Every now and then, there comes a film that hits the bull’s eye with every emotion it evokes. Whether an evergreen comedy, a thriller that has you sitting on the edge of your seat, or a drama which makes you wonder about the state of the world, a great film has the power to move you deeply.

2018, for example, was a barrier-shattering year for several Bollywood films that scored a perfect 10 with the audience and critics. Even as we believe that the movies churned out by Hindi-film industry are mass entertainers and one needs to forget the idea of logic while watching them, it is also true that it has produced gems that are recognised not just in India, but all over the world.

Here, we bring you a list of 10 such films that were recognised as some of the world’s best by international platforms.

1. The Apu Trilogy (1950-1959)

Made between 1950 and 1959, Satyajit Ray’s trilogy won top prizes at Cannes, Venice and London.

Pather Panchali, Aparajito and The World of Apu follow the story of Apu, a poor boy from a Brahmin family. The films shifts focus between the family’s struggle to gather enough money to either repay their debt, repair their house or purchase clothes, and the difference in the upbringing of Apu and his sister Durga. Ray tries to portray the role of technology that improves life and the role of religion when Durga dies and the poverty-stricken family must cope with it.

Ranked number 2 on The Time Magazine’s All-time 100 movie list, the trilogy is a classic.

2. Charulata (1964)

Another masterpiece by Satyajit Ray, the film is about Charu, a lonely woman whose husband, Bhupati, has time only for his work. Things turn controversial when Bhupati’s younger brother Amal comes home on a break and gets close to Charu. Soon enough, their conversations result in Charu falling in love with Amal.

The film set in the 1870s saw Ray introducing the western style of films to India. It scored 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, an American review-aggregation website for film and television, and was listed at number 56 in the Sight & Sound critic’s poll.

3. Pyaasa (1957)

Scoring a full 100% on the Tomatometer, this drama set in the post-independent India, Pyaasa is about two outcasts—Vijay, whose talent in poetry is underappreciated and Gulabo, a prostitute.

Vijay is a sensitive poet who writes from his heart although no one, including his loved ones, appreciates his talent. When he is betrayed by his love, Vijay ends up meeting Gulabo—the prostitute with a heart of gold. The drama takes a twist when a dead beggar to whom Vijay gave his coat and whom he tries to save unsuccessfully from the path of a running train is mistaken for Vijay.

For the world, the poet is dead, and Gulabo takes this opportunity to publish his poetry as a book, which becomes a bestseller.

Directed by Guru Dutt and starring him as Vijay and Waheeda Rehman as Gulabo, the classic is listed at number 77 on The Time Magazine’s All-time 100 movie list.

4. Nayakan (1987)

Considered as India’s answer to ‘The Godfather’ and enlisted at number 65 on Time’s All time 100 movies, this Mani Ratnam film is based on a true story about the underworld.

Nayakan (or Nayagan) is Sakthivelu Nayakar’s (played by Kamal Hassan) story. Sakthivelu was born in a family of an activist, an anti-government union leader. He is arrested by corrupt police who make him believe that they are actually his friends and mean no harm. In reality, they are using the young boy to locate his father. When the police release him from custody, the innocent boy meets his father. The police, who are following him closely, kill the activist.

Betrayed and angry, Sakthivelu ends up killing the policeman and flees to Mumbai to become a Mafia don.

5. Drishyam (2013)

Scoring an average of 8.8 stars from over 22,000 reviews, Drishyam is a Malayalam crime drama about a simple, middle-class family.

Georgekutty’s elder daughter Anju is secretly filmed while changing her clothes and the culprit, Varun, comes to their house.

Varun, a confident, vile teenager is the son of a police inspector. He starts blackmailing Anju and her mother, Rani. Things escalate when the mother-daughter duo accidentally kill the boy.

When Rani tells Georgekutty about this incident, he must move heaven and earth to protect his beloved from the law. The story is about how the simple family goes about setting the perfect alibi, to show the investigating team that they weren’t at the place of murder at the time.

Remade in Hindi two years after the release in Malayalam, the movie is a roller coaster ride that has you sitting on the edge of your seat throughout. It is also listed as one of the world’s best crime dramas.

6. Rang De Basanti (2006)

Six “good for nothing” friends find themselves in acting in a documentary written and directed by a British woman, Sue. Sue’s grandfather worked in British India and had documented the story of five freedom fighters—Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar Azad, Shivaram Rajguru, Ashfaqulla Khan, and Ram Prasad Bismil.

While the friends believe that in this day and age, the country is not worth fighting or sacrificing for, Sue tries to change their mindsets through her documentary film.

When another one of their close friends, Flight Lieutenant Ajay Rathod, an Air Force pilot who genuinely believes in serving the country dies protecting hundreds of innocent villagers, the politicians brush off the incident as the pilot’s error as opposed to the fault in his MiG-21 plane.

That’s when the six friends decide that they must right this wrong and attempt to secure justice for their friend.

Scoring an 8.2 rating on IMDB, this comedy-drama ranks 99 on the globally popular movies database’s list of Top 250 movies.

7. Gangs of Wasseypur (2012)

Directed by Anurag Kashyap and starring the likes of Manoj Bajpayee, Pankaj Tripathi, Piyush Mishra and Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Gangs of Wasseypur is an action comedy beloved by critics.

The story stretches from the 1940s to the 1990s. Kashyap has used semantics perfectly to define the era that the particular scene is based in without always having to specify it with text. Centred around the coal mafia in Jharkhand and the politics and power struggles that three criminal families get tied up in, GoW is a raw representation of the underworld in Bihar and Jharkhand.

It stands at number 91 of IMDb’s top 250 movies and scores 96% on the tomato-meter.

8. Taare Zameen Par (2007)

An emotional whirlwind of a story, Taare Zameen Par is sure to make you feel differently about everything from the schooling system, the mental health of children, and the emotional bonding between parents and children.

Ishaan, a dyslexic child, is made fun of at school and is scolded frequently by his strict father. While his elder brother is everything that their parents dream of, Ishaan is a quiet boy who finds solace in art, imagination and all things creative.

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When he is enrolled in a boarding school as a punishment for performing very poorly in his tests, Ishaan meets Ram Shankar Nikumbh—an art teacher who sees beyond the syllabus and encourages his students to explore the vast realm of their own imagination.

The film shows the power of art and imagination through the life of a dyslexic, misunderstood child. IMDb lists it as a must watch and 44th on its list of Top 250 movies.

9. Dangal (2016)

Loosely based on the Phogat family, Dangal narrates the story of Mahavir Singh Phogat, an amateur wrestler, who trains his daughters Geeta and Babita to become India’s first world-class female wrestlers.

This is another one of Aamir Khan’s movies to be listed in IMDb’s Top 250 and this time, at number 24.

10. Andhadhun (2018)

Still in the news for its sheer brilliance, Andhadhun is a gripping edge-of-your-seat thriller, that will also leave you in splits.

Akash, a blind pianist falls right in the middle of a murder plot purely by accident. The artist, who has a secret of his own, wants to report the crime but falls further down the rabbit hole when he discovers that the investigating officer was an accomplice in the murder.

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From a relatively light plot where Akash’s young neighbour pranks him to check to see if he is, in fact, visually impaired, to an organ harvesting scam that the pianist becomes a part of, the story is all kinds of unimaginable.

A semi-blind rabbit, a seemingly sociopathic trophy wife, an innocent daughter of a cafe owner and a suspicious schoolboy—all unrelated characters come together in this movie to make a flawless crime drama that shot up to number 5 on IMDb’s best crime films.

(Edited by Gayatri Mishra)

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For Veteran Bengali filmmaker Mrinal Sen, the personal was always political.

One of the forerunners of parallel cinema in India, Sen had the penchant for telling tales with a deep socio-political context.

Arrested at the age of eight for participating in a protest march, Sen’s bent on depicting the personal as political had its seeds sowed deep since his childhood. This was the same year when he watched his first film, Kid by Charlie Chaplin, and discovered his interest in cinema.

Although he never went on to make any Chaplin-esque films or any based on politics, his films, nevertheless, were always political.

And, Bhuvan Shome, one of his prominent works, which won him the National Award for Best Film and Director, recently came to light as a major influencer for the Oscar-nominated film, Lagaan by Ashutosh Gowariker.

Filmmaker Hardik Mehta, paying his tribute to Sen, recently shared a trivia on his Facebook page, elaborating on the relationship between the two films, and how Lagaan was a tribute to the veteran filmmaker.

Bhuvan Shome, featuring Utpal Dutt and Suhasini Mulay, not only initiated a new wave of cinema, but also brought to the fore the two prominent artists–the genius of a cinematographer K K Mahajan, and the baritone of Amitabh Bachchan, much before he began his career as an actor.

An influencer for many more directors and films to come, this film also ushered the New Wave of Indian cinema in the 1970s.

His first film in Hindi, it was made on a shoestring budget of less than Rs 2 lakh and was funded by the Film Finance Corporation, which was the predecessor of the National Film Development Corporation. It was a tale of a stout and proud widower Bhuvan (Utpal Dutt) whose tryst into the simple world shows him the reflection of his true self.

95-year-old Sen who breathed his last on Sunday, December 30, at 10:30 am, after 65 years of contributing to the merging of the reel and the real lives on celluloid, concretised the end of the golden age of Indian cinema.

From satires to socio-political critiques, Sen, much like his contemporaries, Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak, has transformed the face of Indian cinema.

This eventually led him to a journey of pathbreaking films, sprinkled with another distinct feature–open-ended conclusions. He believed that much like life, cinematic narratives need not have all their knots tied up in the end.

And, today with yet another knot untied, we bid a heartfelt farewell to Mrinal Da.

(Edited by Shruti Singhal)

Photo Source: Tilak Datta/Facebook

You may also like: Remembering V Shantaram: The Veteran Filmmaker Who Shaped the History of Indian Cinema!

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From the streets to the celluloid, this rapper duo’s powerful socio-political verses are soon going to be adapted into a Bollywood film, Gully Boy, starring Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt.

Naezy and Divine, of the Mere Gully Mein fame, are two literally gully (lane)-grown local talents, whose rap-to-riches stories are truly inspiring.

This duo, together and individually, redefined Indian rap and hip-hop, dragging it out of the cliches around cars, girls and alcohol, to the real stories of the streets, dipped in politics and poverty.

A form of protest music/poetry, ‘rap’ emerged from violence, racism, discrimination and poverty in the West. And in India, the movement, through these artists, is bound for yet another resurrection.

26-year-old Divine, aka Vivian Fernandes, lives in the slums of Andheri’s JB Nagar, a place from where his angry and unrelenting music bubbled into the world in 2011. It led him to make history by becoming the first Indian rapper (in freestyle Hindi) for BBC 1 radio show host and celebrity rapper Charlie Sloth’s prominent Fire in the Booth series.

The award-winning rapper rose to fame after the collaborative track Mere Gully Mein with the other gully boy, Naezy aka Naved Sheikh.

Vivian’s solo Jungli Sher currently has 80 lakh views!

“It has been an interesting journey from the days when Indian hip-hop was underground, to now, where it is starting to become nationally known. However, we still have far to go,” Vivian told the Asian Age.

On the other hand, Naved Sheikh began his rapping journey at the age of 13 after being inspired by Sean Paul’s Temperature. He had heard the track for the first time during a DJ event in his Kurla chawl (locality) and soon found himself printing the lyrics to memorise them.

In 2014, Naved aka Naezy unleashed his musical wrath, Aafat shot on zero-budget on an iPad, amassing more than 30 lakh views on YouTube.

Naezy soon became the subject of a documentary Bombay 70, and he landed himself a deal with Only Much Louder, which is one of India’s most prominent alternative culture promoter and management agencies.

Now with Gully Boy, the film by Zoya Akhtar in place, Naezy is going to collaborate on the lyrics with poet and lyricist Gulzar, as reported by The Times of India.

Adding to the new wave of rap and hip-hop, Divine told TOI, “Delhi had a bustling Punjabi rap hip-hop scene. But they made songs about cars, alcohol, girls. We rapped about our gully, our city. It was genuine, authentic Indian hip-hop.”

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With raw words in the local dialect, these young rappers have ushered in a strong Indian literature of bhasha (language) rap. They talk about the government, poverty, corruption, exploitation by the police, and family issues. These are topics that are understandable and relatable to everyone, be it a teen sitting behind his laptop screen, a rickshaw puller or a vegetable seller at the corner of a street.

“Hip-hop ek aisa zariya hai jo hamare desh main bhi badlav la sakta hai (Hip-hop is a way to bring about a change in our country). The masses think that hip-hop is about daaru (alcohol), nasha (intoxication), bling and swag, but if you really look at hip-hop’s antecedents, it was used to bring about a revolution. I want to remove people’s misconceptions and rewrite the history of Indian hip-hop,“ Naezy told TOI.

In the movie poster, the tagline Apna Time Ayega (Our time will come), depicts the tale of the gully boy, Ranveer Singh, who plays an underground Indian rapper and his journey to fame, with his earthy and authentic rapping style. The film is set to release on February 14, 2019.

(Edited by Shruti Singhal)

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Letters belonging to strangers, bills, and worn, old diaries from the bygone era—these are of little value to most people. However, for those who nurse an affinity for anything vintage, these are priceless possessions and hold more value than age-old heirlooms.

For Bengaluru-based artist Bakula Nayak, collecting old pieces of paper started at an early age but converting them into nostalgic and unforgettable pieces of art has been a recent journey.

Through vibrant illustrations upon old love letters, grocery bills, diaries, official records and even pieces of sheet music, she is breathing life into the otherwise forgotten lives of unknown people and giving us all a slice of history, along the way.

It was her father’s passing that led her to this unusual path, and the very first illustration she made was upon a letter that was exchanged between her parents during the early days of their marriage.

“My parents had rarely stayed apart from each other except on very rare occasions, so during that brief separation, he had written a letter to my mother every single day. I came across these letters after his demise, and it triggered something in me,” says Bakula to The Better India.

For the rest of the world, these may be a collection of papers, but for Bakula, within these letters, there existed an exchange of words, emotions, life stories, and a world that encompassed all of them.

She somehow felt responsible for these faded and forgotten letters as well as every single piece of paper that she had collected from across the world. The need to bring these stories back is what paved the way for these works.

“These might not carry the value of heirlooms that people have handed down through generations, but these fading pieces of paper from another time—these are slices of history that open a window into their forgotten lives,” she adds.

Get ready to lose yourself in the stories of strangers from the past with these touching and colourfully illustrated vintage pieces of art by Bakula.

You can check more of Bakula Nayak’s work on her Instagram handle here.

(Edited by Gayatri Mishra)

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India has a representative in this year’s Grammy Awards.

Singer-songwriter Falguni Shah, who goes by the stage name of Falu, released an album on February 16, 2018, titled ‘Falu’s Bazaar’, which has been nominated in the Best Children’s Music category. She is the only Indian nominee this year.

Inspired by her four-year-old son Nishaad’s curiosity about language, identity, and the food they ate home, Falu’s Bazaar overturns a lot of the stereotypes associated with conventional children’s music. Besides a high degree of musicianship, the album exudes a great deal of depth and maturity.

“I wanted to make a fictional story of an Indian child and how he travels from his home to an Indian bazaar and discovers many new things and languages. In my mind, I created an Indian Dora with my child,” says Falu, in a conversation with The Indian Express.

“I felt that he needed to be assured of his roots, his identity and culture. There was no better way to answer all his question other than through music (which is a language we all speak in our house),” she adds.

Her efforts resulted in a 12-song album in Hindi, English and Gujarati and a Grammy nomination. It features her husband, singer-songwriter Gaurav Shah and her mother, classical singer Kishori Dalal.

Born and raised in Mumbai, Falu has strong musical roots. Beginning with a rigorous training in the Jaipur musical tradition and the Benaras style of Thumri, she went on to study music further under the mentorship of Ustad Sultan Khan, and the legendary Kishori Amonkar, a leading Indian classical vocalist belonging to the Jaipur Gharana.

She moved to the United States in 2000, where after an initial period of struggle, she went onto collaborate with a range of high-profile international musicians like Wyclef Jean, Philip Glass, Ricky Martin, Blues Traveler, Yo-Yo Ma and India’s very own AR Rahman.

Also Read: RD Burman: 5 Reasons Why ‘Pancham Da’ Is One of India’s Greatest Composers!

Appointed by the illustrious Carnegie Hall as the Ambassador of Indian Music in 2006, Billboard has described her music as “ethereal and transcendental”. In 2009, she even performed for then President of the United States Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama alongside AR Rahman.

Today, she resides in New York. “Falu, known for her ‘Indie Hindi’ sound, blends traditions of Indian classical and folk music with western pop, rock and electronic styles to create songs that explore themes of womanhood, romance, longing, love, and loss,” says her website.

The 61st Annual Grammy Awards will be held on February 10.

(Edited by Gayatri Mishra)

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The Bajirao Road in Pune is abuzz with traffic, and shops on either side are attending to their customers.

However, in the routine race to escape from the busy narrow streets, a treasure house of priceless artefacts goes unnoticed.

Standing alongside the modern sweet shops and pooja material shops is a museum, nearly 100 years old. It was established by a hobbyist who spent over 60 years of his life travelling across big cities and remote villages in India, collecting rare, ancient relics.

Dr Dinkar G Kelkar or ‘Kaka’ as he was fondly known, was an optician by profession. Ever since he was a child, his deep interest in poetry was evident. Alongside his profession, he also indulged in historical poetry—a hobby that got him interested in antiquities.

Dr Kelkar’s poetry and in-depth knowledge of history would direct him to remote villages and far away cities where he would be on the lookout for a rare artefact.

“A connoisseur who had an uncanny vision to spot the exotic in the everyday….. To uncover diamonds under the dust” is how the museum’s website describes its founder. It goes on to say, “He was a family man, wedded to customary commitments and responsibilities. Yet, he chose to be nomadic, travelling across the country to singularly amass a priceless collection in a span of 60 years.”

In 1920, Dr Kelkar began his journey to visit families in remote villages, asking them about family heirlooms, antiquities and artefacts.

Of course, not everyone was ready to hand over their prized possessions to this optician. But Kelkar would convince them that the relics would be safe and well maintained.

Sudhanva Ranade, Kelkar’s grandson and the current museum director, told The Hindu that it was a Mayur veena, “a wooden veena in the form of a peacock and embellished with silver” that launched Kelkar’s journey as a collector.

Over the period of 60 years, Kelkar would collect about 500 rare instruments.

One of them is a Taus—a peacock-shaped string instrument that is played with a bow. This (approximately) 250-year-old instrument was once popular in Punjab and was played during kirtans.

Taus, interestingly, is the Persian word for peacock.

Kelkar also invested his time and energy to collect instruments belonging to legendary musicians like Pandit Bal Gandharva, Ustad Alla Rakha, Pandit Ramshakardas Pagaldes and PL Deshpande—a legendary writer, musician and comic from Pune.

“The founder had a passion for music and wanted the museum to include instruments played by common Indians as well as noted artists,” said Ranade to Pune Mirror, adding that “At the museum, we have instruments of 22 famous artists on display.”

But instruments are just one fraction of this incredible three-floor bungalow-turned-museum.

In fact, right next to the music section is the replica of the Mastani Mahal—the palace of Peshwa Bajirao I’s queen, Mastani. Beautiful Mughal era coins, a letter written by Peshwa Bajirao I in the Modi script, dowry chests and a mirror with Meena artwork, belonging to Anandibai, Peshwa Raghobadada’s wife, are perfectly preserved in this house of over 22,000 artefacts. A visit to this room will undoubtedly take you back in time, to the Peshwai era.

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Kelkar’s passion was not limited to a time period nor to one form of an artefact. By 1960, he had collected more than 21,000 items—ranging from pots to instruments and paintings to daggers.

The three-storeyed waada (house) in Shukrawar Peth, although magnificent, isn’t large enough to display every collected object. Currently, it has only 2500 items on display—a small fraction of what Dr Kelkar had to offer.

He had initially named the museum as “Raja Sangraha” after his son, Raja, who suffered an untimely death.

The name changed to “Raja Kelkar Historical Collections” before museums and antiques became common knowledge, and the collection was finally christened as the “Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum.”

Technological advancement has prompted Ranade to update his grandfather’s collection and make it more tech-savvy.

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Speaking to Pune Mirror, he said, “What matters most for me is the fact that I have been able to carry forward the 100-year-old legacy that would have remained traceless, had it not been my grandfather’s determined archiving and preservation… Since a major chunk of our visitors are young, it has become imperative to take help from the social media- with voice-overs in English and Marathi for audio tours, blogs and mobile apps.”

Ranade also plans to shift the museum to a six-acre plot in Bavdhan, Mulshi Taluka, where he can display more artefacts and digitise the museum.

“Not only have I streamlined office automation and digitised library management, [but] I have also created a first-of-its-kind graphic and multimedia studio at the museum for academic work, making presentations for visitors as well as for designing and printing of the museum’s exclusive range of merchandise,” he informed the publication.

(Edited by Gayatri Mishra)

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Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

When I first came across the extraordinary journey of Akshatha Shetty and Piyush Goswami, I couldn’t help but remember these lines penned down by American poet Robert Frost.

Once a part of the young workforce that fuels the corporate sector, the duo decided to bid goodbye to the monotony of routine work and cloistered workspaces.

They wanted to dedicate their lives to art and philosophy and find ways to bring both disciplines together to do socially relevant work.

The year was 2010 when ‘Rest Of My Family’ took flight as an idea and philosophy, and the next three years went in transforming it to something real and practical.

As the ideating went in the background, Piyush started working on various independent photography, fiction and non-fiction films, while Akshatha explored the field of journalism.

“It was during this period that we both started travelling to rural and tribal communities, as frequently as our resources allowed us to. We started sharing our findings through photo-stories. We did this for a while and initially thought that writing about social issues would draw the attention of those who have resources to make a difference to the lives of the ignored sections of the society. But over time, we became convinced that writing/documenting alone seldom results in a constructive impact on the individuals and communities that are being written about. We knew we had to do more,” says the duo to The Better India.

Akshatha and Piyush travelled and lived with families and communities—who were all strangers. However, the love and care they received led them to realise that all social and cultural walls that separate people were a human construct and didn’t really exist.

“The more we travelled and met new people, the more our social walls melted away. Over time, fear and suspicion were replaced with love and trust. We realised that everyone we met and lived with was a part of our own family. And, when someone is part of your family, just writing about their challenges and needs isn’t enough. You have to try your best to find a solution to these challenges,” they share.

In 2013, they gave up their homes, belongings and everything else that they owned to live a life on the road, and dedicated themselves to a single idea and cause—Rest Of My Family.

Three years later, they decided to embark on a nonstop one-year drive through rural and tribal India, that was made possible because of a successful crowdfunding campaign.

Since then, they have documented and lived with numerous rural and tribal communities.

“Throughout the drive, we documented various communities and issues across six states. In Maharashtra, we covered farmer issues in drought-hit regions, and in Karnataka, it was the situation of Devadasis in Koppal, and the social issues faced by the Lambani community in Chincholi. In Bastar, we documented the situation of adivasis and the Naxal-state conflict, while in Odisha it was the issues faced by the Bonda tribe. We have also covered the issue of human trafficking and other challenges near the India-Bangladesh border in West Bengal and the current situation of the Biate community in Assam,” they share.

But that’s not all. Akshatha and Piyush also try to do everything in their capacity to support communities that they document and live with.

In the last three years, they have been able to accomplish the following:

1) Sponsor the education of over 400 underprivileged children across six states.

2) Provide a community bus to a remote fisherman community in Dhanushkodi.

3) Facilitate regular medical camps through a rural healthcare program in Bastar.

4) Introduce biogas to the Bonda tribe by setting up a biogas project in Bonda Hills (Odisha).

5) Mobilise drinking water access project in arsenic contaminated areas of North 24 Parganas district (West Bengal)

6) Form the Kharthong Organic Farmers Producer Company (KOFPO) in Dima Hasao (Assam) to help farmers get fair rates for their organic produce.

Besides these remarkable projects that the duo has spearheaded in the last eight years, there is one noteworthy initiative that we’d like to particularly highlight—The Forgotten Songs Collective (TFSC).

Unfurled in 2018, TFSC is a multi-media art collective initiated by Rest Of My Family’s Artist Connect programme in collaboration with Vinayaka, an experimental electronic musician.

The programme aims to preserve, raise awareness about dying tribal and folk music and cultures of India through multi-media artist collaborations with musicians, visual artists, projection mapping artists, filmmakers and other artists.

As a part of the Artist Connect programme, an artist would have to travel with Akshatha and Piyush to remote tribal settlements in various states to tell stories of and raise awareness about different social challenges.

Additionally, they will also work towards reviving and celebrating tribal and folk music of India through musical releases and audio-visual performances.

It is entirely possible that a greater part of the country must have never heard of the Biate tribe from Assam or any of their cultural legacy. In fact, the tribal heritage of India remains obscure and underappreciated across all corners, and that is precisely what TFSC aims to change.

But what drove the duo to conceptualise a concept as unique and remarkable as TFSC?

“Our work revolves around living with, understanding, documenting and supporting tribal and rural communities. In all our years of travelling and working, we have constantly felt that folk and tribal music of India has been largely ignored and is underrepresented. These obscure music forms and songs have such unique imprints of history, culture, identity and life struggles of their respective communities. While the thought has lived with us for a long time, it began taking real shape during our first stay with the Biate tribe in Dima Hasao, Assam in 2017. During that time we met an old man named Epa Lallura in a remote village called Jahai,” they recall.

The man was a part of the last generation of the tribe that remember their folk songs, stories and rituals. He told the new visitors about how after their community’s conversion to Christianity and the increasing exposure to the modern world, a lot of their history, music and culture was being forgotten.

“Epa Lallura’s knowledge of his culture, music, nuances of their original language is unparalleled. His pain seeing his culture fade away with passing days was so real that it caught our attention. He genuinely wanted to do whatever possible to keep Biate music, and history alive. After meeting him, we knew we had to do something to address his concern for their music and culture,” they share.

They realised that the time was right for them to work with the Biate tribe as part of the TFSC programme.

“We discussed this idea with Vinayaka, who in his musical journey has been trying to find ways to tell real stories with social relevance. He was immediately on board, and the project came to life,” they explain.

Another incident that took place during their stay in Thingol further motivated them to pursue TFSC. When the Biate elders gathered to sing songs of their past and perform ancient rituals, it was their host Lalpuia’s mother who played the gong at night and sang along with the rest.

“Lalpuia stood up and danced to the rhythm. He had tears in his eyes. Ever since the death of his little brother many, many years ago, his mother had stopped singing. That particular day, when the elders gathered on a moonlit night around the fire to rekindle their past, she sang again. ‘Enu (enu in Biate means mother) never sang again after his death. Today, she did after many years,’ he said,” they reminisce.

As its first project, TFSC is working to preserve, raise awareness about and celebrate the music and culture of the Biate tribe. Next in the pipeline are the tribes of Bonda and Gond.

“We are currently in the process of gearing up to execute and document the second phase of the Biate story. With the help of collaborating musicians we hope to release fusion songs inspired by Biate songs and also share original Biate songs with the world. We are also working towards putting together performances where tribal musicians can come to the cities and perform with urban musicians,” they add.

Thanks to its journey, Rest Of My Family is a social-work-through-art organisation. Hence, bringing different art forms together for socially relevant work is quite central to everything that these folks do.

“So we are working on various formats to raise awareness about the Biate tribe, their history and their current social challenges through feature-length documentary film, photo stories and so on. To address their fading music, we felt it would be almost poetic to use state-of-the-art experimental music and visual art mediums to tell the story of ancient music forms that are disappearing,” they explain.

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Under TFSC, the duo is also working towards releasing tribal-electronic-fusion EP/albums while conducting performances in the cities where the tribal musicians perform and showcase their music in front of the country and world.

“A collaboration just seemed like the way to go forward. We need to come together to celebrate such musical diversity and what better way than bringing different artists and art forms together,” they say.

Akshatha and Piyush also observed that the younger Biate generation was slowly losing interest in their cultural identity and music. So, they believe that such collaborative efforts will also generate interest in their hearts and minds by helping them see that everything that is old is not outdated and meaningless and should be celebrated.

You can check out the first episode of TFSC here:

To know more about Rest Of My Family, you can look up their website and Facebook page.

(Edited by Gayatri Mishra)

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“Why are there such few Indian women who have achieved extraordinary things? Are extraordinary women only European or American?”

Daughters Who Dared began in an attempt to answer this question from my seven-year-old daughter.

I paused to re-evaluate the content of a variety of books that my daughters have been hooked to, that have been written with the hope to empower young girls–Women in Science, Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked The World — just to name a few.

I wanted to see if something was not right, prompting this question from my daughter.

Indeed, there were hardly any inspiring women from India whose life stories had found a place in these books that claimed to represent the world.

I love these books, and their presence in my daughters’ lives has been very important, but I feel they are incomplete.

I sensed that as my daughters’ young minds were trying to figure out their identity, they were inadvertently trying to judge their mother, grandmothers, aunts and cousins through the lens of what was missing from these books.

They were arriving at an assumption about who the women around them could not become. I doubt if this feeling would have left them greatly empowered. A book’s bias, or a casual mistake, doesn’t have to become its readers’ perspective. I decided to restore the balance and provide what my daughters were missing.

As I uncovered accounts of extraordinary women throughout India’s history, I realised that Indian women had fought successful battles of their own liberation by changing and reshaping cultural norms for aeons, much before the rest of the world decided to wake up to the idea of women’s liberalisation.

These are the daughters of India who have helped shape a nation which is the world’s largest democracy today, but their stories are not presented with pride in a female-centric and engaging way for young readers to appreciate.

Daughters Who Dared started as a personal project.

My two daughters and I embarked on the journey to retell the story of one inspiring Indian woman every week during their summer holidays.

We listened to interviews and documentaries, read articles, wrote down quotes and collected images. After this, I spent several hours painting each portrait and answering numerous question posed by my daughters.

We immersed ourselves in understanding and appreciating the journeys and struggles of these Indian women who dared to stand up, to speak up, to seek the truth. They dared to fight, run the extra mile, to care, to dream, and above all – dared to be women.

For women to achieve true equality in a modern nation, we must understand their role in laying the country’s foundation.

I hope to give our girls role models from the past and present, who are in many ways, just like the women in their lives.

I have so far painted the portraits of Dr Vandana Shiva, Savitri Bai Phule, Kesarbai Kerkar, Tessy Thomas, Shakuntala Devi, Dr Mandakini Amte, Begum Hazrat Mahal, Janaki Ammal, Queen Velu Nachiyar and Bhanu Athaiya.

It is an ongoing project, and I hope that slowly but steadily, I can paint all other incredible Indian women.

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Homosexuality is not new in Bollywood in the broad sense. In films like ‘Fire’, ‘Margarita with a Straw’, ‘Fashion’, ‘Aligarh’ and ‘Kapoor and Sons’, homosexual characters are played in a positive or neutral light.

Movies about overtly-excited Punjabi families, grand scenes from the heartland of Punjab, a girl being stalked by her hero, a one-sided love story, a love triangle, and even a love story between a Hindu and a Muslim are as old as Bollywood itself.

So what makes ‘Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aida Laga’, by director Shelly Chopra Dhar and screenplay writer Gazal Dhaliwal, unique?

Note: Dhaliwal, a transwoman, has had an inspiring journey to becoming a screenplay writer and you can read all about her here.

The latest Sonam Kapoor Ahuja and Rajkummar Rao starrer movie kicks off with a narrative not too different from what Bollywood film fans love.

Sonam’s character, Sweety, is a Punjabi girl in love with the idea of love and marriage from a very young age. Her family is equally obsessed with getting her married.

There are enough ‘normal’ (read: stereotypical) scenes to make the mainstream Bollywood fan comfortable. While for some this is a deal breaker, for most it is the perfect opportunity to leave stress outside the theatre halls and enjoy the drama.

Most moviegoers are comfortable with this idea. And that’s why they come to watch it over and over again. And it is precisely this aspect that I wish to highlight about ELKDTAL.

The normality aside, from the very first trailer, we all knew there was something unique about this. The end of the trailer featured a shot of Sweety running, offering her hand to a girl running with her.

This shot, and a few other subtle dots scattered throughout the film hint at the actual plot. This isn’t a story about a loud Punjabi family and a shy Sikh girl eventually falling in love with a Muslim playwright.

It’s a lesbian love story—packaged within precisely the kind of setting, style and drama that appeals to so many millions of India’s filmgoers.

So ELKDTAL, in its simplest sense, will attract the attention of tens of thousands (if not lakhs) of mainstream Bollywood fans to the lives and challenges of the LGBTQ+ community – and the perfectly relatable stigma they face looking for love.

And if packaged ‘right’, there is nothing Indians love more than a love story against the odds.

Films that are based on social issues like gender and sexuality are important for sure. But they mainly attract an audience that already supports the cause. This is due to many factors – low budget, a tone that appropriately reflects the dire seriousness of the subject matter and a general style that is at odds with the usual fare on offer.

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While this in no way undermines the importance of such films, ELKDTAL is one of the few (along with than the recent ‘Kapoor and Sons’) that has the potential of spreading this crucial message to non-supporters or those on the fence – by simply making it fun to watch.

You watch it because it seems fun and you learn something while having fun. It is not a classroom lecture. It is just ‘recreation’ that has the potential of going very far indeed.

Interestingly, beneath this, the movie has another message for movie makers and filmgoers as well.

For decades, we have been watching toxic leads stalk their love interest, sing derogatory songs and molest women on screen.

Somewhere, subconsciously, this has become a norm for men and women to follow.

“He’s teasing (read harassing) you because he likes you,” is a common message that goes around and it is a result of such a toxic culture.

If more movies like ELKDTAL are produced and brought into the mainstream, maybe there will be a paradigm shift in this subliminal message.

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We spoke to 25-year-old Siddhant Kodlekere who identifies as a cis-gendered gay man about the film. “I feel if the entire topic of homosexuality is taken up like this, maybe there are chances of it coming into the mainstream popular cinema, without making it awkward for everyone else, or without shoving it in their faces.

But if you bring the entire topic of LGBTQIA+ into the mainstream perspective, it will just put it one step forward that ‘this is as normal as any other film you watch’.

I think the stellar cast of the movie, also with someone of Anil Kapoor and Juhi Chawla stature and respect related to this, will surely help the industry in relation to the upcoming movies for the LGBTQ+ community,” he told us.

Bollywood fans have already been treated to gems like Badhaai Ho, Manto, Raazi, Hichki etc. in 2018 – subtle yet powerful in their messages.

With ELKDTAL, 2019 seems to be a promising year as well, with inspiring movies that you must watch- whether for its masala or its message.

(Edited by Vinayak Hegde)

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In the southern parts of India, there is a long-standing tradition of temple grounds becoming the centre point for classical art forms to flourish.

While this practice has more or less fizzled out with the passage of time and the proliferation of dedicated dance schools, there still exist some institutions that continue to follow this custom.

One such example is that of a dancing institute in Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh.

Located in the premises of the Lakshmi Saraswathy Gnana Mandiram temple in the city, the Betha Venkatarao Dance School has been teaching the ancient dance form of Kuchipudi to underprivileged children for the past five years.

But what makes this institute truly special is the students are not charged for the classes.

The dance school is the brainchild of Betha Nageswara Rao and his brother Betha Satyanarayana, and they have named it after their father.

Speaking to The Better India, Rao shared the reason why the brothers decided to open the school.

“Many children are passionate about traditional art forms, but their dreams remain unfulfilled because of financial limitations. While our love for Kuchipudi and preserving its legacy was the original motivator, we wanted to give such children a chance to hone their passion by taking dance to them,” he explains.

But running a dance institute is no mean feat.

“To begin with, the location should be able to accommodate all the students, so that the instructor can take the classes without worrying about the lack of space. Since we don’t have such landholdings to our name, we reached out to the temple authorities, who were more than happy to let us practise within its premises,” he says.

Close to 160 students are currently being taught at the institute, which is single-handedly managed by Rao, while Satyanarayana, a renowned Kuchipudi dancer, is the instructor.

Each child has been carefully screened by the brothers, keeping their keeping their socio-economic status in mind.

“We went around local schools with our idea and motivated the students to join our academy, and received a phenomenal response. The teachers were more than cooperative and even requested various other schools to participate in our vision. Because we were investing our time and resources with such commitment, it was important to have strict sieving process to zero in on students who were serious and wanted to dedicate their lives to the dance form,” Rao explains.

Initially, the brothers had to go in search of students, but things began to change with word of mouth. Today, according to Rao, approximately 300 students are on the wait list of the school, which is perhaps the largest institute in Andhra Pradesh that teaches classical dance for free.

Rao takes care of all the expenses, which includes supplies like identity cards, dance costumes, bags, notebooks and water bottles for all the students. He also pays his brother for taking classes.

So, how does he do it?

“Apart from the dance academy, I run a prawn farm and a small chit funds company in Kakinada. I also receive some assistance from my son, who is a police officer serving in Chhattisgarh, and my daughter and son-in-law who work in the IT sector,” shares the 52-year-old.

Because of this, Rao is thoroughly particular about not accepting donations from any individual or organisation and intends for it to remain that way.

The brothers have made arrangements for the kids in a way that there is no interference with their regular studies. With an equal focus on theory and practice, the classes are held only on weekends—from 6.30-9 pm on Saturdays and 9-11.30 am on Sundays.

The Andhra Pradesh government has plans to conduct professional examinations for Kuchipudi in the near future, and Rao hopes to see his students ace this exam and emerge victorious.

However, his ultimate dream is to help them master the dance form so that they become teachers themselves.

“Even if one of our students becomes a successful dance instructor in the future, he or she can take forward this beautiful dance form by teaching others and break free from their impoverished lives,” he says.

Whether it is their love for classical dances, upholding our cultural legacy or helping underprivileged children fulfil their dream of becoming classical dancers, the dedication and efforts of Betha brothers are truly commendable.

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We hope their efforts inspire others to follow such selfless pursuits that are not fuelled by monetary aspirations but just for the love of art.

To know more about the Betha Venkatarao Free Dance School, you can reach out to Nageswara Rao at 09490669259.

(Edited by Gayatri Mishra)

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On August 15, 1988, after the then Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, finished his address to the nation from the Red Fort, a soulful melody took the nation by storm.

For most Indians who watched the broadcast on Doordarshan, the opening lines of Mile Sur Mera Tumhara, belted out by the legendary Hindustani classical vocalist Pandit Bhimsen Joshi continue to stand the test of time.

And even now, three decades later, when one plays the grainy video of this musical tribute on Youtube, it invokes the same spirit of pride in the culture and heritage of our country, as it did for those in 1988.

Here are some incredible facts about how the inception of the 6-minute song came about and why it continues to resound in the heart of every Indian as an unofficial anthem:

The origin of the song

The idea originated from a conversation between the former PM and his friend, Jaideep Samarth.

Samarth, who was also a Senior Executive at the advertising behemoth Ogilvy Benson & Mather (now O&M), decided to approach the national creative head of the company-Suresh Mullick, about the project.

Mullick got top ad film-producer Kailash Surendranath on-board and the duo set the wheels rolling after a meeting with Pandit Bhimsen Joshi.

In an interview with Sandeep Goyal for Campaign India, Kailash added that when he and Mullick met Pandit Bhimsen Joshi for the project, the musical legend got back within a matter of a few days.

He had composed almost 45 minutes of music based on Raag Bhairavi.

“It was a soul-stirring composition and I had the difficult task of snipping it down to a mere 30 seconds. It became the core of the composition which was then passed on to other composers for music in different languages.”

The song, apart from Hindi, was sung in languages from different parts of India including Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Kashmiri, Malayalam, Marathi, Marwari, Odia, Punjabi, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu.

The lyrics of the song were to be penned by Pandit Vinod Sharma. But a young account manager at Ogilvy, Piyush Pandey, who was asked to be in touch with Sharma, wrote the lyrics himself when he noticed a lag in the process.  It took 18 drafts, before the final version made the cut!

Penning ‘Mile Sur Mera Tumhara,’ opened up avenues for Pandey who steadily climbed the popularity charts. Conferred the Padma Shri in 2016, he now serves as the Executive Chairman and Creative Director of Ogilvy South Asia.

The six-minute video featured top personalities from different fields.

Actors Kamal Haasan, Revathi, Amitabh Bachchan, Mithun Chakraborty, Jeetendra, Waheeda Rehman, Hema Malini, Tanuja, Sharmila Tagore, Shabana Azmi, Deepa Sahi, Om Puri, Dina Pathak, and Meenakshi Seshadri graced the screen.

It also featured Indian classical dancer Mallika Sarabhai, cartoonist Mario Miranda, filmmaker Mrinal Sen and authors Sunil Gangopadhyay and Annadashankar Ray.

Musicians and vocalists who became a part of the project included Bhimsen Joshi, M Balamuralikrishna, Lata Mangeshkar, Suchitra Mitra, and Kavitha Krishnamurthy. Last but certainly not the least, sportspersons Narendra Hirwani, S Venkataraghavan, Prakash Padukone, Ramanathan Krishnan, Arun Lal, PK Banerjee, Chuni Goswami, Syed Kirmani, Leslie Claudius and Gurbux Singh appeared in the video too.

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Mile Sur Mera Tumhaara also made a mark for its stark and appealing visual representation.

Kailash Surendranath, who had already carved a name for himself in the ad business with exceptional commercials like Liril and Wah Taj, added a golden feather to his hat with ‘Mile Sur Mera Tumhara.’

In the same interview with Goyal, he recalls how Kamal Haasan’s cameo in the video was completely unplanned. When the ad film producer met Carnatic vocalist and musician M Balamuralikrishna, (who sang the Tamil part in the song), he was shocked to see Kamal Haasan with him. The star from the South told Kailash how he was only accompanying his ‘guru’ to the shoot.

When asked about being featured in the video, Haasan humbly added that he wanted to only sit as a chela, listening in rapt attention to the legend. He didn’t want to hog the limelight in the video.

Kailash praises yesteryear A-listers Amitabh Bachchan, Jeetendra and Mithun for their cooperation, humility and professionalism too.

When Doordarshan had written to these biggies to be a part of the video, they not only responded but also reached Mehboob Studios on time, with their own wardrobe. They shared the same screen for the song and completed the shot within five minutes!

The legend of the Liril Falls

The opening scene of the song shows Pandit Bhimsen singing near a waterfall. For those of you intrigued about the location of the shot—it was the same waterfall where the Liril commercial was recorded. This is the Pambar Falls in Kodaikanal, popular as the Liril Falls.

Getting Lata Mangeshkar on board

While Kavitha Krishnamurthy lent her voice for the female actors in the song, Kailash and team were eager to have Indian playback singer and music director, Lata Mangeshkar sing too.

The veteran singer was on the road and the possibilities of a collaboration were slim due to her hectic schedule. But she was gracious to come back to Mumbai just in time, three days before the song was to go live.

“She arrived at the studio in her Indian flag-pallu white saree. I shot and recorded her in the studio in that dress and that is what you see in the film,” says Kailash.

An IAF helicopter was used for the aerial shot of Taj Mahal

This is perhaps one of the most hilarious anecdotes from the shoot. When the makers wanted to get an aerial shot of the Taj Mahal, there faced a crisis. According to protocol, no plane was allowed in such close vicinity to the historical monument.

Kailash flew to Agra to meet the Air Marshal who allowed him to take the aerial shot from an IAF helicopter, free of cost. Sadly, the officer got into hot water for this. Kailash helped him out of the problem by paying for the ride.

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The jumbo stars and the mahout who was the actual singer

Literally, the ‘biggest’ highlight of the video were the elephants in the film, who were shot in Periyar National Park. The mahout in the film was also the actual singer who sang the Malayalam part of the song.

Railway fans! Did you know that two iconic trains made a cameo in the film too?

On Suresh Mullick insistence, the film also shot the then newly-inaugurated Calcutta metro, the first Indian transit system of its kind. The film also shows the much-loved Deccan Queen chugging along a river.

Phir Mile Sur

Two decades after its debut, the song was re-recorded for telecast on January 26, 2010 by Zoom TV. The new version Phir Mile Sur Mera Tumhara featured a newer generation of Indian musicians, singers, sportspersons and film personalities and was 16 min 17 sec long! It was directed by Kailash Surendranath himself with the new version retaining the original music composer Louis Banks.

Watch this version below!

Did the music make you nostalgic too? Don’t forget to tell us about your favourite memories in the comments!

(Edited by Saiqua Sultan)

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Some of the greatest love stories go unseen, unheard and undocumented, simply because they’re ordinary couples living their lives. So this Valentine’s Day, we try to give such stories a showcase— everyday people and their extraordinary love!

On December 22 2018, India bid adieu to Dipali Borthakur, the yesteryear singer from Assam whose mellifluous voice had captured the hearts of the people in the state throughout the sixties.

She was dubbed the ‘Lata Mangeshkar of Assam’ by the legendary musician, Bhupen Hazarika, who also praised her flawless enunciation and singing prowess, calling them “simply unparalleled.”

A native of Sivasagar, Borthakur was relatively unknown when she won the first prize in a state-level singing competition in Dibrugarh in 1956.

However, by 1958, she became one of the most popular female singers in Assam. All India Radio (AIR) Guwahati would broadcast her songs daily, and she became an indispensable presence in every cultural event in Assam.

Some of her most famous songs include Xunor Kharu Nalage Muk, Joubone Aamoni Kore, Chenaidhon, Jundhone Junalite, Konmana Boroxire Sip, Senai Moi Jau Dei and O’ Bondhu Somoi Pale Amar Phale.

Tragedy struck Borthakur when she was diagnosed with a rare motor neuron disease in 1968. The condition not only robbed her of her motor skills—by slowly degenerating her nerve functioning—but also her beautiful voice.

Borthakur was only 27 at the time.

While everyone was certain that it was the end for a rising star, the universe had other plans for Borthakur, specifically, love and one that would transcend all known boundaries and definitions.

Shortly after the disease had taken control of her mobility and left her confined to a wheelchair, a young artist named Nilpaban Baruah walked into her life.

Already a known name in artistic circles, Baruah had just returned to Guwahati after graduating from Shantiniketan with the dream of starting the Assam Fine Arts and Crafts Society.

It was fate that led Baruah to spot this girl in a wheelchair, and his heart skipped a beat.

“I first spotted her at her sister’s house and instantly fell in love with her. In 1976, we got married. My father never opposed my decision, as he could understand what love is being a poet himself. We never craved for anything materialistic, but only wanted peace and understanding,” said Baruah in an interview with The Times of India.

In a world where one’s value is gauged by their outer beauty and bank balance, Baruah’s selfless decision to marry someone whose condition kept deteriorating with every passing day is deeply poignant.

For the next 43 years, Baruah spent each day taking care of Borthakur with unflinching dedication. From bathing and feeding her to managing the daily chores while taking care of her needs, it would only be poetic justice to call Baruah’s untiring devotion to Borthakur a beautiful artwork in itself.

There was a time when the couple was facing severe financial difficulties, and a livelihood solely dependent on art in India wasn’t enough to meet their daily as well as Borthakur’s medical needs.

This led them to find ways to earn their livelihood.

Starting with a tea stall and then renting out rickshaws, Baruah and Borthakur were able to sustain themselves with dignity, before the state government finally took notice and sanctioned the xilpi (artiste) pension to Baruah.

“Love is God, and there can be no substitute for it. Love is sacrifice and marriage is about maintaining the atmosphere of love in the house,” Borthakur had said upon being asked about love during an interview.

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A feeling of anguish swept through the entire state of Assam when the news of her passing was announced, and after having spent an entire lifetime devoted to his wife, it would be impossible for anyone to fathom the vastness of grief that must have engulfed Baruah.

With her demise, not only did the world bid goodbye to a timeless voice, but also to an epic love story.

(Edited by Gayatri Mishra)

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Some of the greatest love stories go unseen, unheard and undocumented, simply because they’re ordinary couples living their lives. So this Valentine’s Day, we try to showcase such stories— everyday people and their extraordinary love!

The story of Pankaj Tripathi’s road to recognition is like that of an uncut diamond, whose real value is appreciated only after years of toil and struggle.

Currently, one of the finest actors in the Hindi film industry, Tripathi aces every single role with such intensity and finesse that we wish he had tasted success much earlier.

Over the years, through all the ups and downs and the seemingly endless wait for his career to take off, if there was one constant in Tripathi’s life, it was his wife, Mridula.

“If you ask me about my struggle, I don’t have any sad details like sleeping on a footpath or starving for days. That’s because my wife, Mridula, had taken over the entire responsibility of the house. In fact, I tell everyone that she is the man of the house,” the actor had informed The Better India in a conversation last year.

Intrigued with this declaration, we reached out to Mridula to know more and what unfolded was a beautiful love story.

May 24, 1993. Mridula clearly remembers the day when she first laid eyes on Tripathi for the very first time, and it was indeed love at first sight.

“It was my elder brother’s Tilak (engagement ceremony). I was on my way to a tiny room on the terrace to get dressed when this boy with hazel eyes, brown hair and a beard crossed me. Those eyes would go on to follow me during the entire function,” recalls Mridula.

Mridula would later find out that the boy was the bride’s younger brother. She was in class 9 at the time, while Pankaj was two years her senior. While he also felt an instant connection with her, little did they know that the road to their ‘happily ever after’ was a long one ahead.

While couples today have all the privacy and ease of communication they could possibly want thanks to smartphones and instant messengers, these options were non-existent back then.

It was tough for Pankaj and Mridula to interact with each other, and writing letters was out of the question.

Fortunately, Pankaj would come visiting his sister once every five months, and that would give them the freedom to spend some quality time together.

“I would leave for school in the morning and could meet him only after dinner. That was our time. We would sit and talk, sometimes till early morning. We both loved reading and had so much to talk about the books, novels, characters, stories, and the writers,” says Mridula, with a smile.

Their relationship rarely went beyond conversations, and they had discussed practically every topic under the sun.

However, in all this time, they had managed to carefully avoid the one subject that mattered the most—the love between them.

This went on till the day Mridula’s parents found a marriage alliance for her. By then, eight years had passed since they’d first met.

“Pankaj accompanied my brother and sister in law to the prospective groom’s place. He came and told me that it was a good match for me and I would surely get much of ‘bhautik sukh.’ I did not know so much Hindi back then and asked what that meant, and he said ‘material happiness.’ That’s when I felt that I was losing something very precious,” she says.

While Pankaj went away with a heavy heart to study at the prestigious National School of Drama (NSD), Mridula hatched a grand scheme to break up the marriage.

“Only I know the lengths that I’d gone to break that marriage. And now the most important dilemma was communicating this news to Pankaj,” she says.

Landline phones were all that they had, and Mridula desperately hoped that Pankaj would call her someday.

And he finally did on December 24—just a day before her birthday.

Pankaj spoke to all the members of the family, and finally, Mridula got the chance to speak to him after months of waiting.

“He wished me, and I reminded him that it was the next day. I tried really hard to convey my feelings to him, but he didn’t understand. It took a long explanation for him to finally get the drift,” says Mridula, continuing to laugh while reminiscing those early days of love.

Following this, Pankaj gave Mridula the number of the telephone booth at NSD and asked her to call every night between 8 and 9 pm.

“Everyone knew it was me on the call and so instead of a ‘Hello,’ I would hear ‘Tripathi tera call hai!’” she adds.

Two years flew by. Mridula had completed her B.Ed. course and her parents wanted to get her married.

However, Pankaj still had a year to finish at NSD. So, the wedding was put on hold.

Interestingly, Mridula received an interview letter around this time.

“It was typed in a very formal way on plain paper. The letter did not have any official seal or the name of the school but came along with a train ticket to Delhi. It didn’t take me long to understand that it was Pankaj,” says Mridula.

She informed her parents that she was taking up the job, and left for Delhi where for the next few months, she stayed at the same boys’ hostel where Pankaj was living.

“Those boys still bully me by saying that I was the ‘Bhabhi’ of Satte pe Satta who came in all of a sudden and made them wear clothes,” she adds.

Things were going in their favour, as Mridula got a job by the time Pankaj finished his course and couple finally got married on January 15, 2004.

A short while later, they moved to Mumbai.

Their daughter, Aashi, was born in 2006 and with her stable teaching career, Mridula took it upon herself to take care of all the expenses so that Pankaj could pursue his dreams, unhindered.

Their life together saw many tough days, but they have no regrets.

“Yes, it was a tough time, but neither of us ever felt that we were doing anything unusual or anything extra for the other one. It’s just like if one of your hand is hurt, you use the other hand and vice-versa,” she adds.

It was finally in 2009 when Pankaj finally got a break thanks to the television series ‘Powder,’ and there has been no looking back ever since.

“We had purchased a small car, and the three of us were out and about when I saw a poster in front of the Inorbit mall with Pankaj on it. That was the most memorable moment of my life, and I was so overwhelmed that I began to cry,” remembers Mridula.

On being asked if the fame has changed anything, she says, “Yes, I do miss those trips to Big Bazaar where we would go happily and fight over buying anything and come back fighting. Somehow people don’t let us enjoy that personal space now. But it’s okay. Whatever Pankaj is today, is because of his fans, and I want to request each one of them to keep showering him with their love and blessings. The gratitude that we feel cannot be expressed in words.”

You may also like: Assam’s ‘Nightingale’ Is An Example of What Unconditional Love Is

Pankaj and Mridula Tripathi’s story of love at first sight, is a beautiful testimony to the sort of love that blossoms slowly, but withstands the test of time and space and emerges stronger than ever.

We wish them the very best.

(Edited by Gayatri Mishra)

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As a kid, growing up I hardly had shoes on my feet,

But I’ve seen bullet holes on church walls and a body in my street,

Follow me on a journey down memory lane homie,

I grew up around killers throwing parties with heist money,

I don’t mean to promote violence nor provoke some sort of rivalry

So far you’ve heard just a bit of my autobiography

These lyrics may seem to belong to a song right out of the projects of Bronx, New York. However, they are the words of Ritik Roy Malngiang (aka Big Ri), one half of the legendary Shillong-based Hip Hop group called Khasi Bloodz in the song ‘Anthem For The Northeast.’

This song was a collaborative project involving fellow Shillong-based rap crews Cryptographik Street Poets and Symphonic Movement, Kolkata-based folk rapper and producer Vikramjit Sen (aka Feyago), and Guwahati-based producer Rajdeep Sinha (aka Stunnah Beatz).

The likes of Big-Ri have seen bullet holes in church walls and murderous insurgents celebrating with ‘heist money.’ These are their authentic lived realities.

In a 2016 interview with 101 India, he spoke about how his family rented a house to a group of people, who they later realised were insurgents.

“We didn’t view them as insurgents back then. They had the public’s full support. They were like the law enforcement of this whole area around here,” says Big-Ri.

Feyago, an artist who won the Best Hip Hop Act at the VH1 SoundNation Awards in 2014 and has extensively performed all over the Northeast, reemphasised this observation in a conversation with The Better India.

“Our subject matter is very close to what rappers on the streets of New York were spitting in the 1980s and 90s on issues of gun violence, drugs, unemployment, liquor, political corruption, and violence. These kids have witnessed gunfire and drugs.

In Manipur, I saw little kids with syringes in their arms and guns in their hands. I’ve seen bombs go off. I’ve also done a show at a venue which was bombed, and no artist wanted to perform there. I returned to the venue a year later after the explosion, and the area below the stage was filled with the armed police. This is their lived reality,” he adds.

From Mumbai to Shillong

The release of the much anticipated Hindi feature film, Gully Boy, has brought Hip Hop, which first originated on the mean streets of Bronx, New York, in the late 1970s, to the forefront of mainstream Indian pop culture.

While fans all over India are genuinely excited about what the movie will do for Hip Hop culture in the country, the buzz about Gully Boy does bring home is how much difference language and geography make.

Long before kids were rapping on the streets of Mumbai, there were youngsters in Shillong and Aizawl who were dropping verses on street corners.

The late Michael M Sailo, an MC and singer from Mizoram who went by the stage name of Ace Man, was tearing it up in not just his home state, but also in cities like Hyderabad, Mumbai, Bangalore, and Chennai. The buzz he generated at the time was mostly word of mouth.

For Andrew Lyndem (aka P.O.E.M, which stands for Prophet of Esoterical Metaphors), who is one-half of the Cryptographik Street Poets alongside Ratul Hajong (aka Grey Jaw Ripper), one of the early pioneers of the Shillong Hip Hop scene was Eric Mason (aka Da 8th Theory) from the 2000s.

“With regards to a Hip Hop space or venue in Shillong, apart from street corners and alleys where we would drop bars among fellow rappers, there weren’t any,” says Andrew, speaking to The Better India.

When you visit the Northeast, it is imperative to understand that music, fashion, and the creative arts are deeply embedded in the consciousness of the people, irrespective of genre.

There is real talent all over, and someone from every neighborhood is doing something productive associated with the creative arts.

They didn’t have to wait for Gully Boy or Honey Singh to show up for them to take to Hip Hop. They’ve been doing it for years and weren’t oriented towards marketing themselves like mainland indie artists in the 1990s.

They were essentially ‘pure artists’ who love their craft and cared little for promotion, and this is why there is very little recorded proof of rappers there.

To add to that, because of the small communities, constant social upheavals and little to no thriving businesses, no aspiring rapper could go to his parents and say ‘I want to be a rapper and make a living off it.’

However, this is now changing. The walls are breaking down, and the internet has played a critical role.

Because of the Internet

The internet is the single vessel which can carry an artist’s talent into the public domain. It’s the easiest and effective way for them.

In fact, Cryptographik Street Poets, one of the pioneers of the Hip Hop movement in Shillong alongside the Khasi Bloodz, may not have ever come to life if it weren’t for the internet.

“Back in the day, there used to be an online rap community-based in India called Insignia Rap Combats. This community was first started in the now-defunct Orkut where rap artists from India as well as other parts of the world would have text/audio battles with each other and get community props, virtual points, and community ranks. Ratul Hajong (aka Grey Jaw Ripper) was a member of that community, and when I joined the community, I noticed that he too was from Shillong, so I connected with him, and we met up in 2009. About a year later, in August, we started Cryptographik Street Poets, and the rest is history,” says Andrew (aka P.O.E.M).

Even though the region is physically cut off from the mainland, after the emergence of the internet, Hip Hop artists from the Northeast have established a significant online presence.

Little surprise that it wasn’t until the 2008-2012 period that Hip Hop started taking root in Shillong.

New artists and bands started popping up in sites like Soundclick and Reverbnation online, while local events began including local rappers in their lineup.

“However, it is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it gives you a real opportunity to reach out to millions. But it’s such an ultra-competitive space forcing you to think about where you are going to get the budget to release your next batch of music, which makes you take silly decisions. You can’t just sit back, make music and let it out from the confines of your room. You have to plan your entire promotion strategy beforehand” says Feyago.

A critical element of the promotion process is music videos. In a country where you come across hundreds of logos the moment you wake up, an artist cannot afford to release a substandard or no video at all.

One complaint Feyago has is that artists in the Northeast are unwilling to promote themselves.

“For example, if I walk into a cafe in Shillong, I will hear a guitar player playing Stairway to Heaven as well as Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, but then I can’t find him at any music festival. Artists here need to develop that go-getting attitude. They must be willing to put themselves out there instead of letting other mediocre artists from the mainland take their place,” he says.

However, the Khasi Bloddz which includes the aforementioned Big-Ri and Donbok Kharkongor (aka D-Bok), are exemplifying how it’s done.

After they got famous, they did not go ahead and release an album on a mainstream label but generated about Rs 7 lakh through a crowd-funding initiative.

This was a highly intelligent move because not only did this give them creative freedom, but also the opportunity to release a proper album with real production quality and shoot top-notch music videos.

Break the Walls Down

“While touring the Northeast, each city that I visited, people knew of the genre, and some were even doing it. So, for every show, I started to get local artists to perform the opening act. This was an attempt to get audiences more invested in the genre by seeing people from their tribe or culture performing on stage. Eventually, it almost became imperative for any of my shows to have two local opening acts. I’ve also met several rappers who never thought that they could make a career out of it, but when they see me performing and touring, they think ‘yes, we can do it as well,’” says Feyago.

Now, there are hundreds of rappers everywhere in the Northeast. However, making it professionally is still a difficult task. Until recently the Khasi Bloodz were making and selling burgers to canteens, cafes, and restaurants to buy recording equipment, while Andrew works as a web designer.

But it is hard to deny real potential.

“We had a rap battle in Arunachal, and this kid called Kekho Thianmkho, aka K4 Kekho, won. He was driven. His dad was there at the time, telling him that this was a total waste of time. However, when the boy went to his dad with the winner’s cheque, what we saw was a parent eventually seeing this as something his son could pursue in the future,” he adds.

Also Read: The Intriguing Story of How Hindi Emerged as The Lingua Franca of Arunachal!

Kekho, a 23-year-old rapper from Lower Chinhan in Tirap district, Arunachal Pradesh, burst onto the scene with his track ‘I am an Indian,’ tackling racism and reclaiming his Indian identity with lyrics laced with dark humour and stinging social commentary in Hindi tinged with colloquial Arunachali.

The video has over half a million views on YouTube.

I am Indian. Well, not really

Racism, xenophobia, and questions of identity make up a lot of the subject matter rappers in the Northeast address. Many young artists are confused about their roots.

They grow up in India, know mainstream Hindi songs, the national anthem and feel like a part of the Indian mainstream. But the mainland, which is threatened, intimidated and a little distant, does not want to recognise them. They see Northeasterners as people who don’t look like them, talk like them, dress like them and frankly, exude an advanced level of musicianship that they don’t possess.

While there are fundamental differences in food, culture, and tradition across India, the mainland is more accepting of the South because its thriving businesses and industries offer opportunities for folks from the North to profit, unlike the Northeast.

However, this is changing now.

Economic opportunities are opening up. Artists from the Northeast have worked in movies like ‘Pink,’ acts like Khasi Bloodz have been roped in for a Puma advertisement, actor John Abraham is helping establish and promote the North East United football club, and a whole host of mainland artists have made their way to the Northeast.

Beyond racism and questions of identity, a lot of the lyrical content is an expression of where they are from and the socio-political realities they face.

“Shillong has definitely influenced (and still is influencing) our music content, no doubt. We incorporate what we see, hear and experienced growing up and living in Shillong on our lyrics. Right from political issues to the social challenges to the street culture here, we referenced them in our music. Even though we try to keep our music content diverse, we do rap about political issues going on here in Shillong quite often. One of the first issues we rapped about was on Uranium mining as well as the blatant corruption going on in in the state,” says Andrew, aka P.O.E.M of the Cryptographik Street Poets.

Take Borkung Hrangkhawl (aka BK), who in many ways is Tripura’s very own rap pioneer, whose breakout single “The Roots (Chini Haa)” crossed 100,000 views in 2013 within a week. The song references the socio-political situation of the minority, indigenous people of Tripura. Chini Haa means ‘Our Land’ in the Kokborok dialect of the Tiprasas community.

So, you do have the underground Hip Hop music scene dealing with social and political conflicts, while on the other hand there is a lot of talk about fashion, style, swag and other material desires.

English ya Vernacular?

The debate between rapping in the vernacular and English is an old one in the Indian Hip Hop scene, and it’s no different for rappers from the Northeast.

For many music critics, it is inauthentic for Indians to rap in English. However, P.O.E.M of CSP does not agree with this assertion.

“We have been releasing music with Khasi/English/Bilingual content since we first started the group. In my opinion, I don’t think it’s a requirement that a songwriter has to produce content in the vernacular (unless the artist wants to write in the vernacular of course) since that would make it somewhat of a rule and I strongly feel that art should never have rules. For me personally, when I write a song, the language that I’d use depends on what and how I want to express that song,” he says.

Their debut music video “Poison Thoughts,” for example, has a verse in Khasi. Also, the flute played in the hook is a Khasi flute instrument, and the flautist is the talented Bah Benedict Hynniewta.

“Many artists are in a quandary because they don’t know their own language, lack understanding of their own culture, and grew up listening to Western Hip Hop. You will always sound better in your native tongue, even if you can speak English fluently. So, if you have the opportunity to learn your own native languages, work out rhymes and improve your vocabulary there, then I’d say it’s worth it. If you want more success, the vernacular hits the heart a lot harder. It reaches a wide range of people instead of just rap fans,” says Feyago.

He gives the example of Despacito, a Spanish pop song released in 2017 which took the world by storm, “How many of us understand the language? It doesn’t matter. An American or Canadian can enjoy a Khasi song if it’s made well,” he adds.

There are similar concerns when it comes to production as well. Much of the production in the Indian Hip Hop scene seems like an imitation of American Hip Hop. Nonetheless, what we must understand is that many of the top producers in India are still very young and with Indian Hip Hop culture at still a nascent stage, imitation is only natural. As they mature, so will their sounds.

“The West heavily influences a lot of Hip Hop production in India, but like any genre of music first making a major splash in India, people will evolve and move closer to their cultural roots,” says Feyago.

Sampling music from old tracks is the foundation of Hip Hop in America. However, unless you have industry connections, it’s impossible to sample say an old Hindi song and compose beats on top of it because of copyright issues. Producers are aware of this fact.

“I went into folk rap because I didn’t have samples as a producer. I also realised that when it comes to folk music samples, we have unlimited choices that aren’t bound by copyright. So, my samples came from someone’s grandmother in Lower Assam or a folk singer in Arunachal. You can release one song each day with a unique sample for the rest of your life. That’s how much is available there,” he says.

Check out his collaboration with the late Baul folk artist Tarak Das Baul below:

Of course, it’s not easy carrying recording equipment and acquiring the necessary finance to travel to some corner of Nagaland and record a folk sample. It takes real graft.

However, the step towards folk music could open opportunities for Indians wanting to rap in English. Millions have rapped over a 4/4 beat, but rapping over a beat based on unconventional folk rhythms could create that authenticity artists are looking for.

Where Does This Leave the Northeast?

It’s a waiting game. As more opportunities open up for artists from the Northeast, who are now getting enlisted by major talent management companies like OML, their words and sounds will evolve.

The sincere hope here is that with the release of Gully Boy, mainstream audiences will dabble more with the genre and subsequently move onto protagonists of the Hip Hop movement in the Northeast, who have long carried the torch of Indian Hip Hop.

As one rapper said, “Everybody knows Divine/Still nobody know D-Mon.”

Well, after reading this piece, one does hope that mainland audiences will now bother to find out more about D-Mon.

(Edited by Vinayak Hegde)

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When the Grammy-award winning sitar maestro, Ustaad Shujaat Khan started playing the evening ragas for the audience, Aarav Verma, standing close to him, picked up his paintbrush. He dipped it in the colour of his choice and let the musical muse guide him across the canvas. As the world-renowned musician allowed his skill to take reign over the sitar, so did Aarav’s dextrous strokes rule the canvas which was coming to life.

For Aarav, a 12-year-old artistic prodigy, the thrill of sharing the stage in October 2017 with Ustaad Shujaat Khan was unforgettable.

“I had not decided beforehand in terms of what I wanted to paint; instead I wanted to follow the mood and the music of the evening.”

The saying, ‘Artists are born, not made’ is perhaps an apt description for this young boy. Aarav, a student of grade 7 at the Shiv Nadar School, Gurugram, had been unique, right from the tender age of three.

In conversation with The Better India (TBI), Yogesh Verma, Aarav’s father, who has been instrumental in recognising and encouraging the talent of his son, says, “I still remember that, at three years of age, Aarav was making unusual characters and human figures, among others.”

“That was when I started delving more into it. Being inclined towards art myself, I was able to spot his talent.”

While Aarav has been exploring various mediums and styles, he has also been busy working toward making a change in people’s lives.

Art for a cause

Aarav is a socially responsible artist. On the night of Aarav’s artistic collaboration with Ustaad Shujaat Khan, his dexterity inspired the organisers to a great extent.

Yogesh tells that the intent of the show was not to sell the artwork, but the sponsors were so inspired that they decided to auction the painting. His painting fetched a sum of Rs 55,000/- and the proceeds went to the Shri Ram Krishna Cancer Hospital, Deoband.

Yogesh says, “This was the first time that his painting was auctioned off. It helped cancer patients get free treatment.”

Aarav’s artwork helps rehabilitate Kerala flood victims

In 2018, when the devastating floods struck Kerala, there was a great outpouring from all quarters of India and the world to help the victims in any way they could. Aarav allowed his paintbrush to come to the aid of the State. He joined the NDTV-Tata sky telethon campaign to raise money.

Faber Castell bought the painting that he made for the campaign for Rs. 3 lakhs. Yogesh says that so far, just via the medium of his artwork, Aarav has raised close to Rs 5 lakh to support various causes.

Aarav’s creations

A known name at various art exhibitions, Aarav has displayed his paintings at the Indian Habitat Centre, New Delhi, Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi in 2015, and even at the recently concluded Art Fair in New Delhi.

Aarav allows his work to speak his thoughts. The inspiration for his work, he says, is something that only he knows and will not be able to express in words.

He goes on to say that his artwork reflects what is in his mind while he is creating it.

With over 400 works spanning across nine years, solo art exhibitions and live painting shows with Indian Sitar maestro – Ustad Shujaat Khan & ace flautist – Paras Nath, this is only the beginning of a long, creative journey for this young artist.

If you wish to look at some of his work, you could visit his website here.

You May Also Like: After Clearing 12th When She Was 12, Samhitha Becomes Youngest-Ever to Crack CAT!

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On my first trip to Allahabad (now Prayagraj) in June 2018, I was struck by the city’s aesthetics – and sometimes by a lack thereof. I noticed that the city had a collection of heritage buildings with envious gothic, art deco architecture, some of which stood in a state of neglect and disrepair.

The growing population, however, seemed to blend with this backdrop. While Delhi had moved on the “next generation” lighter versions, rickshaws in Prayagraj still had a hand-painted visual style reminiscent of the halcyon days.

The Prayagraj Mela Pradhikaran plans and executes the Kumbh Mela. It invited creative teams to share ideas for the largest-ever street art initiative – Paint My City. The task was to identify walls, bridges, buildings, water tanks and other structures, which could host wall art and transform the place into India’s first-ever street art city!

To say that it looked like an uphill battle was an understatement. Monsoons were soon to arrive, and that meant most of the coming months would be wet, slushy and messy.

As a city, barring some newer apartment complexes in the Civil Lines area and the iconic Indira Bhawan, Prayagraj does not have many tall buildings. Delhi Street Art was at the forefront of bringing together public art and artists since 2013, and took up the gauntlet and started exploring and surveying Prayagraj.

The City in Flux

In preparation of the mela, roads were being expanded, new street lamps were being erected, and the frenzy of new construction activity was all around. Frequent traffic snarls and frayed tempers and clouds of dust engulfed the city. Sceptic locals expressed dismay at the inconveniences and wondered when the city would return to normalcy.

Prayagraj can be thought of as a city of five major parts—Civil Lines and new city across the Allahabad train junction; Chowk and old city on the other side of station; Triveni Ghat and Sangam area between rivers Ganga and Yamuna; Naini and Arail Ghats, west of Yamuna banks; and Jhunsi area across the Ganga.

Well, at least that’s how we split up the city to plan our initiatives.

Civil Lines

Here, we picked walls around PCDA colony (Principal Controller of Defence Accounts) – sometimes just called Pension Colony – to represent river life and the daily interactions with sadhus.

Nearby, we located an ideal wall to portray renowned Prayagraj-born poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan with his poetry. Not very far, we selected the Kacheri Building in Katra to depict portraits of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Dr A P J Abdul Kalam.

The Allahabad Junction became a massive hub of creative artwork, including platform walls, city-facing buildings, overhead water tanks, foot-over-bridges and waiting halls.

#GangaStory

A brand new flyover was being built near the iconic High Court building. We picked the large pillars and walls of the parapet to depict the journey of river Ganga from Gomukh to Gangotri, and on to major cities along the way. Various birds and animals thrive along the river, including dolphins, turtles, crocodiles, Sting Ray fish, eagles, with creative canvas homes for them all along the flyover.

#IndiraBhawan

It is one of the most central buildings of Civil Lines, at the intersection of MG Road and Sardar Patel Marg. It also happens to be one of the most neglected buildings with years of garbage piled up on its window sills and balconies.

The Allahabad Development Authority was very keen to give this building a makeover. Yuva Foundation and Nerolac Paints were ready to partner with us for this initiative.

We came up with a design that would do justice to the tall structure, its multiple openings and structural elements. The theme selected was city life, including elements of the Kumbh, the rivers, local art and culture, as well as natural flora and fauna.

As the winter winds blew, the artworks took shape—one wall at a time. Artists spent hours each day sketching, painting and finishing the designs. Within a few weeks, the building was practically unrecognisable.

#PontoonPark

Right along MG Road, brand new walking paths and landscaped gardens were being planned on the spaces reclaimed from demolishing illegal constructions. I had an idea—to take a dozen or so old pontoons, chop them in half and create Shiv Ling installations, depicting various mudras (poses) and moods of Shiva!

We discovered that being submerged in rivers for long added layer upon layer of crusty corrosion and metal pitting to many pontoons. This had to be scraped off and a protective undercoat applied before the surface could be ready for any artwork.

#DevotionStreet

Prayagraj is famous for its ashrams, mutts and akhaadas. We were fortunate enough to give Niranjani and Nirmal Akhaada colourful makeovers. Additionally, we adorned the walls of Shiv Ganga Ashram and others along Ganga at Jhunsi.

What started as an effort to artistically restore a few ashrams, soon turned into an all-out effort to adorn an entire street of ashrams, yoga and meditation centres.

Also Read: For 7 Decades, This Man’s Family Has Reunited Those Lost at Kumbh With Their Loved Ones!

The entire Arail area began to be referred to as the “Devotion Street” as the artworks further enhanced the monicker. The Naini Train Station nearby and its several walls shone in saturated colours and rich hues.

#AkshayVat

At the entrance of the old fort built by Akbar is a small passage to Akshay Vat (immortal tree) and the Pataal Puri temple. During the 45-year construction of the fort beginning in 1576, access to this tree and the adjoining Saraswati Koop (well) was closed off and remained so during the British rule as well as post-Independence.

A new passage was specially constructed with the Kumbh in mind, and the public was finally able to revisit these historical sites. Special attention was paid to ensure a smooth, orderly passage of people, including access for disabled visitors.

Inspired by the sculptures of deities like Ganga, Yamuna, Saraswati and thee sage Markandey from the nearby underground temple, we decided to depict wall art on the entrance walls along with a large representation of the immortal tree.

Water Tanks

The tall, overhead water tanks, some around the train stations, were built during the British period. In fact, a few new ones were constructed just in time for the Kumbh Mela. It was too tempting a canvas to ignore as we went about painting the city.

Large sparrows, floral designs and even imposing portraits like those of Sardar Patel, soon materialised on these cloud-seeking towers.

Rickshaw Walls

The classic rickshaws may no longer have the monopoly on hand-painted public art, but they surely have a colourful gallery of their own! The rickshaw-style artwork at the waiting halls of the main railway junction is our humble tribute to the local artists and their design skills.

If ever an Indian city was completely transformed in a few months, this has to be it! In addition to the new well-lit roads, sidewalks, flyovers, landscaped gardens, sculptures, murals and installations, Prayagraj now boasts of the largest number of street artwork anywhere in the country—covering over five lakh sq ft. It truly has become India’s first ever #streetartcity!

Our team of over a hundred artists came from cities across the country, including Delhi, Lucknow, Kanpur, Prayagraj, Varanasi, Chennai, Bengaluru, Mysuru, as well as from London and Moscow.

All artists, while happy to be compensated for their efforts, were even more excited about the opportunity to be in an artful environment as a part of a historic transformation.

You May Also Like: Indian Railways Gives Stunning Makeover to Prayagraj Stations. Check Out Pics!

We were assisted by countless others including designers, drivers delivering our supplies, technicians erecting scaffoldings, cleaning crew, cooks, staff that helped keep our apartments organised and safe, corner chai and samosa shops and ordinary city folk offering (often unsolicited) advice, opinions and feedback.

We are proud to have made a difference and hope efforts will continue to maintain and enhance the Prayagraj’s unique aesthetics.

Here are a few more scenes from the city:

(Written by Yogesh Saini and edited by Shruti Singhal)

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“Taking a risk for my dream was the best thing that happened to me,” recalls this young dancing star.

With more than four lakh Instagram followers and over 16 lakh subscribers on YouTube, Sonali Bhadauria has emerged as a youth icon and a mass influencer.

But her road to fame was never easy.

“Nothing came in a decorated platter, I had to work hard, fight for it and make my mark,” says Sonali, narrating her cinematic journey to the top.

She began as an ordinary girl-next-door, with dreams muffled under the beats of societal and parental expectations. Living with the hidden heart of a dancer, she settled for the ‘practical’ way of life–pursued software engineering and landed a job at Infosys.

But not in her wildest dreams had she thought that her ticket to fame was right at the corner.

“I come from a very simple middle-class family, where parents supported my dance as a hobby, but it would never be practical to pursue it as a profession. So I moved on with my life, hiding my dreams. I had almost given up on dancing, and then almost a year in the job, I found the dance club and joined in. And, that was the beginning,” Sonali tells The Better India.

She continued to live a dual life–of an engineer and a dancer–for quite some time. The dance club, Crazy Legs, created by Infosys employees, gave her the flexibility to practice after office hours and helped her go to various events and competitions.

She shares, “Slowly and steadily, I moved from copying steps to choreographing. And that earned me a lot of visibility and appreciation. I began to take it more seriously. It was at the group, that I met my husband who was also working in the same company.”

They decided to start a YouTube channel called ‘LiveToDance with Sonali‘, to record and document the steps she choreographed.

She said that the aspiration of being seen was “always there”, but she never thought it would roll into a success. Originally from Mumbai, she later moved to Pune for work.

As things got better and bigger, she quit her job and took to dancing full-time.

“At that time, it was my husband who stood beside me like a rock, despite most people advising against it. The year was 2016, and it was a huge risk to leave such a lucrative job, but I knew it was the right thing to do,” the 29-year-old dancer added.

She took up various events and wedding choreography projects, while regularly updating her videos on the YouTube channel. It was then in 2017 that her video on the song Nashe Si Chad Gayi, went viral, followed by another video on Shape Of You.

“It was so spontaneous, and I was shocked when that video earned me a spot at the contest for Ed Sheeran’s concert. My husband and I began to prepare and flew to London for it. Eventually, I won it, and realised that our videos had gone viral internationally,” she said.

Seeing the bulk of followers in London made Sonali realise the impact she had made both nationally and internationally. Although the concert won her fame, it was her consistent efforts to produce better videos for her channel that made her the star she is today.

With her followers on social media multiplying, Sonali began to soar higher. She added, “I was not just restricted to events or weddings now, I began to conduct workshops, and soon various contracts from the industry pulled me back to Mumbai.”

Amid the surging popularity, her lack of formal training in dancing did pose hurdles, although short-lived.

Sonali shared, “I had never learnt dancing formally. I was always that girl who would stand in front of the TV, dance and try to perfect the steps. But, it was through hard work that I taught myself dancing. It is a form of expression, just like writing or talking, which can be learnt to perfection, with time, patience and hard work. I have taught myself various forms and techniques of dance.”

She pointed out that there were instances when she met formally trained and skilled dancers who looked down upon her, but the number of those who respect her passion and approached her for collaborations was way higher.

Also Read: India’s Youngest YouTube Stars: 5 Kids Blazing a Trail & Earning Lakhs on Social Media!

Today, as a youth icon, she has inspired thousands to express themselves through dance.

Speaking about her journey, she concluded, “I have been blessed with so much love that it’s hard to believe. But, every morning, I tell myself that it was all possible because I took a risk, put myself out there and worked my hardest. It’s important to do the right thing at the right time, with the right platform, and social media helped me do that. And, thanks to that, my career has indeed just begun!”

(Edited by Shruti Singhal)

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This International Women’s Day, we introduce you to some truly incredible Indian women whose stories define resilience, courage and inspiration. #BalanceForBetter

If there is one film that has transcended generations of Hindi film buffs, it is Sholay.

Its iconic dialogues and a memorable cast make the film a true classic which continues to amuse and enthral us even today. After all, who can forget the shawl-clad Thakur saab or evil-incarnate, Gabbar Singh?

The film redefined the quintessential villain, introduced some epic action sequences, and its depiction of male friendship (Jai-Veeru) created one of the most popular duos in the Hindi film industry.

And then, there was Basanti, the feisty village girl who rode a tonga and talked a mile a minute.

Immortalised by the actor, Hema Malini, this remarkable and fearless character, was a part of several action sequences that left the audience in awe.

But what we all saw was the face on the screen, never the one who performed each stunt—some even life-threatening.

We are talking about Reshma Pathan, the stuntwoman or body double for not just Hema Malini in Sholay but almost all actresses through the seventies and eighties in the Hindi film industry.

Like many of her peers, Pathan’s contribution to the industry remained behind the scenes all these years. Now, that is all set to change, and she will finally receive the recognition she deserves—through a biopic!

‘The Sholay Girl’ is an original web film by Zee5, which stars actor, Bidita Bag, as Reshma Pathan. The film has been produced by Shrabani and Sai Deodhar, a mother-daughter duo, and is gearing up for release on March 8, International Women’s Day.

Pathan was barely 14 when she entered the field, to support her impoverished family, and initially faced a lot of opposition, mostly from male stunt artists.

“At that time, there were hardly any women taking up the role of even body doubles, let alone those requiring stunts. So, she earned the wrath of stuntmen; they accused her of stealing her job!” says Bidita.

Pathan joined the industry in 1968, but it wasn’t until the early-seventies that she gained recognition for her work.

Speaking with The Better India, she shares, “Between 1971-72, I began getting more work, but these would rarely stretch beyond ten days in a month. Slowly, that began to change with more work coming along my way. But the real break came in 1975—with Sholay,” Pathan remembers.

That one film made Pathan an overnight celebrity amidst the industry bigwigs. So much so, that she began to be even known as ‘Sholay Girl’.

But nothing came without hard work, and Pathan’s chosen profession often jeopardised her health.

“While it is the job of a stuntman to overcome any fear and put their life at risk, not many know that during the shooting of Sholay, Reshmaji had once suffered a serious injury. Everyone on the set was anxious, but such was her commitment to the work that she only went to the hospital after completing her scenes. And this was not a standalone incident. Throughout her career, Reshmaji has faced many life-threatening situations during shooting and each time, she bravely went ahead doing her work,” shares Bidita.

Even while she was pregnant with her son, Pathan went on doing stunts. Only when a jumping sequence in a movie almost put the life of her baby at risk, did she decide to take a break. But, she returned to work right shortly after delivering her son.

“The doctors had advised me to take good rest and care, but I had to support my family. After three months, I resumed my work as everything I’d saved until then had almost finished,” the sexagenarian remembers.

An interesting fact about Pathan is that she was the first stuntwoman who officially got a membership in the Movie Stunt Artists Association.

“By then, more and more stuntwomen began to enter the industry but it was Reshmaji, who received this membership first,” adds Bidita.

Now that the world is finally getting to see the face behind all the stars and hear her story, Pathan cannot help but feel elated.

“There never was any form of recognition by the outside world. People like us have risked our lives so many times for the sake of doing stunts, but no one gave awards for stunts. Though I always wished that stunt men and women should also get due recognition, something even better came along my way—a film on my life. My happiness knew no bounds when I came to know about the film!” she adds.

What is more, Bidita even got a chance to closely work with Pathan, while reenacting scenes for the film.

You may also like: Facing Domestic Abuse to Marital Rape, This Stunt Woman Is Braver Than Any Hero

“Working with someone as fearless and brave like Reshmaji was indeed a great learning experience. I was so scared while re-enacting some of the scenes and then there was this woman, who had lived through them all! There are so many people like her who never get any form of recognition for their work, and I feel honoured to bring the story of her life to the world,” she concludes.

As a tribute to the first Indian stuntwoman of Bollywood, The Sholay Girl is releasing on March 8. You can check out the trailer below:

(Edited by Gayatri Mishra)

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Located in the heartland of Palakkad district in Kerala, Cherpulassery is a town that is off the tourist radar.

Unknown to many, it played a crucial role during India’s freedom struggle. Another reason why Cherpulassery remains a culturally significant town is because a large number of Kathakali and traditional percussion artistes in the state, come from here.

Besides Malayalis and seekers of Kerala’s art and culture legacy, the town rarely finds any mention or recognition from the rest of the country.

But that is all set to change, thanks to the painstaking efforts of an art professor and his students.

The ‘Wall of Peace’ is the brainchild of Suresh K Nair, a renowned artist from the nearby hamlet of Adakkaputhur and a professor at the Banaras Hindu University.

Built across the Government Higher Secondary School in Cherpulassery, this 7,000-sq-m wall is a work of mural art that has been developed in a scroll format with 25 panels depicting the historical and cultural legacy of the town.

In addition to paying tribute to Mozhikkunnam Brahmadathan Namboodiripad, the legendary freedom fighter, and depicting Mahatma Gandhi’s visit to Cherpulassery, the wall also showcases the visages of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, and his confidant PS Kuttikrishnan Nair carved skillfully in cement.

One can also find panels depicting the artistic legacy of Cherpulassery, the cattle race at Puthanalkkal, the region’s obsession with football as well as the history of Cherpulassery school.

But, the highlight of Wall of Peace is in its name itself—Peace!

Across the wall, one can see the word engraved in nearly 250 officially identified languages including Sanskrit, Tamil, Hindi, Kannada, Bengali, German, Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Nepali, Arabic, and Egyptian, to name a few.

“Our work is derived from the Sanskrit shloka, ‘Lokah samastah sukhino bhavantu.’ Which means—may peace and happiness prevail everywhere. This verse is engraved in Malayalam in the peace panel,” says the fine arts professor to The Better India.

The mirrors embedded in the centre of the peace message panel are also eye-catching and add to its significance.

“I am deeply inspired by Sri Narayana Guru, and my ideology behind this installation was for every person who looks into the mirror to realise that peace lies within us all,” Suresh shares.

One would wonder how did a professor from BHU come to a town as far-flung as Cherpulassery?

“Every year, I take my students to work on various projects outside the precinct of the University with the aim to further their scope of learning through exposure and get them out of their comfort zone. This time I chose Cherpulassery, which is close to my birthplace and 12 of my final year mural students as well as a student from the Sankaracharya University in Kalady, joined me in this pursuit. The government school, where we are building the wall, didn’t have one to begin with. It is nearly 150 years old!” adds Suresh.

Interestingly, the idea behind the Wall of Peace came to Suresh during his student days at Visva Bharati University in Kolkata.

“Back then, I used to be a tea addict! To put an end to this ‘bad’ habit, I decided to go on a fast for a month and consumed only fruits and coconut water. On the last day of the fast, an idea cropped into my head, and that formed the foundation of this project, many, many years later,” he recalls.

The project commenced towards the end of last year and has now become a community initiative.

Today, Suresh and his students, who have have been carving brilliant motifs and elaborate patterns along the wall, find help and support from children, teachers, residents as well as the labourers.

“We have about ten masons, eight labourers, an engineer as well as a contractor from Cherpulassery involved in the project. The work is still ongoing, since I don’t get leave very often from the University. Currently, local painters are priming the wall. Hopefully, the wall will be standing in its entirety by March 20-23. We are yet to decide on the inauguration date,” Suresh concludes.

You may also like: With Their Unique Handmade Traditions, These 15 Little-Known Villages Are a Must-Visit!

To know more about the Wall of Peace and his other art projects, you can write to Suresh K Nair at sureshnair71@rediffmail.com.

(Edited by Gayatri Mishra)

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As one walks along the green roads, click and whoosh sounds grow louder. One can smell the yarn, the dye and the new cloth. Suddenly, the synagogue, the church, the temple and the mosque spread in a 10 sq km area appear happy.

Five months ago, our small town looked very different,” begins Sojan P A, secretary, Chendamangalam’s Kaithiri Neythu Vyavasaya Production cum sale Cooperative Society of Handloom Weavers.

Chendamangalam is a small town in Kerala’s Ernakulam district. It’s a weaver’s village located about 35 km from Kochi. For centuries, almost every person in the village has had a loom. They’ve all survived by weaving the beautiful, soft and highly absorbent cotton fabric. With a GI (Geographical Indication) tag, their saris, dhotis, towels, shirts and trousers sell like hot cakes during festivals in Kerala.

Sojan recalls the night the villagers had to run to save their lives. “We just picked up one or two things from our homes and tried to reach a higher plateau to escape the wrath of the water gushing in our village. At that time, we just couldn’t think of anything else,” he says in broken English interspersed with Malayalam.

It was unexpected. Kerala, a small state in South India, gets heavy rains annually. The abundance of rich biodiversity is due to plenty of rainfall and the reason for the common tagline for the state, ‘God’s Own Country’!

It’s known for its backwaters, canals, palm trees, mountain slopes filled with tea and spice plantations and bountiful wildlife. The Silent Valley National Park houses elephants, langurs, tigers and plenty of snakes and pythons.

So Keralites annually face heavy rains and floods, but the rains of August 2018 were different. At least 500 innocent people died, and the state incurred an overall loss of more than Rs 40,000 crore.

About 15 days after the rains subsided and the water receded, it seemed finally safe for people to return to their homes. The residents of Chendamangalam returned to a devastation they had never faced in their lives and didn’t know how to cope with.

The entire weaving community of Chendamagalam has five weaver’s clusters and about 600 looms. It was on the verge of being wiped out as the receding flood waters left behind wet clay in the looms. There was no way they could be salvaged.

The store and showroom of one such cluster which stored the community’s fabric were flooded, making the stock of Rs 70 lakh almost worthless. A similar scene was met by all other clusters.

“After reading about the calamity of weavers in Chendamangalam, I decided to visit the place and see if I could be of any help,” recalls Shalini James, Kochi-based designer of Mantra label.

Previously, Shalini had worked with the weaver’s cluster headed by Sojan and his group of 120 looms. He knew them and their work. Along with another designer friend, Sreejith Jeevan of Rouka label, they went to the town.

But they weren’t prepared for the sight.

“The stock was not only wet but also dripping with water, the bottom was covered in wet clay and it had already started turning black due to mildew. But at the top, the fabric was wet, and we realised that it could be saved,” recalls Sreejith.

Shalini immediately bought stock worth Rs eight lakh, but realised that the two of them were not enough to help these 120 weavers. They contacted others through social media.

Another Kochi-based designer, Indu Menon of Kara Weaves label, and the fashion retailer of The Wardrobe, Tracy Thomas, stepped in. Between the four of them, and their networks, they formed a group – The Friends of Chendamangalam.

Within a week, they sold goods worth Rs 40 lakh! This was a huge relief to the villagers!

Before selling the fabric, Tracy contacted a dry-cleaner who helped clean the fabric. “As the place was still very wet, we couldn’t dry the good fabric. If we had left it, then fungus would have set in, and the resultant black stains would have been almost impossible to remove. So we had to get the fabric dry-cleaned to be saleable,” says Tracy.

Indu Menon, along with daughter Chitra Gopalakrishnan of Kara Weaves, known for their table and bath linen, sarongs, among other products, bought some of the stock. Their value addition was including small embroidered motifs of the looms to tell the story of the flood and the survival of the weavers.

In fact, at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, at the Gallery OED in Mattancherry, garments designed by Sreejith, Shalini and Indu are on display until the end of March.

Even at The Wardrobe, Tracy has a section where these garments and linens are displayed for customers. “They are intrigued by the story behind these clothes, the elegance of the design and the comfort of the fabrics,” shares Tracy.

The four didn’t stop at saving the stock and selling it; they decided to go further and get the looms back so that the weavers could start their work. That’s when they started their second step, ‘Looms to life’.

They had evaluated that only 40 looms needed minor repair. The remaining needed to be rebuilt, which would cost Rs 40,000-45,000, each.

“This is when we tapped into the CSR activities of corporates where 114 looms were funded. Even the Kerala Government is helping them immensely,” explains Sreejith.

With the looms repaired, weavers of Chendmangalam got back on their feet. The state government also gave them bulk orders of weaving school uniforms.

This was the time for the third step.

The four ‘Friends of Chendamanagalam’ decided that it was time for the weavers to incorporate new designs and processes of weaving. For decades, they hadn’t experimented or changed their approaches.

Shalini smiles, “Most of the weavers who are older than 50, don’t like the word ‘change’. We are trying to change their mindset. The sale through social media after the floods has now opened doors for them to build a global customer base. People outside Kerala and India have recognised the beauty of these fabrics and are willing to buy them. Now it’s the turn of the weavers to produce something which would help put the Chendamanagalm cotton fabric on a buyer’s must-have list.”

Sreejith agrees that change and international recognition will also enable the emigrating younger generation to return home. He adds, “We are trying to help them learn new designs, to add small embroidered motifs or a signature feature to their products.”

Perhaps the floods were a boon for the weavers. But as the ‘Friends of Chendamangalam’ say, “Every handloom weaver’s cluster in India needs help to survive and keep the tradition of handloom weaving alive. Unfortunately, this has almost vanished from other countries. If anyone needs help in emulating our project, we are willing to step in.”

Also Read: Saris From Bananas: TN Weaver Creates 25 Natural Fibers, Wins National Record!

To get in touch with them, write to friendsofchendamangalam@gmail.com.

(Edited by Shruti Singhal)

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