What’s On I The idea of ‘place’ is both an interior landscape and an external environment’

“The book was edited this summer. I also went back to other materials, my diaries, journals, some published or unpublished pieces, photographs, letters and mementoes from different places. Yes, I did have to retrace my steps, in a sense. What you will read is updated, so to speak,” she says. Someone who has taught at the University of Massachusetts and Columbia University and is currently a visiting professor at Ashoka University is clear that her academic life enriches her literary endeavours, and vice versa. As the conversation veers towards the tendency of putting writing into silos and strict genres, she stresses that several pieces in the collection are actually short stories, though scarcely fictional. In one essay, she is looking at Bombay through the figure of Ambedkar; in another, she is looking at Delhi through the figure of Amir Khusro.

Dr Pramod Kumar, Chairperson of IDC, says that the idea to invite authors and academics like Vajpeyi is a way to encourage conversations that go beyond a particular work and subject.

Once upon a line
“Why do, or rather why should people visit a gallery?” ponders acclaimed visual artist Avijit Dutta. “It’s not solely for the purpose of buying or collecting art. I feel it’s with the intent of reflection, of investing wholly and mindfully in a work of art, in a line of thought, in an image that evokes a variety of emotions,” says Dutta, whose work, along with other legendary names, will make their debut in the tricity at a group show curated and conceptualized by him. Titled Blueprint, the exhibit at Mehak Bhan’s 105arts gallery in Sector 11 will showcase 44 works of art from acclaimed artists, along with those from young and promising ones. The exhibition is set to mark five years of the 105arts gallery and will be on from December 6 to January 5, 2026, 12 to 6 pm.

In town for the show, an enthusiastic Dutta considers galleries to be stepping stones for an artist, and Chandigarh a beautifully, thoughtfully designed, perfect for an exhibition titled ‘Blueprint’. “This is the city that established the blueprint of a new, free India, and opened doors to a new world. One line changed it all, and it does the same for an artist, and this is how I imagined, conceptualised and curated the show… around artists and their first line of thought from where the painting began,” observes Dutta.

In between painting the walls of the gallery in his style and preparing it for the show, he also interacted with art students and hinted at a student’s biennale here in the Tricity.