A ficionados of Hindi film music (present reviewer included) seriously believe that the output of songs from the Golden Era (1940-1970) is so rich and diverse that there is a song to describe every single emotion, feeling that we are aware of, as well as those that might be subconscious and subterranean. There is a eureka moment each time one encounters a song that manages to guess one’s exact feelings and puts it just right.
Malvika Maheshwari’s book on the extra-constitutional attacks on artists and artworks in post-Emergency India, adds productively to the literature on free speech and censorship. Emerging out of her PhD dissertation and research conducted between 2008 and 2016, the book maps a history of `hurt sentiments’ and violent attacks through studying a selection of controversial events.
Reading through Dance Theatre of India: Crossing New Aesthetics and Cultures, there are two questions that arise from the preface itself: 1. Who is the intended audience for this book? And by extension, who then should the reviewer be? 2. What are the basic assumptions and attitudes that seem to underlie the lens of research and the form of writing?
A sequence in Komal Gandhar (1961) is where the camera dollies towards the dead end of a railway track. The tracks end at the banks of the Padma. On the other side of the Padma is Eastern Bengal or East Pakistan. As they stare into the vast expanse of the Padma with itinerant vessels plying along the waters, Anusya shares with Bhrigu that her ‘desh’ is on the other side and that the sight of the other Bengal has saddened her.
Theatre has been the oldest art form known to humankind—an art form that surpasses class barriers to facilitate an egalitarian representation of community’s aspirations, ideas and responses. In fact it is an evocative medium that articulates the identities of societies all over the world. As Monica Mottin remarks, her intent is to probe how reflectivity and ambiguity can allow for the aesthetic space to become a transformative space.
Trying to understand Indian urbanism is like the proverbial story of the blind men trying to describe the elephant. Scholars, professionals and engaged commentators who have written about the phenomenon and consequences of postcolonial urban development in India have provided partial insights into the nature of the beast they have ‘touched’, but in sum, its complexities have eluded the kind of understanding that would have enabled any agency, state or market, to effectively engage with its welfare and maladies.