カテゴリー: Culture
The struggles and triumphs of a 1950s Kolkata family whose highest earner is a woman is told with marvellous lucidity in an optimistic masterpieceSatyajit Ray’s magnificent movie from 1963 is now rereleased as part of a Ray retrospective at London’s BF…
Remains returned from UK Natural History Museum as well as from across New Zealand, a century after being dug up as curiosities by explorersThe skeletal remains of more than 100 Moriori ancestors, the Indigenous people of Rēkohu – or the Chatham Island…
Kazuki Takahashi found in snorkelling gear floating in the sea off coast of Okinawa, reports sayA Japanese artist who created the hit manga comic series Yu-Gi-Oh!, which spawned a worldwide media franchise including a trading card game, has been found …
Translated by two Kashmiri pandits from an C18th English translation in the 1930s, unique work lay forgotten in a Harvard University libraryThere is an adjective that all too invitingly describes the wildly optimistic endeavours of the American book co…
Shah Muhammad Rais survived decades of misrule in Afghanistan but finally fled to escape the TalibanHe was made famous by international bestseller The Bookseller of Kabul, and survived a succession of repressive regimes in Afghanistan. But two decades …
A British orchestra will this week play, for the first time, a programme of Afghan music, featuring exiled Afghan musicians on traditional instrumentsThe musicians of Afghanistan have again been silenced by the Taliban. Other than specific religious an…
Where does a state’s power truly reside? Not in its military, says the celebrated writer, but in the Kafkaesque files it keeps on its citizens – and no one showed this more brilliantly than SinghI first met Dayanita Singh in India in 2011. Her house wa…
A hero of the 2008 Mumbai hotel siege gets a relentlessly entertaining biopic, going all-out with the hagiographic bells and whistlesAs unstintingly jingoistic as it is relentlessly entertaining, this Bollywood blockbuster celebrates a fictionalised ve…
Krishnakumar Kunnath, a star Bollywood singer best known as KK, complained of feeling cold and unwell before collapsingStar Bollywood singer Krishnakumar Kunnath, popularly known as KK, has died of a suspected heart attack at age 53 after a concert on …
Killed in a shooting this week, the 28-year-old Punjabi Sikh MC offset gangster bravado with a keen sociopolitical awarenessFive years ago, Sidhu Moose Wala announced his arrival with So High. Using flutes and a faint tumbi, producer Byg Byrd roots the…
Education ministry orders publisher to rectify illustrations of children deemed inappropriateChina’s education ministry has ordered a state-owned publisher to rectify a school textbook that went viral owing to what social media users described as “trag…
Musician whose real name was Shubhdeep Singh Sidhu was killed a day after his security cover was withdrawnIndian police are investigating the murder of a popular Punjabi rapper a day after he was fatally shot.Shubhdeep Singh Sidhu, better known by his …
Alamat are aiming to bring their music to the world – by singing in their local languagesVocal coach Zebedee Zuñiga twists his hand in the air, and the melody of a tender, haunting lullaby, Ili Ili Tulog Anay, begins. “Little one, little one, sleep now…
Country’s longest-running soap opera marks 30 years on air this week. Here we celebrate some of its most infamous scenesIt’s the scene that tackled the issue of sexting and made waves all the way to Jimmy Kimmel in the US, who spoofed it on his talk sh…
The Indian novelist and her translator scooped the £50,000 prize with Tomb of Sand, a novel about death – but with laughs. The morning after their triumph they talk about fun, feminism and famous ancestors“If you handle a heavy thing with lightness, yo…