The year 2020 force-fed us a bitter concoction comprising of the Coronavirus pandemic, losing dear ones, and the toughest of all, Isolation. Well, for an introvert like me, walking away from the humdrum wasn't really a major task. However, the blues of losing closed ones were and my love for art helped convert the former to ending the tumultuous year with approximately fifty sketches that I will cherish for the rest of my life.
“The aim of therapy is not to correct the past, but to enable the patient to confront his own history, and to grieve over it”- Alice MillerThe Silent Patient begins with a psychotherapist, Theo Faber, who chooses to lean on the emotional front of trying to understand Alicia Berenson, the celebrated painter accused of murdering her own husband.
“I have a feeling that inside you somewhere, there’s something nobody knows about”, this phrase from the Shadow of a Doubt is what pretty much summarises the idea behind The Woman in the Window.
India is home to 140 million farm households and approximately 120 million smallholder farmers who contribute close to 40 percent of the country’s grain production and more than 50 percent of its fruits, vegetables, oilseeds, and other crops.
The Coronavirus pandemic has not left any age group unscathed.
India is currently experiencing a cataclysmic wave of COVID-19.
The beginning of the New Year witnessed the arrest of comedian Munawar Faruqui over insulting Hindu deities during a performance at a cafe in the city of Indore.
Going home without my sorrow,
Imagine waking up in the trunk of a car only to find yourself amidst raging bullets, an escaping terrorist, closed windows imprisoning pain and fear and a bunch of cronies approaching their end for the sake of decimation of all the above- the Phoenix 5.
- by Bidisha Bhattacharya and TEACO's India
I still recall the good old days, when my father post-afternoon meal would sit with his cigar lit, on the wooden rocking chair, and narrate me stories about India. A man whose family had witnessed the perils of partition and who had and still possess the vast expanse of knowledge that nobody could ever possibly match; used to sail me across the ocean by turning the ship back in time in an attempt to portray me what my nation went through and gained out of those turbulent times since the eighties.
The startling discovery based on various metrics of measuring the actual growth of the Indian economy between 2011-12 and 2016-17 clearly states the fact that India did not grow at 7% per year as the citizens were officially informed. Instead, the average annual growth crawled at a ridiculously small 4.5%, on an average, during those 5 years and now? Well, its -10.2 percent for 2020-21!
The COVID-19 outbreak has caused a huge public health crisis across the globe. While the imminent health concerns naturally took priority, the impact of certain other dire consequences of climate change took a back seat. With the ocean devouring up land in the world’s largest mangrove forest, humans and tigers are being squeezed into an ever-shrinking space in the Indian Sundarbans, with deadly ramifications.
Manav and Abhay live in the same society in Andheri. The two toddlers who just turned 5 have been moved to a regular school from a ‘full-of-play’ home. It wasn’t even a week when Manav’s mother learns from other parents that they have already enrolled their children into the so-called extra-curricular activities like swimming, tennis, and guitar classes. She hears the other mothers beaming with pride when they narrate the fact that their little 5-year-olds return late in the evening all-drained from the gazillion ‘pits’ they have been pushed into under the caramel-coat termed as “All-round Development”. She finds it more of a bane on the contrary and hence prefers not to fall prey.
“Bhaiyya ek chai”, the usual afternoon line a tapri situated outside any office was familiar with, somehow evaporated amidst this lockdown, and with it, the Bhaiyya as well. Stepping out into the street from their respective offices in order to share that milky tea with a hint of ginger or cardamom was an Indian office ritual. Be it masala, adrak, tulsi, extra milk, green, sulaimani, sugarless for the health-conscious souls or the famous cutting chai - you name it, the Chai-wale bhaiyya had it. No matter where you work and what you do, the one thing common to 'work cultures' across Indian states is having a cup of tea with colleagues.
Jaba Da sat down in the nearest bench of the tea stall stationed exactly opposite to his workshop sipping a cup of tea before he would give finishing touches to a Durga idol. Pal Para, popularly known as ‘Kumartuli’ (potter’s locality), has been sustaining his livelihood for the past 15 years. Yet somehow this so-called ‘peak season’ brought in with it a significant segment of THROW than THRIVE.
Kabita, a 22-year-old woman, lives in a basti next to the posh residential complexes of Kolkata’s South City. She runs a family of five- a husband, who earns his livelihood from pulling rickshaws, an old mother-in-law suffering from arthritis, a widowed sister-in-law, and two children. After losing her job as a housekeeper in the nearby office premises, she decided to take up domestic work in two houses in order to sustain her family. It was at this time that COVID-19 kicked in.
As the Incumbent Government approaches towards experiencing what can precisely be termed as 'Economic Slowdown', here are the two deep cracks they should look out for and ensure healing at the earliest.
The 25th of July, this year, gave us all an incredulous gasp when we had to painfully witness the terribly unsettling picture of Derek Chauvin kneeling on the neck of George Floyd, the 46-year-old African-American for nearly eight minutes while the other three officers looked on.
November 14th, 1883, the day when not only revolutionaries but also the citizens and newspapers vehemently opposed a farewell party to Mr. D.F.Carmichael, member of the Madras Governor’s Executive Council still haunts my mind every time I turn back the pages.
