Jaaware’s Destitute
Prasanta Chakravarty In his book Practicing Caste, on Touching and Not Touching Aniket Jaaware takes caste as an instance in order to transport us elsewhere.We are not yet born, he says. So, he...
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The Aesthetics of the Festival
We celebrate festivals. Actually we celebrate the experience and mood of a festival. Celebrating itself is an art, a primitive and joyous form. Besides, festivals are where we gather as a community—real...
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MOMENT, META-MOMENT AND THE MINIATURE: NAINSUKH, THE ARTIST AND AMIT DUTTA’S FILM
Amrit Gangar _______________ [This is the pre-screening lecture-text given at the Rachana Sansad, College of Architecture, Mumbai, on 24 January 2017.] This is a beautiful moment indeed, beautiful because it connects me...
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Akhand Sphota
Amarjit Chandan ____________________________ [Born in Nairobi, Amarjit Chandan graduated from Punjab University. As a result of his active involvement in the Maoist Naxalite movement in his youth, he was imprisoned and spent...
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Set Your Inner Deities and Demons Free
Shobhan Som interviews Ramkinkar Baij [Translation: HUG] Shobhan: Kinkarda—how does one learn painting and artistry? Ramkinkar: First, you must learn how to observe. Your eyes and mind must be open...
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The Language of Flowers
Michael Taussig ________________ Asked on a radio interview a couple of years back why he drew animals and not people, the great cartoonist Chuck Jones of Bugs Bunny and Road Runner fame replied:...
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On The Cold Dark Black Girnar: A Hanumana & Another
Amrit Gangar __________________ The sun has yet to tilt up perhaps a mile more to peep out of the ancient cleavages of the mount Girnār, much older than the...
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Between Desire and Disability: Karichan Kunju’s Pasittamanidam (Hungry Humanity)
Kiran Keshavamurthy -------------------------------------- Introduction The significance of the literary lies in its ability to imagine the inner workings of the human subject. The imagination of the human mind or body can never be...
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About A Song: The Use And Abuse Of ‘Shopno Dekhbo Bole’
Moushumi Bhowmik On 27 August I was at a workshop on copyright and the traditional arts at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS) on our E.M.Bypass. They wanted...
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The Crossover Is In The Mind
Prasanta Chakravarty The Filter People are mostly helpless, mostly tangled and messy. Irresponsible with our lives. With others’ lives too. We repeatedly falter. This, our human condition. This word—irresponsibility, and its...
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Bridge and Door
Georg Simmel ________________________ The image of external things possesses for us the ambiguous dimension that in external nature everything can be considered to be connected, but also as separated. The uninterrupted transformations of...
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No More Flat Feet
Serge Berna, Jean-Louis Brau, Guy-Ernest Debord & Gil J. Wolman Internationale Lettriste #1 (November 1952) _________________________________________ Sub Mack Sennett director, sub-Max Linder actor, Stavisky of the tears of unwed mothers and the little orphans...
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Kafka’s Parable, or, Literature Between Past and Future
Supriya Chaudhuri Suhita Sinha Roy Memorial Lecture, Paschimbanga Bangla Akademi, 9 January 2015. This lecture was delivered in the evening of 9 January, Professor Jasodhara Bagchi having passed away in hospital that morning....
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Images of Listening: Word-Pictures from a Journey through Music
Moushumi Bhowmik and Sukanta Majumdar The pictures are spread before us like disjointed tiles—photographs from our long and entwined journey through music in Bengal. It’s two of us; one singer and writer, the...
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