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With realism thoroughly explored, we need to turn to unrealism and convey epic emotions through minimal means

In Chandan Bez Baruah’s work, intricately-crafted woodcuts compel viewers to pause, ponder and delve deeper

In 2014, on a visit to Punjab for a story on global migration, I witnessed a unique scene — at a place of worship popularly known as the Airplane Gurdwara, I saw devotees offering plastic toy planes in the hope...

Shailaja Khanna A recent concert at the capital’s India International Centre by Abu Dhabi-based Bengali vocalist Kaustuv Kanti Ganguli, trained in the Patiala gharana gayaki, got one pondering about how far the gharana has travelled. Punjab was once a centre...

Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry Athol Fugard, the South African playwright, described “censorship as hesitation”. For him, censorship was not necessarily the proximity of government inspectors or the police or the threat of imprisonment, but rather the physical hesitations of his hand...

Monica Arora “And if travel is like love, it is, in the end, mostly because it’s a heightened state of awareness, in which we are mindful, receptive, undimmed by familiarity and ready to be transformed. That is why the best...

Malvika Kaul It was in the mid-19th and early 20th centuries when close to 40 foreign artists travelled to India and painted not just the grandeur of palaces, but the noise and movement of Indian streets. Coming from Germany, Italy,...

Adhiraj Singh Bisht The origin of the word ‘Naati’, a traditional folk performance of the western Himalayas, is lost in time. However, many speculate that it is a corruption of the word ‘Naach’ (dance). Historian OC Handa describes it in...

Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry Many years ago, I saw the rehearsal of a traditional performance where the shishya stood in front of the guru and copied each gesture, each expression and each footwork of the guru, almost akin to a mirror...

R Umamaheshwari Simultaneous conversations and multiple dialogues run across generations, it seems, at the Ivy Lodge in Kasauli. Be it in the paintings of Amrita Sher-Gil or the art of her nephew, Vivan Sundaram, signifying political expressions with objects, sound...

Brijeshwar Singh Every aspiring singer still wants to sing his songs. Contemporary music directors from Pritam to MM Kreem to AR Rahman study his moody melodies. Shreya Ghoshal says that if a singer wants to learn when to be loud...

Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry Charles Baudelaire, a French poet and philosopher, wrote: “Here we have a man whose job it is to collect the day’s refuse in the capital. Everything that the big city has thrown away, everything it has lost,...

Sreevalsan Thiyyadi The pine trees at Mussoorie reminded young CV Chandrasekhar of the hill-slopes in Shimla where he grew up as a child. The lanky artiste had just reached the Himalayan range, travelling 2,500 km from Madras. The metropolis was...

Renu Sud Sinha Veteran documentary makers Kavita Bahl and Nandan Saxena picked up yet another award recently for their latest project, ‘Lakshmanrekha’, that tells the story of a school dropout who revived his village’s water sources in the deserts...

Malvika Kaul It’s been almost six months since Chittaranjan Tripathy became director of the National School of Drama (NSD). An ex-student of India’s premier theatre training institute, Tripathy continues to have mixed feelings about his role as the NSD...

R Umamaheshwari Hostel nights in our times in JNU, Delhi, were incomplete without the quintessential radio. And Akashvani was incomplete without at least one number by this singer. There was something about the lilt in Talat Mahmood’s voice: it wafted...

Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry When a griot (storyteller) dies, a library burns down — African proverb No, this is not an obituary, nor will I refer to Surjit Patar in the past tense. I find it difficult to wrap my head...

Krishnaraj Iyengar Abhay Rustum Sopori has vivid memories of accompanying his father, Pt Bhajan Sopori, to pray at a Shankaracharya temple atop a hill and then at a Sufi dargah at its foothill during his childhood days in Srinagar....

Shireen Quadri India doesn’t have an official pavilion at the ongoing Venice Biennale this year, but art from the country is making a splash across various sections. Of these, sculptor Sonal Ambani’s installation, ‘Slings & Arrows of Outrageous Fortune’,...

Nonika Singh Where Punjabis go, Punjab follows. Only, in the case of eminent playwright and theatreperson Atamjit, make it Punjabi rangmanch. Thus, when in 2022, this prolific writer, with 36 plays to his credit, made Chicago his second home,...

Shailaja Khanna One of India’s oldest extant string instruments, the rudra veena (been, as it is colloquially called) has been in a state of decline for the last 100 years. Today, very few practitioners remain. When the last great beenkaar...

Siddharth Pandey Whenever the epithet ‘Dev Bhoomi’ is used with reference to the religious landscape of Himachal Pradesh, it is usually a select list of temples that readily comes to mind. The official website of the Himachal Pradesh government, for...

Monica Arora Sreemoyee Singh’s ‘And, Towards Happy Alleys’ is a gem of cinematic brilliance, a symphony on Iranian poets, filmmakers and, most importantly, women. Here are women who go on living with grace and dignity, refusing to be quietened, despite...

Krishnaraj Iyengar There is no India without Sindh, says filmmaker Susheel Gajwani, reminding us how the words ‘India’ and ‘Hindustan’ originate from ‘Indus’ or ‘Sindhu’. His fierce passion has finally found form. After having directed several Hindi and Marathi movies,...

Sarika Sharma Manjit Bawa’s first-ever painting sold for Rs 50. Over the last one year, his artworks have been auctioned for as high as Rs 25 crore, making and breaking records. Bawa, born in the small town of Dhuri in...