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The Chakkar publishes reviews, features, essays, and opinions about Indian music, literature, arts, film/TV, theatre, sports/outdoors, and more - including creative prose, poetry, photography, etc.
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Poems by Aardhra Chandran: ‘Concrete trucks rumble past his fence, shaking the loose teeth / in his jaw, spitting black diesel smoke onto his holy basil plant. // He measures his life not in years, but in missing trees’
thechakkar.com/home/aardhrac…
All the courage and longing prove powerless against the passage of time. In ‘Main Waapis Aaunga’, Imtiaz Ali seems to ask: What is the point of overcoming borders when you cannot overcome the years that they stole from you?
By @Deepansh75 thechakkar.com/home/mainwaap…
‘listen to
the worms writing histories
in cursive tunnels,
archiving sorrow
grain
by
grain.’
“The Gravedigger’s Soliloquy” - poem by @anju_devadas thechakkar.com/home/thegrave…
‘Main Waapas Aaunga’ and the Cruelty of Returning Too Late
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Partition is not so much a mere plot device in Imtiaz Ali’s ‘Main Waapas Aaunga’, but a ghost that continues to haunt the people who survived it—in memories and regrets. By @Deepansh75
thechakkar.com/home/mainwaap…
Flow of Conversation: Zahir Mirza’s podcast from Kerala’s waterways
thechakkar.com/home/zahirmir…
‘To exist fully as an artist and human, one must be seen, heard, read, and acknowledged’: Farah Ahamed explores Satyajit Ray’s Charulata through the lens of Simone de Beauvoir. thechakkar.com/home/charulat…
Award-winning book designer Bena Sareen speaks to @cjmitra
“Book covers... are open to multiple interpretations. I love working on this genre. Just as a reader’s experience can be quite subjective, so is the designer’s engagement with the manuscript.”
thechakkar.com/home/benasare…
‘He remembers that the box smelled of tobacco and rosewater and something else underneath, something old, like a cupboard that had not been opened in a long time.’
“Guts” - personal essay by Prachi Sharma thechakkar.com/home/guts
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Judging the Cover: An interview with award-winning book designer Bena Sareen
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Sareen, winner of the Oxford Bookstore Book Cover Prize, speaks about her latest honour and the “huge responsibility” of designing a memorable literary cover. By @cjmitra
thechakkar.com/home/benasare…
Creative Nonfiction by Shobhita Rewal: ‘Rotund Japanese purple enlarged. A plushie abandoned. Soot-stained lips float past. Saliva upon the metal in the skin. Chivalry ain’t dead yet, innit? Plebians need the masala but give this to me anyway.’ thechakkar.com/home/sanctuar…
In an essay about the fraught relationship between reality and spectacle in Telugu Cinema, Sumithra Prasanna examines how institutions and audiences can point to a culture of silence through which patriarchal power is sustained.
thechakkar.com/home/peddi
Photo essay from the ‘Old Shop’ in Lucknow’s Wazirganj - “Rizwi’s afternoons are spent on his chair in the middle of his modest shop, a journey through time and space, far and wide.”
By Ishita Yadav thechakkar.com/home/oldshop
The Fraught Relationship Between Reality and Spectacle in Telugu Cinema
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When commercial cinema consistently turns the sexualisation of women into entertainment, who should be responsible for the world these images help create?
By Sumithra Prasanna thechakkar.com/home/peddi
Recent photo-stories on The Chakkar includes work by @Arsalanshamsi45, Vijay Kaushik VP, Siddharth Sharma, Dikshit Sharma, and more instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0…
Short story by Karan Madhok: “Now, Lady, Miss: Please take the flowers and lean into your husband, like this, as if you are falling into him. Just a little. That’s why in English they say, ‘falling’ in love, no? Bas, gir jao unpar!”
thechakkar.com/home/firstsno…
'Dust drips
from my palms
like exhausted prayers
(there is no hymn here)
the earth exhales
in broken syllables
names,
years,
hunger.'
"The Gravedigger’s Soliloquy" - a poem by @anju_devadas thechakkar.com/home/thegrave…
‘I have been seeking the stones for years.
Now I wander in the deft of your tongue.
Maybe if I emerge from you,
I will find the entrance.’
“To My Translator” - poem by Saoirse thechakkar.com/home/tomytran…
The Unsettling Politics of Violence and Music in ‘Dhurandhar’ thechakkar.com/home/dhurandh…
In a variety of personal essays on The Chakkar, our narrators write about a turbulent childhood in Assam, finding art after losing an eye, the burdens of student life in India, and more.
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