Sunday Long Reads: A peek into this year’s cultural soiree

Here are the interesting reads of the week!

A round-up of the cultural fix to look forward to this year (Source: Getty Images/Thinkstock)

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People, festivals, award ceremonies and trends — a round-up of the cultural fix to look forward to this year

Music to the ears: It was about 50 years ago that a meeting between English guitarist John Mclaughlin and tabla maestro Ustad Zakir Hussain at the behest of a Greenwich shop owner created Shakti – a world music band at a time when there were none. With violinist L Shankar and ghatam expert Vikku Vinayakram as its other members, the group merged Indian music with jazz, creating a unique sound. While the band’s music received a great welcome from the audience, jazz purists had their reservations. But Shakti withstood those early criticism to soon find its groove to influence generations of musicians worldwide. This month, Shakti, with new members Shankar Mahadevan, Ganesh Rajagopalan and V Selvaganesh will embark upon their 50th anniversary world tour to celebrate their music.

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Are we at the point of no return?

Let’s drop the word ‘ethnic’ as a prefix to our indigenous food, dance, clothing and craft (Credit: Suvir Saran)

In this first month of 2023, I find myself wondering what fads, trends, diets, colours, destinations and tales multi-trillion-dollar industries will spin, promote, and etch into our collective psyches this year. Will we be chasing a high-protein diet? Will we be flocking to Mauritius and its withering beaches? Will cerulean be the colour we will all wear? Will right-wing fascists and left-wing woke cancelists get more traction to tear our fraternity apart? Will becoming vegan and eating meatless meat and meat manufactured in petri dishes be our fad of choice? I’m sure I haven’t even scratched the surface of the mountain of madness and self-enriching hyperbole that is used to turn people into obedient sheeple, who follow and/or buy anything and everything that profit-hungry corporations and soulless executives market and sell to humans hungry for a quick road to heaven.

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Five of India’s top publishers deliberate on what lies ahead in 2023

Here’s what publishers say (Source: Getty Images/Thinkstock)

Chiki Sarkar

Typically in a year the same sort of books do well: the high profile non-fiction book, especially with revelations, the book that’s won an international prize, the next book by a well-known writer. The breakout trend this last year has been the books of social-media stars — whether it’s Ankur Warikoo, Ashneer Grover or Raj Shamani. This will continue. Watch out for more such books!

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Nafees Fazal’s Breaking Barriers documents the upswings and downturns of being a politician in India

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Breaking Barriers: The Story of a Liberal Muslim Woman’s Passage in Indian Politics
Nafees Fazal with Sandhya Mendonca
Konark Publishers
232 pages
Rs 750 (Amazon,in)

The one word that keeps coming up in any description of Nafees Fazal, the colourful Karnataka politician – a ‘liberal Muslim woman’, as in her sub-title – is “feisty”. She certainly lives up to this description in this entertaining voyage through her life.

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Two very different books try to arrive at an understanding of the phenomenon that was Swami Vivekananda

Swami Vivekananda (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Swami Vivekananda has become, to borrow Auden’s phrase, a climate of opinion. It seems almost impossible to grasp the real depth of his achievement. He has been ill served by crude political appropriations by the Right and ignorant polemics by the Left. But even more politically detached readings of Vivekananda are marred by breathtaking superficiality.

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