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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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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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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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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Dhaniya in Indian cuisine, cilantro to most North Americans, also referred to as Chinese parsley, coriander gets its name from the plant’s genus, coriandrum sativum.
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If you like a story about freeing abused dogs, samosas poisoned with mosquito coils, and greetings like, ‘Namaskar, goat fucker’ with barely intact polite tones, then this book is definitely for you.
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Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree was unexpected. It’s a tale that hits like a lost, slow-moving freight train. A rambling, chugging adventure in prose that diverts again and again before pulling you back to its core. It is a tale of Partition sprinkled throughout with magical realism.
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If you’re looking for an intelligent novel in which a fascinating subject has been made into a memorable story by way of excellent research, you probably can’t go with Amitav Ghosh. The Calutta Chromosome is an extremely suspenseful medical thriller about malaria research.
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This is a wonderfully strange book, and probably the most obvious reason for its strangeness is the confluence of genres it enacts. Ghosh’s book gives his readers both the findings of many years of research, and the story of his undertaking that research.
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A complex and frank story unfolds set in 1830s London, tracing a series of strange murders in which the victims are beheaded. Amir Ali from India becomes entangled in the happenings and explains his perspective of things.
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