Thursday, August 12 2004
Beyond the Horse and Carriage: Understanding Arranged Marriage
The arranged marriage is in fact far from a single, monolithic institution, but rather a range of ideas and practices that can mean many things to many different people.
Wednesday, July 14 2004
Sexuality on the Subcontinental Screen
From Bollywood's latest, raciest song and dance numbers to the newly released, controversial Girlfriend's, it's going to take a lot more than these types of frivolous female exhibitions -- two lesbians making out, the token 'loose' woman character slinking sinuously through a crude dance routine -- to signal the arrival of an honest treatment of sexuality to Indian cinema.
Wednesday, June 16 2004
You Are What You Wear?
Can one wear clothes from other places without comprising one's own cultural integrity?
Wednesday, April 28 2004
Whose World Cinema?
The language of 'world cinema' is highly reductive, often compressing all artistic decisions made in a film from another country into irreversible inferred statements about the singular essence of that entire country or culture itself.
Wednesday, February 11 2004
Wickets and Missiles
The cultural flexibility for which South Asian cricket stands... is what will ultimately turn away the dark forces of the war-mongering, chauvinist nationalists.
Thursday, December 18 2003
Beauty Queens and Fairness Creams
Their true significance in the context of modern Indian society lies in the fact that behind their chiseled, smiling faces lies a wave of an almost terrifyingly aggressive commercialism.
Wednesday, October 22 2003
Fantastic Trash, Modular Man, and the Postcolonial City
While the city of Chandigarh -- modular man -- marched visibly, unabashedly into scientific modernity, Nek Chand -- the trash man -- began secretly transforming his odd collection of junk into art.
Wednesday, September 24 2003
On Film Stars, Politicians, and Gods
Sometimes, when reality gets too unreal, you have to let unreality become real.
Wednesday, August 20 2003
1-800-Call-Center: India as the World’s Receptionist
Many Indians are now merely perceived as better equipped to serve Western companies.
Thursday, July 24 2003
Crossing Borders, Writing Back: The Work of Arundhati Roy and Mahasweta Devi
Novelists across generations and national borders have had feet planted simultaneously in the worlds of fiction and non-fiction, creative writing and journalism.
