Sunday Long Reads: New generation of parents turn to coaches, Tota Roy Chowdhary on Rocky Aur Rani, book reviews, and more

READ MORE

Out of our heads and into our lives

Through numerous conversations on overthinking, three themes have stood out (Photo credit: Mimi Chakrabarti)

“We are living too much in our heads and not really living our lives!” This remark by a young person has stayed with me as I deeply resonated with her words. Human suffering has stemmed so much from how we internalise the pressures and measures of our society and the vicious loop of overthinking. The pandemic has obviously cranked it a notch higher with the uncertainty of the 2020s, the spiralling death toll of 2021s, then a slow attempt at limping back in the 2022s and the coming to terms with our loss that still continues in the 2023s. Though many of us were not at the receiving end of its brutal impact, we carry the memories and images of the exodus of the migrant workers, the funeral pyres lining the roads, the relentless search for hospital beds and sleepless nights of the dreaded, “Who next?”

READ MORE

‘We have not fully understood the Modi phenomenon which is a response to an India changing’

Photo caption: Neerja Chowdhury (Photo credit: Renuka Puri)

The tantalising debate that is going on even today is why did Indira go for elections in 1977. What fascinated me even more is that 33 months after she was routed, a hated figure at that time, she bounced back with 353 seats. How did she do that? I found that Sanjay Gandhi was her main comrade-in-arms. The man who pushed her into declaring the Emergency and was responsible for her rout, became the person responsible for her comeback. She won over Raj Narain, who was this demolition squad against her — responsible for her disqualification in 1975, then defeated her in 1977 — and became her main tool for the fall of the Janata government. She neutralised Jayaprakash Narayan, who led the Bihar movement, and sidelined Jagjivan Ram. He was the only one who could prevent her from coming back to power. It’s also fascinating how she decided to Hindu-ise her politics because she had lost the support of the Muslims during the Emergency, because of the policy of forced sterilisations.

READ MORE

‘Indira Gandhi, who had studied in Santiniketan, respected art and artists’: Shanti Dave, artist

Renowned artist Shanti Dave photographed at his home in New Delhi (Express Photo by Tashi Tobgyal)

One of India’s earliest abstractionists and pioneer of calligraphic modernism in India, Shanti Dave is known for his persistent exploration of the alphabet. Winner of Lalit Kala Akademi’s prestigious National Award for three consecutive years in the ’50s, he also completed several commissions for Air India offices across the globe. Delhi’s DAG is now celebrating over six decades of his artistic journey through an exhibition titled “Shanti Dave: Neither Earth, Nor Sky” curated by Jesal Thacker.

READ MORE

How do stray dogs turn into feral packs?

What is dicey and dangerous is when dogs form packs (like we form lynch mobs), harking back to their wolf days. This seems to be happening more frequently, both in urban and rural areas. (Credit: Ranjit Lal)

In our early school days, while learning about domestic animals, we were made to chant “Kutta wafadar janwar hain! (The dog is a faithful animal)” And indeed they are: This year has seen the 100th birth anniversary of Japan’s famous Akita, Hachiko, who waited every evening for his dead owner at a railway station for over nine years. He became a symbol of fidelity and faithfulness, and a bronze statue was erected in his memory.

READ MORE

Romila Thapar: ‘Majoritarianism can easily become – and often does — an authoritative anti-democratic system…’

At the level of school teaching, knowledge in many subjects is being selectively deleted from teaching for ideological reasons, said Romila Thapar (Courtesy: Aleph Book Company)

Romila Thapar’s latest book, The Future in the Past (Aleph Book Company, Rs 999), is a collection of essays, new and old, on themes that the historian has engaged with during her long career — the myths around the coming of the Aryans, the centrality of dissent in democracies, the importance of public intellectuals and the insidious attempts by majoritarian governments to control narratives around ‘culture’. These are views that have also put the 91-year-old at the receiving end of criticism and Right-wing vitriol. In this interview, Thapar speaks of the narrow idea of nationalism that can be used to silence dissent, the recent rationalisation of NCERT textbooks and the pushback against Nehruvian India.

READ MORE

Tota Roy Chowdhary on Rocky Aur Rani: ‘Had to do this for all artistes who are catcalled for not conforming to traditional concepts of masculinity’

Actor Tota Roy Choudhury plays the role of Alia Bhatt’s father in Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani.

You may know him as Alia Bhatt’s sensitive, in-touch-with-his-feminine-side, kathak dancer father in Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahani, but Tota Roy Chowdhury cannot help but chuckle at the irony of fate. The actor was denied romantic leads in the early years of his career in the Bengali film industry because he was considered “too macho”. “Because I was always athletic, I did not fit into the image of the chocolate-boy hero of Bengali cinema of that time. That’s why I was always cast as the antagonist or the second lead,” says Tota Roy Chowdhury, 47, whose phone hasn’t stopped ringing since the film released on July 28.

READ MORE