In a time where nostalgia is at a high, there is no shortage of old Bollywood covers. The problem with most of these covers, however, is that many artists and producers fail to retain the integrity of the original songs. Keerat Kaur’s new EP Pink Guava doesn’t suffer from this problem. Kaur and producer Wisechild … Read More
Peter Cat Recording Co.’s (PCRC) new album, Bismillah, is meant to be heard in high definition. From the grand gestures of trumpets and keys to the subtle electronics and sound bites knitted into their music, the true intricacy to their sound can only be captured in HD. The chirping birds, distant car horns, and synthesized … Read More
Following her debut book of poetry If They Come For Us, Chicago-based poet and screenwriter Fatimah Asghar is back with a new collection. Co-edited with Safia Elhillo, Halal If You Hear Me is an anthology of poetry from Muslim writers who identify as women, queer, genderqueer, nonbinary, or trans. Kajal caught up with Asghar shortly … Read More
Ramy, streaming now on Hulu, follows the life of Ramy Hassan, a Muslim American man who lives in New Jersey with his family. It delves into the classic trials of being a first-generation immigrant Muslim. The show’s creator, 28 year old Ramy Youssef, is also an Egyptian-American Muslim from New Jersey. While the show isn’t … Read More
“I am not a girl, I am a storm with skin” reads one of the first shots in the title sequence of Four More Shots Please, Amazon India’s latest original “woman-centric” show. The phrase serves as a manifesto for the show, in which each character is less complex, layered individual and more vessel for a … Read More
Amrita Mahale is an aeronautical engineer by profession. She studied as the lone woman in her engineering class in IIT and she even wrote about female students experiencing the “imposter syndrome” in classes that are dominated by men. Her first book Milk Teeth, like her, stands out in the publishing scene of India. The blurb … Read More
Indian filmmaker Jyoti Nisha does not think anyone can claim B.R. Ambedkar’s image or politics. But with her upcoming film, B.R. Ambedkar: Now and Then, Jyoti weaves Ambedkar’s life and history as an opponent of Brahminical hegemony together with the current political climate and anti-caste movement, all from her own Bahujan feminist perspective. Kajal sat … Read More
Dove is a bestselling novel by Robin Lee Graham, a non-fiction narrative about sailing solo around the world at 16 years old, starting from San Pedro, California. It ends like a fairytale: he returns home with a wife and a daughter. I read it as part of my middle school curriculum and was so taken … Read More
Getting to the inaugural Crazy Funny South Asians variety show at the Upright Citizens Brigade theater was a trek given the near-apocalyptic scale of this season’s first snow on November 15. But somewhere between the endless lines outside Penn Station mere blocks away, the unnecessary but – I’m calling it – quintessentially Indian queue skipping … Read More
Jude Ratnam didn’t realize he would be telling his own story. Initially, Ratnam set out to make a film about the Sri Lankan Civil War, using the railway connecting the Sinhalese-dominated south and the Tamil-dominated north as a springboard for his explorations. “You can’t rationally understand the process of art-making,” Ratnam told Kajal. “But one … Read More
