Dia’s 95: the ‘Bidhoba’ with a swag!

This post is about Dia, in the context of patriarchy, feminism, widowhood, hypocrisy of the Bengali community, sexual need, gender roles, power struggle, and mental health awareness, narrated by her granddaughter in whom she confided a lot but could never get herself to love as much as the grandson.

Nobel Prize for Economics & the Santiniketan connection

"This urge to reduce the poor to a set of clichés has been with us for as long as there has been poverty. The poor appear, in social theory, as much as much in literature, by turns lazy or enterprising, noble or thievish, angry or passive, helpless or self-sufficient," Mr Banerjee and Ms Duflo wrote...

Amar Kutir: revolutionaries, Batik & local culinary delight!

Amar Kutir Society for Rural Development near Santiniketan, West Bengal, is a registered cooperative society since 1978. Susen Mukhopadhyay started it in 1923 as a safe haven for the young revolutionaries fighting for Indian’s freedom. He was greatly concerned for the daily livelihood of these young people who had left home and were mostly hiding...

The world’s nest at Santiniketan

India's first Nobel Laureate, Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore wrote in 1929: I was brought up in an atmosphere of aspiration, aspiration for the expansion of the human spirit. We in our home sought freedom of power in our language, freedom of imagination in our literature, freedom of soul in our religious creeds and that of mind...

The young boy who didn’t like going to school

Dear Arushi Wish you a very very Happy Birthday 🙂 many happy returns of the day. This post is about a young boy called Robi who didn't like going to school. He was born on 7th May 1861 at his father, Debendranath Tagore's house, in Jorasanko, Kolkata. He was born more than 100 years from...

‘Varnika’ explained

Many friends have asked about the name of my blog and tiny firm 'VarnikaDesigns'. The name is borrowed from 'Varnikabhangam' from the Six Limbs of Indian Painting. The Six Limbs of Indian Painting is a set of cannons and guidelines that were assembled around the 6th century to guide artists for creating paintings. If you...