Asia Reborn
Alex Travelli who was moderating the discussion with Prasenjit Basu asked what made him bring Asia together, where people see every country as different. Prasenjit said he lived in East Asia for 25 years and then spent 5 years in …
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Archives for Red Couch
Satyajit Ray Sci-Fi
It is only fair that someone having as iconic a stature as Satyajit Ray also must be having a life full of equally iconic incidents. In 1962 Ray was all set to be the first ever Asian to venture out …
हिंदी is Cool – Presented by Kalam
If there was an award for the most entertaining session this would be it. Nikhil and Divya Prakash are a box of fun and frolic. In their attempt to revive Hindi literature they connect to the Hindi speaking individual’s sensibilities. …
Catch a Tiger by the Tale
Raghava KK is a contemporary artist living and working in New York and India. His wife Nethra is a musician. Krithi Karanth is a Conservation Biologist based in Bangalore, India. They were addressing the audience in the Bangalore Literature festival …
Chit-Chat on Bofors and Rafale
Ten years. That is how long Chitra Subramaniam worked on the Bofors scandal, from Geneva in Switzerland. She was 29 and pregnant when she began her investigation. She continued to follow the paper trail and money trail to their end, …
Nautanki Dairies
Dominic Franks who graduated from the Bangalore Medical College had always carried an ambition to be a writer and he achieved his dreams by cycling his way up. This session was about Dominic’s ‘doodh waala’ cycle called Nautanki which he …
Polio: The Odyssey of Eradication
Thomas Abraham is an Associate Professor and journalist in Journalism and Media Studies Centre University of Hong Kong. Dan Morrison started the conversations by addressing him a question, ” Why did you write about Polio?”
Thomas said he was not …
ISRO: A Personal History
The Indian Space Research Organisation, or ISRO, is one the most widely respected and revered organizations in the country. It has no doubt placed India on the map of Space research, with the many successful PSLVs, and the hugely popular …
Hunger’s Daughters
Nirmala Govindarajan is a complete Bengaluru writer. Sitting in the most iconic restaurant of the city, Koshy’s, with the usual suspects of the restaurant featuring in quite unusual ways through the naming of all male characters in the story, her …
The Brahmin
Spies and conspiracies are the most consumed fiction plots. Shrouded in mystery, personality oriented stories fuel our need to vicariously live our fantasies. When two people, one who has lived a spy’s life while the other who has helped many …
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 …
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 …
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 …
sahapedia.org
Sudha Gopalakrishnan who is a co-founder of sahapedia.org and a former founder director (2003-07) at National Mission for Manuscripts, started the session by speaking about the manuscript mission and said, at the manuscript mission, it was an arduous task to …
Winning on #377
This September, the Supreme Court of India passed a historic judgement of decriminalizing homosexual relationships between consenting individuals. It struck down on the IPC section 377 after a 17-year long legal battle. The Bangalore Literature Festival had Anjali Gopalan who …
The Best Asian Short Stories
Short stories. They’re etched in the memories of so many of us who grew up on them. Often confined to a particular region or theme, the exposure could have been limited. The editor of The Best Asian Short Stories, Monideepa …
The Things We Do
On the velvet red couch were seated the wildlife couple, Romulus Whitaker and Janaki Lenin getting candid with the audience of diverse cultures united under the roof of literature, discussing their journey with reptiles.
Romulus is very popularly known as …
Kama: The Riddle of Desire
‘India is the only country that elevated Kama to a goal of life and had a god for desires”, quipped Gurcharan Das who was discussing about his latest book ‘Kama: A Riddle of Desire’. The book is the third in …
In Search Of Wacky Female Characters
When one singular social pursuit has taken you to writing, you have most probably taken a journey similar to Sujata Parashar’s. Her years of working with women in red light areas, strong social activism on the front of female empowerment, …
The Cows of Bangalore
The speaker for the session was Shoba Narayan who initially shared that her dream was to become a standup comedian. The speech was set around the Indian mythological spiritual animal: Cow; cow being a part of Indian mythology.
The speaker …