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Retaining some old-world fantasies is a huge challenge when technology is out to provide modern-day comforts at your fingertips. Conservatives would swear by books and would hate to replace them with any convenient gadget as they become ecstatic… feeling the books, leafing through the pages, breathing in the typical smell of the printed pages – be they old or new. Innovations can’t make its way through some innate things and these things only intensify with time. But the pain point is either you are born with some kind of antenna to experience such bounties of life or you are just plain unlucky. Like the intellectualism of the Bengalis and also their <keyword id="2052955" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Love-for-books">love for books</keyword>! How else would you explain the sheer addiction to books, books and more books and yet the event draws more than 2.5 million <keyword id="456096" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Book-lovers">book lovers</keyword> every year? 
 <keyword id="100667" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Kolkata-book-fair">Kolkata Book Fair</keyword> is now well into its late 30s (<keyword id="793067" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="KBF">KBF</keyword> celebrated its 38th birthday this year) and witnessed huge crowds milling around the stalls, set up by about 109 publishing houses operating in India. The book fair was a 13-day affair this time – from the inauguration on January 28 to the closing ceremony on February 9. Interestingly, KBF is the world’s <keyword id="2052986" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Largest-non-trade-book-fair">largest non-trade book fair</keyword>, which means it essentially caters to the general public, instead of wholesalers. So it’s no wonder that the who’s who of the Indian and global literati are mostly here at the plenary sessions. <keyword id="6360497" type="COUNTRY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Peru">Peru</keyword> was the theme country of 2014 but Peruvian poet <keyword id="2052952" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Rodolfo-Hinostroza">Rodolfo Hinostroza</keyword> and Peru’s cultural minister <keyword id="2033619" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Patricia-Balbuena-Palacios">Patricia Balbuena Palacios</keyword>, who were to inaugurate the event, could not attend the <keyword id="6363379" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="80" keywordseo="Opening-ceremony">opening ceremony</keyword> following the political situation at home. 
 In actual terms, <keyword id="6357783" type="CITY" weightage="100" keywordseo="West-Bengal">West Bengal</keyword> is one of those states in India which has a high concentration of <keyword id="54033" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Scholars">scholars</keyword>, <keyword id="6498302" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Academicians">academicians</keyword> and <keyword id="105357" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Intellectuals">intellectuals</keyword>. As social movements are often fuelled by the litterateurs and <keyword id="60303" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Leftist">Leftist</keyword> overtones exist there among the so-called intellectuals, it could have been the prime reason why <keyword id="6354925" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Kolkata">Kolkata</keyword> Book Fair has remained a non-trade affair throughout these years. 
 Organised by <keyword id="2052951" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Kolkata-Publishers-and-Booksellers-Guild">Kolkata Publishers and Booksellers Guild</keyword> and largely supported by book lovers, the annual event had some tough times when <keyword id="26497" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="environmental-issues">environmental issues</keyword> compelled it to leave the Maidan greens (near Park Street-Rabindra Sadan) at the centre of the city. The fair was shifted from the Maidan area in 2007 and finally found a home at the <keyword id="532071" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Milan-Mela-ground">Milan Mela ground</keyword> opposite Science City. 
 By now, readers must be feeling curious about the hottest selling books at the event. The 38th edition of the book fair was inaugurated this year by none other than <keyword id="670521" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Chief-minister-Mamata-Banerjee">Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee</keyword> and (believe it or not) her books turned out to be best-sellers even this year. A <keyword id="2052958" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="80" keywordseo="regular-writer-and-a-poet">regular writer and a poet</keyword>, Mamata started writing in 1995 and has penned 45 books so far. Last year, her books worth Rs 10 lakh were sold, earning her a royalty of Rs 1 lakh. This year, the sales are supposed to shoot up even further as new books penned by her had been released on the inauguration day. 
 Yet, all might not be well at this global gathering of great minds. Just as it happened at the Jaipur Literary Festival two years ago, <keyword id="25391" type="PERSON" weightage="80" keywordseo="Salman-Rushdie">Salman Rushdie</keyword> was stopped from participating at the Kolkata Book Fair last year. And do you know the irony of it all? It’s the <keyword id="2052997" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Author-CM">author-CM</keyword> who might have played a key role and stopped the internationally acclaimed but equally controversial Rushdie from coming to the event. 
 
It was said at that time that Rushdie himself had decided to stay away from the event. The author, however, had reportedly told he was informed by the government that the protests against him could be ‘dangerous.’ Photos, too, had swarmed the Internet, featuring hundreds of men brandishing placards that said ‘Rushdie Go Back.’ 
 
It’s understood that Mamata, who was touring North Bengal at that time, had told the police commissioner she didn’t want Rushdie to land in the city. And the reason was obvious – she didn’t want to antagonise the minority community if she could help it. 
 
The whole drama of not hosting Rushdie was played out in many shades and across many episodes. When finally it was learnt that Mamata was completely against Rushdie’s participation at the book fair, the grave concerns around his security and the gravity of the situation (with the number of protestors increasing every day) were conveniently played up to persons in charge of Rushdie’s itinerary. Then the easy way rolled out by itself. The statement issued to the media read: The ‘author decided to stay out of the event’ for reasons known to him. And Mamata had won her game. 
 This way, the world’s largest book fair held a mirror to India’s so-called democratic values and assured <keyword id="60937" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Fundamental-rights">fundamental rights</keyword>. But never mind. <keyword id="5258" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="100" keywordseo="CM">CM</keyword> Mamata’s books have turned her into a literary sensation over the years. And it’s quite an indicator how the scale is tipping in the <keyword id="2053000" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="World-of-literature">world of literature</keyword>. 
 
Image: Thinkstock Photos/Getty Images

Kolkata
Book Fair: Leafing Through The Pages In The Era Of E-readers

hoichoi adds 13 million cumulative subscribers in 3 years with 40% of its direct revenue coming from International users

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Growing up, my parents and I never said "I love you" to each other.</li><li>They showed me love through their actions instead of words, but I felt their love was conditional. </li></ul>"You know that she's going to die, right?"Four years ago, a doctor assigned to my mother's case and I were watching her through the glass door of the intensive-care unit. He was right. She had been injured in a fire; a few days later, she passed away.A few months before her death, she had asked me, "Why do you never say 'I love you' to me?" I had shrugged off the question; my Indian parents and I had never made a habit of saying "I love you" — or "ami tomake bhalobashi," in Bengali — to each other.The evening we cremated her, my aunt told me, "Your father loved her very much" — or "Khub bhalobashto" — which was incredibly strange to hear because they had never said it aloud to each other, either; at least not in my presence.<h2>The phrase has always held a lot of weight for me</h2>I have always been unable to say "I love you." The thought of uttering the phrase made my skin crawl and my voice revolt against it. If it's a declaration of truth — "ami tomake bhalobashi" — I feared my love would not be able to measure up to the sentiment. If a day came that I grew out of that love or my actions were inadequate, I worried I wouldn't be able to take it back. I never felt that my parents expected me to say it to them, and in turn, I was never told <a href="https://www.insider.com/mom-didnt-love-her-children-the-second-they-were-born-2022-10">I was loved as a child</a>. I knew their love existed; I saw it in their labor, such as clothing, feeding, and educating me. But I recognize as an adult that it has been conditional; in my family, our love is made of burdens and obligations.I grew up not in the absence of love, but feeling as though I was not loved enough. In turn, this made me believe that I was not enough and that the love I offered others wouldn't be either.Though I devoured the greatest love confessions <a href="https://www.insider.com/best-rom-com-movies-golden-age-stream#when-harry-met-sally-1">in books and movies</a>, I also believed that my own admissions of love were likely to pale in comparison. I assumed that my love was frivolous and insincere.<h2>I wanted to break the pattern as an adult</h2>Recently, I looked up the words "love you" in my messages. My search results told a sad tale — even when my friends said it, I <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/the-2-reasons-why-people-hide-their-feelings-in-a-relationship-2018-1">rarely said it back</a> to them.Every "love you" was met with silence, a "thank you," or a heart emoji, when I really meant: "Thank you for loving me. Thank you for being my friend. I want to say it back but I don't know how to."Over the past four years, through my grief after my mother's death and then the pandemic, I have been surprised by how easily the words have rolled off my tongue when talking to my dearest friends that I met online. It started to feel as though if I didn't tell my friends that I loved them right away — truthfully and urgently — I might wither away, and our relationships would go with me. "I love you. I'm proud of you.""I love you. You look beautiful.""I love you. You're working so hard."My real-life friends — people who've known me longer — have heard this sort of proclamation far less often. I haven't figured out why it is easier to say "I love you" to those across oceans and borders, only that I need to tell them as much as I can for as long as I can.<h2>I've learned my love language is words of affirmation</h2>I love hearing that I am loved and I am enough as much as I now love saying it. I'm desperate to tell my friends that I love them to make up for what I longed to hear in my familial relationships — that I am good enough. I've learned through my friendships that these things are true.So, to my friends, I say "I love you" over and over without expectations because I want them to know. I tell them how I feel without worrying if my love is enough, without worrying if we'll still be friends a month from now. I say it because I worry that all the love I have for them cannot be contained in these three words, but I still want to try to express it while I have the chance.I cannot remember my mother's last words. She died without hearing that I loved her. But to my friends: I don't know how I lived two decades of my life without saying these words, and now I don't want to stop."I love you, I love you": If these are my last words, I hope my love survives.

My parents and I never said 'I love you' when I was growing up. Now I say it to my friends every chance I get.

Just on the outskirts of the old city limits of the megapolis of Kolkata stands the semi-urban hamlet of Boral, where a young art director with the advertisement agency D J Keymer shot his classic debut film '<keyword id="106892" type="General" weightage="80" keywordseo="pather-panchali" source="Orion">Pather Panchali</keyword>' (Song of the Road), some 70 years ago, to metamorphose into the celebrated movie maestro Satyajit <keyword id="6561" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="ray" source="Orion">Ray</keyword>. Ray or Manick-da as his close associates called him, whose 102nd birthday is being celebrated Tuesday with aplomb across the globe, chose the village as it "was only four miles from the city limits and this meant that we could make daily trips" as also because with his shoe-string budget to shoot the movie, he could hardly afford on-location shoots in faraway rural idles. "He used to come to this field between our house and the ancient twin Shiva temple and stand for hours under a tree staring and chewing a handkerchief. "My father asked him what was he really doing. Ray told him that this was his way of composing shots in his head," said <keyword id="5748880" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="tushar-kanti-ghosh" source="Orion">Tushar Kanti Ghosh</keyword>, 80, a scion of the <keyword id="701424" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="zamindar" source="Orion">Zamindar</keyword> family which used to own most of the land in this village turned part of the city at one time, adding with a wrinkled grin: "He told dad he wasted around a dozen handkerchiefs a day thinking about shots!" Ghosh met Ray at age eight, and played a small part as a student at the village school in 'Pather Panchali', shot over from 1952 to 1955. "He (Ray) asked my father if he could borrow some young boys for the movie ... I had two small parts in the film and naturally at that age I was thrilled," chuckled the octogenarian, who along with other fellow villagers never realised that their non-descript village would be thrust into international fame once the movie was released and showcased at Cannes as India's official entry. Opposite the pond where Ray had shot some of his scenes for 'Pather Panchali' lives Abhishek Paul, 31, a young artist who said he heard stories of the film's shooting from his grandmother. "The entire village was agog with excitement through the period the movie was shot ... today we feel a kind of pride that he chose our 'para' (locality)," said Paul. A small bust of Satyajit Ray stands at the turn of the road from the house he had rented for the shooting. Locals have garlanded it and put-up festoons to celebrate the renowned filmmaker's birth anniversary Tuesday. Satyajit Ray cast mostly amateur actors in his movie for which he raised money by pawning his wife's jewellery and taking a subsidy sanctioned by the then chief minister of West Bengal Late Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy, a fellow Brahmo Samaji. New York's Museum of Modern Art too chipped in with some support after noted American film director John Huston saw some of Ray's unfinished raw reels and declared it as the work of a "great filmmaker". "His first movie marked him out as being born into a different league ... 'Pather Panchali' was a far more realistic and yet stunningly beautiful presentation of rural India's life than we had ever seen before ... it touched the heart, not just the other senses," said <keyword id="466542" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="shoma-a-chatterji" source="Orion">Shoma A Chatterji</keyword>, veteran film critic and author of books on Satyajit Ray. No script was ever written for the movie as Ray believed the novel written by noted Bengali writer Bibhuti Bhushan Bandyopadhyay was far too lucidly written to require a script. Instead, "Satyajit Ray drew a storyboard for the entire movie - picturising every scene that he shot with the dialogues scribbled on the margins in a strong, neat hand ... this was typically Ray, a very meticulous director who planned every single shot long before executing it," explained Chatterji. The music for the movie was composed by the famous sitarist Ravi Shankar and was considered an epochal score by the film fraternity, but Chatterji said the two geniuses had their intellectual differences and "in later films, Ray started composing his own music". After initial hesitation, the movie which depicts a family's struggle to live in their rural ancestral village as the hero - a child named Apu - grows up, did surprisingly well with both the critics and in the box office. Times of India in a piece in 1956 said: "It is banal to compare it with any other Indian picture...Pather Panchali is pure cinema. There is no trace of theatre in it." In Cannes, his debut film was nominated for the Palme d'Or for the best film and won the Prix du document humain (best human document). Part of Ray's 'Apu Trilogy, Boral's debut on the big screen remains one of the most influential movies that the world has seen. Twenty years after it was released, another film maestro Akira Kurosawa said the movie continues "to stir up deep passions." However, the village itself no longer stirs any great artistic passions. The forest patches and farmland have been gobbled up by an ever-hungry city as the megapolis's realtors built middle-class 'dream' high-rises. The fields of 'Kash' flowers or kans grass which at one time ran parallel to the single line railway track where 'Pather Panchali's' main characters - Apu and Durga - ran around, have been replaced by more railway tracks and ugly warehouses while the plaintive whistle of the steam engine has given way to brash honking by diesel locomotives. "But some things still remain the same ... everyone still loves a good story and someday another Ray will discover another Boral to produce yet another compelling movie," said Ghosh. SEE ALSO: <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/7-out-of-10-indians-are-unable-to-identify-ai-voice-call-scams-and-half-fall-for-scams-with-monetary-losses/articleshow/99924644.cms">7 out of 10 Indians are unable to identify AI voice call scams, and half fall for scams with monetary losses</a> <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/several-twitter-users-logged-out-from-desktop-accounts-globally/articleshow/99925101.cms">Several Twitter users logged out from desktop accounts globally</a>

The urban hamlet where Satyajit Ray met 'Pather Panchali'

<keyword id="31278" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Lata-Mangeshkar" source="Orion">Lata Mangeshkar</keyword>, India's most loved singer who had once moved Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru to tears, leaves behind a teary-eyed nation of admirers who grew up listening to her immutable voice give wings to the words of poets and the screen careers of legions of heroines. India's Melody Queen, who also composed music for Marathi films and was a producer as well, and had the distinction of being conferred with the highest civilian honours of India and France, passed away on Sunday morning at the Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai, where she had been admitted because of Covid-related complications on January 11. Lata Didi, as she was known among her family and followers, was 92 and is survived by her siblings -- playback singer and composer Meena Khadilkar, popular singer and restaurateur Asha Bhosale, singer <keyword id="146736" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Usha-Mangeshkar" source="Orion">Usha Mangeshkar</keyword>, and music director Hridayanath Mangeshkar. She never married, but was close to the late Raj Singh Dungarpur, the aristocratic former cricketer and President of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) from 1996 to 1999. One of India's most loved voices, Lata Mangeshkar was the recipient of three National Film Awards, seven Filmfare awards, and of course, the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1989. She was conferred the Bharat Ratna in 2001, becoming the second singer after M.S. Subbulakshmi to be so honoured, and the French awarded her the Officer of the Legion of Honour. In 1974, Lata Mangeshkar became the first Indian to perform at the Royal Albert Hall, London. She had indeed come a long, long way since the time when the first song that she recorded for a film -- 'Kiti Hasaal' in 1942 -- was dropped in the final cut. Born in what was then the princely state of Indore on September 28, 1929, to the classical singer, Marathi theatre actor and writer of musical plays Deenanath Mangeshkar and his wife Shevanti (Shudhamati), Lata Mangeshkar was originally named Hema by her parents, but they later changed it to Lata after the character Latika from one of her father's musical plays. Lata Mangeshkar's association with the performing arts began when she was five and started appearing in her father's musical plays, and it continued even after her father's premature death in 1942, thanks to his good friend, the actor and director Master Vinayak (Vinayak Damodar Karnataki), who took the family under his wings. It was Master Vinayak who took Lata Mangeshkar to Mumbai, paved her way into the world of Marathi cinema, got her to take Hindustani classical music lessons from Ustad Aman Ali Khan of the Bhendi Bazaar Gharana, and introduced her to Vasant Desai, V. Shantaram's favourite music composer. But it was not until Master Vinayak's death in 1948 that the struggling singer-actor found the person whom she considered to be her "godfather" -- the music composer Ghulam Haider, who gave Lata Mangeshkar her first big break with the song 'Dil Mera Toda, Mujhe Kahin Ka Na Chhora' in the movie 'Majboor' (1948). It was her first big break. Haider took his protege to Shashadhar Mukherjee, the Filmistan boss now better known as Kajol and Rani Mukherjee's grandfather, for his film, 'Shaheed' (1948), but he turned her down because he found her voice to be "too thin". Lata Mangeshkar proved him oh-so wrong just a year later when her song 'Aayega Aanewaala', filmed on the gorgeous Madhubala in Kamal Amrohi's debut directorial, 'Mahal' (1949), became an ageless hit. And in one of life's delicious ironies, Mukherjee's grand-daughter lip-synced the 'Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge' song, 'Mere Khwabon Mein', which was sung by none other than Lata Mangeshkar, as well as the other numbers picturised on her and Shah Rukh Khan. Since 'Mahal', Lata Mangeshkar was courted by just about every music director of note -- from Anil Biswas to S.D. Burman (and his son Rahul Dev, whose first and last song she sang), Naushad (who had asked her to sing like the then reigning nightingale, Noorjehan), Madan Mohan, Shankar-Jaikishan, Laxmikant-Pyarelal (for whom she's said to have sung 700 songs in 35 years), and Kalyanji-Anandji. And she worked with every contemporary composer of note -- from Anand-Milind, sons of Chitragupt, with whom she had also worked, and Anu Malik, Sardar Malik's son, to Ilaiyaraaja and A.R. Rahman. It is said she worked with music directors from 13 states in her star-studded career. After Noorjehan moved to Pakistan, Lata Mangeshkar became the go-to playback singer for every film producer and music composer. She did not disappoint them. Lata Mangeshkar lent her voice to an endless succession of chart-topping numbers in Hindi cinema, from 'Allah Tero Naam' and 'Rangeela Re' to the 'Satyam Shivam Sundaram' title track, to 'Lukka Chuppi' in 'Rang De Basanti', apart from songs in Marathi (she also composed the music for several Marathi films in her 'Anandghan' avatar), Bengali, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, and Sinhala. In 1974, the Guinness Book of Records listed Lata Mangeshkar as the most recorded artiste in human history, stating that she had recorded "not less than 25,000 solo, duet and chorus-backed songs in 20 Indian languages" between 1948 and 1974. The claim was contested by her long-time rival, Mohammad Rafi, who claimed to have sung around 28,000 songs. After Rafi's death, the Guinness Book in its 1984 edition listed Lata Mangeshkar in its entry for 'Most Recordings', but it also recorded Rafi's claim. Later editions of the Guinness Book said Lata Mangeshkar had sung no less than 30,000 songs from 1948 to 1987. For 73 years, from 1943 to 2015, when she recorded her last song for a film (the Indo-Norwegian production, 'Dunno Y2...Life Is A Moment', which was all about gay love), Lata Mangeshkar commanded a fan following and an inimitable reputation with not many parallels in the Indian performing arts. The late Yash Chopra, who was one of Lata Mangeshkar's favourite directors, said in an article he had penned for BBC.com on the occasion of the singer's 75th birthday (not longer after she had sung the famous 'Veer Zaara' song, 'Tere Liye Hum Hain Jiye', with Roop Kumar Rathod): "I see God's blessing in her voice." We are blessed to have that voice live with us forever. SEE ALSO: <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/ecommerce/news/aditya-birla-fashion-retail-d2c-unit-will-sell-ethnic-and-wedding-wear-from-top-designers/articleshow/89347587.cms">Birla has the best wedding suits stacked up and he wants them displayed on your phone</a> <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/textile-cigarette-metal-and-electric-batteries-sectors-stocks-up-budget-day/articleshow/89346157.cms">Textile, cigarette makers and others sector stocks that rallied since budget speech</a>

Lata Mangeshkar, the ageless voice of India, passes away at 92

<ul><li>The Brides of India 2021 campaign captures the excitement around the grand entry of bride.</li><li>The <keyword id="11835959" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="wedding-anthem">wedding anthem</keyword> video has been directed by Kookie Gulati, director of Bollywood movie The Big Bull.</li></ul><keyword id="984733" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Malabar-Gold-Diamonds">Malabar Gold &amp; Diamonds</keyword> has kicked off the 9th edition of its Brides of India campaign with a special wedding theme song titled #<keyword id="11835960" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="MakeWayForTheBride">MakeWayForTheBride</keyword> which depicts the grand entry of brides, the hallmark of modern-day Indian weddings. The wedding anthem, released in an aesthetically shot 3-minute video that has already garnered two million views on social media platforms within the first fourty eight hours, features celebrity brand ambassadors of Malabar Gold &amp; Diamonds, <keyword id="6354700" type="DEFINITION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Anil-Kapoor">Anil Kapoor</keyword> and Kareena Kapoor along with brides from diverse regions of the country. The Brides of India 2021 wedding anthem has been conceptualised by the creative agency <keyword id="188613" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Dentsu-India">Dentsu India</keyword> and developed by some of the highly gifted and supremely talented professionals from the world of celluloid. Directed by Kookie Gulati, who has also directed movies such as the Abhishek Bachchan-starrer The Big Bull, the anthem also boasts of Amit Roy, who was Director of Photography (DoP) for Love Aaj Kal as DoP, Piku-fame Anupam Roy as music composer and Vicky Donor fame writer Juhi Chaturvedi as lyricist. The shorter versions of the wedding anthem will be played on television channels and OTT platforms as an advertisement. The full version of wedding anthem will be aired on select TV channels and streamed on digital platforms. The campaign will exclusively be streamed on digital platforms in the first week and will be aired on television and occupy print media space afterwards. The wedding anthem theme song video shows brides from various states such as Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh &amp; Telangana, Punjab, Maharashtra, Bengal, etc., entering the wedding arena in the grandest possible manner, thus breaking the stereotypes and conventional practices. This way, the new-age bride hopes to inspire other brides-to-be to express their true self at their wedding, too. <keyword id="1657948" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Malabar-Group">Malabar Group</keyword> Chairman MP Ahammed said, "The Brides of India Campaign is our tribute to the new-age brides and their awe-inspiring individuality. Over the last ten years, Brides of India has played a pivotal role in showcasing our versatility in catering to all bridal jewellery needs from all around the country. The theme of Brides of India 2021 encourages all to make way for the bride. Because this is her moment, it’s her big day, and she’s here to own it! She’s here to shine and make sure the world knows it. With the launch of Brides of India 2021 campaign, we celebrate the brides who choose to make the big day all about her. With designs that cater to varied sensibilities of new-age brides across regions, there is something unique for every bride to complement her unique entry." The campaign features 13 brides from various parts of the country in two distinctive looks. These 26 unique looks include the Bejewelled bride featuring polki jewellery, the Statement bride and the Shimmering bride featuring diamond jewellery, the Contemporary reception bride featuring handcrafted jewellery, the Classic Gold bride, the Kerala bride, the Karnataka bride, the Telugu bride, the Tamil bride, the Uttar Pradesh and Bihar bride, the Punjabi bride, the Bengali bride, the Odia bride, the Marathi bride and the Gujarati bride. All these looks are captured in an exquisite range of bridal jewellery shot by ace photographer Avinash Gowarikar. The campaign also features all the major jewellery sub brands of the Malabar Gold &amp; Diamonds including Mine, Era, Precia, Divine, Ethnix and Polki collection. As a part of the campaign, the jeweller will also showcase an especially curated range of bridal jewellery catering to the new-age brides at its showrooms. The curation of jewellery has been done with great care by keeping local community tastes and preferences in mind after an in-depth research., Along with the wedding anthem, the Brides of India 2021 campaign will involve a 360-degree marketing overdrive which includes print ads, hoardings, popular social media feeds like reels, bridal look-books, catalogues, product shots and videos and a dedicated microsite as part of the brand website. The on-ground activation of the campaign includes in-store launch events, specially designed visual merchandising elements such as bridal swings and grand entrance arches. With the launch of Brides of India campaign, Malabar Gold &amp; Diamonds has strengthened its position as a wedding jeweller of repute. Each year the campaign highlights the jeweller’s bridal jewellery offerings and brings to the fore its design leadership in the bridal jewellery category. To strengthen this edition of Brides of India, the brand has also announced a Wedding Advance Purchase scheme wherein gold rate protection is offered to customers by paying as little as 10% advance of the total purchase amount.

Malabar Gold & Diamonds launches a wedding anthem with Anil Kapoor and Kareena Kapoor Khan

Director <keyword id="35863" type="PERSON" weightage="100" keywordseo="Dibakar-Banerjee">Dibakar Banerjee</keyword>, who is ready for his next movie titled "<keyword id="1725719" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="DETECTIVE-BYOMKESH-BAKSHY">Detective Byomkesh Bakshy</keyword>!" hinted that there are chances that the movie might be made into a franchise, meaning that there can be more movies involving the fictional character. 
 
On being asked if he would want the movie, which is an adaptation of a fictional book character, to be turned into a franchise, he said, "We would love to (make it a franchise), but we are waiting for the first film to do well. This is because - fortunately or unfortunately - a film like this has not yet been made." 
 
Talking further, he said, "If the audiences' hunger and thirst for such films increases and our first Byomkesh story catches on, then our franchise is ready and we would love this franchise to go forward." 
 Created by the Bengali writer <keyword id="1641501" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Saradindu-Bandyopadhyay">Saradindu Bandyopadhyay</keyword>, Byomkesh Bakshy is a fictional character, a young Bengali detective. Bandyopadhyay wrote as many as 32 stories involving the character from 1932 until his death in 1970, leaving one story, <keyword id="2760413" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Bishupal-Bodh">Bishupal Bodh</keyword>, incomplete. 
 The movie, which has been produced by Yash Raj Films and Dibakar Banerjee productions, features actor <keyword id="6356062" type="PERSON" weightage="100" keywordseo="Sushant-Singh-Rajput">Sushant Singh Rajput</keyword> in the title role and is slated to release on April 3. 
 
Image courtesy: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/detectivebyomkeshbakshy/photos/pb.171939026318144.-2207520000.1426066860./417987698379941/?type=3&amp;theater">Official Facebook Page</a>

Is India ready for the Byomkesh Bakshy Franchise?

In 1906, in a lodging house for Indian students in Highgate, a pleasant area of north London, a young lawyer called Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi dropped in on a law student called Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, who happened to be frying prawns at the time. Savarkar offered Gandhi some of his meal; Gandhi, a vegetarian, refused. Savarkar allegedly retorted that only a fool would attempt to resist the British without being fortified by animal protein.
The meeting is said to have begun hostilities between the two young Indian nationalists; whether or not the story is apocryphal, there were real reasons for antipathy.
The two men had very different approaches to the struggle against Britain. Gandhi, who became leader of the Indian National Congress (INC), was a pacifist with an inclusive attitude towards Muslims and Christians. Savarkar, who would lead the Hindu Mahasabha, was a right-wing majoritarian who spawned the idea of hindutva, or Hindu-ness--the belief that the Hindu identity is inseparable from the Indian identity. Congress eclipsed the Mahasabha and, since history belongs to the victors, the story of India's independence movement became one of non-violence. But the strand of thought that Savarkar represented was more important than is generally recognised, and is enjoying a revival.
A member of the Mahasabha broke away to form the paramilitary Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), or national volunteer organisation, in 1925, modelled, some say, on the British army. A social rather than explicitly political organisation, it presented itself as the world's largest non-governmental group, in which like-minded, khaki-uniformed men could gather for dawn calisthenics. It recruited boys at an impressionable age, as the Jesuits did, the better to inculcate them with discipline and with passion for the cause. One such was the eight-year-old Narendra Modi. The future prime minister attended training sessions with the RSS, was subsequently inducted as a cadet, and in 1985 was assigned by the RSS to its political wing, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which he rose to lead.
Mr Modi is India's strongest leader since Indira Gandhi, and its most controversial. The source of controversy is his failure in 2002, when chief minister of Gujarat, to avert a massacre of Muslims, which opponents attribute to a hostility to Muslims born of the ideology that Savarkar spawned. Mr Modi has never apologised for the massacre, though he said last year that he felt regret over them, as he would at seeing a puppy run over in the street. Nor has he made any attempt to distance himself from the RSS.
The RSS, meanwhile, is becoming more overtly political. Mohan Bhagwat, its current leader, is somewhat in the mould of Savarkar, paraphrasing his beliefs and promoting Hindutva. In August this year Mr Bhagwat directly echoed Savarkar by saying all who live in "Hindustan" are in fact Hindus, whatever Muslims, Christians or secular Hindus might say. More striking, the RSS leader has switched the organisation's methods. Now, far from eschewing party politics, the group has become an enthusiastic and effective actor within it. The RSS's millions of members and volunteers (no one knows just how many active ones there really are) played a big role in electing the BJP by a landslide in 2014. At least 19 ministers in government, including Mr Modi, have a background in the RSS. Its leaders are seconded to senior posts in the party too. So the ideas of the man who inspired the RSS matter more than ever before.
<h3>The naked jumper</h3>
The lawyer described by a British official in 1906 as "a small man with an intelligent face and a nervous manner" does not sound like the muscular hero that Indian nationalists crave, but Savarkar clearly had a certain dash. In 1910, while he was in London, he was charged with conspiring to wage war against the king and with providing weapons used to assassinate a Briton in the Indian civil service, sentenced to two life terms--50 years--in jail and sent back to India. While the steamship "Morea" was berthed in Marseille harbour, he slipped away from his guards, leapt, almost naked, into the sea and swam ashore. Unfortunately for the eulogists, he was promptly caught by French police and bundled back to the ship.
His daring did, however, win him fame, and also created legal history. France's government, annoyed that Britain had overseen an arrest on its territory, wanted Savarkar returned. Britain refused so the matter went to the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague. It ruled his arrest was indeed "irregular", but decided Savarkar might as well stay in India. The case was one of the earliest heard by the tribunal.
Savarkar's next stop was the Andaman Islands--a group of islands in the Bay of Bengal. This palm-fringed tropical paradise served as a penal colony for the British. Cellular Jail in the capital, Port Blair, is now a memorial for freedom campaigners. In a park opposite stands a row of statues of independence heroes. One is of a slender man with a pinched face behind round spectacles. A pen protrudes from his jacket pocket, one hand rests on a part-furled umbrella and the other wags a finger at the sky. You might mistake him for a prissy bank manager, but a plaque identifies him as Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. The park is named after him.
Ranjit Savarkar, his great-nephew, who runs the Savarkar trust, says that he showed great fortitude in jail. A trained yogi, he overcame thoughts of suicide. Other inmates nicknamed him "Barrister Babu", for his London legal training. Already a published historian and poet, he used Cellular Jail to work on his writing--literally: he wrote on its walls. He spent a decade there before being moved to the mainland in 1921. He was subsequently freed, after pledging to keep out of politics--a promise which the ideology he was developing in jail suggests he did not intend to keep.
A fierce nationalist, he adored Guiseppe Mazzini, who fought for the unification of Italy, writing about him in the hope of inspiring resistance to the British in India. Savarkar believed that India is really composed of, and must only be run by, Hindus. In his 1924 book, "Hindutva", he drew on cultural, philosophical and religious practices of ancient Hinduism, a rich faith that allows immense variety in how it is followed. But he also distinguished the ideology of hindutva--an attempt to unite disparate Hindus in a political project--from the religion. He himself was an atheist, and disapproved of aspects of traditional Hindu belief, dismissing cow worship as superstitious--a stance that would upset many today. He was an early outspoken opponent of caste discrimination. In the 1920s and 1930s others among the emerging Indian political elite opposed "untouchability", the rejection as sub-human of those considered "below caste". But Savarkar went further, saying modern India should drop altogether the idea of dividing people by caste.
His attitude towards Muslims, who made up a quarter of the population before partition, and other non-Hindus was less liberal. He regarded them as alien and separate, in effect not as real Indians. He was fiercely opposed to the formation of Pakistan and what his great-nephew calls the "appeasement" of Muslims. He believed that they, along with the Europeans, had crushed Hindus for a millennium--a sentiment echoed by Mr Modi in an address to parliament after his election this year, when he spoke of ending "1,200 years of slave mentality" in India.
Aside from his view of Muslims, the big difference between Savarkar and the nationalists in the INC lay in their contrasting attitudes to violence. He also wrote one of the first Indian accounts of the uprising in 1857, centred in Delhi. Known as the "Mutiny" to the British, it is referred to by many Indians as the "first war of independence"--echoing the title of Savarkar's book, "The Indian War of Independence". It was a gruesome episode, in which hundreds of thousands were killed, but Savarkar was untroubled by the violence, and seemed to justify the murders of British women and children. His works are steeped in a desire for revenge against those who have humiliated Hindus, and his frustration with the passivity of his co-religionists: "I want all Hindus to get themselves re-animated and re-born into a martial race." In his early years, he circulated manuals on bomb making. He approved of--and probably assisted in--the assassination of colonial administrators. He was suspected, for example, of encouraging a student radical who shot dead Sir Curzon Wyllie, a government official, one summer night on a Kensington street in 1909.
<h3>Rewriting history</h3>

Today, some Indians adulate him. On the day your correspondent called in at Cellular Jail, a party of jovial men in their 80s and 90s, an official "Eminent Committee of Freedom Fighters", was also visiting. Among the last surviving veterans who battled the British in the Quit India movement in the 1940s, they raised gnarled fists to chant "Jai Hind", posed for pictures and praised Savarkar as strong. The local MP called veer (brave) Savarkar a "ferocious, dangerous man who frightened off the British". Rashida Iqbal, the jail's curator, assessed him as "one of the most important freedom fighters". Port Blair's airport, like the park, bears his name. Some 2,000km away, in his native Maharashtra, a street and a park in Mumbai also each carry his name. (In London a blue plaque identifies his former home in Highgate.)
Savarkar's enthusiasm for violence sits uncomfortably with conventional ideas of how India got its independence. India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and then the Congress party (successor to the INC) promoted a pacifist narrative of history, the idea that Gandhi and the likes of B.R. Ambedkar, a social reformer who inspired the Modern Buddhist Movement, triumphed through non-violent resistance. That meant downplaying the bloodshed of 1857, in which atrocities were perpetrated by both sides, and also the roles of Savarkar, Subhas Chandra Bose and Vallabhbhai Patel.
Bose, the Bengali leader of an Indian National Army against the British in the second world war and an ally of Hitler and imperial Japan, led some 40,000 soldiers against the British. (He didn't get far, though the Japanese briefly handed him control of the Andamans.) Patel, the "Iron Man of India", had the Bismarckian task of uniting the country. He oversaw the integration of 562 princely states into India, threatening and using military force. Operation Polo in 1948, a five-day conquest of Hyderabad, a wealthy and Muslim-run state in the south, was bloody indeed. Official estimates, only made public in 2013, suggest the fighting and subsequent Hindu-Muslim clashes there killed between 27,000 and 40,000 people. Some historians claim the real toll might have been five times higher.
The way the story of Indian independence is told is beginning to change. Mr Modi and the BJP are keen to celebrate muscular, nationalist figures. Patel is likely to have a much higher profile in future: in the national budget, in July 2014, the government set aside $32m to erect a statue of him in Gujarat, twice the size of the Statue of Liberty, by 2018. And while Mr Modi frequently invokes Gandhi's name and beliefs, he refers almost as often to Swami Vivekananda, a 19th-century nationalist who revived Hinduism and promoted it abroad. Mr Modi is said to be named after him (the swami was originally called Narendra Nath Datta) and frequently poses before his photograph. Vivekananda's ideas on invigorating Hinduism foreshadowed Savarkar's hindutva project.
Savarkar's profile is lower, but is also rising. Educational comics, hagiographies and patriotic films retell parts of his life story. In 2008 Mr Modi, then chief minister of Gujarat, inaugurated a website (savarkar.org) that promotes a man "largely unknown to the masses because of the vicious propaganda against him and misunderstanding around him that has been created over several decades", and in 2012 he launched a Gujarati-language biopic. A previous BJP-led government put Savarkar's portrait in parliament. On his birthday this year, May 28th, the prime minister paid homage to him there. Mr Modi tweeted about Savarkar's "tireless efforts towards the regeneration of our motherland". Ranjit Savarkar's group plans various events to mark the 50th anniversary of Savarkar's death in 1966. (Aged 83, he submitted to what he called atmaarpan--refusing food, water or medicine in order to die. It took 20 days.)
Yet Savarkar remains immensely divisive. He was a fiercely outspoken critic of Gandhi, still India's top national hero: he called Gandhi weak, a "sissy" and far too willing to collaborate with Britain. Gandhian talk of man's common humanity he regarded as utopian to the point of naivety. In articles from the 1920s to the 1940s Savarkar lambasted Gandhi as a "crazy lunatic" who "happens to babble...[about] compassion, forgiveness", yet "notwithstanding his sublime and broad heart, the Mahatma has a very narrow and immature head." Gandhi promoted ahimsa, a Buddhist rejection of violence which Savarkar called "mealy-mouthed". He said Gandhi was a hypocrite for supporting violence by the British against Germany in the first world war. Nor did he cheer Gandhi's prominent backing for the Ottoman Caliphate Movement, designed to win Indian Muslims to oppose British colonial rule.
Over the years, Savarkar was eclipsed by his rival. During the 1920s and 1930s, the INC benefited from its ability to claim plausibly that it spoke for Muslims as well as Hindus, which made it a more credible interlocutor with the colonial authorities. Perhaps more important, it had an impressive organisation and, in Gandhi and later in Nehru, accomplished political leaders.
By the mid 1940s Savarkar and his supporters in the Mahasabha (which he led until his death) had a new gripe against Gandhi. They were enraged at the prospect of Pakistan seceding from India. Gandhi, in their eyes, did nothing to stop that "vivisection". Worse, he seemed to favour Pakistan when it sent forces to violently seize Kashmir, evidence to Savarkar that warlike Muslims were again crushing passive Hindus. When Nehru applied economic sanctions on Pakistan (refusing to pass on its share of central-bank funds from before independence), Gandhi launched a fast in protest and forced him to back down. To Savarkar's followers in the Mahasabha, that constituted national betrayal.
On January 30th 1948 Gandhi was assassinated in Delhi. The killer, Nathuram Godse, was a member of the Mahasabha, edited its newspaper and was an associate of Savarkar's. Godse's explanation of his actions echoed Savarkar: he said he murdered Gandhi for his "false notions of Hindu-Muslim unity" and in fury over the secession of Pakistan. Savarkar was arrested and tried as a plotter in the murder. He denied all and was acquitted. That did not convince everybody. As the leader of the Mahasabha, who had praised the efficacy of violence and railed against Muslims, it was reasonable to suspect he had at least inspired Gandhi's killer. A.G. Noorani, author of a book on Savarkar and Godse, goes further. He draws a parallel to the Kensington murder of Wylie in 1909, saying the elder man had twice pressed others to pull the trigger. "I would definitely call him complicit in the assassination of Gandhi," he concludes. He points, too, to an official commission of inquiry into Gandhi's death, in the late 1960s, which drew on testimony unavailable at the original trial. It found the evidence was "destructive of any theory other than the conspiracy to murder by Savarkar and his group". Following Gandhi's murder the RSS was also banned, for a year. Yet the final reason why Savarkar should remain unacceptable in modern India goes beyond suspicion over Gandhi's murder. It lies in his attitude to his fellow, non-Hindu, Indians. In his own writing he relates joyfully how as a 12-year-old boy he led a gang of schoolmates to stone his village mosque and smash its windows and tiles, in the aftermath of Hindu-Muslim riots. Relating how "we vandalised the mosque to our heart's content", he adds that when confronted by Muslim boys, he and his pals wielded knives and sticks and chased them away.
Throughout his writing he sets out Muslims as savage, immoral, sensual and eager to destroy the Hindu way of life. In 1937 he wrote of there being "two antagonistic nations living side by side in India", an idea that relies on using religion as the defining characteristic of any Indian, one utterly against the secular constitution of India. And while he occasionally wrote admiringly of the political and religious fervour of Islam, or rather of Muslim political leaders, he did so to encourage his fellow Hindus to match or exceed it.
In India today the fear of communal clashes--between Hindus and Muslims--should not be overblown. But it is never far away. Especially before elections, parties exploit religious tensions. Those who promote hindutva and echo Savarkar whip up stories of "love jihad", alleging that Muslim men convert large numbers of Hindu women by seducing them. Earlier this month a BJP parliamentarian praised Godse as a "patriot" equal to Gandhi. Members of the increasingly influential RSS feel emboldened. Such majoritarian politics, when a larger religious group sets out to absorb or flatten a minority, is utterly destructive. One need only look at the failure of Pakistan as a reminder of that. Sarvarkar could be a brilliant, eloquent and progressive leader. He could also be extremist, violent and divisive. If his influence grows, India's tolerance and moderation will be at risk.
"Notwithstanding his...broad heart, the Mahatma has a very narrow and immature head," wrote Savarkar
&#xa0;
Savarkar (back row, second left) was arrested and tried as a plotter in Gandhi's murder. He was acquitted
&#xa0;
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