Monthly Archives: April 2010

It’s time again for everyone’s favourite sensory overload in Rajasthan. In the mela grounds, I asked a foreigner if I could sneak a peek at the day’s programme she was reading. She looked me straight in the eye and said, “Rs5 please.”
This was Pushkar, after all, and we burst into peals of laughter, which merged with the bells ringing on camel carts lined up at the fringes of the grounds.

Bibi Russell showcases traditional Indian fabric in the West. Fashion has to be affordable while being eclectic, stylistic and wearable. A strict eye on quality control, especially USE of chemical dyes, is routine. IT is not every day that new yarns are spun in the glitzy world of haute couture; a yarn that makes a weaver’s hand loom a style statement. Bibi Russell’s show in Jaipur, “Renaissance Weaves” put the weavers in the front rows to be showered with applause […]

Geetika Goyal’s solo venture is an exploration of the man-woman relationship as a struggle. TO harness creative energy into fixed formulas is certainly not Geetika Goyal’s beat. Making a quantum leap from Physics numericals into the limitless realms of aesthetics, this sensitive artist stands for the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Exhibiting her series on the man-woman relationship at the Habitat Centre in New Delhi, Geetika’s solo venture is an exploration of their life as a struggle. To find those […]

A horrific gangrape in Rajasthan raised a rare tide of support for the victim, says MITA KAPUR THERE WERE about a hundred and fifty of them. Heads covered in flaming reds, burnt oranges, shocking pinks to hide their faces. Arms raised and fists curled tight. One breast-fed her child as she joined the chorus, “Para Devi ko nyay do, nyay do. Hosh mein aao, hosh mein aao.” The woman next to me murmured quietly, “There was no such demonstration when […]

… with a tenderness that can touch the heart, he allows himself like his characters, to be pulled first in one direction, then the other, but remains finally, a writer who insists on his doubleness, who refuses, inspite of everything, to choose between East and West . — From the blurb on Salman Rushdie’s East and West, a collection of short stories It was this ‘doubleness’ that was the flavour of the recently-concluded Jaipur Literature Festival. Authors who were born […]