Arts & Culture
India doesn't have one culture — it has a few hundred, layered on top of each other for four thousand years. This is where we explore all of it: the temples and forts, the classical dances and folk songs, the weaves and the paintings, the saints and the film stars. One article might take you inside a Chola bronze workshop, the next into a Kathakali dressing room or a Kanchipuram loom. Pick a thread below — architecture, music, regional traditions, the people who made the art — or just follow your curiosity. The idea here is to understand where the art came from and why it still matters.
Ustad Bismillah Khan and the Shehnai That Became His Prayer
Every morning for most of his ninety years, Ustad Bismillah Khan walked to the Vishwanath Temple on the banks of...
Rukmini Devi Arundale and the Rebirth of Bharatanatyam
In the early twentieth century, a dance form that had sustained the spiritual and artistic life of Tamil Nadu's temples...
How Goa’s Shigmo Festival Carries Myths Older Than Its Own Name
Shigmo is the festival that Goa keeps for itself. Not the version packaged for tourism, though that exists and draws...
Ancient Agricultural Myths That Shape the Magh Bihu Harvest Festival
The fire that burns at the center of Magh Bihu is not simply a bonfire. It is a conversation with...
How Mirabai Left the Palace and Found Her God
Mirabai walked away from one of the most powerful royal households in Rajasthan not in anger but in devotion, carrying...
Hemis Festival: Sacred Cham Dances That Offer Liberation in Ladakh
High in the Indus valley of Ladakh, at an altitude where the air is thin and the sky is a...
How the Karaga Bearers Balance the Floral Pyramid in Karnataka
On one night every year in the heart of old Bengaluru, a man dressed as a woman walks barefoot through...
How the Bhotiya Weavers of Uttarakhand Kept a Himalayan Textile Tradition Alive
The Bhotiya weavers of the Uttarakhand Himalayas have been spinning wool at altitudes where most things do not grow and...
How Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay Saved India’s Artisan Heritage
Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay understood something about Indian handicrafts that the newly independent government of 1947 did not immediately grasp, that the...
Poush Mela and the Baul Singers Who Keep Shantiniketan’s Soul Alive
Every December, in the red-soil village of Shantiniketan in West Bengal's Birbhum district, something happens that has been happening without...
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