Shobhan Som interviews Ramkinkar Baij   Shobhan: Kinkarda—how does one learn painting and artistry?   Ramkinkar: First, you must learn how to observe. Your eyes and mind must be open...

Among the Innuit of Baffin Island 1883 In the summer of 1883 Franz Boas travelled from Germany to Cumberland Sound, Baffin Island, aboard the sailing vessel Germania whose main objective was to...

  Amrita Dhar _______________   The Flour and the Porters One summer morning a few years ago I was walking hurriedly across a stretch of Hyde Park in London. I was returning to the Royal...

Malayaj:  A  Letter _______________ 2-4-1971   To: Sri Rameshchandra Shah 3/2, Professor’s Colony Vidha Vihar Bhopal 462002     Dear Ramesh Bhai, Your letter has arrived “hale and...

Jahir Hasan ______________ ash anyone, ash? ___________ that-house, I take a picture then I enter it. its resident beast emerges. i set ablaze the house. in that burning pyre I drop the picture of the...

  Tight little alleyway – no room to squeeze between its walls – a young girl blocks my way, my rambles around Venice knocks me off my feet, the place, the come-on to a stranger’s eye, a wide...

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:...

    Debraj  Dasgupta ___________________   Please, no more snippets of memories. Please, we don’t want to hear anymore about portrayals. Allow us a respite from the very refinements of...

HumanitiesUnderground had, in March of 2016, initiated a discussion on contemporary Hindi poetry in Benaras, with a group of poets who are composing and thinking right now about the intricacies of the...

    Mahesh Verma __________________   A consummate artist is a rare creature. And if such a sense of art is able to amalgamate fever and vehemence with restraint and formal experimentation...