Call Me By My Pen Name

In July last year, a deliciously tight debut EP offered an intimate window into the world of the self-actualising musician Aditi Saigal — aka Dot. — who rose to viral fame in 2017 with a home-made song uploaded to YouTube and is now set to be launched by Zoya Akhtar in her upcoming Netflix musical ‘The Archies’. As she emerged from a self-elected two-and-a-half-year hiatus with ‘Khamotion’, the reclusive Saigal spoke about prioritising personal growth over professional success and evolving as an artiste while grappling with a global culture where self-promotion overrides art
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“To say that I felt lonely as a Dalit woman navigating urban spaces in the face of an utter lack of relatable perspectives on desire, does not cover a modicum of the despondence I experienced because of the loneliness.” In a first-person account, Christina Dhanaraj, writer and co-founder of Dalit History Month, investigates the ecosystem in which these desires are formed and how the narrative around Dalit women becomes one of victimhood
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Badhaai Do has brought up a familiar discourse around non-heterosexual narratives in mainstream Hindi cinema with its portrayal of a lavender marriage between a gay cop and a lesbian PT Teacher. Madhavi Menon, professor of English at Ashoka University and author of The Law of Desire: Rulings on Sex and Sexuality in India, speaks to J. Shruti about reading queerness into Indian films, and why she is suspicious of mainstream queer representation
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Newly minted food entrepreneurs – Ruth Phillips from Faridabad, Karen Martin from Bengaluru, and Jerry and Penny Williamson from Kolkata – share their distinct motivations behind reviving an interest in Anglo-Indian cuisine
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As bottled water companies continue to remove beneficial, naturally present minerals and nutrients through “purifying” processes, Lakshitaa Khanna has made it her business to learn everything she can about water’s varying flavours, textures and other properties, which are surprisingly complex. She talks to us about how she ended up in this unconventional profession and the importance of going back to the source
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Melancholic and melodic, Shantanu Pandit’s new music is the perfect antidote to these fraught times. Marked with advanced maturity folded over a keen sense of awareness and authenticity – it has the potential to cut across age groups, from adolescents through to those in their mid-thirties. But within them, the prime takers for his debut album Milk Teeth may just be the adamant romantics seeking comfort in a past innocence after “adulting” and looking to view the world anew, much like Pandit
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Movie prosthetics artist Zuby Johal uses innovative make-up techniques and can scare the wits out of you…. She also displays an innate love of fashion, with the desire to extend her expertise in working with silicone to the clothing and lifestyle sectors…
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