15 Apr, 2026

 Can erosion of certain kind actually save and shelter lives?

 Rock Shelters are cave like formations moulded over long periods and across the yugs. The large caves, that often contain labyrinths and niches within itself, are large cavities (de-)formed through natural erosion due to harsh weathering. They are deep, dark and inspire reverence. No wonder much of the knowledge persuasion and exchanges in the first millennium took place in the seclusion of the caves. Caves were places of deliberation and many of them were also made or modified by humans. In comparison the rock shelters are shallow and thus open to the sunlight, often hang from a cliff. Formation of the rock shelters is attributed mainly to a stronger rock layer shrouding over a less durable rock layer and thus creating a massive ledge. These aggressive operation of the nature created shelters from natural elements for living beings in pre-historic era. Unlike the caves, the rock shelters were not conducive to long term institutional activities such as monastery and trade route stations. They could only provide temporary and rudimentary sanctuary.  

 Internet is splashed with information about the rock shelters of Bhimbetka - 70km from the Tropic of Cancer near Bhopal. But its magnificence has another aspect than the indents on the rocks. Through erosion / evolution some rocks take shape of animals. And the trees, struggling for survival in the arid and rocky surface, end up resembling the rocks. While the pre-historic rock paintings depict the kind of animals that look mythical to us. A play of impersonations and trans-existence sprawl around the south-end of Vindhya range, known as a series of broken hills.

10 February, 2026

Flying Tigers will premiere at Berlinale - Berlin International Film Festival on 16 February 2026.

More details on the Berlinale website

25 Oct 2025

Istanbul! Half way to Asia and half way to Europe. Hence it feels half way familiar to everyone. But this time around I could feel even more at home as the Supremo of the country accompanied one right from the airport to the local fish joints. If ‘this’ Supremo was not attired very differently from ‘that’ Supremo at home there could have been serious confusions. The posture, the gesture, the steel eyes as well as the size and placing of the flex banners are so similar that you almost feel like –‘yeh kya jagah hai doston…!’ (which land is this!)

Till I met the blazing members of MARUF – Marmara Urban Forum, the research wing of MMU - federation of unions of 190 municipalities in the Marmara region. Maruf bi-annually organises an international conference on various aspects of urban living and town planning. This year the theme was On the Shore of All Possibilities and one of the sub-themes was Urban Cinema curated by illustrious film scholar and cinema activist Övgü Gökçe from Kurdish town Diyarbakir. This constellation gave me a chance to visit Istanbul and hold the fort for Single Screen Cinemas. But with 500 speakers from 50 countries and 8000 local participants in a venue that was littered with the towering images of the Supremo, initially, it was more unsettling than promising. Though the overwhelmingly large presence of young students was quite noticeable. There was no external signs that could betray the political anxieties that were simmering.

Then it surfaced. And how.

It took some time to figure out that the programme was actually organised by the people and partner organisations who are opposed to the current regime. Around the time of the conference Ekrem Imamoğlu, the elected mayor of Istanbul and a key person in the structure of MARUF, was in prison with 142 criminal charges. He is the leader of Republican People’s Party (CHP) and considered a major challenge for Edgowan in the forthcoming presidential election in 2028. CHP has gained significant success in 2024 municipal election when they won Mayoral seats representing 62% of Turkey’s population. Many of those Mayors are now in jail. Oh so familiar a pattern!

But the familiarity, unfortunately, ends there. The fact that an outfit that is dominated by the party in opposition could still mobilise adequate energy and resources to organise a socio-academic international conference at such large scale found me astounded. The old strategy of developing resistance by mobilising through fora of research institutions, study classes, planning studios, international conferences is so wonderfully implemented.

When did we last saw such robust resistance in terms of urban mobilisation? Maybe World Social Forum 2004 in Mumbai was one such last instance.

10 July 2025

According to Khuswant Singh it was around 1987 when every Sunday morning the whole of India got united and uniformed with the auspicious signature tune of the TV serial Ramayan.

Three friends / workmates – a Hindu, a Muslim and a Sardar – went for a serious drinking session. After a couple of drinks, the Hindu and the Muslim got entangled into a cultural debate. What was the religious affinity of Hanuman? The Muslim had an irrefutable argument – like the Sulemans, Usmans and Armans he too was a Musselman. The Hindu could not believe that his long-time friend could come up with such blasphemy. Yet he could not find any linguistic resource to counter it. Do not come to my house to take shelter when the riots happen next time – this is the best he could come up with. Finally, the two decided to make Sardarji the mediator, especially since he has no stake in this identity conflict. Sardarji, on the other hand, was quite amused by the childish squabbles of his friends. Obviously he was a Sardar – he concludes while finishing his fifth glass. How was that –the warring Hindu and Muslim asked in unison. ‘Oh c’mon! Kiski biwi kiska Lanka woh apne poonchh pe aag laga ke ghum raha hai! Sardar hi toh hoga.’ (Someone’s wife, someone else’s Lanka but he is jumping around with his tail in blaze! Definitely he was a Sardar.)

 Khuswant would know as he was one of the elites of Kasauli, the former colonial cantonment town in Himachal and also a happy grazing field of Langurs. There is no duality in Langur’s territorial membership or food preference. They are decidedly Indian and strictly vegetarian. Apparently in English they are called Leaf Monkey. The food habit must have evolved even before Valmiki has written down Ramayan. A quick google search threw a gem – some 89 sub-species of Monkey are omnivorous. They eat everything that come their way – leaves, fruits, insects, fishes, reptiles… Tohba Tohba! What pedestrian life style! Our Langur is different, distinguished.

The Langur with handsome black face and magnificent long tail continues to inspire spinning tales. One day in Kasauli I was carrying home a packet of jalebi. All of a sudden a small gang of noble-looking Langurs circled around me and kept coming closer. Some local people sensed danger and advised me to throw away the food packet. Our housekeeper was amused with the speed and elegance the Langurs disappeared with the fragmented pieces of jalebis. ‘You should be careful. They are particularly threatening to dogs and women’. In her musical Pahadi style she said – ‘kutto ko aur jananion ko toh bilkul nahi mante hai Ji!’

10 Sept 2024

 Why should one must visit the Forbidden City in Beijing – to see Palace Museum, the national museum complex? Or to see the architecture of UNESCO heritage site? Or because it was tantalizingly called forbidden? The Chinese word for it is Zǐjìnchéng(紫禁城)  - (very roughly translated) Zi is purple signifying the North Star that was believed to be the auspicious abode for the emperor. Jin is for non-accessibility and cheng for castle / fort. Every capital city in the world and occasionally even some minor cities boast about at least one such complex, if not more. In their life time they were variously called – walled city, fort compound, Castle ground, equivalent to what in the era of housing societies is - gated complex or ‘trespassers will be persecuted’. When it comes to China the translation elevates it to Forbidden City. Fantastic linguistic spin to address the western conglomerates’ and their colonies’ fear of China. Also fitted well the communist contempt for monarchy. So Forbidden City it is, not a simple a fort or a palace complex.

The play of colour in Chinese public life is intriguing. Yellow is considered the imperial colour and so the architecture and attires in palace life had excess of that colour. The library walls adorn black tiles as that was associated with water – hence signifying fire prevention. And as you finally trek out of the massive palace complex into the city centre your eyes will be greeted with unusually coloured cars and two-wheelers. The colours that Chinese riders put on the metals and plastics of their vehicles are unimaginable for rest of the world.

15 December, 2023

Do we (my generation of people in India) remember the name Yugoslavia? Yes, more than vividly. A large and influential country in the socialist block. A major player in the non-alignment movement. There were so many posters of Tito-Nasser-Nehru. Then in the ‘90s the romance of Yugoslavia collapsed. Came in the term Balkanisation. In smart conversation in the safe spaces, we may have often said – India should be Balkanised. I have definitely said it, multiple times. It was the sheer frustration against the cow belt hegemony. In the non-safe place outside we were nick named as the tukde tukde gang. In the last two decades as the propagandists of Akhand Bharat (Undivided India) consolidated themselves into a violent mode called Silent Majority, some of us got more convinced that a single nationalism for a land and people of this size and variety is not only ridiculous also somewhat vulgar. Hence when a chance came to visit Bosnia and Harzegovina I jumped into it with lot of enthusiasm.

City of Sarjevo - capital of Bosnia and Harzegovina, a thirty years old country of three million people. The modest size capital city holds layers of architecture from Ottoman urban design, Astro-Hungarian monuments, Yugoslavian social housings and the post-independence investments. Currently one of the tallest buildings at the city centre belongs to German Sparkasse bank. And any online research for tourist attraction results in a series of war museum.  

The terminology used by the people of Sarajevo are distinct.

Top Angle Shot – the Serbian army stationed themselves on the mountains that surround the city and shot into the valley, 1992-1996. The longest military siege of a city in history.

Sniper Alley – the artery roads and the boulevards. During the siege the Serbian army posted plain dressed shooters on apartment buildings that lined those roads. People traversing across the city from residential old city to the industrial part were targeted.

Bullet crafts – the streets are dotted with war memorabilia – most affordable of them are objects made of used bullet cases. Memories of the war with Serbia / Yugoslavia do brisk business with the foreign tourists who are more than curious about the fall of Yugoslavia.

30 June 2023

A land of Reloading – a crisp description of the twin town, Terespol and Malaszewicze in Poland, by my maverick cab driver.

The petit woman drove a large SUV taxi through the sleepy towns of five churches, one school, 4000 people and some 20 loading stations with thousands of cargo wagons in each. It was not eerie. Just too fantastical. The roads are impeccable, the railway lines are many and of different gauges – European 1435mm, Russian 1524mm, Narrow 1067mm for internal transfer and so on. This is the border of Poland and Belarus (formerly Russia); and also the coveted junction of the land transport between Asia and Europe. A facility that ran uninterrupted through world wars, cold war, war of globalisation and even the current war on Ukraine. After all the Capital moves along this line. War is too minor to disrupt that movement.

There was a 7km long queue of private cars, with electronic gadgets and nylon carry bags on the roof, patiently waiting at the custom gate to enter Asia. There were wagon trains of the size of 8 football fields lying idle at the station car shed. An important site is called MRI centre – a tunnel where the entire passing train is scanned. Neck of the cranes, that move metal containers from the incoming wagon trains in Russian gauge track to the outgoing European gauge track, crisscross the skyline. Their average size is 130 meter long and 70 meter tall.

Metal, metal and more metal – to contain, protect and transport consumers goods between continents. Human bodies are to be sighted only around the churches and the rickety market halls.

There are a couple of modest motels. We chose the one that overlooks the newest reloading station (owned by a Czech-German corporation) – Europort. But behind that window to the global network lied yet another surprise. The rooms were ornated and glaring – grotesque roses on the wall, velvet bedspreads and transparent lacy curtains – too human, too carnal, to incongruous to the feel of the wagon land. Phew!

We should have known that such a gargantuan system is likely to be controlled by something satellite. Lack of people is not indicative of access. In fact it is likely to be other way around. The towns are strewn with hidden cameras. After a few hours of roaming around and taking pictures the uniformed guys arrived, almost from nowhere. My colleague, a young German girl, lost her nerve and chewed on the memory card to destroy evidence. For me, being an Indian and working in the field of documentary filmmaking, brush with inflated egos of uniformed guys is sort of routine. I instinctively know when to be assertive, when to plead innocence and even when to play the gender card. But my white German companion, grown up in the safety of mainstream privileges, found it extremely scary. Next day she quitted the job – stating that she felt unsafe. Is the idea of safety relational? Or notional?

6 May, 2023

Spent a week in Abu Dhabi and Sharjah. My first substantial time in the Emirates. Was there in company of friends, mostly from India. Generally, in foreign countries one counts on certain privacy while using the language of one’s own, Hindi, in this case. But not here. The air hostess, the car driver, the university receptionist, the hotel manager, the pistachio seller, the guide in the art biennial, the bank manager… are of South Asian origin. Hardly any of the South Asians has picked up Arabic. Between scanty English in formal encounters and Hindi / Urdu / Malayalam in informal spaces their lives are sorted, in fact more than what it could be in India. In Mumbai in a public transport there will be minimum five languages running; in Delhi maybe three; in Kolkata one – okay one and a half; in Chennai at least two and so on. Monolingual cities unnerve me, I feel suffocated by the absence of language obscurity.

White Kandura clad Emirati men and women with black Abaya can be spotted more easily on the streets of Mumbai’s Colaba than in the public places of UAE. Wondering whether it is so because of the demographic number or because they are too elite to hang around in public. They will begin to arrive in Mumbai in June-July to watch rain on the sea. Sea facing rooms in the hotels are being refurbished.

Monsoon tourism competes with desert tourism.     

Between the vast expanse of desert, sharp (extremely sharp actually) horizontal cityscape and the sea that is really blue eyes are always stressed. There is always an anticipation to experience a mirage at the bend of the next corner. While traveling from Sharjah to Abu Dhabi we stopped at Dubai for dinner. It was a simple roadside joint. Kebabs on skewer were being served hung on a replica of Burj Khalifa. We almost expected Shahrukh Khan to greet us along with the kebabs.

 20 Feb, 2023

Was on a rushed trip through the borders of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. Margherita is an unassuming town with layers of histories living in strange autonomy. Nations and nationalities are intricately entangled in coal, tea, forest and infrastructure. Are all the rich soils destined to be a sad land? 

Phalap was a bush tree that could be sporadically found in the jungle at the foothill of Himalayan Patkai range. It was named as Phalap (wonder leaf) by the Singpho tribe when they realised that brewing the leaves have medicinal effect. The minuscule size tribe began to tend to Phalap trees in the mid-18th century. They would pluck the leaves, store them in bamboo rolls and hung the rolls over the chulha. Throughout the year the leaves would get roasted inside the bamboo rolls and turn into smoked dry leaves to brew and drink. This, of course, only till the time the Brits could smell gold in the brewed liquid. 1823. Tricking the Singpho king to disclose the trade secret was easier than Adani acquiring loan from SBI. Rest was only about cloning and industrialising the herb.

My maternal grandfather was a babu in one of the oldest tea gardens in Lakhimpur. He migrated from the coastal Bikrampur to the hills. Bedtime stories in my family were often around the mythical tea garden where lived three kinds of people – Assamese coolies who were simple and raw, Bengali babus who were obedient and mannered, and Saheb managers who were brave and handsome.

One Mr. T. H. Ho was on the next seat in the flight back to Mumbai – an elegant restauranter. His proficiency and smooth shifts between Assamese, Bengali, Hindi and English made me almost tongue tied. Fortunately, he turned out to be a man with a special talent to guess what you are dying to know. He talked through the two and a half hours of flying time. His great grandfather, a skilled carpenter, was deported from Calcutta to work in the tea plantation in Assam with the belief that all ethnic-Chinese people know how to harvest tea.

In the flight we drank only diet Coke! 

17 Oct,2022

My love for trains and ghosts took me to Chamberi – a closed underground station in Madrid. It may not have been a wise decision that in the famed city of museums, monuments, food and street culture (not mentioning sports as that is not my calling) I ended up spending an entire afternoon in an abandoned train station.

 Chamberi was part of the eight stations of the first metro line in Madrid – inaugurated in 1912. The architect was given a brief to make it exciting for the reluctant citizens to opt for train commuting. That may answer for the excessive use of white tiles and cobalt blue ceramic pieces and a luxuriously spaced out (by European standard) station building. It was shut down in 1960s – not for any noble cause, such as, ghost scare, accident, political condition, crime reputation etc. – but simply because its platforms were too short for new trains with more cars. But you can still watch the trains of busy Line 1 passing by the immaculately maintained dead station.

Ghoststations are distinct – it is not enough to be abandoned but it must be maintained as a memory. In India, capital cities do not have the luxury to accommodate a ghost station. They immediately go for reusing. The distinction goes to Dhanushkodi Station at Pamban island – 40km from mainland India and 24km from Sri Lanka. The Boat Mail used to carry passengers by train from Madras to Dhanuskodi, then ferried them across the sea to Thaliamannar in Ceylone and thereafter to Colombo by train till 1964 when one night the running train along with the town of Dhanuskodi got washed away by a cyclone. The ruins of the railway station and the town at the sea shore make for a ghostly spectacle. Yet these days they are struggling for footfalls of the tourists who are increasingly preferring to visit the ruins of Ram Setu in the vicinity– the bridge built by God Ram around 5th century BC to invade Sri Lanka to rescue his abducted wife. Apparently, after accomplishing his mission, Ram broke the setu with the tip of his bow / dhanus. He did so to prevent further invasion of Sri Lanka by Bharatvarsh. The name Dhanuskodi is believed to have come from dhanus(bow) and kodi (broken).

18 July, 2022

Have come to Berlin, the city I love and ceaselessly fight with. The midsummer nights have begun to shrink. And the enigmatic summer is being, sort of, unpredictable.

There is archive fever all around - lots of projects: celebratory, critical, nostalgic, speculative, artistic and also manipulative. Right to memory has become sharply contested. Gone are the days of grandma’s tales.

But documenta15 is determined to make a case for indigenous as authentic voices from the South. A white German art critic commented over a cup of coffee - It is so refreshing. I am bored with Western modern art. So it is time to dance to kill someone’s boredom. Decolonial noises make for a nice therapy for the tired and the bored subjects of modernity!

A new word has entered the social vocabulary - Repatriation! Stolen artefacts from colonial museums are being returned to their country of origin? Country of Origin? Has it stood still in the same space and same time since the robbery took place? Aha the magic of the origin! So decolonisation has begun! Europeans repent for the last two centuries. Everyone needs to earn a good night sleep after some moral exercises.

And some of us learn the art of articulating the anger of the POCs (person of colour).

Yet most of my time slips away following the not-so-exciting news from India turning pre-modern.