Age of Empires – Reading List
Understand Indian empires through their temples, art and even hairstyles in this reading list drawn from the Sarmaya library
Reads
Dig a little deeper into India’s art and heritage, uncover lesser-known stories and expert insight on everything from the popular to the esoteric.
Rock & Ruler: Golconda’s Trail of Diamonds
What the chain of diamonds trickling from the marketplaces of Golconda tells us about the dynasties that branded and traded, and won and lost them
Book of Kings: Early Mughal portraits in Muraqqa’s
Opulently gilded and calligraphed, filled with a patchwork of intricately detailed imagery, evoking wonder and awe, the muraqqa’ tells unforgettable tales of royalty
Parallel Histories: Personal Photos as a Political Statement
Powerful pieces of imagery from personal albums are setting down in history what is otherwise undocumented and therefore unacknowledged, acting as the nuanced subtext that is drastically missing from our public rhetoric. We talk to the curators of these intimate archives
Now reading: The stories every picture tells
An initiation into the Sarmaya team involves the confrontation of and acclimating to certain books from our library. New ‘uns are told this is necessary reading meant to familiarise them with the genres of the collection. Each object inhabits a world that is resonant and multi-faceted and it’s impossible to know where to start. “Today… Read more »
Nature & Nurture in the Art of Pushpa Kumari
Mithila artist Pushpa Kumari’s aesthetic genius combines the traditional with the contemporary, and the personal with the political
In defence of Sita
The festival of light fast approaches, which of course reminds us of the legend behind the pomp and its heroine, Sita. Queen, Goddess, icon, Sita is a woman exemplar, revered for her beauty, grace and loyalty. But in modern times, Sita has had to pass frequent tests of feminist fire. If she is denigrated, it’s… Read more »
“Our books are like a room out of a museum”
Dulari Devi is an artist but she wasn’t always one. This is how the story begins in her autobiographical children’s book, Following My Paint Brush, published by Tara Books, an independent publishing house that brings art by Indian women, folk and indigenous artists to young readers. Coming from a community of fisherfolk in Bihar, Dulari… Read more »
Bhaktapur’s Mithila influence
This text and images below are reproduced with permission from the author Bhaskar Koirala and Nepali Times and it was originally published on the Nepali Times website King Harisingh Deva of Simraongarh must have sat on his heavy-set chair while a pair of household staff was cross-legged on the black chlorite stone floor massaging… Read more »
Remains of the Day: The forgotten city of Murshidabad
A conversation with author and historian Rosie Llewellyn-Jones about a city whose beauty decayed and grandeur faded even as history forgot its name
His Dark Materials: A young feminist discovers Satyajit Ray
Kuhu Kopariha enters the cinematic universe of India’s great auteur to meet his women, see them through his eyes, and find her own reflection
Bengal & Co. – East Meets West In Company School Paintings
An interview with Dr Xavier Bray of the Wallace Collection to understand how Bengal came to play an important role in the evolution of the striking Company School paintings
Lights, Camera, Calcutta! 9 films that capture the magic of the city
A land of memory and vision. A city of joy and heartbreak. A capsule of what was and what could have been. The cinemascape of Calcutta shows us all this and more
Now reading: our favorite Tagore
Something is daunted when one attempts to remember the bequests of India’s early multi-hyphenate on his death anniversary. A good profile should be a seamless whole of the inner and outer life of the poet, Rabindranath Tagore had said, commenting on Tennyson’s biography by his son, which he admonished for being full of trivialities. But… Read more »
Once Upon A City – Visiting Calcutta in Fiction
A highly subjective list of reads to wrap you snugly in a cocoon of Calcutta-coloured threads
Staying in with Mario de Miranda
With his sharp wit and satirical yet sympathetic portrayals of daily life, Indian artist and cartoonist Mario de Miranda is the perfect companion during a lockdown. These illustrations in our StoryLTD auction, The World of Mario, would be sure to add some humour to your walls, and are as relevant as ever to the strange… Read more »
Who pulls the strings in Gulabo Sitabo?
I am desperately late to the Gulabo Sitabo Netflix watch party (or Amazon in this case), but in my defence it was catching virtual dust while sitting at the very top of my watchlist and this is just how movie screenings and time work now. How ironic it is that this film was released in… Read more »
More quarantine reading: Kerala, Kolkata and the Kafkaesque
We’ve settled into routines now and a big part of that is just vegging out on the couch, in front of a screen or in bed with a novel. It feels like all we’ve done this lockdown is read and reread books we love and binge-watch shows on Netflix. And so we have a new… Read more »
Frozen Music – Landmarks from Iconic Hindi Film Songs
Here we share photographs from our archive, some over a hundred years old, of these iconic Indian landmarks and the unforgettable songs that will always stir our memories of the place
The mythical origins of shadow puppets
Made in China, made in India, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, or even Turkey, the tradition of shadow puppets has survived for a long time, the second century BC, some say. But as is also custom, scholars have many disagreements on its origins. Folklorist Stuart Blackburn suggests that this tradition, like Buddhism, travelled to the rest of… Read more »