The philosophy of nonsense. ‘Sangita, I fuck you.’ ‘Your mother’s cunt’. ‘Book a cock.’ The Delhi Walla saw this calligraphy in Connaught Place, Delhi’s colonial-era commercial district. They are depicted in the dusty glass panelled sky roofs of Palika Bazaar parking. The glass pyramids jut out into...
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Signs of our times. News flash on a website: 2G:BJP demands probe against PM, PC. The meaning of the cuss word Chutium Sulphate, explained in an online dictionary: “Complete moron, as in, That chutium sulphate can’t drive two feet without blowing his horn.” Slutwalk’s Indianised avatar that...
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Hips and hops. Twisting the hip. Spinning on the floor. Standing on the head. Freezing into a pose. Legs leaping up. Suddenly, the entire body falling flat with a thud. “Yo, yo.” One late monsoon evening The Delhi Walla saw a gang of boys who were B-boying...
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The artist as ideologue. Artist Chittaprosad Bhattacharya (1915-78), whose retrospective opened in Delhi on July 11th 2011 was most memorably the illustrator of the Bengal Famine of 1943 in which more than three million people died. But even if he had not wandered with his sketchbook in...
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An exhibition. Flags, according to a Delhi-based novelist, are bits of coloured cloth that governments use to first shrink-wrap people’s brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead. In an exhibition at the American Center (2 to 30 July, 2011), flags are bits of coloured plastic that corporations...
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A musical evening with the essayist. While launching Broken Republic – Three Essays at the India Habitat Center in May 2011, Arundhati Roy read the book’s introduction that touches upon the lives of Delhi’s street children. The recital was accompanied by live music from the band The Ska Vengers....
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On Maqbool Fida Husain’s death. On June 9, 2011, a few hours after the death of painter Maqbool Fida Husain in London, The Delhi Walla sat down with Syed Haider Raza at his first floor studio near Aurobindo Market, south Delhi. Both painters were early members of...
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The struggle for the soul of qawwali. Dama dam mast qalandar. Qawwali, Islam’s sacred Sufi music offered in the shrines of the Indian subcontinent, is facing a moment of unease. It is best reflected in the gentle discord between the two leading qawwal families in Delhi’s Hazrat...
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The making of the devil. He will die. Again. On the evening of October 17, 2010, the effigy of Raavan, the 10-headed demon king of Lanka, will burn down with much cheer and firecrackers in the neighbourhood parks of Delhi. Raavan burning is the final act of...
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The annual multi-starrer Hindu blockbuster. Totally Shakespearean. It has love, jealousy, greed, lies, betrayal, revenge, war, death and redemption. Ramlila, the 10-day play on the exploits of Bhagwan Ram, which takes place every fall during the Dusshera festival, is a mix of King Lear (exile), Macbeth (jealousy),...
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