My Amrita
How a woman found herself in a new land through the writings of Amrita Pritam
Absence
A young woman doesn’t return home for a night. A retired professor casually leaves his home one evening but never returns. The young servant boy of a middle-class Kolkata household is found dead one morning. Delay, disappearance, death – three films made over almost a decade, but connected through their central idea, form Mrinal Sen’s […]
The World of Ramjan Ostagar: The Common Man of Old Calcutta
Guest Author: Upayan Chatterjee The World of Ramjan Ostagar: The Common Man of Old Calcutta is a chapter written by Sumanta Banerjee from the book ‘Calcutta: The Living City’ (Oxford University Press), dedicated to the anonymity of Calcutta’s common man in the 19th century. The author speaks of how all the history of the period […]
In Letting Go
Guest Author: Utsa Bose Death, we are told, arrives unawares; that it arrives suddenly, softly, swiftly, without remorse, catching us defenceless, ripping us apart. We learn to read death as a parting, as departing, as an aberration, as deviation, devastation and exception—but what are we to do when we reach a point in life when […]
The Music of Ritwik Ghatak
“Why do you always sing sad songs?” Ishwar asks his sister Sita in Subarnarekha. “It is almost as if there is nothing in this world beyond pain and suffering.” When art stems from lived experiences, it must be truthful. And truth is seldom under the compulsion to have a happy ending. Cinema, for Ritwik Ghatak, […]
Posters for Posterity
An ode to Ray the graphic designer
The Poetry of Kamala Das
Remembering the poet who wrote for the Indian woman
The Other Lens
An account of some of the most prominent photographer characters in Indian cinema
To Love the Ordinary
Remembering the world of Basu Chatterjee that celebrated the richness of simple living
Why don’t we talk about Salims or Naseems anymore?
Exploring Saeed Akhtar Mirza’s undisguised portrayal of Muslim communities
