Tag Archives: Art & Culture

Nor was it only the royal men who commissioned gardens—Shah Jahan’s daughter Roshanara had an elaborate space named after her, quite near what was to be known as the Grand Trunk Road. Throughout the book, the Liddles provide us with interesting nuggets of information on Mughal history. Roshanara was close to her brother Aurangzeb, supporting him when he usurped the throne from their father. She was rewarded with the then enormous sum of five lakh rupees and made the head of the palace.

The next paper by Sazi Dlamini also discusses the ngoma not just as music but as organized sounds because ritual and ceremonial use of ngoma involves dance, possession by spirit, healing practices and initiation rites. The performance with the ngoma lungundi drum is central to the identity of the Venda ancestry and this memory also speaks of resilience in the face of conquest and migration

In addition to lying on the Uttarapatha, Nalanda, says the author, is, ‘Geographically… a part of the Indo-Gangetic trough but some of its parts were connected with the Siwalik ranges in the northern part of Champaran district and partial fringes of the peninsular block in the south. Nalanda lies in the Magadha-Anga plain in the south Ganga region.’ It was also close to the ports of Champa and Pataliputra.

This secular and positive portrayal of Muslims in the 1950s and 1960s was largely due to the significant involvement of Muslims in the filmmaking industry during this period. While these portrayals often relied on certain stereotypes—such as the use of poetic Urdu, Lucknowi aristocracy, and elaborate costumes—the author argues that by the 1970s, the social genre introduced Muslim characters, especially women

Promil Pande’s lovely book, Floor Coverings of Kashmir, comparatively slim considering its impressive content, and beautifully illustrated, brought back nostalgic memories of Kashmir

The 1980s is a decade of contradictions in Hindi cinema. Theatres grew in numbers over the decade while the size of the theatre audience fell.

In the post-Satyajit phase of Indian cinema, Rituparno Ghosh (1961-2013) was a force to reckon with. He enriched Indian cinema, mostly through the Bengali, having won umpteen national and international awards, mesmerizing the urban audience through some of his celebrated works.

South Asia has arguably been the cradle of the visual from times immemorial. Story telling in picture form from fables to epics has a place in the history of the subcontinent. Painting, sculpture, printing, weaving, sketching are practices that the people have used continuously.

A full page, at the very beginning, carries an arresting photograph of Sayed Haider Raza. We see a young Raza, somewhere in the early 1950s, sitting with his hands clasped around his raised left knee, apparently photographed in that reflective moment, with a painted canvas on the easel.

The term ‘biography’ can mislead at times. A person can be written about in so many different ways—popular forms include scholarly studies, trade bios and dictated memoirs—and ‘biography’ encompasses them all.

The book under review is a treat for scholars and students of Indian ‘cinematology’ embedded in social science. The landscape, timeframe and theoretical debates around Hindi cinema have been deliberated in an extensive way. The idea of ‘Social Language’, its construction and meaning in reference to the Dalit have been explored.

In her latest book, Chickpeas to Cook and Other Stories, critically acclaimed Singapore-based Indian writer Nilanjana Sengupta takes us beyond the traditional images of Singapore as a vibrant metropolis and wealthy financial hub to a more sensitive, compassionate and humane domain

Adaptations of Shakespeare, particularly of the transcultural kind, are currently in vogue in academia; the global spread of Shakespeare through diverse media is gradually being recognized and given critical attention: for example, the latest British Shakespeare Association’s conference at Liverpool