Culture

India in Love: Marriage and Sexuality In The 21st century explores mating habits of youngsters on campuses and in offices; examines the changing face of pornography and prostitution; probes oppression of the LGBT community. Author Ira Trivedi, who would be in the city later this month, tells dna how India in Love was stitched together. I believe this book was in the making for four good years. How did you go about planning how you would move around the country? What about logistics? Yes, it did...

It took five years of painstaking work since the time he embarked on his project, to finally seeing the translated work in print. And when acclaimed Marathi writer Ranjit Desai's celebrated novel on painter Raja Ravi Varma hit the stands, it was gobbled up in no time. The translated work was in English, and the one who hit on the idea was engineer-turned-writer Vikrant Pande. He now lives in Bangalore with his family, and the city and its weather being what they are, Pande doesn't feel the need...

A languid and sunny Sunday, an ostensibly picnic mood, some flashes of brilliance here and there, and a seamier look at literature brought the three-day Bangalore Literature Festival langurously to a close here today. The highlight of closing day was a tête-à-tête – ‘Mera kuchh saman, tumhare paas pada hai’ – between lyricist-filmmaker Gulzar and film writer Bhawana Somaaya. Dressed in his resplendent, trademark white kurta pajama, Gulzar started off from the point that he himself had in the...

When someone organises a retrospective of as many as 71 young artists, that too from the state, you are likely to do a double take. And when you are told about the sheer scale of the project, of which the said exhibition is only a launch, you are going to sit up and be all ears. And that’s what it will be like when KalaRasa’s inaugural art exhibition Rendezvous with 71 opens for the public come Sunday. Simply put, KalaRasa is an art studio – complete with a gallery, workshop space, resident...

At the turn of the millennium, if 5000 copies of your book were sold, you would be a best-selling author. Then, in the next few years, the Indian publishing industry expanded by leaps and bounds. As the industry burgeoned, there was this author whose re-print runs usually exceeded 500,000. He was described by the New York Times as “the biggest selling English language novelist in India’s history” and many others ascribed to him the “phenomenon” tag. The man in question, Chetan Bhagat, changed...

At a time when more monuments and architectural sites in Karnataka are crying out for attention, the monetary allocation for the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to maintain central protected monuments in the state has been curtailed. The funds allocation for 2012-13 will be Rs17.55 crore as against the Rs19.85 crore that had been earmarked in 2011-12, Union minister for culture and housing and urban poverty alleviation Kumari Selja announced in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday. The allocation for...

Sometime in the early 1990s, a young Ashoka fellow set about shaking off the archetypal lethargy of old Kolkata. This man, Debashsis Nayak, formed an organisation called the Foundation for the Conservation and Research of Urban Traditional Architecture (CRUTA), and went out taking both tourists and residents of old Calcutta on guided tours through an intricate maze of lanes and bylanes of the cold city. The heritage walks soon found takers among oldtimers of the city, and when Kolkata celebrated...

When a marriage proposal comes from someone you can only think of as a god, it can be more than overwhelming. You wonder whether you are dreaming, and your life thereafter is just a trance. You don’t think of yourself as a dance; for, dance is life. It was during a chance trip to Paris in the summer of 1931 with her father Akhoy Kumar Nandy, when the 11-year-old Amala met a few young men at the Exposition Coloniale where a group of Indian artists were said to be performing. One of the older of...

Books by Indophiles make for tedious reading. They are usually unreadable and insufferable. Much as they try not to, they are invariably condescending and take the reader on a journey of cultural tourism that Indian readers are never interested in. Such books need to be read only to ascertain what perception outsiders hold of India. Mark Tully is an exception. Tully is no Indophile, as we know them. He was born in India and has lived and worked here for 40 years. He is probably as Indian as any...

One would need to be blind not to notice the signs – that of the Indian publishing industry being on a roll. Every other person seems to be penning a book, and everyone seems to be buying and reading them. Newspapers every other day carry reports of one book launch or the other. To top it all, there are the literary festivals that all and sundry want to attend. Yes, the Indian publishing industry is certainly on the upswing, if one goes by sheer numbers, recession or otherwise. But then, all...