Mekong Review

Category: India

Star power

Mathieu Berbiguier

Dorothy Wai Sim Lau undertakes a nuanced interrogation of how fame, altruism and regional identity intersect in Asia’s transnational mediascape.

Too much for the lens

Sabahat Ali Wani

Through their exposure in front of the camera—as well as their work behind it—the faces and bodies of Kashmiri women not only become visible but also assert themselves on their own terms.

A changing India

Salil Tripathi

India goes to the polls mid-April in a huge democratic exercise that will take over a month. But the nature of Indian society and democracy has changed quite fundamentally in the past decade.

You are not alone

Mili Semlani

Although democracy and media freedoms are declining in India, filmmaker Vinay Shukla seeks to inspire people to show up courageously to create a better society for everyone.

Poetry and music

Jhilam Chattaraj

An interview with Sudeep Sen, a poet who has edited influential anthologies and offered poems to a polarised world in times of crises.

Fact in fiction

Radhika Oberoi

Arundhati Roy’s fiction and non-fiction offer a worldview bristling with the fervour of a pamphleteer, the intuitiveness of old lovers, the curiosity of a child.

Dyeing art

Adil Hussain and Owais Gul

The ancient practice of dyeing yarn in Kashmir used to be the source of livelihood for hundreds of families, but modern techniques and tools have slowly pushed the tradespeople into the margins.

Mothers and daughters

Gayathrii Nathan

In eleven short stories, Prasanthi Ram probes the lives and relationships of nine women, exploring the narratives of love (or hate) that we develop within ourselves, alongside the ones shared with our families.  

Colonisation and modernisation

Muhammad Nadeem

Hafsa Kanjwal contends that Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed’s state-building practices helped strengthen India’s hold over Kashmir while also enabling modernisation, which paradoxically reinforced a sense of alienation rather than reconciliation.

Multitudes

Aditya Narayan Sharma

Saadat Hasan Manto knew that it was not for him to analyse the multitudes people contain, and that often spill out from us without warning.

Factory voices

Anand P. Krishnan

Japanese Management, Indian Resistance is an important work in understanding the larger ecosystem of foreign capital, more specifically that from East Asia, in India’s political-economic-social terrain.

Inshallah

Abhishek Mehrotra

Hindu-Muslim relations are worsening across India. There have been no rumblings of communal strife in Kadayanallur yet, but news from elsewhere creates ripples of anxiety and worry.

Operation Corporate

Salil Tripathi

What Philip J. Stern offers is a reflection on the nature of power—how organisations created to share risks and raise capital for economic activities ended up becoming a dominant force.

Bombays of the mind

Radhika Oberoi

It is impossible to mention Mumbai without alluding to its former name, Bombay. Radhika Oberoi reflects on reading Salman Rushdie’s writing about the city.

Solipsism

Pratinav Anil

It is the whiggish conceit of a certain kind of cosmopolitan that cultural exchange breeds understanding. But it can just as well occasion contempt. The story Nile Green tells in How Asia Found Herself: A Story of Intercultural Understanding is a riot of intercultural misunderstanding and misperception.