Research Assistant, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies, Kolkata MA in English Literature, Presidency University (Kolkata) BA in English Literature (Asutosh College, University of Calcutta)
The article discusses the themes of isolation and estrangement in two films of Satyajit Ray-"Kanc... more The article discusses the themes of isolation and estrangement in two films of Satyajit Ray-"Kanchenjunga" (1962) and "Charulata" (1964).
The article pays tribute to the Russian journalist Anna Politskovskaya, who became a voice of dis... more The article pays tribute to the Russian journalist Anna Politskovskaya, who became a voice of dissent against the governmental despotism.
This article tries to analyze the concluding part of Abbas Kiarostami's film "Through the Olive T... more This article tries to analyze the concluding part of Abbas Kiarostami's film "Through the Olive Trees" (1994), which was the last instalment of his celebrated Koker Trilogy.
This paper tries to explore the ingenious imprints left by two eminent female vocalists of Hindus... more This paper tries to explore the ingenious imprints left by two eminent female vocalists of Hindustani Classical Music, Begum Akhtar and Kishori Amonkar, who have successfully established their identity in a patriarchal musical atmosphere, through the lens of Virginia Woolf’s influential feminist essay A Room of One’s Own (1929).
It's an attempt to analyze the character of the Joker, the fictional supervillain of the "The Dar... more It's an attempt to analyze the character of the Joker, the fictional supervillain of the "The Dark Knight" (2008), the second installation in the Batman Movie Trilogy, directed by Christopher Nolan, in the light of the essay "The Uncanny" (1919), written by Sigmund Freud. The paper tries to show how the Joker invokes the feeling of the uncanny in the fictional and the real worlds, primarily through intellectual uncertainty.
This paper tries to explore the anarchistic traits of the Joker, the DC Comics supervillain, thro... more This paper tries to explore the anarchistic traits of the Joker, the DC Comics supervillain, through the lens of Louis Althusser's influential essay "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses," with special references to two movies, "The Dark Knight" (2008) and "Joker" (2019).
This paper attempts to critically examine two significant songs which garnered currency during th... more This paper attempts to critically examine two significant songs which garnered currency during the Indian independence movement against the British Raj in the twentieth century: Jana Gana Mana and Subh Sukh Chain, written by the Indian polymath Rabindranath Tagore and Colonel Abid Hasan Safrani, military officer of the Provisional Government of Azad Hind (1943-45) respectively. The paper analyzes the two songs through a comparative study and underscores the parallels, shifts, and points of convergence observed in the structure, melody, metaphor, and imagery. It also tries to contextualize the two songs by briefly discussing the creation of a national aural imagination of India through nationalistic songs, and how the two aforementioned songs have contributed to the creation of a secular image of India, against the practice of upholding a monolithic, majoritarian, and saffronized narrative of Indian society and culture.
This article attempts to make a comparative study between the balcony performances, which primari... more This article attempts to make a comparative study between the balcony performances, which primarily involved the production of sounds (both musical and non-musical), held during the onset of the Covid pandemic in Italy and India to boost public morale and influence community solidarity. This article examines how Indians and Italians generated aural resistance against the pandemic through this novel method of sonic production to cancel the silence of death with the sounds of life, and how a community feeling and a sense of unity were injected through the sounds. This article juxtaposes the Italian and the Indian experiences of musical resistance against the pandemic, revealing similar patterns of response existing between them, by highlighting the multifaceted sides of the balcony performances that celebrated life over death and destruction, which ideationally and phenomenologically connected the two countries separated by geographical distances. Besides, it also discusses the impact...
Consortium: An International Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies, 2022
The present paper discusses Pedro Almodovar’s film Pain and Glory (2019), taking into usage the S... more The present paper discusses Pedro Almodovar’s film Pain and Glory (2019), taking into usage the Socratic idea of Pharmakon, and attempts to analyze the role of drugs which acts as both remedy and pain to the ailing protagonist Salvador Mallo, and how their interplay constitutes the role of memory, which serves as a textual phenomenon to the protagonist. The present idea also takes into consideration the notion of the writer’s sacrifice and elaborates the idea of authorship and its authority involved in the fictional domain of Almodovar’s film and argues in detail how filmmaking strategies employed by the filmmaker himself meditate on the theory of fiction within the so-called fictional space itself.
This paper tries to explore the Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami's search for a "feminine" cine... more This paper tries to explore the Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami's search for a "feminine" cinematic language by analyzing his remarkable film Shirin (2008). The paper tries to argue, how Kiarostami deviated from the traditional "male gaze" project emphasized by the film industries worldwide, especially the Hollywood film industry, and how he created a resistance against the dominant cinematic male gaze by positing a counter gaze or the "female gaze" by employing ingenious cinematic techniques in Shirin. The paper attempts to discuss the cinematic language of Shirin from the perspective of Hélène Cixous's seminal essay "The Laugh of the Medusa," which argues for the establishment of a separate literary language for the expression of female subjectivity, or the écriture féminine. The aim of the paper is, therefore, to establish how Kiarostami tries to achieve a cinematic écriture féminine by positing a symbolic challenge to the phallocentric cinematic discourse.
All About Ambedkar: A Journal on Theory and Praxis, 2021
This paper tries to analyze the character of the Santhal girl Duli(played by Simi Garewal)in Saty... more This paper tries to analyze the character of the Santhal girl Duli(played by Simi Garewal)in Satyajit Ray's film "Aranyer Dinratri" (1970) from multiple perspectives.
It was a pleasure to read Rebanta Gupta's brief essay, "A Stranger in the Crowd: Camus' Meursault... more It was a pleasure to read Rebanta Gupta's brief essay, "A Stranger in the Crowd: Camus' Meursault and His Antiheroic Traits," and to be recommending publication in Academia Letters, with two thumbs up. Gupta's finely written text brought to this reader, who never got beyond a first reading of The Stranger, long ago, a tingling appreciation of Albert Camus' most famous novel. The Stranger works the underside of Camus' notion of the Absurd: the view that the world we find ourselves in has no inherent meaning, only those meanings that we create, moment by moment. "Absurd" derives from the Latin absurditas, which indicates a discordance, a disharmony, a gap between what we ask of the world and what we receive in return. Through the character of Meursault, we are shown what it is like for someone with no understanding of our absurd condition to surrender to it. Camus' novel can be read as a cautionary tale-Meursault has become one of literature's most famous antiheros. Succumbing to, rather than overcoming the condition of the Absurd, he easily and willingly capitulates to a nihilistic despair. Meursault does not relate to the world in what we would call a meaningful way-a glass wall seems to separate him from everyone and everything. This is why his actions at first appear to make no sense. What he does and doesn't do is not intended to make sense to us, until we grasp his inauthentic, nihilistic take on what it means to exist. Even the least perspicacious and courageous person makes occasional positive, authentic adaptations to a world that offers no ultimate direction or guarantee. But not our protagonist. The title of Camus' novel-The Stranger, L'Étranger-introduces Meursault as a strange man, estranged in a strange land.
The article discusses the themes of isolation and estrangement in two films of Satyajit Ray-"Kanc... more The article discusses the themes of isolation and estrangement in two films of Satyajit Ray-"Kanchenjunga" (1962) and "Charulata" (1964).
The article pays tribute to the Russian journalist Anna Politskovskaya, who became a voice of dis... more The article pays tribute to the Russian journalist Anna Politskovskaya, who became a voice of dissent against the governmental despotism.
This article tries to analyze the concluding part of Abbas Kiarostami's film "Through the Olive T... more This article tries to analyze the concluding part of Abbas Kiarostami's film "Through the Olive Trees" (1994), which was the last instalment of his celebrated Koker Trilogy.
This paper tries to explore the ingenious imprints left by two eminent female vocalists of Hindus... more This paper tries to explore the ingenious imprints left by two eminent female vocalists of Hindustani Classical Music, Begum Akhtar and Kishori Amonkar, who have successfully established their identity in a patriarchal musical atmosphere, through the lens of Virginia Woolf’s influential feminist essay A Room of One’s Own (1929).
It's an attempt to analyze the character of the Joker, the fictional supervillain of the "The Dar... more It's an attempt to analyze the character of the Joker, the fictional supervillain of the "The Dark Knight" (2008), the second installation in the Batman Movie Trilogy, directed by Christopher Nolan, in the light of the essay "The Uncanny" (1919), written by Sigmund Freud. The paper tries to show how the Joker invokes the feeling of the uncanny in the fictional and the real worlds, primarily through intellectual uncertainty.
This paper tries to explore the anarchistic traits of the Joker, the DC Comics supervillain, thro... more This paper tries to explore the anarchistic traits of the Joker, the DC Comics supervillain, through the lens of Louis Althusser's influential essay "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses," with special references to two movies, "The Dark Knight" (2008) and "Joker" (2019).
This paper attempts to critically examine two significant songs which garnered currency during th... more This paper attempts to critically examine two significant songs which garnered currency during the Indian independence movement against the British Raj in the twentieth century: Jana Gana Mana and Subh Sukh Chain, written by the Indian polymath Rabindranath Tagore and Colonel Abid Hasan Safrani, military officer of the Provisional Government of Azad Hind (1943-45) respectively. The paper analyzes the two songs through a comparative study and underscores the parallels, shifts, and points of convergence observed in the structure, melody, metaphor, and imagery. It also tries to contextualize the two songs by briefly discussing the creation of a national aural imagination of India through nationalistic songs, and how the two aforementioned songs have contributed to the creation of a secular image of India, against the practice of upholding a monolithic, majoritarian, and saffronized narrative of Indian society and culture.
This article attempts to make a comparative study between the balcony performances, which primari... more This article attempts to make a comparative study between the balcony performances, which primarily involved the production of sounds (both musical and non-musical), held during the onset of the Covid pandemic in Italy and India to boost public morale and influence community solidarity. This article examines how Indians and Italians generated aural resistance against the pandemic through this novel method of sonic production to cancel the silence of death with the sounds of life, and how a community feeling and a sense of unity were injected through the sounds. This article juxtaposes the Italian and the Indian experiences of musical resistance against the pandemic, revealing similar patterns of response existing between them, by highlighting the multifaceted sides of the balcony performances that celebrated life over death and destruction, which ideationally and phenomenologically connected the two countries separated by geographical distances. Besides, it also discusses the impact...
Consortium: An International Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies, 2022
The present paper discusses Pedro Almodovar’s film Pain and Glory (2019), taking into usage the S... more The present paper discusses Pedro Almodovar’s film Pain and Glory (2019), taking into usage the Socratic idea of Pharmakon, and attempts to analyze the role of drugs which acts as both remedy and pain to the ailing protagonist Salvador Mallo, and how their interplay constitutes the role of memory, which serves as a textual phenomenon to the protagonist. The present idea also takes into consideration the notion of the writer’s sacrifice and elaborates the idea of authorship and its authority involved in the fictional domain of Almodovar’s film and argues in detail how filmmaking strategies employed by the filmmaker himself meditate on the theory of fiction within the so-called fictional space itself.
This paper tries to explore the Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami's search for a "feminine" cine... more This paper tries to explore the Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami's search for a "feminine" cinematic language by analyzing his remarkable film Shirin (2008). The paper tries to argue, how Kiarostami deviated from the traditional "male gaze" project emphasized by the film industries worldwide, especially the Hollywood film industry, and how he created a resistance against the dominant cinematic male gaze by positing a counter gaze or the "female gaze" by employing ingenious cinematic techniques in Shirin. The paper attempts to discuss the cinematic language of Shirin from the perspective of Hélène Cixous's seminal essay "The Laugh of the Medusa," which argues for the establishment of a separate literary language for the expression of female subjectivity, or the écriture féminine. The aim of the paper is, therefore, to establish how Kiarostami tries to achieve a cinematic écriture féminine by positing a symbolic challenge to the phallocentric cinematic discourse.
All About Ambedkar: A Journal on Theory and Praxis, 2021
This paper tries to analyze the character of the Santhal girl Duli(played by Simi Garewal)in Saty... more This paper tries to analyze the character of the Santhal girl Duli(played by Simi Garewal)in Satyajit Ray's film "Aranyer Dinratri" (1970) from multiple perspectives.
It was a pleasure to read Rebanta Gupta's brief essay, "A Stranger in the Crowd: Camus' Meursault... more It was a pleasure to read Rebanta Gupta's brief essay, "A Stranger in the Crowd: Camus' Meursault and His Antiheroic Traits," and to be recommending publication in Academia Letters, with two thumbs up. Gupta's finely written text brought to this reader, who never got beyond a first reading of The Stranger, long ago, a tingling appreciation of Albert Camus' most famous novel. The Stranger works the underside of Camus' notion of the Absurd: the view that the world we find ourselves in has no inherent meaning, only those meanings that we create, moment by moment. "Absurd" derives from the Latin absurditas, which indicates a discordance, a disharmony, a gap between what we ask of the world and what we receive in return. Through the character of Meursault, we are shown what it is like for someone with no understanding of our absurd condition to surrender to it. Camus' novel can be read as a cautionary tale-Meursault has become one of literature's most famous antiheros. Succumbing to, rather than overcoming the condition of the Absurd, he easily and willingly capitulates to a nihilistic despair. Meursault does not relate to the world in what we would call a meaningful way-a glass wall seems to separate him from everyone and everything. This is why his actions at first appear to make no sense. What he does and doesn't do is not intended to make sense to us, until we grasp his inauthentic, nihilistic take on what it means to exist. Even the least perspicacious and courageous person makes occasional positive, authentic adaptations to a world that offers no ultimate direction or guarantee. But not our protagonist. The title of Camus' novel-The Stranger, L'Étranger-introduces Meursault as a strange man, estranged in a strange land.
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