Memories are many-hued, multi-layered. The clock turns back in time. The past finds its way into the present.
read full storyNostalgia has a deeply political aesthetic that recoils from symbols and certitudes. It doesn’t let us reconcile ourselves to the past as a template for the future.
The past is a world before the pandemic, a place of happiness perhaps, of love, of togetherness. We want a romanticised past to become our future.
The politics of nostalgia involves mobilising the masses around the yearning for a glorious past brought alive in imaginations of the future
The Congress and the Left habitually inhabit a past of real and exaggerated achievements
From Partition to genocides in Rwanda and elsewhere, museums are important to understanding our fractured past
No festival is complete without its own set of myths. Traditions invented for the relatively new Durga Puja...
Are your sweet memories as summer-centric as mine? One summer, I read through all my novels and comics. You see, I was bored.
Missing the sound-drenched ethos of Delhi’s Durga Puja, set to rhythm by the childhood dhaaki, in the autumnal stillness of Ontario
Jaffna, 1987. A fragile truce takes hold between the Lankan army and the LTTE, with IPKF keeping peace. Then, it explodes into bloodied bits.
An NRI looks back with fondness, and a little bit of regret, at the time when the sea was part of her everyday life but didn’t matter as much as it does now.
Fantastical tales of djinns, river ghosts and demons in circulation for centuries were an integral part of growing up in mofussil Bihar
Not only do they have indubitably unique sound, old vinyl records effortlessly summon up the past in a whirl of tactility and art
The events entrenched in memory are all imbued with a tinge of grief. A medley of loss and tears.
Always a community exercise, film viewing in 1980s Kashmir left an impact on the audience few could anticipate
Scattered souvenirs from memory’s cache spread across Panjim, Sao Tome and Fontainhas, of growing up under Portuguese colonial shadow
From Lahore to Delhi, Dinesh Khanna follows in his father’s footsteps to capture extraordinary images.
Oh, to be able to return to the dank, muggy, single-screen theatres in dusty mofussil towns, and to relive the magic of Bollywood...
A festschrift to penmanship, ink, paper, stamps and the man in blue on a bicycle
In case you missed it: News and newsmakers from India over the past week
For the moment, the Lakhimpur Kheri crisis appears to have been defused. However, this may...
Romila Thapar’s account of a 1957 journey to ancient Buddhist sites in China, across swathes of Silk Route territory and modern cities, comprises both visitor’s gaze and historian’s introspection. The result is time travel with a continually shifting lens.
I never wanted to be an actor. Though I was always told that I am a good actress, I never took...
