Life is difficult for pedestrians in Indian cities. It is estimated that around 1.5 lakh people die on the streets of Indian cities every year, and over a crore get hospitalized. In the run for making our roads comparable to that of the developed parts of the world, we have focused too much on the car and bike wallas, and done too little for the pedestrians. Continue reading
Category Archives: Culture
Where the sidewalk ends
The urban-rural dichotomy
Class divide does exist within cities – between the slum dwellers and the ones living in high rise apartments. However, the divide between the urban and rural classes is growing at a much faster rate, and should be a much larger reason for concern. Read my latest article on the-NRI.
Doctor Who
There was a time in cinema where almost every film would have a scene where a doctor would make a house visit to see the bed-ridden patient. On his way out, his leather bag would be carried by the patient’s son, and the doctor will stop at the door, and reveal in hushed voice about the patient’s suffering from tuberculosis, or cancer. Those gray haired doctors were accessible over phone and often themselves called the patient, just to know how was doing. Continue reading
Kids of Persia
If I were to recommend films for children’s viewing, 8 out of 10 films would be from Iran. Iranian cinema is known for its childlike innocence, moral values, rural beauty and poetic elegance. It is entirely different from the western media’s portrayal of post-revolution Iran, which paints a picture of war, repressive mullahs and fundamentalists. Propagandists still argue that the paradox is a direct consequence of the censorship there. The larger picture, however, is much more complex and interesting. Continue reading
History, 24 frames per second
History is an interesting subject for cinema. It has stories to tell, and more importantly lessons to teach. While Chinese resort to their martial art and wartime dramas, Japanese make jidaigekis, Russians are known for their working class films, and Americans with very little history to tell, still fall back to their cowboy westerns and political dramas, it is rather unfortunate, that India despite of its thousands of years of rich history, vastly fails to replicate it in cinema. Continue reading
सौरभ राय | Sourav Roy 