Shoma A. Chatterji

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,...

Khilawadi, a short fiction film directed by the young and sprightly Shobhita Thakur, alumnus of the FTII, Pune, is making news wherever the film is being screened. Why? The subject of the film is shocking in its inhuman brutality. Through a brief but powerful narrative, the film tells the story of the 12-year-old Sapna who is good in studies and dreams of becoming a doctor one day. The term “Khilawadi” is a locally used word associated with the Banchada community in Western Madhya Pradesh,...