, ecology, and community. By Sohini Sengupta