By Mosarrap H. Khan
You might howl in abstraction. But the pain of being denied an apartment is concrete. And trying to express that concrete pain in abstract language is a reductive endeavor.
By Lopa Banerjee
In the evening, when Charu became infuriated to the point of complete silence, Amal discreetly dropped from his pocket a hand-written note.
By Lopa Banerjee
Bhupati was young, passionate about his editorial work, current affairs and world politics to the point of addiction, and there was no dearth of people to arouse his passion for dissenting on an everyday basis.
By Amartya Banerjee
There is a lively school of thought in West Bengal that my father describes as “not Marxism, not socialism, not even secularism, but Denial-ism”. Without singling out any person or party, there is present, a pattern of justification which says that “Everybody is to blame, save us.”
By Nandini Ghosh
Korpan, on the other hand, is just the opposite of all that Nirbhaya represented – a mentally ill man, with little education and no stable job, hence with very few aspirations in life. Moreover, the aspersion of theft of a mobile phone made him more culpable for the crime he was accused of. It is almost believable that a mentally ill man with little money would be prone to committing such a crime.
By Joyeeta Dey & Anushka Sen
The movement protesting police violence against students in Jadavpur University, Kolkata, is right now in its most vulnerable position. The marching has calmed, a high court order aimed at restoring “normalcy” to the campus has been implemented, the issue is beginning to fade from television and the public imagination, while, in all this time, not a single demand of the protestors has been met.
By Lopa Banerjee
Exuding a raw energy and supreme power of art, the entire Apu trilogy, on the surface level, traces the epic journey of the protagonist, Apu, from his impoverished rural boyhood to his years in Baranas and Calcutta and, finally, to his marriage and fatherhood. On a more metaphysical plane, the three films depict the unique life of the protagonist in various stages, repeatedly facing deep spiritual questions centered round the vision of death.
By Lopa Banerjee
The whistle blows. I find myself in the sweltering heat of a train compartment in suburban Kolkata, my tongue chained to numbness and austerity. I carry with me the rampant memories and succulent folklores of my childhood, my unruly hair running along with the houses, huts, trees, ponds, and creeks, as my life speeds along, swishing back and forth between pale faces and clumsy station platforms.
By Achyut Dutt
Indian women, those days, didn’t feel sane unless they were battered in some way, even if it was by their own child. Is it perhaps universal with women everywhere? The more you treat a woman like dirt, the more she adores you and thinks you’re cool? I saw this in my own mother as a child and took full advantage of it.
By Mosarrap H. Khan
However, engagement with the secular world does not imply abandonment of faith. Rather, Seabrook and Siddiqui’s study illustrates that faith is the most important pivot that makes the dream of transformation feasible. Among the poor Muslims in Calcutta, faith thwarts the seductions of extremism and violence.
By Rafikul Islam
The Governor of West Bengal, Shri M.K. Narayanan, inaugutated the festival. This year is Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s 125th Birth Anniversary. The Governor mentioned the important contribution of Maulana to Indian politics. He praised the role played by Maulana in initiating modern education in Independent India.
By Mosarrap H. Khan
Aman Sethi’s A Free Man:A True Story of Life and Death in Delhi, focused on the life of Mohammed Ashraf, is by no means a sociological work. It is a journalistic work that explores the life of one of those thousands of nameless workers who, while contributing significantly to India’s growth story, are often rendered faceless and seen as having no individual subjectivity.
Cafe Dissensus Everyday 