Feminist Rani
The feminist rani is not a phrase simply coined to indulge the Indian audiences. As the co-author of the book named the same, Shaili Chopra says, “the English- Hindi word was constructed to break the notion that feminism is an …
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Women in Conflict Zones
‘Women in conflict zones are not victims’. That was the general consensus among the panellists of ‘Women in Conflict Zones’ comprising of eminent figures like Barkha Dutt, Jasmina Tesanovic, Paro Anand and Rashmi Saxena. The discussions were driven by Humra …
Editor’s Cut: Road to 2019
As the evening set in, the bards, visionaries and activists came out of their hibernation in Bangalore Literature Festival. Maybe it was the general air of intoxication around- a sense of utopia, an acute awareness of affecting the possibilities or …
The Sad State of Indology Today
The first impactful glimpse into the history of India for many of us is from the history books from school. Most of these episodes have been passed on, generations after generations, and were written by the British, which is the …
Where’s the Body? Crime and Detection
“If you really want to read a country, read its crime novels” – This quote pretty much sums up this intriguing panel that took the listeners to the world of crime and fiction. The panel had diverse representations in …
Cityscape: Transforming Public Spaces
If you love to take a stroll around cities, neighbourhoods and colonies, chances are you have closely tried to establish a relationship with public spaces that cities have to offer. We all, in fact, do share a known/ unknown relationship …
Outside Looking In: Eyes on India
India has been seen by the world through myriad prisms for a long time. From the epithet of ‘land of snake charmers’ and mystics to being touted as the next big emerging power, India keeps changing its imagery on the …
The Paradoxical Prime Minister
This event comes in the backdrop of the launch of Shashi Tharoor’s new book called The Paradoxical Prime Minister. If you ask why should you read a book by an opposition leader for the current regime, then understand that as …
Dreamers: How Young Indians Are Changing The World
On the second day of the Bangalore Literature Festival, the audience got to witness an exciting discussion of the book ‘Dreamers: How Young Indians Are Changing The World’. The author of the book, Snigdha Poonam who is National Affairs Writer …
Shades of Saffron
Saba Naqvi is a journalist turned author and she has also engaged with politics very closely for her role as a journalist. This session was interesting for it covered the present BJP Government in the light of the BJP government …
Crossing to Hampi: A Dramatic Exploration of the Vijayanagara Catastrophe
This session was about the recent Kannada play Rakshasa Tangidi by the very eminent Kannada personality and playwright Girish Karnad who in conversation with Deepa Ganesh revealed the intricacies of the ruins of Hampi and the battle of Vijayanagara. Karnad …
Fashion: The seamly and the unseemly
The panel of ladies: Manjima Bhattacharya author of ‘Mannequin-Working women in India’s glamour industry’. Shvetha Jaishankar, former beauty pageant titleholder of Femina Miss India, entrepreneur, now the author of ‘Gorgeous- Eat well, Look great’ along with Susan Thomas discussed fashion …
The Business of Sex
Modern India is very forward when it comes to debating and coming to a resolution on any topics that might have raised a few eyebrows before. Not so much when it comes to the business of sex. The taboo around …
Populism, Liberalism et al
Populism, Liberalism et al had Ashutosh Varshney and Narayan Ramachandran in session. Ashutosh Varshney is a professor of International Studies at Brown University. His ideas on populism, follies of liberalism; his political inclination and the difference between Indian and American …
Ujjivan: Small loans that transformed lives
Samit Ghosh is the founder and managing director of Ujjivan Financial Services Limited. He was accompanied by Subir Roy, a writer. We have large commercial banks on one hand and microservices banks on the other hand. They are blooming slowly …
The Diary of a Political Idiot
Shoma Chaudhury, who moderated the session introduced the author Jasmina Tesanovic who is a journalist, feminist, political activist, and filmmaker. On Serbia bombing in 1999, Jasmina started the conversation saying that she believed it could happen to anyone, anywhere and …
Unfolding the Goddess Within
Yogini Shambhavi Chopra is the Co-director of American Institute of Vedic Studies and she calls herself as an ‘Anubhavi’.Sharing her experiences she says the outer world experience is like an unsettling woman but the inner self is peaceful and not …
Listen to Me: A Memoir
As the title suggests, this session was about listening to Shashi Deshpande, an eminent English writer who has recently penned down her memoir recollecting all her good old and bad days. This session was specifically interesting because it contained …
Outback Tales: Stories from Oz
Rajith Savanadasa started the session at ‘Adjust Maadi’ venue by asking the audience how many of them had been to Australia to unpack the idea of Australia and there were quite a few.
He asked Roanna Gonsalves who grew up …
Who owns that song?
In a country such as India that is replete with diversity in its social milieu, it should not be surprising that some things get missed to the extent of becoming obscure. This is one such story that spun out of …