In this Pride Month, filmmakers talk about their films, characters and drive 'It's ironic that people celebrate my films during Pride Month but they won’t support my new work' When it was released in 2005, Onir’s debut film My Brother. Nikhil, inspired by the life of Dominic D’Souza, reportedly the first-known HIV-positive person in India, broke new ground. Onir, whose anthology I Am (2010), bagged the National Award for Best Hindi Film, went on to make Bas Ek Pal (2006), Sorry Bhai! (2008), Shab (2017) and Kuchh Bheege Alfaaz (2018). One of the most outspoken voices in the industry, the 53-year-old’s memoir, I Am Onir and I am Gay (Penguin Random House India), to be released this month, co-written with his sister Irene Dhar Malik, gives an intimate view of his journey, capturing his failings while celebrating the impact of his work in normalising queer discourses. “Revisiting these experiences by writing about them helps understand the same journey better,” he says. READ MORE Pride Month: ‘Push boundaries, one step at a time’ When Badhaai Do director Harshavardhan Kulkarni and its two writers Akshat Ghildial and Suman Adhikary worked on the film’s script, they were aware of their conditioning. “We were careful about correcting and checking our heteronormative gaze,” says Kulkarni. With its four primary characters who are queer, Badhaai Do went on to become a significant conversation starter and an entertainer that received a warm reception. READ MORE Pride Month: 'Usually, caste discourse is not tolerated in queer spaces' Queer narratives have found a robust form of expression in short films. This explains why writer-director Nishant Roy Bombarde, 39, chose this medium for Daaravtha (2016) and Gair (2022). Layered and delicate, Daaravtha is about a young boy making his choice even as he discovers his sexuality. In Gair, caste and queer narratives intersect as two youngsters experience love. Daaravtha (The Threshold) scooped up the National Award for Best Debut Film and, recently, Gair has been winning acclaim during screenings after its premiere at this year's New York Indian Film Festival. READ MORE ALSO IN THIS WEEK'S SUNDAY EYE EDITION: ‘Go live on the Moon,’ says Mother Nature In a first and exclusive interview Down in Jungleland (DIJ) asks Mother Nature some hard-hitting, pointed questions regarding the state of the Earth’s environment. Excerpts: DIJ: First of all, thank you for agreeing to this interview. Ma’am, these days you seem to be in an exceptionally foul temper. There are hurricanes, cyclones, wildfires, floods, droughts, and viral infections happening with terrifying frequency around the world. Do you take any responsibility for these occurrences and wouldn’t you like to apologise to humankind for your disgraceful behaviour? READ MORE Each poem in The Penguin Book of Indian Poets is history recorded in a language of one’s own In a small-minded world that pulverises feelings, writing poetry is an act of grace. Poems offer coherence, provide solace, reinstate dignity, and suggest that beauty exists, if only in metaphor. To read The Penguin Book Of Indian Poets now, in a milieu benumbed, is to feel a new lexicon stirring the blood. It is to find, if not salvation, then at least a congregation of kindred spirits, with whom one might discover the rhythm of grief or the wingspan of a moment or the syllables of a city. This anthology, edited by Jeet Thayil, is a collection of 94 poets — 49 women and 45 men from India and the Indian diaspora — who observe and delineate in verse after verse, a ruptured age. READ MORE In Chamor, Sheba Jose looks at the world through a child's eyes On reaching the end of Sheba Jose’s novel Chamor, if one feels more than a twinge of disappointment, one could, perhaps, blame the subtitle. After all, if the promise on the cover — “A deadly mistake and its aftermath” — seems out of reach when one has gone through two-thirds of the book, then even when it is fulfilled in the final third, albeit in a hurried, let’s-get-this-over-with kind of way, the reader is bound to feel let down. READ MORE Monpas: Buddhists of the High Himalayas is a civil servant’s celebration of career and community Monpas: Buddhists of the High Himalayas reads like a 200-page love letter to a posting that left a permanent impression on the life of a devoted IAS officer. Shortly before his death in April 2020, Vinay Sheel Oberoi, former secretary, higher education, in the government, wrote this religio-cultural feast disguised as a travelogue-cum-account of a long administrative career in the Northeast. Monpas is a celebration of the culture, community and customs of the Monpa tribe he encountered in Arunachal Pradesh. READ MORE Remembering Panditji, who turned a cook into a chef and taught a human to respect those of all faith The outpouring of grief on the passing of Panditji, my family’s Brahmin cook, has been nothing short of extraordinary. He died peacefully on June 10 at the age of 91 in his village near Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh. He touched the lives of countless others and left all with delicious memories of rich indulgence and simple pleasures. He blessed our home with the watchful eyes of a caring elder and gave family and friends the taste of an era long past. READ MORE ‘Biome Diaries’ reflects on collaborative multi-disciplinary processes and stresses on dialogues around ecological approaches to architecture Over the last few years, architects have begun to reflect on their praxis and share insights on the nature of projects. These publications are essential in the context of a rapidly transforming social and economic context. The impact of the industrial revolution over the last two centuries has also begun to have an adverse influence on the environment, as cities experience natural calamities such as floods, heavy rains and pollution. It calls for a renewed ecological consciousness, among architects, designers and patrons to explore a more holistic approach to design and construction. READ MORE Kerala Film Awards 2022: How Aavasavyuham, Chavittu and Prapedda are expanding the scope of playing with the form Halfway into Krishand RK’s Aavasavyuham: The Arbit Documentation of An Amphibian Hunt, you’re still wondering if it’s an environmental documentary, a fiction feature, spy thriller or sci-fi. It employs elements of all, stylistically, for its multitiered storytelling. With vérité shot on 28 mm lens, for 90 per cent of its length. Here is a group of biologists looking for a mysterious frog species in mangroves, there is a man with supernatural abilities, calling upon frogs, fish, crabs, drifting from one set of people to another, evoking astonishment, attachment, greed or fear among the locals of Puthuvype. The hunt for the frog Mysticellus joy (loosely based on Mysticellus franki that was discovered in Wayanad in 2019) turns into one for the elusive — note Krishand’s wry humour — Joy (Rahul Rajagopal), the amphibian man (inspired from Creature from the Black Lagoon, 1954). The film’s title reads like a research manual and it’s structured like one too, in prologue, epilogue, chapters. READ MORE
