Briefs/ Did India Drop the Oscar Ball Again?/ Indian Brands with "Phoren" Names/ Book Matters.
WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, & WHY
Gukesh Dommaraju, at 18, became the 18th world chess champion last month after he beat Ding Liren of China. India’s Dommaraju, a prodigy who’d been a grandmaster at the age of 12, is the youngest world champion ever. Like Viswanathan (Vishy) Anand, a former world chess champ, he is from Chennai. Dommaraju, previously ranked fifth in the world, was able to clinch the championship in Singapore with a score of 7.5 to 6.5.
Somini Sengupta, a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, was one of seven recipients of the Professional Excellence Award at the 2024 ceremony hosted by the Association of Foreign Press Correspondents in the USA. Honored for her reporting on climate change, Sengupta, who also won a George Polk award, spoke about the challenges and the role journalists played as “guardians of the public commons.”
Sneha Revanur is on the BBC’s list of 100 inspiring and influential women from around the world for 2024. The 20-year-old founded Encode Justice, which promotes a safe and equitable AI for young people. It has more than 1,300 members spread across 30 nations. Also on this list are astronaut Sunita Williams, Indian wrestler Vinesh Phogat, and Pooja Sharma, who performs funerary rites for unclaimed bodies in Delhi.
Jasleen Kaur, a Scottish-born artist, won the U.K.’s prestigious Turner Prize 2024 for “Alter Altar,” which pays tribute to her father and her native Glasgow’s Sikh community. The 38-year-old Kaur’s art installation includes a red Ford Escort car with a big doily partially covering it. The award, worth 25,000 British pounds, was presented at Tate Britain. The exhibit also features bottles of a Scottish soft drink and old family photos.
Tej Patel, who’s studying molecular biology and healthcare management at UPenn, is one of 36 Marshall Scholars who will head to the U.K. for higher studies. Patel, a 2024 Truman Scholar, will do a master’s in Applied Digital Health at Oxford. Other Marshall Scholars include Pratyush Seshadri, who’s studying economics and math at UNC-Chapel Hill, and Sridatta Teerdhala, who’s studying biology and economics at UPenn.
Suhas Subramanyam is the newest and youngest Indian American in the U.S. House of Representatives. Like the other five members, he’s a Democrat. He represents Virginia’s 10th district. Subramanyam has served in the Virginia Senate and House of Delegates, where he has been succeeded by another Indian American. As a law student at Northwestern, Subramanyam helped to overturn a wrongful lifetime conviction.
Shahnaz Habib won the 2025 New American Voices Award from the Institute for Immigration Research. Founded in 2018, the prize is now worth $5,000. Habib’s nonfiction book, Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel, challenges the presupposition that people from the Global South “don’t travel, they immigrate.” Born and raised in Kerala, Habib is also a translator who won the JCB Prize. She teaches writing in the U.S.
Madhav Gadgil, a distinguished Indian ecologist, is one of the UN’s six 2024 Champions of the Earth. This environmental award recognizes trailblazers in civil society, private and public sectors, and academia. Known especially for his groundbreaking work in India’s fragile Western Ghats, Gadgil, who earned his PhD from Harvard, won in the Lifetime Achievement category. He and Ramachandra Guha wrote The Fissured Earth.
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DID INDIA DROP THE OSCAR BALL AGAIN?
Lost Ladies (Laapataa Ladies) did not make it to the shortlist of 15 films for the 97th Oscars in the Best International Feature Film category. No offense to Kiran Rao, the director, and Aamir Khan, one of the producers. They made a fine movie, but did the Film Federation of India (FFI) make a mistake in its submission? Many critics felt that Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light (AWIAL) would have been the best choice for India’s entry. Instead, the FFI picked Lost Ladies. There were 85 entries this time. AWIAL, which has been showered with awards and acclaim, is about two Malayali nurses and a cook in Mumbai. It received two Golden Globe nominations (Best Foreign Language Picture and Best Director), reinforcing the belief that India made the wrong decision this time. In 2013, many felt the same way when the FFI overlooked The Lunchbox.
One consolation this time is that the U.K.’s Santosh, a Hindi film made by Sandhya Suri, is on the Oscar shortlist. AWIAL, which topped the Sight & Sound poll for Best Film of 2024, won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival. No other Indian film had made it to the main competition at Cannes in the last three decades. So far, only three Indian movies got an Oscar nomination in the Best International Feature Film category. So, why didn’t the FFI pick AWIAL? The jury felt that “they were watching a European film taking place in India.” A curious response. It’s like saying that Asghar Farhadi’s Iranian films—which won two Oscars in this category (for A Separation and The Salesman)—are actually European films set in Iran!
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INDIAN BRANDS WITH ‘PHOREN’ NAMES
Those who think Peter England is a British brand can’t be faulted for being mistaken. What sounds more English? But this Irish brand has been an Indian brand since 2000. Owned by the Aditya Birla Group, it’s an established brand in the fashion and lifestyle retail environment. The Birla Group also owns Allen Solly. Then there’s American Swan, headed by Anurag Rajpal. Their “designs combine traditional American style with a European touch,” but it’s an Indian apparel company. Lakmé (the name was inspired by a French opera) could just as well be called Lakshmi. This Indian cosmetics brand is owned by Hindustan Lever. Other Indian brands that sound foreign include Tetley, Royal Enfield, Jaguar, and Old Monk. The last one, known to rum lovers everywhere, was founded in India by a Scotsman in 1855.
Are you in the mood for French, Italian, or German? We have Indian brands to satisfy many cravings. Louis Philippe, an upscale men’s apparel line, is owned by the Birla Group. Another Indian brand for Francophiles is La Opala, the maker of high-end tableware. It was founded by Sushil Jhunjhunwala in 1988. Monte Carlo is not based in Monaco or anywhere near it. Owned by the Nahar Group, Monte Carlo’s woolen clothing is made in Ludhiana, Punjab. Da Milano’s leather accessories have nothing to do with Milan, but they have a lot to do with India, where it’s based. Currently headed by Sahil Malik, it was conceived by Malik’s father in 1989. Then there’s Munich Polo, a Delhi-based Catmoss Retail brand that focuses on clothing for kids. Franco Leone, also based in Delhi, produces and sells formal footwear and retail apparel.
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BOOK MATTERS
Black River (Pushkin Vertigo), by Nilanjana Roy. A well-known journalist and literary critic in India, Roy also writes speculative fiction. But this novel, picked as one of the notable books published in 2024, is a noirish murder mystery. It grew out of Roy’s journalism and her walks along the Yamuna, which inspired the title. The story kicks off in Teetapur, a mostly Hindu village near Delhi, when an eight-year-old boy is found dead. Shockingly, the body is hanging from a tree. Sub-Inspector Ombir Singh, who has a deputy and one usable revolver, arrives on the scene to solve Munia’s murder. When an outsider named Mansoor draws suspicion, the situation becomes explosive. The mounting anger in the village complicates matters, and the novel is not just about solving a murder case. It’s a commentary as well on a society that’s grappling with divisions. The Guardian calls it a “dazzling, lyrical tale of friendship, love and grief that shines a light on the corruption and religious sectarianism of modern India.”
Aflame: Learning from Silence (Riverhead Books), by Pico Iyer. A renowned nonfiction author returns to a subject that has engaged him for years (Iyer’s Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere was published a decade ago). Here, he shows how silence can, paradoxically, connect us to the larger world. Iyer returns to California’s Big Sur, where he has spent time at a Benedictine monastery for extended periods since the 1990s. He also writes about Buddhism and his Japanese life (his wife lives near Kyoto), which is monastic in its own way. Readers encounter thinkers from the past and Big Sur’s long-time residents, and they learn about fires, an ever-present reminder of impermanence. Iyer’s family home burned down in a fire. There’s sorrow as well as joy; domestic bliss as well as the bliss of solitude. ‘Aflame’ has multiple meanings. “The world isn’t erased here; only returned to its proper proportions,” Iyer writes. “It’s not a matter of finding or acquiring anything, only of letting everything extraneous fall away.”
The New India: The Unmaking of the World’s Largest Democracy (Public Affairs), by Rahul Bhatia. Identity is at the heart of this book. Bhatia draws on interviews with ordinary citizens, archival and other research, and sociopolitical analysis to illuminate how Hindu nationalism has transformed the idea of India. Many methods have been used to bring about this change, including the weaponization of technology. Misinformation and disinformation are familiar to us, but in India there’s also Aadhar, which gives the government unparalleled access to data. While this unique 12-digit identity number has benefitted Indians, it can be misused. Bhatia shows how, in this battle over Indian identity, the
ruling party is mining data to enforce discriminatory laws. His “astonishingly granular and deeply empathetic reporting reveals an India well on its way to being an authoritarian dystopia,” notes journalist Samanth Subramaniam.
The Magnificent Ruins (Algonquin Books), by Nayantara Roy. As a TV executive in the U.S., Roy develops original scripted series at STARZ/Lionsgate. She’s also a successful playwright (her plays have been performed at Prithvi Theater in Mumbai), and Roy recently came out with her debut novel. Lila De’s extended family lives in a crumbling mansion in Kolkata, but she resides in New York and is estranged from them. In 2015, sixteen year after Lila left her old life behind, her mother informs her that she is inheriting the mansion. The timing couldn’t be more inconvenient. Lila, a 29-year-old editor at a reputed publishing house, is about to get a promotion. To make matters worse, resentments have resurfaced in her family. Meanwhile, her first boyfriend in India is seeking a reconnection, and her new boyfriend—a breakout author in the U.S.—may be seeking a more serious relationship. “If you love a family epic set in India (the food! The melodrama!), this one’s for you,” according to People magazine.
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