South India
A conversation with NIO the Tamil Magician
A while back I was shown an exclusive trailer about an up-and-coming young magician called Niresh Satkunarajah, best known perhaps under his nom de guerre “NIO BELIEVE”. First reaction: a Tamil magician? His parents must be really cool and chilled out people, because I know for a fact that if I or any of my […]
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A Tamil Garden at the 2016 Chelsea Flower Show
Photos by Helen Fickling & Charles Hopkinson For five days each year, London houses its own little Garden of Eden in the heart of the city. Every May, since 1912, gardeners from all across the world make their way to the Chelsea Flower Show, turning the capital in to a heavenly paradise with their beautiful, […]
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A New Shade of Blue: Mas Subramanian’s Accidental Discovery
The color you see below is no ordinary hue. It’s one of the world’s newest — and perhaps most vivid — shades of blue. It also happens to be the result of a brilliant mistake. A team of chemists discovered YInMn blue during a chemistry experiment at Oregon State University in 2009. “It was serendipity, […]
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Amma Canteen: Seven cents a meal in Tamil Nadu
The Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa’s “amma canteens”, which serve cheap meals to hundreds of thousands of people daily, have become immensely popular with the poor and the middle classes. The BBC’s Geeta Pandey samples the treats at a canteen in Chennai (Madras). It’s just a few minutes after noon on a hot summer […]
READ MOREKamal Haasan Screen Talk at the BFI London
Europe’s largest South Asian film festival returns on the 14th to the 24th July 2016 for its seventh edition in ten great cinemas across London. This year the organisers are also screening synchronously in two cinemas in Birmingham. In 2015 ‘London Indian Film Festival & the BFI London’ hosted a screen talk with Indian film maker Mani Ratnam. This year […]
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