Reframing Power: Sheba Chhachhi’s Decolonial Vision in Visual Culture
By Sukhmani Basra For over three decades, Sheba Chhachhi has been a transformative force in Indian visual art, challenging entrenched narratives about activism, agency, and the historical roles of Indian women. Currently showcased at the Barbican’s new exhibition, The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975– 1998 (on till January 5, 2025), her work offers a vital […]
Love and Loss: In Bhaskar’s Light
By Debmalya Bandyopadhyay It is June, 2015. I am sixteen and I wear a rabbit’s heart. I ride an auto early each Monday morning to arrive at my mathematics tuition before anyone else. Our tutor is pleasantly surprised by my recent prowess in the subject. No one knows this yet, but there is someone in […]
History as Memory: Dibakar Banerjee’s Tees
‘I am being rowed through Paradise in a river of Hell:Exquisite ghost, it is night. The paddle is a heart; it breaks the porcelain waves.It is still night. The paddle is a lotus.I am rowed- as it withers-toward the breeze which is soft asif it had pity on me. If only somehow you could have […]
Camera Indica in the New Millennium
As World Photography Day approaches, we take a look at the shifts in Indian photography over the past decade. By Sourajit Saha Christopher Pinney, in his book The Coming of Photography to India, makes a very interesting statement – ‘If nineteenth-century Indian photography’s paradigmatic location was the Himalayan foothills, in the twentieth-century photography’s preferred location […]
On Being Misfits: Charachar and the Cinema of Buddhadeb Dasgupta
A bird catcher who loves birds too dearly to keep them caged. Strong, yet gentle hands quietly open the doors of cages, and the birds flutter out into the vast, blue skies – one by one, sometimes in swift motion, and sometimes nudged softly by the very hands that caught them. With every passing day, […]
Ishqnama, or Why I Love Wajid Ali Shah
By Soumyadeep Roy I’ve spent the last 7 years researching and learning about 19th century Lucknow and one person in particular, its last artist-King— Abul Mansoor Meerza Muhammed Wajid Ali Shah. It’s longer than any romantic relationship I’ve been in, my friends joke. And that too with a dead person from a dying culture. But […]
Women by The River: A Beloved Portrait by Renoir
By Aliyah Banerjee At times, Renoir holds up a mirror so close to my face that I cannot not look at myself, at Harriet, Melanie, and Valerie on screen. Young girls coming of age- so much spoken about the matter in film, literature, and life. And yet, words get lost in the silent river that […]
Trijya: The Heaviness of Being
By Babli Yadav It is 4.45 pm and the sun has just hit the neighbour’s window. It is glowing, almost as if telling me something private. I wonder if anyone else can see what I do. The descending sun’s reflection on windows and walls between 4.30 to 5 pm is one of my best discoveries. […]
Rowing Across Languages
Ten Bangla poems translated to English, on the occasion of World Translation Day
204B Block B, Lake Town, Kolkata: My Tête-à-Tête with Shanu Lahiri’s Creative Spirit
By Srilagna Majumdar While I’m aware that many people have penned down their emotions regarding the address mentioned in this piece’s title, I still want to do it again, one more time, in my own way, because the aforementioned address never seems to lose its charm. In 2021, just about 21 years old, I was […]
