Shoma A. Chatterji

Did Ram or the epic Ramayana really exist? Or is it a fictional creation reportedly authored by Rishi Valmiki? In fact, there is no scientific or historical truth in the existence of Rishi Valmiki himself. Evolution has taken such long steps in our lives, that any question raised about the authenticity of the very existence of Ramayana has become redundant as we have accepted the Ramayana to be the ideal, indisputable truth unfolded through the eternal battle between fact and fiction, between...

Four decades after his death, Bengal’s greatest star still commands a devotion that borders on the religious. Uttam Kumar was revelatory in Satyajit Ray’s Nayak (1966), one of his most iconic performances. Every year, in the month of September, when Uttam Kumar was born in Ahiritola in the northern parts of Kolkata, and also in July, when he passed away, people across West Bengal go wild with celebrations in tribute to Uttam Kumar though he passed away in 1980, more than five decades ago. One...

The Annapurna Bhandar scheme is meant to put money in women’s hands, but where husbands control the purse strings, it could become another source of domestic tension and violence. Mariam’s husband used to beat her when she was pregnant. She suffered a miscarriage. The abuse escalated after she gave birth to their first child. On one occasion, he refused to give her money to buy formula milk for their six-month-old baby. She had to feed the child cow’s milk instead. He constantly put her down,...