The Nine Unknown Men

Watched Jodha Akhbar on weekend. I can’t believe Rashmi Bansal gave it 4.5 stars. For once, HT was better at giving movie ratings. It is a long melodramatic boring movie. And those of you who like mumbaiya lingo would get really really uncomfortable by all that urdu and decent poetic language by the end of [...]

Durga Puja

This year I visited a durga puja pandal and was lucky enough to attend the Sandhi puja, which is performed at the juncture of ashtimi and navmi. During this juncture (the “Sandhikhan”), Durga is worshipped in her Chamunda form. This puja is often shown in Hindi movies, with a pujari rhythmically rotating aarti diye, dhols [...]

A History of Fascination

“When we look at a landscape, we do not see what is there, but largely what we think is there… We read landscapes, in other words, we interpret their forms in the light of our own experience and memory, and that of our share cultural memory.”
Robert Macfarlane, the author of my latest love, “Mountains of [...]