anuradha roy

The most surreal aspect of these last few days has been watching prominent, liberal and highly regarded feminists on the same side as right-wing politicians burning effigies of the BBC as they demanded a ban on a film they had not even seen. There were widespread and passionate protests against a ban, including in Parliament, but the documentary, about an Indian problem on which every Indian has a view, has now been aired everywhere except in India. Naturally, it went viral in seconds. I had friends posting links, and thousands watched or downloaded swiftly so that they could see it before the State blocked it off the internet. Watching it through, the first feeling was of vindication simply in the act of watching, the sense that the thousands of people in India, outraged by attempts to control them, had personally thwarted State censorship. It is a harrowing, deeply disturbing film that you need a strong stomach to watch. The image that emerges through the long...

You get the feeling from Murakami’s latest novel, Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki , that while the rest of Japan was waiting with champagne on ice for his Nobel, he took a more sardonic view of the circus. "What a strange world we live in,” says a character in the book. “Some people plug away at building railroad stations, while others make tons of money cooking up sophisticated-sounding words.” A recurrent opposition is set up in the book between those who live by making things and those who live by words or ideas. The word tsukuru, the narrative explains at some length, can mean to “create”, but Tsukuru Tazaki is named after its more basic meaning,   to “make or build”. Following the conventional world view, Tsukuru thinks that as a mere builder of railway stations, he is much less interesting than two of his childhood friends who deal in words: one has become a car salesman, stereotypically an occupation defined by smooth talking. Another runs a corporate trai...

Share on email Share on print Share on facebook Share on twitter More Sharing Services Ranikhet's own traditions and its unique culturehave trumped the charmsof Durga Puja, says Anuradha Roy ( The Telegraph, Sunday 28 September 2014 ) Anuradha Roy Late one October evening, a man in a gilt crown, lush false moustaches and polyester dhoti dashed out from Munir Bux Steam Press and Drycleaners, loped across the road and leaped over the parapet into the space below. His only witness at that hour ought to have been a leopard wandering in search of rashly adventurous dogs. Today was different. Argumentative Indians abounded: Look, there's Manoj. Not Manoj, can't you see him, he's still at his shop. No, that's Nandu Dhobi. He's Lakshman this year. Nandu? That three-foot midget as Lakshman? It's someone else. Below the parapet was an arrangement of tables held together as a stage with ropes and prayers. It had a glea...

Ando Mura, Yamato, Japan (about 1939) Dear L, How your family and your work getting on? Nearly everyday we talk about you but it is too far Yamato and St Ives... Here plum blossom and nightingale came, harbinger of spring. I think you remember this best season of Japan. This year I had five kilns but only five good works (not good , ordinary) and we wish to break up all the others (50) but if we break up all of them we must ask 100 yen each for the five works. Then who will buy? Can they buy? Well if they cannot buy how shall we live? Think! Only five pots out of 100 pots, two months hard work, 150 yen gone. I will stop. You know well. Plum blossom, nightingale and the rain of Yamato -- poor, but we enjoy so much. I feel the plum blossom and such kind of flower deeply coming into my mind year by year. Last year I did not feel as I enjoy this year. I wish to speak to you in the quiet room but I cannot explain well. Bah! English! Please write to us. Yours Kenkichi Tomimoto ...

Cylinders are to ceramics what the alphabet is to writing, and the first thing all potters have to learn is to throw a cylinder. This sounds much, much easier than it is. I’ve been at potters’ wheels in various places for years but am still a wobbly, faltering potter wonderstruck if I manage to pull something off. I began at university, in the Round Church at Cambridge. Below the Church, like a secret in the basement, was a little pottery, kiln included, for any student who wanted to come and throw a pot or two. There were no teachers, nobody to tell you a thing. At that time there was no Youtube either, to learn from a vast world of potters out there. You were given a key to enter the ancient grotto -- any time of night or day -- and then, mostly in solitude, you stared at the wheel that was spinning, and tried to figure it out. I have a pot I made then, and wonder how I made it at all. My first real teacher, Bani de Roy , was a student of the illustrious Shoji Hamada ...

Photograph by Anuradha Roy Is This Us? A bus with ‘La Perle de la Savanne’ painted down its back and sides trundles down the road and we crawl in its wake. Behind us, many others as patient. There’s no honking nor any attempts to overtake the bus. This wouldn’t be so mystifying if about 63 per cent of the population in Mauritius were not Indian-origin. Where’s their Indianness gone? Why isn’t anyone shooting jets of scarlet spittle or peeing into roadside walls? I travel across the island, see no garbage heaps. And oh—nobody’s groping women. I feel safe enough to take taxis alone across the country, safe enough to sail to another island on a motorboat where the only other passengers are the Creole boatman and his buddy. Jade, celadon, sapphire and turquoise melt and mingle in the sea under a sky as blue as a kingfisher’s wing. We make our crossing. The water’s clear enough to see fish flitting past corals. No hint of floating rubbish. No Sweet Deal Indian-origin...

 I learnt many new things on my first visit to Australia. That water drains anticlockwise Down Under. That Victorian refers not to nineteenth-century England but to the state of Victoria, of which Melbourne is the capital. Also that Australia has llamas—and two days into my travels, I was standing face to face with one on a green meadow high above the ocean. Llama at Otway Farm. Photograph by Anuradha Roy The llama had a serene, supercilious face and her elegance was undiminished by the fact that sprigs of hay stuck out from her mouth. Early training from Tintin comics gave me the cosmopolitan ease with which to handle the situation: step back as if admiring the view before she can spray you with spittle. When I wondered at his choice of exotic pets, Steve Earle of Otway Farm told me the llama was a sheepdog in disguise. It chased away foxes, protected new-born lambs. It was a working member of his farm. My learning curve was going to get steeper: next I was ...