Cultural Press

It is a known fact that literary criticism from practising authors/ poets carry a whiff of fresh air as compared to those by professional critics and academics. Not that in the case of the former, the end result is necessarily superior, but they do not have that extra burden of proving the probable and extricating the improbable. Instead, as Milan Kundera’s The Curtain amply exhibits, a writer engages with the unencumbered flow of discourses and ideas that a…

Arjun Appadurai is the Senior Advisor for Global Initiatives and the John Dewey Professor in Social Sciences at New School University in New York. He was born and educated in Bombay and did his MA and PhD from the University of Chicago. Appadurai is one of the few scholars who have defined the way we have come to understand globalisation. He is also involved deeply with Mumbai-based NGO, PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge, Action and Research). He spoke to Sayandeb…

Different roads. Image Photo Arno Senoner/Unsplash Despite similar backgrounds, Mayawati (R) and Mamata seem to be going different ways. The extent of success that Mayawati’s ‘social engineering project’ is going to have in the daily business of running the largest state in India is currently one of the hottest debates in Indian politics. What is also dominating discussion is how she is going to influence government behaviour at the centre in the coming years. But what is already visible…

Satyajit Ray, by Nemai Ghosh. Image under copyright. The idea of commercially re-releasing three of Satyajit Ray’s films by Sony Pictures is an inspired idea. Ray remains, despite Bollywood’s repeated efforts to ‘showcase’ itself in respectable film venues like Cannes and Venice — the most enduring icon of Indian cinema. The release, thankfully, does not include the umpteenth rerun of his Apu Trilogy, for which he is feted the world over. The films being screened were made between 1968 and 1970…

So much has already been said about The Namesake being about finding one’s home both within and without, that I saw it as incumbent upon me to go and see the film, more so since it was about my home and my city. The novel had not made my heart melt, but then I read it when I was not ‘outside’ my home. So I thought the film might provoke those emotions that the novel did not, especially after Mira Nair’s insistence…

There is a new graphic novel in town – Sarnath Banerjee’s The Barn Owl’s Wondrous Capers, Steven Spielberg is producing a Tintin film, and noir director Anurag Kashyap is directing Hanuman 2. Suddenly, animation is threatening to grow up and rival adult live-action entertainment in a big way. Disney, Chandamama, and Superman creators Siegel and Shuster are in danger of being left behind for SFX, CGI, 3D, ‘comix’, manga, anime, graphic novel, and video games, as visual narratives ramify into widely varied,…

Bengal is chained to politics. Image by Photo by John Salvino/Unsplash Last week, the world saw visuals of poor villagers, bleeding and being carried away after the police opened fire on villagers in Nandigram in Bengal. They were protesting against the acquisition of farmlands for industries. For anyone, it was revolting that a democratically elected government should shoot down its people because they were engaging in what appeared to be legitimate protest. Not surprisingly, the general reaction was…

Those were wonderful wonderful times. The middle of the 18th century. Calcutta, the second city of the British Empire, was an extension of the first city in many ways — in its riches, its arrogance and its excess. Except that in Calcutta these great imperial values included even the despondent native elite who, flushed with wealth, invented the most absurd and obnoxious ways to get rid of it. Sarnath Banerjee’s second graphic novel, The Barn Owl’s Wondrous Capers has many…

Guru is a parable of many things, real and imagined.   After years of shepherding him through the pitiless jungle of Bollywood, and sustaining him through dud after dud, Amitabh Bachchan finally has a chance to bellow openly about his cub Abhishek’s performance in Guru, which can be called Dhirubhai Ambani’s ‘unauthorised’ biopic. It is hard to miss the full-page ads in the dailies, sponsored by the proud father who imperiously salutes his son for having finally matched his greatness. He has the…

Henry Fuseli, Titania Caresses Bottom with the Donkey’s Head, 1793-94, oil on canvas.  Kunsthaus, Zurich. On a trip to Switzerland, organized by Pro Helvetia, Sayandeb Chowdhury finds that the Alpine country is not just about clocks, wine and chocolate. But also art, music, dance, theatre and cinema. And finds them anything but neutral. Renzo Piano is not a musician. But he plays music in glass and steel, brick and mortar. As I stood in front of the Zentrum Paul Klee,…