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.
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 »
A conversation with author and historian Rosie Llewellyn-Jones about a city whose beauty decayed and grandeur faded even as history forgot its name
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
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
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
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 »
A highly subjective list of reads to wrap you snugly in a cocoon of Calcutta-coloured threads
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 »
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 »
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 »
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
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 »
For most people worldwide, Tibet was hardly a major issue. Many had heard of the Dalai Lama, but few know much about his homeland. It was therefore a matter of deepest regret to the Tibetan leader that, when news of the Land of Snows did finally make headlines, the picture it presented should be so… Read more »
After discussion sped towards the end of the zoom call, the part where people start talking candidly and share recipes or book and binge recommendations, we were mildly concerned that we were all consuming the same things. Faced with the possibility that we were caught up not in a trend, but an echo chamber, we… Read more »
Come with us on a journey of Kerala’s maritime history
Five unputdownable reads that bring all those boring history classes to life with warmth, spirit and great invention
In this interview with the author of ‘History Men’ TCA Raghavan, we talk about the ways in which history has been written, understood and shaped in the Subcontinent
We discover the story behind his unusual name, the method behind those highly collaborative miniatures and the rest of one American’s unforgettable tryst with India
The book is full of profound insights communicated in the simplest of words
Three novels about three Indian families, warts and all