Darshita R Jain

Literati gather to discuss man’s search for truth, with Rajdeep Sardesai and Devdutt Pattanaik, on the third day of GLF 2018.
Take it from someone who calls herself a poet: there is nothing as beautiful as the sight of a poet reading out his work and the sound of people simultaneously saying “AHA”!
It seemed to me that the third day of the Gujarat Literature festival saw every person who visited not wanting it to end. It was a full house at all three venues of the Festival; be it where ghazal...

LITERATURE OF RESISTANCE, RELATIVE TRUTHS AND MORE : DAY 2 OF GLF WAS AN ARENA OPEN FOR REFRESHINGLY UNCENSORED DEBATES AND DISCUSSIONS!
Themed around the all too important questions surrounding the freedom of expression as artists and the portrayal of women in the Indian cinema the second day of the Gujarat Literature Festival saw one of the most riveting panel discussions, so enriching were they, that even after the stipulated time, the audience refused to move.
R Prasanna of Shubh Mangal S...

5 million people were out protesting on the streets, raising their voices against oppression. Ideally, these words would seem to be an introduction to the historical marches that have happened in our past, but they are not. These are not words recalling a memory from the past. These are words describing the Women’s March on Washington, 2017.
1963 was the last time that such a large group of people had ever marched for their rights in Washington – for jobs and freedom – back when Martin Luther...

Questioning everything we’ve learnt from Indian cinema, ‘Item’ at Abhivyakti Festival takes a hard look at the role we play in adopting aspects of our toxic ‘pop culture’ into society.
It all began as Amitabh Bachchan uttered his classic monologue in Deewar, “Aaj khush toh bahut hoge tum”. As Bachchan goes on to list the virtues of his ever-sacrificing mother, in one fell sweep, the ‘adarsh naari’ is established in the masculine eye for posterity, without us even realising what’s happened. Fu...

Last night, the city of Ahmedabad saw ‘Words Have Been Uttered’, a breath-taking celebration of the human ability to ask questions and raise voices to the truth.
Galileo is ecstatic in the wake of his discovery of the planetary system. Sagredo, a reluctant admirer, warns him that proving the existence of this system will essentially show the world that the Earth isn’t the centre of the Universe, and that God isn’t at its centre either. This scene from Bertolt Brecht’s Life of Galileo initiate...

If you are young and Indian, with a head full of dreams – someone like me, who imagines her life being played out to changing background scores – it is difficult to imagine these scores without that quintessential radio static that has become all too familiar to our ears. Sometimes it cuts off that one line that you were waiting to hear in a song, or blurs out the traffic report for that one street that you were going to drive on. The radio static has, by now, blended into our everyday radio ...

Mitul Kajaria’s photographic documentation of the transitions that have occurred in Ahmedabad is more than just a series of pictures. Not only is it a testament to Ahmedabad being the first World Heritage City, but it also asks pivotal questions about the nature of heritage and what legacies mean.
What is the purpose of art? This is a question I’ve been mulling over since quite some time now. Is art about expression and skill, or is its purpose to bring about change? Most of the times, the mo...

Blackout poetry + watercolors

PART I :
“Subcultures are meaning systems, modes of expression or life styles developed by groups in subordinate structural positions in response to dominant meaning systems, and which reflect their attempt to solve structural contradictions rising from the wider societal context” says Michael Brake. The significance of subcultures for their participants is that they offer a solution to structural dislocations through the establishment of an achieved identity – the selection of certain elemen...

I’ve often come across many faded and dog-eared postcards at antique shows with hand-written messages barely legible on the back. What’s always surprising is how elegant and expressive everyone’s handwriting seems to have been 100 years ago. There was a time when every postcard, contract, or love letter was a thing of beauty – giving each document an intrinsic sense of value and permanence that no longer exists in today’s digital world. Once the primary means for both personal and business co...

GRUNGE : A movement
Why does popular music change? Why do we, as creators and consumers of music and culture, rebel against what appears to be harmonious and correct? Although the answers to these questions may be many, the musical soundscape of Seattle during the early nineties gives an insight into how the modern generations consume their ever-changing fads. Grunge music started in the mid to late-eighties in the garages of Seattle and epitomized everything mainstream rock at that time did ...

On Stranger Things Season 2

After #metoo