Long Reads News - Page 3

A COVID Christmas in Johannesburg: An unexpected 'celebration' in unprecedented times

An essay about family, festivals, being a single migrant mother — and the pandemic we're living through.

How writer-director Mohit Priyadarshi made Kosa, a searing look at human rights violations in Chhattisgarh

The film made its Indian premiere at the 26th Kolkata International Film Festival in January 2021, after debuting internationally at UK's Raindance Festival in October last year.

A decade after Japan's 2011 earthquake, many still hope for 'recovery' from trauma

More than 30 trillion yen (US$ 280 billion) has been spent on reconstruction so far in Japan. But while the government has charged ahead with new buildings, it has invested less in helping people to rebuild their lives, for instance, by offering mental health services for trauma.

Once denounced as forgery, fragments of old Biblical manuscript earn credibility, a scholarly article claims

In a just-published scholarly article and companion book, Idan Dershowitz, a 38-year-old Israeli American scholar at the University of Potsdam in Germany, marshals a range of archival, linguistic and literary evidence to argue that the manuscript was an authentic ancient artefact.

'All my hopes were with my son': A grieving migrant father’s plight in Greece

A migrant father made the perilous sea journey from Turkey to Greece to give his son a chance at a better life. His son died during the voyage, and the father is now charged with his death by Greek authorities.

A Million Steps for Love: Exhibition captures moments from a documentary on pilgrimage of 'love' to Jerusalem

The documentary takes the audience on a journey through the beautiful and barren landscape of Palestine and shares the message of love.

The double lives of gay men in China's Hainan province: Navigating visibility and invisibility in public spaces

How gay men in Hainan understand themselves, build communities and negotiate the pressures to conform to the heterosexual life script of marriage and reproduction.

After pandemic year, a weary world looks back, and forward

A year later, some are dreaming of a return to normal, thanks to vaccines that seemed to materialise as if by magic. Others live in places where the magic seems to be reserved for wealthier worlds.

Tipu Sultan dreams of faith, conquest — and a free country

From Tipu Sultan's writings about his own dreams, it becomes evident that the ruler's hours of sleep were as devoted to the cause of freedom as the hours while he was awake

Indian artists design comic strips to raise awareness about water consumption in the fashion industry

With their works, these seven artists have tried to showcase the absurdity of the fast fashion industry, with the hope that viewers will take note, lend a thought to the cause and thus make responsible decisions.

In Bangladesh, a fishing community lives in a boat village, dissociated from mainland, government assistance

The locals consider them to be lower caste people. The land dwellers are the main customers of these fishers, as they do business with the ‘Babaija’. It is a relation of monetary transactions, not one of kinship.

Central to disaster relief efforts in Pakistan's mountain villages, women scale heights with rescue teams

Dedicated teams of women volunteers are an important part of working with communities in effective ways during disaster relief operations.

Celebrating Losar with the Monpas: Glimpses from a celebration of the Buddhist New Year in Arunachal Pradesh

Losar, the Buddhist New Year, was once a time of snowfall and mask dances for the Monpas of Arunachal Pradesh. Today, the festival is known for the feast that accompanies it and the rituals involving water sources and prayer flags.

In photos: The story of Nepal's first, and now nearly forgotten, hydropower project

This was only 30 years after the installation of the world’s first hydropower plant on Fox river of Appleton, Wisconsin, in 1882, and a year before China built its first hydropower plant in 1912 in Yunnan province.

Encountering architectural riches while travelling through Gandhara, the land of forgotten Buddhist relics

A peep into the heritage sites and museums of Pakistan and Afghanistan gives an idea of the beauty of Gandhara’s architectural wealth.

What do we lose when we lose a grain of rice? | Story of Goa's Korgut rice, grown in its Khazans, is story of the state

Korgut — a salinity-resistant rice variety specific to the reclaimed wetlands known as Khazans — embodies vital aspects of Goan history, ecology and culture

In Bengal's Rasui village, 75-year-old Khudiram Hajra keeps the dying tradition of 'bhorai' kirtan alive

In Vaishnavism, the sun is believed to be a manifestation of Krishna, and in the Bengali month of Kartik, the kirtan verses sung at dawn by kirtaniyas is known as 'bhorai', which is derived from term 'bhor', meaning dawn.

Pause, rewind, play: An Australian Summer that will never be forgotten by this avowed cricket fan

Inexperience can sometimes be a virtue.

Still Life: Anoushka Khan's debut graphic novel creates a world both unsettling and extraordinary

Part road trip, part existential thriller, Still Life seeks new ways to look at love, isolation, memory and loss, asking what connects us to each other and to the natural world, and how we are governed by impulses we barely understand.

Jarjar Ghar: Documentary on Mumbai's generational tenants underscores city's ethos, and its glaring housing crunch

Shot entirely during the ongoing pandemic, the six-minute documentary captures vignettes of a 200-year-old building on Marine Lines' Sonapur Street, crumbling on the outside but bustling within.

Markhor struggles to survive in Kashmir as its Hirapora habitat is overgrazed, fragmented by roads and power lines

Markhor (Capra falconeri) – the largest wild goat in the world – was in the near-threatened category on the IUCN red list when the most recent assessment for the species was made in 2014. The mountain goat’s habitat ranges over the north-western parts of the Hindu Kush Himalayas, in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

Debate around IIM-A dorms' demolition underscores irony of emphasising heritage while ignoring history

If the dormitory blocks at IIM-A are conserved, that would be beautiful. But when will we restore the professional understanding of our roles and responsibilities as architects in shaping the professional and public realm – its intellectual, political, and aesthetic (philosophical) dimensions and discourses?

A Himalayan community's efforts to contain COVID-19 attest to power of outreach, and need for better healthcare

Residents, medical workers and a youth group mitigated a dangerous rise in COVID-19 recently in the district of Lahaul and Spiti in Himachal Pradesh, but the pandemic exposed a desperate need for better healthcare in this remote part of India.

How gaming made 2020 a tiny bit more tolerable: A short story

This January, as I pondered the new direction my gaming was taking, what I hadn’t factored in was 2020, what an absolute stinker it was going to be, and how gaming would make the year (ever-so-slightly) more tolerable.

100 years of Sahir Ludhianvi: An essential, timeless poetic voice

“What is the secret behind Sahir Ludhianvi’s everlasting appeal?” Surinder Deol asks in an essay for Firstpost, examining the poet-lyricist’s life and legacy in the year of his 100th birth anniversary.

An Oral History of the COVID-19 Crisis: Indians narrate their lived experiences of a lockdown and pandemic

The Oral History Project aims to be an ongoing compendium of individual experiences of the pandemic, with a focus on one significant day in our respondents’ lives during this time.

In Mumbai Monochrome, photography and haiku conjoin to explore the unfamiliar in the mundane

Through Mumbai Monochrome, a collection of photographs that capture the cityscape in all its moods, Kelkar places dead centre the people who have made this much talked about city an energetic, complex and multicultural metropolis simply by way of their quotidian lives and occupations.

On the trail of Sambhaji Bhide: Ahead of Bhima Koregaon riots' 3rd anniversary, tracing the Hindutva leader's rise

How image, ideology, outreach and political patronage took Sambhaji Bhide from RSS rebel to Sangli's kingmaker.

To give the (unseen) woman farmer a land of her own

The mahila kisaans of Bundelkhand are visible everywhere in the fields, but rarely seen in official policy. Khabar Lahariya imagines a world which places women farmers at the centre of agriculture policy rather than at the peripheries.

Remembering Moheener Ghoraguli, India's first rock band from Kolkata whose legacy thrives in resistance

Forty-five years since their formation, Moheener Ghoraguli — who likened themselves to a "movement" — continue to find resonance in the sound and art of budding artists not just in Bengal, but across India, with their songs being widely reprised and recreated.