On the morning of the first day of the new year in 1989, a group of young men and women set out from Delhi for Jhandapur, an industrial area in Uttar Pradesh, where they were scheduled to stage Halla Bol, a play on workers’ rights. They were running late and their bus was rickety. When […]
Nothing that you will read here is new. But I am still writing this. Here’s what prompted it. Last evening, a friend of mine got called an extremist, indoctrinated, misogynist troll on Twitter because she chose to defend her choice of wearing a hijab. (Yes, I am using variables of the word choice because it […]
The auditorium at the National Museum, in the heart of Delhi, is packed to capacity on the afternoon of the 5th of October. There is standing room only, and that too, barely. The draw is a symposium to commemorate Hemu, a medieval era king, in an event organized by the Akhil Bhartiya Itihas Sankalan Yojana […]
54 year old artist Atul Dodiya was, in 1977, in a fix as to whether he should pursue art or films because “they were both intense passions”. He chose art. The boy who was “brought up on old Guru Dutt movies” studied at the Sir J. J. School of Art, Mumbai, and the École Des […]
A memoir subservient to political propaganda, an aborted statement of policy positions, a dubious report of investigative journalism- the sum of parts in Mamata Banerjee’s My Unforgettable Memories comes to naught. It is hard to tell what the book really is, but despite its inherent confusions it tells on its author rather candidly- And it […]
Video interview with scholar Sheldon Pollock. Jaipur Literature Festival, January, 2011.
There is this world among the many worlds of Delhi- the world of book events- you show up for a reading followed by a conversation between the author and some other prominent member of the fraternity. Afterwards you drink wine and exchange news with everyone you know there. And you know everyone there. The scale […]
An interview with Junot Diaz. Jaipur Literature Festival, January 2011.
Video interview with author H.M. Naqvi, winner of the DSC Prize for Literature 2011. Jaipur Literature Festival, January 2011.
Video Interview with writer Candace Bushnell, 2011. Jaipur Literature Festival, January 2011.