Categories: PETS

Sunday Long Reads: Women priests at Durga Puja, social media’s pet influencers, books to understand Israel-Palestine conflict, and more | Life-style News

Durga Puja: From priesthood to playing the dhaak, women leading from the front tell their stories

Rita Saha pirouettes and jumps, like a bird taking flight, while drumming up a crescendo with her mallet. Her fingers are almost invisible as she swings her feathered dhaak on her shoulder, matching her feet to her own beats. “Eta te moja pai, sammano pai, maayer aashirbado pai (I have a lot of fun, get respect and blessings of the goddess when I play the barrel drums),” says the 35-year-old, looking up at the clay idol of the goddess that’s awaiting a final coat of colour. But Saha feels complete as one of the first woman drummers of Bengal who are creating a new century of women dhaakis as percussion artistes.

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For Fuldi: Art students of GCAC dedicate pandal for model who worked at college for four decades

durga puja, durga puja pandal The Jagat Mukherjee Park puja pandal in north Kolkata that features Fulkumari Das (Credit: Partha Paul)

At Jagat Mukherjee Park near Shyambazar in north Kolkata, artists are giving final touches to portraits that will adorn this year’s puja pandal. After five decades of being a model for students of the Government College of Art and Craft (GCAC), one of India’s oldest art colleges, Fulkumari Das or Fuldi, will now have a pandal dedicated to her. Many of the works will be painted by the art college students.

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Social media pet influencers rake in money for their human parents

Mumbai-based exotic shorthair cat Oscar has done over 450 brand collaborations and starred in multiple ad films earning around Rs 70,000 for each shoot.

Armed with selfie sticks, biscuits and some coconuts, a crowd gathers at the Basirhat border of West Bengal to welcome a guest from Bangladesh. Meet Sontu, a seven-year-old Labrador, who connects the two Bengals and has over 15,000 followers on Facebook.

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Five books to understand the Israel-Palestine conflict

People take part in a pro-Palestinian rally outside the Sydney Opera House in Sydney. (AAP Image/Dean Lewins via REUTERS)

A Day in the Life of Abed Salama (2023) – Nathan Thrall

Based on a 2012 incident documented by journalist Nathan Thrall, this non-fiction work unpacks a mosaic of characters – paramedics, parents, police – that converge on the site of a bus accident in Palestine. Through the eyes of Abed Salama, a father who can’t locate his son in the wreckage, the story, according to writer Arundhati Roy, explores the “cunning and complex ways in which a state can hammer down a people and yet earn the applause and adulation of the civilized world.”

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Where have the plum-headed parakeets and ashy prinias vanished?

Plum-headed parakeet (Credit: Ranjit Lal)

We’ve started off what scientists call the ‘sixth great extinction event’ condemning thousands of species of plants, insects, amphibians, birds, mammals, fish and reptiles to a forever farewell. For many of them we know only too well the reasons why they are in such dire straits – and, in so many cases, are doing damn all about it. The Great Indian Bustard, a truly magnificent bird (and one which Salim Ali cannily proposed be named the National Bird) has been robbed of its habitat and is being made to blunder into live wires strung across its airspace or get minced by giant windmill propellers.

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How the British acknowledged the importance of Delhi

The Coronation Durbar of 1911 (Credit: Delhi Art Gallery)

In 1901, when Edward VII succeeded as the British monarch after the death of Queen Victoria, Lord Curzon as the Viceroy of India organised a formal proclamation for the accession to the title before the princes and people of India. An Imperial Assemblage had previously been held in Delhi in 1877 as a visual announcement of the British domination over India and the investiture of the title of Kaiser-e-Hind on Queen Victoria, but this time the grandeur was far greater. The 1903 event had all the trappings of oriental splendour, including a procession of 48 princes from across India riding on elephants. The procession was led by Curzon and his wife, Mary, on the first elephant, followed by the Duke and Duchess of Connaught on the second elephant.

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What it means to be 50

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‘Age is for wine, not for people’ (Credit: Suvir Saran)

As I celebrate my 50 th year on this planet, I find myself showing the effects of aging. I am ripening into who I ought to be. I see myself becoming vociferous as I acquire courage to be who I really am. I have become that age where I am fit to be Suvir Saran.

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Exhibition on printmaking aims to start a conversation on the underappreciated art form

Gulammohammed Sheikh’s Still Life with Landscape (Days of the Dagger) (Credit: Art Heritage)

Upon entering the Art Heritage gallery in Delhi, viewers are introduced not to an artist but a medium that has largely remained underappreciated and undervalued in India. Believed to be one of the oldest art forms, a wall lists the commonly used terminologies associated with printmaking and its foremost practitioners in India. “The goal of the exhibition is to restart a conversation about printmaking and tackle some misconceptions about prints, such as they being simple reproductions. A combination of artistic creativity and scientific methodology, we are looking at the print medium from an alternative perspective in this exhibition — exploring the various stages of the printmaking process and the artworks that emerge along the way,” says Tariq Allana, associate director, Art Heritage.

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Doggone Well Staff