Tag Archives: Art & Culture

If we look at some of the case-studies examined in the book, the contours of the argument become clearer. Lady Smuggler (1987) is an action heroine film produced by Shamim Ara Productions (headed by star Shamim Ara), co-produced with the Bangladeshi star Babita.

There is hardly any enigma in the life and professional career of Soumitra. A consummate actor, equally proficient in cinema and theatre, Soumitra knew the difference that these two art-forms demanded. He was also fortunate to have been mentored in his early years by Natyacharya Sisir Kumar Bhaduri who gave a new life to Bengali theatre, and later by Satyajit Ray.
Satyajit-Soumitra collaboration has been much discussed in discourses on cinema.

1975 marked the rise and decline of leading stars and ‘super’ stars. The ‘anti-hero’, ‘rebel’ image caught the imagination of the audiences, in particular the youth. The characterization and portrayal of heroines underwent a significant change from the stereotypical signifying the changing, modernizing influences affecting the till-then conservative society. They could be shown as having a distinct personality;

An interesting aside: when my father, TCA Rangachari went to Paris as the Ambassador of India in the mid 2000s, he made it a point to call on Raza. The practice till then was to invite artists to ‘meet’ the Ambassador. My father thought otherwise—after all, such artists were themselves ambassadors of India, though of a different kind.

Even occasional listeners of Carnatic music may be familiar with the pot occupying the stage. After the great success of Vikku Vinayakam, the ghatam has become a part of the pantheon of percussion instruments in classical and experimental music. Sumana is part of that extraordinary narrative, of courage

The first occurrence of narrative drawing was in the Delhi Sketch Book in 1850. Inspired by British satirical magazine Punch, it showcased the life of Britishers in the city. Although short lived, over the next two decades, cartoon magazines sprung up in Bengal, Lucknow, Punjab, Gujarat, Lahore and Bombay. These magazines were mildly humorous and usually were a commentary on everyday life.

Ten Indian Traditions of Folk Music that Tell Our Stories is a remarkably written book by Mamta Nainy. What we often call folk is in fact the expressive culture of the labouring classes—their music is diverse, deeply rooted, and profoundly moving. In ten chapters,

‘I bow to you, O sweet Mahalakshmi’ comes with ‘namastastu’ below pointing to ‘bow to you’ (p. 1). In the book Shiva, below ‘O Lord Shiva, you are the lord of the mountains’, an arrow links ‘lord of the mountains’ to ‘geerisham’ below it (p 9). No italics are used, thankfully, keeping the target readers in mind.

Purushothaman’s sensitivity as a writer allows her to zoom out from individual lives and situate them within broader social realities of gender, caste, and community. This wide-angle lens, which acknowledges how both opportunities and constraints shape musical progression,

This is seen clearly in one of the most interesting essays: Suryanandini Narain’s ‘Yatra Chitra/Parivar Chitra: Mrs Gupta’s Photographic Record of a Family amidst a Changing Nation’. Mrs Gupta lived in Brindavan with her husband, the Principal of a local college, and their three children—Guddu, Guddi and Dabloo. Her photo albums of her family’s holidays in the 1960s to historical places of interest show the historic/tourist sites plus the whole family, which, according to Narain, ‘frame Mrs Gupta’s aspirations of looking at the family and nation as part of the same continued trajectory…’.

Organized in six incisive chapters, the book draws on concepts and methods from new critical close reading, deconstruction, and semiotic as well as discourse analysis to generate important insights into Hindi cinema. The opening chapter titled ‘From “History” to Circus: Politics of Genre and Muslims’ Representation in Hindi Films’, examines the representation of Muslims in historical films, war narratives, and biopics of Urdu literary figures. It contrasts the inclusive vision once embodied in films such as Mughal-e-Azam (1960), with more recent works that employ history to promote a Hindutva-oriented perspective wherein Muslims are depicted as ‘the other’.

Studies of Hindi cinema’s depiction of India-Pakistan conflicts often engage acts of selective remembering and forgetting, reinforcing the dominant ideological narratives that shape national identity, otherness, and historical memories through hegemonic cinematic frames and frameworks. What distinguishes Bharat’s book, however, is its resistance to reduce cinematic narratives to simplistic binaries of ‘us’ versus ‘them’. Instead, she frames the affective entanglements and shared cultural imaginary that persist despite political partition.

What have been the decisive influences on Dutt’s style of filmmaking? Although he had produced eight films and acted in sixteen, his main claim to critical and popular appreciation is his directorial talent exhibited in eight of them (Baazi, Jaal, Baaz, Aar-Paar, Mr & Mrs 55, Sailaab, Pyaasa, and Kaagaz Ke Phool) made during 1951-59. The book does not throw much light on this aspect. What role did Hollywood or the French masters play?

Kapur might carp at my introduction for, as she tells Saloni Mathur, ‘I describe myself quite simply as critic and curator. “Art historian” is not a correct academic description for me, and I am not comfortable with the self-attribution of a theorist. Although the term “critic” seems now reduced to the blogger or the newspaper columnist, in the early 1960s, when I was a graduate student in New York, it was starkly different.

Photography happened rather late in Rai’s life. He had started as a qualified engineer and had dabbled in a couple of government jobs, but his restless mind was in search of something else. He constantly recalls his mother’s saying in Punjabi which means, ‘If we do not work dedicatedly, we will not achieve the heights of heaven.’ Encouragement by his elder brother S Paul who was an established photojournalist and the urge to do something different brought about the change Raghu Rai was looking for.

The Bengali intellectual displays this immense appetite for knowledge, and it does not matter where it came from. Whether it is Badal Sircar or Kunal Basu or Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, they are not afraid of looking far and wide to grasp, and even grab, ways of seeing and ways of writing. But this is overlaid on a deep Bengaliness. And that saves them in many instances from being blown off their feet.

The genesis of the book lies in Subramaniam’s stint as a teacher at CalArts, during which he felt the need for a ‘handy guide of music theory’ potentially useful to ‘a practical musician and a composer’ (p. 1). This led to the authors collaborating on a work initially titled Euphony, of which the book being reviewed here is an extensively revised edition. The authors’ backgrounds attest to their formidable grasp over three distinct forms of music, namely the Hindustani, Carnatic, and Western classical systems.

In the chapter ‘The Cry of the Oppressed’, the author recreates and reconstructs the scenes, the milieu and the ethos of Benegal’s films with great precision and felicity. The reader feels like watching a movie of the quintessential director, who indisputably occupies a unique position in the film industry of the country.

I dipped into the book with some hesitation, not because the book—designed also by Chaudhuri—is in any way intimidating or uninviting, but because its Foreword is written by her husband, Sanjeeb Chaudhuri—a choice that seems oddly hagiographic. Sanjeeb Chaudhuri is the chairman of IDFC First Bank and while banking, investment and art are bedfellows, especially in the first world, the reader must decide why his voice here is important.

From a diminutive rock smeared with vermillion, to logic-defying edifices cut out of sheer rock, to large complexes spread over hundreds of acres with the most spectacular architecture humans could ever envision, the Hindu temple can indeed be a bewildering space for the uninitiated and un-socialized.