By James Aitchison Think of American pop music and Nashville springs to mind. Or that iconic circular Capitol Records building in Los Angeles. Originally, though, New York was the undisputed home of American music. Before records, phonographs and radio, the…
By: Ramlal Agarwal In its early stages, Indian writing in English met disapproval and disbelief. It was argued that no alien language could express the Indian ethos. As such, Madhusudan Datta and Bankimchandra Chatterjee, the earliest practitioners of Indian writing…
By James Aitchison Germany between the wars. The Weimar Republic replaced the old monarchy. In the golden 1920s, Berlin became a glittering world city, a melting pot of culture and counterculture, of science, philosophy, art, design, architecture, music, film and,…
By James Aitchison Once, the culture of overworking yourself to death was unique to Japan. “Karoshi”, which literally means death by overwork, claims worker lives from heart failure, stroke, sleep deprivation and exhaustion, mental health issues and suicide — the…
By: Ramlal Agarwal Arundhati Roy’s debut novel, The God of Small Things, won the Booker Prize in 1997 and sold millions of copies worldwide. It was an extraordinary achievement for an Indian writer, and readers of Indian writing in English…
By James Aitchison Thomas Ince was the “Father of the Western” and made 800 silent movies. He pioneered the disciplined, assembly-line system of movie making. He was the first man who produced more than one film a week. He built…
By James Aitchison Once revered for its convenience, plastic is becoming a curse. Certainly, it was a curse for its inventor. He died a lonely eccentric, bitterly at war with his son. His wealth then became a curse for his…
By: James Aitchison Water: colourless, slippery, life-giving, eternal. Deserts: dry, gritty, hostile, awesome. Both the blue and desert humanities have diverse, textured relationships with humans. Why are we so drawn to both? From vast, turbulent oceans to the local fountain…
By James Aitchison Being branded a traitor is bad enough, but having your name used to describe one is another matter entirely. Today, dictionaries define a “quisling” as a traitor who collaborates with an enemy force occupying their country. Many…
By James Aitchison Psychotherapy and hypnosis had a strange genesis: the absurd quackery of Dr Franz Anton Mesmer. Like phrenology — the so-called science of reading lumps and bumps on someone’s head to determine their character — Mesmer’s theories would…