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By Suhasini Haider Having moved back to the Promised Land — from Calcutta, Cochin, Manipur — over the last few decades, Indian-origin Jews, or Bene Israel, are large in number but not as prosperous. (This is the third piece in a series that tries to take take an in-depth look at Israel and its dynamics. Have you read the first piece,  Israe'l's many flashpoints , and the second,  Homes that don't belong ?) ‘ Ajeeb dastan hai yeh, kahaan shuru kahaan khatam  [A strange story this is..where it begins, where it ends]...’ For 35 years, Yona Shimson Kasukar was chief engineer in the little-known Israeli town of Ashdod before he retired. But the years here, far away from Mumbai where he was born, have not dimmed his memory of the songs of his youth, and he sings the 1960s hit song with great gusto. Mr. Kasukar is not alone in remembering them, and soon, the rest of the restaurant on the Ashdod beach, where a group of Bene-Israelis from the area have gathered, joins in to sing

If you grew up on a healthy dose of children’s fiction by English authors, revisit it in your adulthood. Just to reinterpret what gnomes and pixies really are. Did you ever read Jacqueline Wilson? Children’s literature penned by authors from England tends to be the foundation of most middle- and upper-class Indian households growing up. Starting at the age of six, I grew up on a staple diet of Enid Blyton, travelling with elves, gnomes, and pixies; going on adventures with the Famous Five and the Secret Seven; and navigating with Noddy and his pals of various shapes and sizes through Toytown. Joining my collection at the age of eight was the esteemed J.K. Rowling, who entertained me with the adventures of boy wizard Harry Potter and his duels with the Dark Lord Voldemort. These are the books, among others, that inspired me to do what I do today: writing for a living. Source: Wikipedia The award winning, Jacqueline Wilson is an English author of children’s books. She is best known fo

The Walled City is at the core of the Israel-Palestine tussle. Even if Jerusalem is divided, the government will face greater opposition to the resolution from Jewish settlements in the territory of the West Bank that the Palestinian authority claims. (This is the second part of a series that takes a look at the conflict and faultlines in Israel. Read the first part,  Israel's many flashpoints ?) If you ask most Israelis what is the most contentious part of the Israel-Palestine conflict, they will say: Jerusalem. It seems inconceivable to most how any government would be allowed to accede any part of the city, coveted and conquered for 4,000 years, and finally under control of the people of Israel. The first Prime Minister Ben-Gurion had reportedly said, when Israel only controlled West Jerusalem, that he could imagine “Jerusalem without Israel but not Israel without Jerusalem”. On the other hand, most will admit that Jerusalem today is a city divided, and East Jerusalem is con

Whether in Chennai, where natural floodplains were ignored to facilitate infrastructure; or in Mumbai, where Bollywood and business have cut into forest land, danger crawls out of the woodworks every monsoon... In the recently released  Phobia , Mehak, Radhika Apte’s character, an artist, is molested by the driver of the cab she’s returning in late night from her art show. Resulting from that trauma, Mehak develops agoraphobia, a fear of being in perceptibly threatening places. She is panic-stricken and feels paralysed at the thought of just stepping out of the apartment door. Even when her boyfriend moves her out of her home to a rental, he has to drug her to do so. (Mahek is compelled to move out as her sister, who she is living with and is married with a son, begins fearing for how Mahek’s mental state and her resulting actions will affect her child and thus also begins getting exasperated with Mahek.) However, her condition doesn’t necessarily improve in the new place, and she swe

In Golan, Ramallah, Gaza, or the Ariel settlement, you see a curious contrast — clusters of military presence amid the pastural idylls of the Levant. “If your hat flies off, please don’t try to retrieve it! Or you may return without some parts of the body,” our guide to the Golan heights, Brigadier Nuriel cheerfully tells us as approach it. Here on Mount Bental, much of the land remains a minefield, and especially in the winter, when it’s covered with snow, people have been known to be caught in landmine explosions. Golan, at the northern tip of the land controlled by Israel, was taken from Syria in the Six-Day War, and even today isn’t recognised by the United Nations as Israeli territory. But the Israeli grip on it is complete, as officers explain its crucial strategic purpose: As one stands here, it is possible to see Syria just below, Lebanon to the east, and Jordan to the south. ^  A cow walks past Israeli military vehicles in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights near the bord

By Thejaswi Udupa How similar are the musical trajectories of David Bowie and Prince? At first glance, not so much. But look again. You have heard everyone say this. 2016 has been a horrible year for celebrities. They are dying at a faster clip than ever before. There have even been articles trying to convince you that there is steadfast logic behind all this. Here’s looking at you,  BBC . Despite all that rationalising, it is hard to come to terms with some deaths. Especially when you were not expecting them. And two of the most prominent deaths in recent times from the world of music fall into this category — David Bowie, and Prince (or the artist formerly known as The Artist Formerly Known As Prince.) Over the past few years, I have figured out a way of dealing with the death of a favourite musician. Armed with Wikipedia and YouTube, I listen to every song the artist put out, in chronological order. It makes a lot of sense. Given my creative constraints — my ability to draw is “

By Shijith Kunhitty Here's an analytical look at the men who decide football games with mere whistles and gesticulations. Euro 2016 is coming up in a few days, and there’s no shortage of coverage about players, tactics, managers etc. ( The Guardian’s Euro 2016 section  is particularly good). But one thing a lot of the articles will be missing is a look at the one person with the most influence on the outcome — the referee. The thing about refereeing is that it’s one of the most high-profile but completely thankless jobs around. If you do everything right, no one ever takes notice, but make one mistake in a crucial match and the whole world is on your case. So refereeing is a high-pressure role that not everyone can handle.  The 18  who will be going to the Euros are some of the best referees Europe has to offer. One of them, for example — Mark Clattenburg — had the privilege of officiating the FA cup final and the Champions League final in the span of a week. (Yup, he was the

By Divya Sridharan Children in India are not so much brought up as used as projection screens for their parents' aspirations for them. And that sort of thing takes its toll. Our children are killing themselves. And it’s our fault. So all the Board and Entrance examination results are out. Amazingly, many young men and women have achieved “cent per cent” scores. Unbelievable really. How can you score 100/100 in languages, or in English? Is that a reflection on how much of learning is by rote now. And how little value there is for original thinking. These are troubling questions that we don’t ask ourselves. Meanwhile, victorious students have been proclaimed the heroes and heroines of the hour. Ecstatic parents have been portrayed kissing their beaming, brilliant children. Full-page all-colour advertisements (from the many tutorial sweatshops that dot this scholarship-hungry nation of ours) have hailed the toppers. Interviews have been conducted, reports have been written, of th

By Thejas wi Udupa How similar are the musical trajectories of David Bowie and Prince? At first glance, not so much. But look again. You have heard everyone say this. 2016 has been a horrible year for celebrities. They are dying at a faster clip than ever before. There have even been articles trying to convince you that there is steadfast logic behind all this. Here’s looking at you,  BBC . Despite all that rationalising, it is hard to come to terms with some deaths. Especially when you were not expecting them. And two of the most prominent deaths in recent times from the world of music fall into this category — David Bowie, and Prince (or the artist formerly known as The Artist Formerly Known As Prince.) Over the past few years, I have figured out a way of dealing with the death of a favourite musician. Armed with Wikipedia and YouTube, I listen to every song the artist put out, in chronological order. It makes a lot of sense. Given my creative constraints — my ability to draw is

By Sudish Kamath The Matrix trilogy is often viewed as a stark underscoring of the man-vs-machine conflict of our technology-laden world. Perhaps it's time to revisit the newly-transformed Wachowski Sisters' cult classic and explore it at a more personal level? “There is no spoon,” the Wachowski Brothers — Larry and Andy — famously observed in  The Matrix  (1999), a film I called “the single-most definitive film of our times” in my film  Good Night Good Morning  (2010) mostly because I read only the more obvious conflict of man versus machine. Larry went on to transition into Lana Wachowski in 2012 and earlier this March, the younger sibling Andy too came out as Lilly Wachowski. As someone who has always seen  The Matrix  as a feminist action film, I felt the need to revisit  The Matrix  trilogy as a film made by the Wachowski Sisters, especially after Lilly expressly encouraged critics to revisit the films while picking up an award from Sense 8 at the GLAAD Media Awards las

By Sudish Kamath Though uphill, the battle against the censor board is one that must be fought by filmmakers given how toothless the government has been in saving their work from scissor-happy autocrats If culture is the new opium of the people, the chief of the Central Board for Film Certification Pahlaj Nihalani is the drug lord controlling all business in this town. Udta Punjab is the latest example of the autocratic, arbitrary nature of the unchallenged power given to the certification body that continues to censor films under assorted excuses. This time around, it has a problem with profanity, drug use and representation of Punjab and Punjabis. Last year, after The Hindu  leaked  a recorded conversation where Nihalani is heard dictating what he thinks are permissible words for adults, the CBFC chief completely banned phones or cameras or any recording device in his cabin. Mr. Nihalani was heard offering dubbing solutions to the young filmmakers. “You can dub g**** with Mirchi

It's important that we train ourselves to go deep into the import of events and happenings, threading and interconnecting, so that we can make holistic sense of our otherwise random world. The world often presents us with a chaotic mess of random events, a mish-mash of unrelated images, a cluster of disparate sights and sounds. If we want to make sense of all these individual sensory inputs, we need to thread them together into a coherent concatenation. And each element of this concatenation needs to be interconnected with its siblings, or at least with its predecessor and successor. This is what we are attempting in Photospeak. To trawl through a host of week-old images from across the globe and collate an collection with an integrated identity. And if we're lucky, this process should germinate an overarching message — the nectarine outcome of a rigorous churning. A clear narrative that bursts forth from a hitherto unexamined story. Here, have a go at gazing through these i

By Rituraj Konwar On World Environment Day, we look at an endangered species in India that mostly feeds off Guwahati's garbage dumps — the greater adjutant stork The greater adjutant stork is one of the most endangered bird species widely distributed in the plains of the Brahmaputra valley of Assam. The present global population of the greater adjutant stork is about 1,500 — around 900 of them are in Assam. The stork, a scavenger, has long been known in India for making frequent use of rubbish damps which is important for its survival. The birds are therefore often observed in urban settings. Earlier in Guwahati these birds were recorded in 12 localities, and they bred only in North Guwahati. But fast-vanishing wetlands in and around the city has now become a major threat for the survival of the stork. Guwahati has the largest concentration of the endangered greater adjutant storks in the world, and forage for food at the city’s main dumping ground near the Deepor Beel Wildlif