A Caste-Ridden Society, in Checkmate
The 2017 documentary Turup reminds viewers of how we are all trapped in a haunted physical world, rife with symbols of pathos; and yet, the revolutionary yearning echoes itself in the corners of the strangest of rooms. By Anamitra Bora
The Remedy
Fiction by Samruddhi Ghodgaonkar: ‘When my foot slipped, I felt a familiar sense of suspension, the weightlessness of a social pariah, a suspension that now waited with a terrible consequence.’
Art Against the Algorithm: Vauhini Vara’s THE IMMORTAL KING RAO
In Vauhini Vara’s debut novel, the story of the eponymous King Rao is part of larger questions of human creativity and meaning in a transhumanist world, where life is data-fied, and sentience, thought, emotion and ethics are mere products of automated and arbitrary calculations. By Paromita Patranobish
Distorted Images: Caste, Sexuality, and History in the art of Keerthana Chandragiri
“One becomes a beast of burden, a puppet in the hands of the inherited history.” 25-year-old Dalit artist Keerthana Chandragiri discusses how experiences of self-image, discrimination, and trauma shaped the intimacies of her art. By Preeti Nangal
Mental Health in India: Purity, Pollution, Caste, and Mental Health
In India, our approach and understanding of mental health concerns are often further complicated by the historical weight of the caste-system and a yearning for cultural ‘purity’. By Sadaf Vidha
Mental Health in India: Looking Through a Filter of Colonialism and Casteism
India has to grapple with both caste and colonisation to get a holistic understanding of mental health issues, stigma, treatment and community interventions. - By Sadaf Vidah
Sima Auntie’s Inconvenient Arrangements
Superfluous, dispensable, and restricted, Netflix’s Indian Matchmaking is as (Un)necessary as arranged marriage itself. An analysis into the flaws of the docu-series—and the deeper flaws it exposes in contemporary Indian culture. By Harshita Murarka.