Culture & Heritage
7 min read
12

Book Review: ‘Toward Eternity’ sees Celebrated Translator Anton Hur Coming into his Own As a Writer

November 21, 2024
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In physics, singularity is the point where known physical laws break down and predictions become impossible. The Big Bang theory suggests our universe emerged from such a singularity. That is an infinitely dense, hot point which expanded and cooled. At this moment, conventional concepts of time and space lose meaning.

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Culture & Heritage
4 min read
13

Uma Dasgupta, Iconic Child Actor of Satyajit Ray’s ‘Pather Panchali’, Dies at 83

November 20, 2024
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A young Uma Dasgupta in Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement One important aspect of Satyajit Ray’s great craft was that he would not begin a project until he had the right faces for the characters of his film. He was stuck while preparing for his masterpiece, Pather

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Culture & Heritage
5 min read
43

Booker Prize 2024: British Writer Samantha Harvey Wins For Space Novel ‘Orbital’

November 13, 2024
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Samantha Harvey poses with the trophy and her book Orbital after winning the Booker Prize award 2024, in London, on November 12, 2024.  | Photo Credit: AP British writer Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for fiction on November 12 with Orbital, a short, wonder-filled novel set aboard the International

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Culture & Heritage
5 min read
34

Manoj Mitra (1938-2014), the Doyen of Bengali Stage and Screen, Passes Away

November 13, 2024
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Manoj Mitra was equally at home writing a hundred plays, teaching philosophy at university, performing in folk theatre or acting with his expressive eyes for Satyajit Ray and Tapan Sinha | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement When Banchharamer Bagaan (The Garden of Banchharam), Tapan Sinha’s dark-comic masterpiece, was released in

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Culture & Heritage
4 min read
44

Book Review: Ta-Nehisi Coates’ New Book Reminds America of its Complicity in the Ongoing Massacre in Palestine

November 12, 2024
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Outgoing US President Joe Biden with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York, on September 20, 2023. | Photo Credit: Susan Walsh/AP As demonstrated by Between the World and Me, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2015 and is a must-read for anyone who wants to

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Culture & Heritage
7 min read
50

Epic Cop-Out: The Flawed Heroism of Rohit Shetty’s Singham Again

November 11, 2024
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The rot at the heart of Rohit Shetty’s Singham Again is not what you think it is. It is not the tired plotting, the exhausted acting, the cameos that stack up like a house of cards that should have toppled tiers ago, the repetitive direction, or even the forceful, joyless retracing of

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Culture & Heritage
13 min read
45

Why Anti-Hindi Protests Shaped Tamil Politics For 60 Years – And Still Matter Today

November 11, 2024
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The 1960s were a time of student uprisings across the world. Militant socialist students in Europe, especially in France and West Germany, staged protests with the aim of bringing about revolutions in their countries. Anti-war students and “hippies” in the US opposed the military intervention in Vietnam. There were student

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Culture & Heritage
11 min read
52

Quincy Jones Dies at 91: The Producer Who Reshaped Music from Jazz to Pop, Sinatra to Michael Jackson

November 11, 2024
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Sometime around 1944, an 11-year-old boy, growing up motherless and wild in Seattle, broke into a military store to steal some food. Prowling about inside he spotted a piano in the supervisor’s room; he was about to move on, when a childish instinct (which he later referred to as “God’s

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Culture & Heritage
10 min read
48

Shibpur Botanical Garden Crisis: Great Banyan Tree, Heritage Under Threat from Climate Change, Urban Sprawl

November 10, 2024
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On October 25, the severe cyclonic storm Dana struck the eastern coast of India, bringing torrential rain and high-velocity winds that uprooted trees and electric poles in Odisha and West Bengal. It brought back memories of Cyclone Amphan, which caused massive damage in 2020. West Bengal’s Shibpur botanical garden, one

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Culture & Heritage
10 min read
52

Actor Vijay’s TVK Party Launch: Star Power Meets Ideological Confusion in Tamil Nadu Politics

November 8, 2024
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When Tamil filmstar “Thalapathy” Vijay, or General Vijay as his fans fondly call him, stepped on to the podium on October 27 to deliver a 45-minute speech, he was greeted by roars and applause in a charged and theatrical event that opened yet another exciting chapter in a State where

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