fri 03/05/2024

India

South Asian Literature 2: Rana Dasgupta micro-story

A tanbur: Featured in Rana Dasgupta's micro-story

Rana Dasgupta is a British novelist living in Delhi. His first novel, Tokyo Cancelled (2005), a 13-part story cycle in the tradition of Chaucer and Boccaccio, was translated into eight languages and shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize....

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Eat Pray Love

Julia Roberts takes a long time to find her centre in Eat Pray Love, a glossy adaptation of the Elizabeth Gilbert memoir that, while offering a respite from the usual cinematic diet of reboots, remakes and comic-book blockbusters, ends up being just...

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Complicite and the Mozart and Salieri of Maths

In 1913 a 25-old-year mathematician from Tamil Nadu sailed to England. He journeyed at the behest of a Cambridge professor who had been mesmerised by the display of untutored genius evident in the young Indian’s correspondence. Within four years the...

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LPO, David Murphy, Royal Festival Hall

Anoushka Shankar brings humour, humanity and uncomplicated directness to her performance

A packed Festival Hall and a cheering, stamping, standing ovation – hardly the usual welcome for an evening of contemporary music. Sitting, wizened and waistcoat-clad, at the centre of the front row was the reason: Ravi Shankar. Framed by the...

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OperaShots, Royal Opera

Anyone hoping to take refuge from last night’s football fever in the solemn halls of the Royal Opera House would have scored something of an own goal. Heading the bill for OperaShots – a trio of new operas staged in the intimate Linbury Theatre –...

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Susheela Raman, Rich Mix

Raman: Moving forward implacably like one of her beloved South Indian Goddesses

The political tectonic plates were re-aligning, the economic indicators were jittery, but the cultural kaleidoscope also shifted a bit last night with the unveiling of Susheela Raman’s new material from her yet untitled new album, which on this...

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Bombay's first international gay film festival triumphs

Everything happens so quickly in India. It seems like only yesterday that homosexuality was legalised; and now Bombay has just hosted the first Kashish-Mumbai International Queer Film Festival.  As one of its very literary organisers pointed out,...

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It's A Wonderful Afterlife

Many is the mother the world over who announces that she won't die happy until she has lived to see her daughter (or son) happily wed. And so, out of a familial condition that transcends ethnicity and geography comes It's a Wonderful Afterlife, the...

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theartsdesk Q&A: Sarnath Banerjee

Sarnath Banerjee: 'Everybody has his own aesthetics; but mine are a bit… wonky.'

When the subversive graphic artist Sarnath Banerjee won a MacArthur grant he opted "to research the sexual landscape of contemporary Indian cities", embroiling himself in the aphrodisiac market of old Delhi and introducing the English reading public...

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Art Gallery: Sarnath Banerjee

The subversive artist and film-maker Sarnath Banerjee, credited with introducing the graphic novel to India, features in a London show, Royale With Cheese, at Aicon Gallery, 8 Heddon Street, London W1, where his eight-scene graphic narrative Che in...

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theartsdesk Q&A: Artist Anish Kapoor

The sculptor Anish Kapoor (b. 1954), RA, CBE, won the Turner Prize in 1990. His public works are characterised by their gigantic scale and ambition. In the UK he is probably best known for Marsyas (2002), the viscerally red “ear trumpet” that...

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