Sandip Roy's Dispatches from Kolkata

India’s COVID-19 numbers of late have shown great promise, what’s going on?

A childhood goddess that was once asked for help with math takes on a new significance in adulthood.  

  More and more celebrities are tweeting about the farmer protest in India,

Something funny happened on the way to the comedy club,  but no-one is laughing.

Priya’s Shakti is a comic and animated film about India’s first female superhero Priya and her flying tiger Sahas.

Social media has become our tool for validation. And we go to further and further extremes to get that validation rush.

What happened in the United States might feel shocking. But we gloat at our own peril. 

  The pandemic has exhausted all of us, but just as we’re letting our guard down it will come to town, just like Santa Claus.

In a big shift from tradition the Oxford English Dictionary said 2020 is a “year which cannot be neatly accommodated in one word,” so maybe this year we need a word cloud.

This episode is based on a column written for Mint Lounge.

The new paper strip test for COVID-19 in India is called “Feluda.” Why such a name? Sandip Roy sleuths out the answer.  

Never underestimate the power of a poem.  

India struggles with its image in the larger world, but so should America reconsider hers.

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite American holiday, and this has been a year where we learned to be thankful for all the things we once took for granted.  

Even though the pandemic put a damper on Diwali, last Sunday tens of thousands of people still poured out onto the streets. 

Everybody wants a piece of the first female vice president of the United States; Or at least a few degrees of separation from her.

Indians now look at the 2020 American elections and understand that there’s chaos that’s colorful and then there’s chaos thats toxic.

More than anything else the pandemic has forced us to reckon with what really lies at the heart and soul of Durga Puja. And it’s not necessarily big budgets grand feasts and corporate sponsorships.

Durga Puja, the festival of the ten armed Goddess Durga, has always been a time of excess in Kolkata. But this is the story of the “Little Durga.”

For more information visit Meghdutam Foundation (https://www.meghdutamfoundation.org/)  

Writer and actor Rupert Everett spoke recently with Sandip Roy for the Jaipur Lit. Fest. about comparing pandemics and sainthood.

The caste system is a long and controversial cultural norm in India, but now the Dalits may be getting a boost from America’s civil rights movements.  

Oct. 2nd is the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, and in an angry toxic world, we would do well to remember a man who fasted, intermittently, to force us to think about a better humanity.  

…the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill.

There is a pandemic demon that needs slaying...

As San Francisco’s heat wave hits 100º Sandip Roy recalls how to battle heat waves in his native Kolkata.  

It was just two years ago that India Supreme Court decriminalized homosexuality, but the real hope for change might not lie in politics.

The dogs that wander the streets in Kolkata are not strays, but part of an extended family, cared for and fed by many of the cities lesser known individuals.

Pariah Dog the movie is now available on Apple TV, iTunes and Amazon Prime

http://www.pariahdogmovie.com/  

The furor over a Kamala seems much ado over very few syllables, but how one handles the mispronunciation can be telling.  

Sandip Roy wonders if the new normal is really normal.

"Coronavirus Rhapsody" by Raúl Iravién on YouTube here:

At Bakra Mania, a goat dealership in Mumbai Fahad Zariwala runs the youtube channel FSA Entertainment which showcases many goat gems 

With the news of Olivia de Havilland’s death this week coinciding with the Indian celebration of Rakhi Purnima, Sandip reflects on how the holiday might have helped the de Havilland sisters.