A Handful of Stories

Reportage on health, science and politics. And some meditations on film

Tag: Kaushik Ganguly

Palan: A filmic tribute to Mrinal Sen gets everything wrong

National Award-winning filmmaker Kaushik Ganguly’s Palan is a sequel to Mrinal Sen’s Kharij, the story of a Bhadralok couple whose apathy is responsible for the death of a “servant” boy. The film won the jury prize at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival. Aside from plain silliness, Palan is bloated with misdirected sympathy for the Bhadralok Palan is billed as a sequel…

Nagarkirtan: Unusual Loves and Marginal, Gig Economy Lives

This love story is also a portrait of the urban precariat–the life of a food delivery worker who earns on commission is not so different from the life of a ‘hijra’ who earns for each ‘performance’ I came to Nagarkirtan several months after my homo-unaware parents exhorted me to watch this “adbhut chamatkar” (strange marvellous) film. I call them homo-unaware…