The Kerala boy stands alone, facing the sea or what looks like the sea. Water is never far from his feet. His eyes are dark and his hair is blacker than the best Tellicherry pepper. He is an inch taller than most and a little long in the tooth. He likes the language of protest. He likes the flavour of a season called ‘Left’.
Kerala is a country. It is self-sufficient. You can feel an undercurrent in its tea shops and its colleges. Discussion runs around with its tail on fire but differences stay grounded, rooted and forever the same, and people hold their ground and meet you half-way, like the local language, a palindrome called Malayalam. Outside a literacy percentage hangs proudly from a coconut tree. Poets speak in a language that rolls its consonants and sucks in its tongue; writers sit in a paddy field and the green sway hides serpents; a dance uses make-up as masquerade. Standing there, taking in the breeze and observing all this, a Namboodri thinks of gesture. Behind him the setting sun finds no horizon worthy, and retires amongst some trees.
This is me, Krishna Kumar, in my native avatar, looking a little older and facing a ‘situation’. Every ‘situation’ in Kerala is a mystery where the past collides with the future and the present remains less than satisfactory.
‘Where do you think you are going?’ is the question you are asked in Kerala.
‘Where I am?’ is the question you have, as an artist.
I am standing still in my boat, at the bow. I am alone and it is a moonless night. The light comes from a traditional oil lamp. I want to dance. My stance is precarious. Only my eyebrows are alive and they are trying to express like Mohanlal did in the film Vanaprastham. The principal character in Vanaprastham is a low caste, male, Kathakali dancer.
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Falling In Love (Again): India's Weaves Story
India’s love affair with handwoven cloth shows no signs of abating. Open any fashion magazine or newspaper and weaves get ample play. Designers up and down the country extol the virtues of weaves, proudly brandishing their innovative work with weavers to contemporise motifs and palettes. This is laudable but hardly surprising.
Regal Renaissance: The Royal Opera House Re-opens
The Royal Opera House Mumbai is widely touted as ‘Mumbai’s cultural crown jewel’ and India’s only surviving opera house. The original idea for the space was conceived of in 1908. It was inaugurated in 1911 by King George V, and eventually completed in 1916. The design incorporated a blend of European and Indian detailing.
Technologies Of Elegance
As soon as you enter the exhibition space in Bikaner House, the display ahead sort of takes your breath away. It’s a carefully crafted mise-enscène, filled with dangling screens, suspended sequins, overflowing jewellery boxes, glass displays, and more. And yet, in spite of the exquisite setting, and the props that inhabit it, your focus never wavers from the clothes, which form the essence of the exhibition.
Fictioning The Landscape: Robert Smithson And Ruins In Reverse
That zero panorama seemed to contain ruins in reverse, that is – all the new construction that would eventually be built. This is the opposite of the ‘romantic ruin’ because the buildings don’t fall into ruin after they are built but rather rise into ruin before they are built. –Robert Smithson, “A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey”
Kerala Boy
The Kerala boy stands alone, facing the sea or what looks like the sea. Water is never far from his feet. His eyes are dark and his hair is blacker than the best Tellicherry pepper. He is an inch taller than most and a little long in the tooth. He likes the language of protest. He likes the flavour of a season called ‘Left’.
Ghosts Of Ghan-Town
Landing gracefully on a rock, the camel tucked in its wings And wondered if this was perhaps Miryam Springs? This parched and desolate landscape was not what he hoped to find What of the flourishing settlement he had once left behind?
Delicate Animals
The humidity is sabotage and my skin is undone. I’ve always had a preference for dryness. While other women fear wrinkles, I never mind the beginnings of a crease. They seem cleaner, those intersecting lines. But then I’ve never been afraid of getting older, of being an abstraction.
The Smuggler: A Mural By Sadequain
The story goes that Sadequain (1930 – 1987), living in Karachi, was exhausted and in poor health. He was offered a stay at a government rest house at Gadani in 1958, so that he could recover. Gadani is located in the province of Balochistan on the Arabian Sea, a few kilometers west of Karachi. It must have felt quite remote from the city back then. The western coastline of Pakistan has long been infamous for underdevelopment and for unregulated trade activities with West Asia.
Complete Love
It’s 2011, late summer. All over Europe, young people are occupying central public squares to demonstrate for more social justice. In Berlin, their agenda is different. The completists gathered at Alexanderplatz aspire for justice primarily on an intimate level. They believe that only when the redistribution of material wealth includes equal chances of finding sex and love — no matter how elderly, disabled, or ugly you are — communism will become real.
A Writer's Discourse
There are two moments in Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus that I come back to often. The first is an epitaph that Socrates uses to explain bad writing, which he recites (and I will now quote) in full:
MIKE FARRINGTON
Woodworker, content creator; a lesson in contradictions
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2021 : A GUITAR ODYSSEY
SIX SUCCESSFUL GUITARISTS FROM COMPLETELY DIFFERENT BACKGROUNDS TACKLE THE STATE OF GUITAR IN 2021, THE REPERCUSSIONS OF THE DIGITAL UNIVERSE, THE FUTURE OF GUITAR HEROES, HOW TO MAINTAIN ONE’S PASSION AND UNIQUE VOICE AMID THE CACOPHONY, LIVING IN THE PAST, MAGIC KNOBS AND MORE
GMAIL, YOUTUBE DOWN BRIEFLY AS GOOGLE SUFFERS BRIEF OUTAGE
Google users in the U.S., Europe, India and other parts of the world were briefly unable to access their Gmail accounts, watch YouTube videos or get to their online documents during an outage this Monday.
Baboucarr Faal
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Just like a golfer must practice often with a variety of clubs performing a wide range of shots on a vast array of terrains, so must the musky angler cast with a wide selection of lures at various spots.
Something's coming
So, what’s “this thing of ours”?
Woodworking Accountant
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DID SOCIAL MEDIA ACTUALLY COUNTER ELECTION MISINFORMATION?
Ahead of the election, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube promised to clamp down on election misinformation, including unsubstantiated charges of fraud and premature declarations of victory by candidates. And they mostly did just that — though not without a few hiccups.