Mintlounge • 27th January 2022

Seeing photographer Sunil Janah in a new light

In 2012, after Sunil Janah died at the age of 94, tributes poured in from all over the world, celebrating the Assam-born photographer’s luminous, although relatively unsung, career. Indeed, it was likely that several generations of Indians heard of his name for the first time with the news of his death—which was deeply ironic, considering how woefully poorer the visual history of 20th-century India would be without Janah’s uniquely original contribution.

Mintlounge • 19th June 2021

Finding the Raga by Amit Chaudhuri: Beauty of digressions

Amit Chaudhuri’s new book, , is an ode to the , a genre of classical music that traces its provenance to the ancient cultural repositories of the subcontinent. However, much like the meandering whimsy that the word evokes, his narrative also takes frequent detours into areas not conventionally associated with Indian music: into the realms of world literature and linguistics; jazz and blues; rock ‘n’ roll; Western classical musicology; and, above all, the inflections of ordinary life.

Mintlounge • 19th June 2021

Badri Narayan and what it means to be a modern Indian artist

In the well-worn tussle between tradition and modernity in Indian art, painter Badri Narayan occupies a unique niche. A self-taught stylist, he created a visual language that was at once idiosyncratic and, yet, also strikingly apart from that of his more celebrated contemporaries—M.F. Husain, K.H. Ara, S.H. Raza, F.N. Souza, and others, who came together to form the iconic Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group in 1947.

Mintlounge • 31st January 2021

Suresh Punjabi: The man who captured the Great Indian Dream

Suresh Punjabi was born in 1957, the year Guru Dutt’s iconic film, , was released. It was an odd coincidence, considering the key role the movie would play later in his life. Those were heady days for the 10-year-old independent nation. Its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, had envisioned big dreams of economic reform and scientific modernisation, aspirations that spread among the teeming population of the infant republic.

Mint Lounge • 8th January 2021

'The Surgeon's Cut': How the world’s greatest doctors stay human

If you go to as a fan of, hoping for the heady excitement and nerve-wracking suspense that characterise the US medical drama, chances are you may be a tad disappointed. However, once you reckon with the fact that the four episodes in this limited series, produced for Netflix by BBC Studios, are all based on actual people and their real battle with disease, you may sober up considerably, and marvel at the stories that unfold.

Mint Lounge • 8th January 2021

The fine art of capturing the faraway and the nearby

New Delhi-based Vadehra Art Gallery’s (VAG) latest online show, , is driven by two complementary ideas. “We thought it was especially important during these challenging times to support the work of emerging artists,” says Roshini Vadehra, director of VAG, on email. “The gallery is also giving a percentage of sales to covid-19 relief work.”

Mint Lounge • 8th January 2021

A forgotten artist from Bengal gets a new life

Earlier this month when Princeps, the auction house, put up the works from the estate of Bengali painter Atul Bose (1898-1977) for sale, the founder Indrajit Chatterjee didn't know what to expect. But the response from the bidders was overwhelming. "I was surprised the lots sold at all," he says, "let alone generate the kind of interest it did among collectors across the world—from the UK and the US to Europe and all over India." Eventually, the sales totalled to Rs 1.64 crore.

Mint Lounge • 8th January 2021

Into the rabbit hole of Sohrab Hura's art

When I started making , I realised I don’t have a unidimensional relationship with photography,” says Sohrab Hura, referring to his latest body of work, which is currently showing at Experimenter-Ballygunge Place, Kolkata, and on the online viewing room of the gallery. It’s a big statement coming from the 39-year-old associate member of Magnum Photos, the prestigious international cooperative of photographers.

Mintlounge • 19th November 2020

Revisiting Ram Kumar’s unsung genius at Art Basel

It may be hard to believe that Ram Kumar, retiring and reclusive as he was all his life, belonged to that fiery bunch of trailblazers who came together to form the Progressive Artists’ Group in 1947. Initially known for his Hindi short stories (it was his brother, Nirmal Verma, who would end up as one of the greatest writers in the language), Ram Kumar had a humble start. After a degree in economics, he worked in a bank.

Mint lounge • 19th October 2020

Is pasta the new pizza for middle-class Indian consumers?

For the 57 seconds that the footage runs, it’s hard to pull away your eyes from the screen. First, dosa batter is thickly spread on a skillet, followed by what appears to be a generous slathering of butter. Then chopped vegetables, dollops of luridly colourful sauces, some creamy stuff and—wait for it—a small mound of macaroni are heaped on to it.

mint • 12th September 2020

‘The Social Dilemma’ review: Can we clean up big tech’s big mess?

Jeff Orlowski’s The Social Dilemma, a documentary which released on Netflix this week, follows a familiar plot. A bunch of Silicon Valley “whiz kids", who once helped establish and perpetuate habits of internet addiction on a global scale, come on record to express their horror at the beast they have unleashed. They admit to writing codes and creating programmes specifically targeted to feed the business model of the attention economy. As former employees of big tech companies who nurtured this

Mint • 7th September 2020

Chef’s Table BBQ: There’s more to barbeque cooking than meat and fire

Barbeque cooking seems like a no-brainer. With only a handful of ingredients involved, it is arguably the most ancient culinary style practiced by humankind, depending primarily on fire. And yet, as the new season of Chef’s Table shows, there’s much more to this form of cooking than the ability to build and sustain a roaring fire.

Mint • 5th September 2020

How Ravi Shankar defied classical music’s orthodoxy

The year 1967 was a watershed moment for the global music industry. That year, The Beatles released one of their iconic albums, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which soared to the top of the charts all over the world. Millions lost their minds over the fab four from Liverpool as the frenzy of Beatlemania turned into a contagion. It was an annus mirabilis—a year of miracles—for another musician too, groomed in a tradition that had nothing to do with rock ‘n’ roll. As the world became drunk

Livemint • 18th July 2020

Bharat Sikka on ‘The Sapper’ and his search for his father

Bharat Sikka on ‘The Sapper’ and his search for his father Artist Bharat Sikka’s ongoing photo-based project aims to rediscover his father, who was mostly absent during his growing years

Livemint • 12th July 2020

#AnneFrank Parallel Stories review: How not to turn history into hashtags

#AnneFrank Parallel Stories review: How not to turn history into hashtags This Netflix documentary about Anne Frank and Holocaust survivors misses the chance to make a powerful statement

Livemint • 15th February 2020

The ‘ghoti’ versus ‘bangal’ rivalry in Bengali cinema

Romantic comedy in 1950s Bengali cinema explored neighbourly tensions between Bengalis from two sides of the divided state

Livemint • 31st January 2020

Indian art’s decade on Instagram

In the 10 years since the photo-sharing app was launched, artists across the world, including India, have adopted the medium to amplify their work and philosophy

Livemint • 20th December 2019

Charles Dickens and the legacy of a Calcutta Christmas

At the school I went to in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in the 1980s and 1990s, students were subjected to one “rapid reader" after another for several years in the junior classes. The idea was to introduce us to texts that were easy to read, comprehend and enjoy. If this trinity hit its mark, chances were it would instil a love of books in our 10-year-old hearts—in those days at least, this was one of the primary aims of a well-rounded school education. It was through one of these rapid readers that

CNN • 25th October 2019

A fashion blogger's guide to Indian street style

One of Scott Schuman's portraits shows a man in the Indian city of Kolkata with glitter on his face, shining like stardust. But the photographer initially missed this detail. Schuman had run into the stranger -- "a young man in a hoodie who had a certain allure," as he's described in the photographer's new street style book -- during an early-morning visit to a flower market on the outskirts of the city. The man had agreed to pose, but it was only after he left that Schuman zoomed into the imag

Livemint • 18th October 2019

Jogen Chowdhury: Breathing life into forms

At 80, Jogen Chowdhury is remarkably spry, brimming with ideas and observations. “When does an image become art? What is the difference between a painter and an artist? I would throw questions like these at my students when I began teaching at Kala Bhavana (the school of visual arts in Santiniketan) in 1987," he says. “I still haven’t stopped thinking about them." A couple of floors below the room we are sitting in, a retrospective based on his long and illustrious career is on display. Spread