Art & Culture

Where You Can See Tagore’s Passbook

Prerna Raturi

The State Bank museum in Kolkata also boasts Rajendra Prasad’s current account application and the box that stored Gandhi’s ashes

The Singing Nun

Avantika Bhuyan

Ani Choying Drolma joined a monastery to escape her father’s beatings and found a voice that has now got Warner Brothers lining up

The Strange Silence of Mahesh Bhatt

Shaikh Ayaz

One of the things we missed most after Radiagate was him announcing a film called Phone Call. Precious words on his recent reticence

A Cartographer among Photographers

Janice Pariat

Alain Paiement uses a technique called mapping to put together hundreds of shots that offer an artistic aerial view of life

The Photographer of Dhobi Ghat

Madhavankutty Pillai

When Jyotika Jain was signed on for the movie, she had hundreds of photos of female train commuters but no clue what film photography meant

Women Who Rock

Isha Singh Sawhney

Growling, rasping and purring, here is the vanguard of female indie music, rocking stage after stage with performances like none other

The Candid Killer of Camera Shyness

A Basu

Kolkata filmmaker Q’s movies are unlike anything seen in India. His latest, Gandu, is shot in digital SLR and features explicit sex scenes with risque rap lyrics

Vernacular Wikipedia

Prerna Raturi

It’s not just Hindi and Tamil. The online encyclopaedia is serious about Wiki versions in Sanskrit, Pali and forgotten languages like Angika too

If Not an Oscar, the Oscar Library Will Do

Rahul Bhatia

Indian filmmakers keep boasting about their scripts getting into the Oscar Library. But the library rejects no script that is sent

The Legend of Santino Corleone

Atul Sabharwal

On the 39th anniversary of The Godfather’s release in the US, a film writer marvels at how Bollywood keeps reincarnating its most undervalued character