Journalism of Courage
Remembering Pandit Shivkumar Sharma: The man who made santoor classical
The history of Hindustani music is replete with instances of experimentation that have shaped its course. These experiments have taken place in the realm of performance practice, pedagogy, modes of dissemination, and several other areas. However, there is enough evidence to prove that experiments in music were not always encouraged, and, sometimes, even derided when they met with success. In fact, even today, many Hindustani music aficionados who are quick to boast about the diverse repertoire and the plurality of genres, forms, instruments and styles, harbour deep prejudices that lead to needless comparisons between these elements: pitting vocal against instrumental, Dhrupad against Khayal, Dhrupad and Khayal against Thumri, rudra veena and surbahar against sitar and sarod, or these instruments against harmonium and santoor, all melodic instruments against percussion instruments — the list goes on.
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When Pasoori dancer Sheema Kermani used sari and dance to defy Zia regime in Pakistan
In Pasoori (meaning conflict), Coke Studio’s recent music video in Technicolor that has India and Pakistan bonding over its Punjabi lyrics and pulsating rhythm, one spots a dancer, in a big black bindi and temple-border mustard sari. She comes and goes, swivelling in an old Karachi haveli gracefully, to a mellifluous jugalbandi between Pakistan’s Ali Sethi and Shae Gill, in the latter’s breakthrough debut. Sethi’s lyrics, inspired by the lines Agg laavan teriyaan majbooriyaan nu (set fire to your worries), which he found written on a truck, is layered with interludes on baglama (a long-necked lute used in Ottoman classical music) and electronic drums and octopads. The composition by Sethi and Zulfiqar “Xulfi” Jabbar Khan, that has crossed all borders, has become a global chart-topper and accrued over 11 crore views on YouTube in the four months since its release.
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‘Conversations With Friends’ feels like a heart-to-heart with BFFs
Do you have friends whom you talk to? Like, really, truly have conversations with? The kind of friends who can sense your emotional temperature at one glance, and forgive you even when you’ve been a total jackass? Because that’s what deep friendship is about: strong and nourishing enough to paper over cracks, or to pick up threads from wherever they were left off.
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What happens when a tree explodes like a dynamite stick
Most (sensible) parents can’t wait for the day when their loutish teenagers finally decide to pack up and leave home because they “want to be independent” and live their own lives. Nor can most animal parents. Once the pup or kitty can fend for itself – it is turfed out of its parent’s territory. This is especially true of boys who can become obnoxious and pose a leadership challenge for their fathers. True, in some animals – like elephants – the girls remain with their mothers even when mature, but go out with roving boyfriends when the need arises. It’s easy for animals (and us) to move away – we just walk away. But how do plant parents get rid of their often hundreds if not thousands of young who like them are stuck in one place forever? They must, because some plant parents will not allow their progeny to mature if they stick around close to them – like parents who remain in helicopter mode all their lives. And sometimes, they have to literally kick butt to get rid of their clingy young. So how do these seeds get away?
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‘Architecture can and should be more than the province of the privileged’: Martino Stierli
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, exhibition, “The Project of Independence: Architectures of Decolonization in South Asia, 1947-1985”, that continues till July, comprises over 200 works from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and includes sketches, drawings, photographs, films and architectural models. In this interview, Martino Stierli, The Philip Johnson chief curator of architecture and design at MoMA, speaks on architecture shaping the process of decolonisation and how concrete as a material straddled the global and the local.
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When Irrfan got angry with Anup Singh
In one scene in Qissa: The Tale of a Lonely Ghost (2013), Tisca Chopra comes charging into a room to push Irrfan’s Umber away from their daughters, her yellow-brown dupatta flies ahead of her, and because of the force of her body, the dupatta touches Irrfan before she does, “the violence created by the colour, not the actual hitting of the cloth, makes Irrfan react in a very frightened, desperate, strong way, he pushes Tisca (who goes flying and hurts her back) with an energy, a violence almost, that I doubt he’d have in any other circumstance,” says filmmaker Anup Singh.
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