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: India

Panther Paw

In my family, caste was mostly a far away concept. As an adult, I am trying to constantly interrogate my positionality within my Indian identity and that includes acknowledging the privileged aspects.

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Widening the Gothic World in Kohraa (1964) 

What’s great about cinema though – lest you thought I wasn’t going to mention books versus movies – is that it has helped to diversify this aesthetic of storytelling. So I was especially thrilled when I first came across Biren Nag’s Kohraa, (‘The Fog’) a film from 1964 which is an adaptation of Rebecca the novel by Daphne du Maurier and film by Alfred Hitchcock.

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Meera Syal
Anita and Me

In Meera Syal’s semi-autobiographical novel, Meena Kumar is the only Indian girl in the former British mining village of Tollington. While her parents wait in vain for their daughter’s sudden and definitive metamorphosis into the model Indian girl, all Meena wants is to be a Tollington wench.

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Culture Wrappings: Sanskar aur Parampara (Culture and Tradition)

I would argue that we were raised to see the best parts of our culture and that some of it was made visible via Bollywood. However, this was a world we visited rather than took at face value as the life we should be expected to lead. It is that which has allowed me to hold these films dear whilst still being critical.

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Sunday Buttered Toast 

Last night around ten o’clock, Jess drank a mug of Horlicks with a Hershey’s Kiss dropped inside, scavenged from an expired bag she found in a cabinet.  It was white and fossilized by now, but with some vigorous stirring, she managed to melt it into a blob which she ate at the end with a vanilla cream wafer biscuit.

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Ismat Chughtai
Lifting the Veil

Lifting the Veil is a title which carries implications spanning across western and eastern traditions. Consider the image of the veiled bride, a female figure condemned to lifelong possession. The veil is lifted to reveal the bride, for the pleasure of the male gaze. But in this collection of short stories, Ismat Chughtai turns that trope on its head.

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The Emotional Onion

It’s an ingredient which crosses – cultural, political, geographical – boundaries and yet it does not show a lesser degree of respect wherever it goes.

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