Don’t watch Ertugrul. Yawn. Another list of do’s and don’ts, we did what we do best. We paid no heed. But this time there was a difference. The decree to ‘unwatch’ Ertugrul came from the two camps that are normally rabidly opposed to each other, the fundamentalists and the liberals. The two and two really made four, this time. Parvez[Read More...]
I started photographing rickshaw pullers in Manipur, who veil their faces so as not to disclose their identity as a rickshaw puller, even to their fiancé. Because they consider plying rickshaw is a low profile job. Now it has become a routine practice in Manipur, veiling the faces. My documentation of the rickshaw pullers in Imphal, the capital city of[Read More...]
A masquerade of ugly traits Chasing citizens of ordinary values, A parade of dirty linens Messing up the environment, Heaps of confusion Troubling the land. Politics, the pillar of karma Canonizing, canalizing, cabalistic too Beams of fetish columns Streams of radiation Rays of fraudulent hopes. Politics, dirty, stinking, inhumane Bearing stamps of hardship Bits and bits of flesh Pounding bones[Read More...]
It is difficult not to miss the irony in the timing of Mrinal Sen’s passing on, roughly coinciding as it did with the fiftieth anniversary of perhaps his best-known film, BhuvanShome. It is generally agreed that it is with this film that the seminal movement called ‘New Indian Cinema’ began. The movement was an ideological/political body of work that questioned[Read More...]
The Chief Chaddis smirked, stroking his little beard menacingly. This was the moment he and his fellow Chaddis had waited for and chewed so much cud over. They had finally got their prey – the Black Sheep, now trapped in a corner from where he could not escape. The Black Sheep, popularly known as Beep Beep to his friends, had[Read More...]
Masked at the face of evil Turning blind eye to reality, Clapping for killers And feeding murderers, Everyone is politically correct. Political leaders appoint touts and thugs Religious leaders ordain Judas, Cultural leaders erase history Social leaders act nude and promiscuous, Traditional leaders title vagabonds Educational leaders burn certificates, Because they want to be politically correct. Judas kissed Jesus Jesus[Read More...]
For Suda J., who lives in M’rira (Tunisia) I dare not ask a kiss; I dare not beg a smile; [. . . ] No, no, the utmost share Of my desire, shall be Only to kiss that air, That lately kissed thee. Robert Herrick, To Electra, 23. What is it that we just love about an embrace and why[Read More...]
17 August: On the 75th anniversary of a classic work Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903–21 January 1950), known to all of us by his pen name George Orwell, described the source of the idea of setting the book on a farm: “I saw a little boy, perhaps ten years old, driving a huge carthorse along a narrow path, whipping[Read More...]
A 40 kg silver brick overrides the threat of the grim Saffron coronal rim that explodes in the stomach of a fever-ravaged populace Hunger floods the Green challenging it to celebrate internecine borders crimsoned by the wheel, the sickle, the crescent Hatred bubbles under hooded jobless seekers of truth. Jails clang with differences between Left and Right. [Read More...]
Sivakasi is a curse, a blight, an abomination that India could do without. Here, workers, especially children, are routinely killed or scarred for life in fires and explosions while making crackers and bombs to feed the fireworks industry. A devastation in Sivakasi, 700 kilometres from Chennai, on September 5, 2012, claimed 54 lives. Between January 2011 and September 2012, there[Read More...]
