Himal Southasian Podcast Channel Himal Southasian

At Screen Southasia, we host monthly online screenings of compelling documentaries from the region, including Nepal, India, Kashmir, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Tibet, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Maldives and Sri Lanka. We present a diverse range of films, both classic and new, that showcase the unique cultures, histories and perspectives of Southasia.

Screen Southasia is a partnership between Himal Southasian and Film Southasia.

Film: Split Ends
Country: Nepal
Released: 2016
Q and A with director: 7 JUNE 2024 (FRIDAY)
Time: 6 pm IST, 6:15 pm NPT, 5:30 pm PKT


Synopsis:
A barbershop becomes a place of refuge for Nepali migrants who travel to Portugal in search of the European dream.

About the director:
Rajan Kathet is a filmmaker based in Kathmandu working in both fiction and documentary films. Rajan's first feature documentary, "No Winter Holidays," premiered in the International First Feature Competition section of Sheffield DocFest 2023 and is the winner of the NATIVA Award at Alternativa Film Awards 2023 in Kazakhstan. His short fiction work, "Bare Trees In The Mist (2019)," was screened at several international film festivals, including the Toronto International Film Festival 2019, Tampere Film Festival, HKIFF, Encounters Film Festival, Dharamshala IFF, and Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia.

Rajan collaborates with national and international filmmakers through his production company, Salpa Films. He has worked on projects such as the Taiwanese feature documentary “After The Snowmelt” by Yi-Shan Lo, which premiered at Visions du Réel 2024, and the TV documentaries "In the Land of Machines" by Heo Chul-nyung (South Korea), "Home Street Home" by Alan Lau for Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK), and "A Himalayan Endgame" by Deepak Chaturvedi (India), all of which are in post-production.

Rajan is also engaged in film education and mentors young filmmakers through his involvement in local film schools and filmmaking workshops. He regularly contributes to the Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival DocLab.

Welcome to the Southasia Review of Books Podcast from Himal Southasian, where we speak to celebrated authors and emerging literary voices from across Southasia. In this episode, Shwetha Srikanthan, assistant editor at Himal Southasian, speaks to Siddhartha Deb about his novel 'The Light at the End of the World' and his latest book, 'Twilight Prisoners: The Rise of the Hindu Right and the Fall of India'.


'The Light at the End of the World', Siddhartha Deb’s first novel in fifteen years, reinvents Southasian fiction for our time.


The novel, beginning and ending in a dystopian future of authoritarianism and climate disaster, blurs the lines between realism and speculative fiction. It captures the puzzle of contradictions that is modern India today, and traces it back to the many moments of apocalypse in the Subcontinent’s history. At its core, the story is also about how certain tragedies and certain kinds of violence are repeated.


Over the past decade and a half, India has pivoted from a seeming success story, revealing itself to be a stranger than fiction-dystopia. In his recently published collection of essays, 'Twilight Prisoners', Siddhartha paints a damning picture of these darkest of turns in India’s recent past. It is a powerful exploration of the rise of Hindu Nationalism and its impact on dissenting voices and marginalised communities. And most importantly, it’s a timely reminder that those who resisted and are resisting – India’s twilight prisoners if you will – are not forgotten. As long as there is resistance and remembrance, there is still hope.


Born in Shillong, in northeastern India, Siddhartha Deb lives in Harlem, New York. His fiction and nonfiction have been longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award, shortlisted for the Orwell Prize, and been awarded the Pen Open prize. His journalism and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Republic, Dissent, The Baffler, N+1, and The Caravan.


Episode notes:

This episode is now available on Soundcloud: on.soundcloud.com/LoWvGocG7fDagxrQ7
Spotify: spoti.fi/3KKdxsf
Apple Podcasts: apple.co/3KMugLF
Youtube: youtu.be/s8QAJGgY6zc

Welcome to the second edition of the Himal Fiction Fest, where we celebrated Southasian fiction in translation. Southasia’s rich literary tradition spans hundreds of languages, cultures, regions and traditions – and translators play a vital role in bringing these works the exposure and recognition they deserve, and connect.

To kick off the festival, we hosted an online reading of translated stories originally written in Bangla, Farsi, Hindi, Nepali, Punjabi and Tamil by their translators. These stories are published on our website. This was followed by a panel discussion on the future of Southasian fiction in translation, which featured the prize-winning translators Daisy Rockwell, Musharraf Ali Farooqi and Jayasree Kalathil, as well as the leading literary agent Kanishka Gupta.

The event was held in partnership with the Armory Square Prize for Southasian Literature in Translation. The 2024 prize finalists read excerpts from their translations before the announcement of this year’s winner.

The event took place on Monday, 10 June 2024

Featured in the fest:

My Sister, Life (excerpt) by Mahmudul Haque, translated from Bangla by Shabnam Nadiya and Mahmud Rahman

Insects (excerpt) by Fauzia Rafique, translated from Punjabi by Haider Shahbaz


Unknown by Mayilan G Chinnappan, translated from Tamil by Kalyan Raman

Chowmein by Durga Karki, translated from Nepali by Sandesh Ghimire

Lord Almighty, Grant Us Riots! by Anil Yadav, translated from Hindi by Vaibhav Sharma

One Day Forever... (excerpt) by Lina Rozbeh Haidari, translated from Farsi by Laila Ghezal Azimi

In this episode of State of Southasia, Nayantara Narayanan speaks to Laxmi Murthy, a senior journalist and the editor of the report, about the important role of the media and the struggles of journalists working in crisis conditions in an especially important year for the region, when several countries in Southasia are holding elections. (Disclosure: Laxmi Murthy is a Contributing Editor for Himal Southasian.)

State of Southasia releases a new interview every four weeks.

Welcome to the Southasia Review of Books Podcast from Himal Southasian, where we speak to celebrated authors and emerging literary voices from across Southasia. In this episode, Shwetha Srikanthan, assistant editor at Himal Southasian, speaks to the Siliguri-based poet, writer and essayist Sumana Roy about her latest book 'Provincials: Postcards from the Peripheries'.


In Southasian literature, it seems that there might not be any other way to see the province except in contrast to the city. So much has been said about cosmopolitanism, but what of provincialism?

Growing up in Siliguri, a sub-Himalayan town in Bengal, Sumana Roy’s experiences have marked her understanding of the provincial reader’s life: including the sense of belatedness, and the desire for pleasure in language. There’s a constant search for writings that bring other worlds to the provincial readers’ lives but also for glimpses of lives similar to theirs.

In a series of “postcards” from the peripheries of Southasia and beyond, with writings ranging from Rabindranath Tagore to William Shakespeare, Bhakti poets to the Brontës, Sumana introduces us to the imaginative world of those who have celebrated provinciality. She challenges the dominance of the metropolis to reclaim the dignity of provincial life and challenges the imaginary barriers we tend to put between the rural and urban.

Sumana Roy is a poet, writer, essayist and editor based in Siliguri. She is the author of several published texts, including her latest 'Provincials' (2024), 'How I Became a Tree' (2017), 'Missing' (2018), 'My Mother’s Lover and Other Stories' (2019), and two poetry collections, 'Out of Syllabus' (2019) and 'VIP: Very Important Plant' (2022).

Episode notes: https://www.himalmag.com/podcast/sumana-roy-provincials-postcards-southasian-peripheries-tagore-bengal-siliguri-literature

Listen to the episode on Soundcloud: on.soundcloud.com/ZRR39EPSLv3Ptqa38
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3UQD9IR
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/44SPnFd
Youtube: youtu.be/yDxo2G_f0X8

Southasia Review of Books is a podcast and a monthly newsletter that threads together our latest reviews and literary essays, with curated reading lists and all things books-related from Himal’s extensive archive. A special reading list curated by Sumana Roy will be featured in this month’s Southasia Review of Books Newsletter. You can subscribe to the newsletter here:bit.ly/sign-up-southasia-review-of-books-newsletter. A new episode of the Southasia Review of Books Podcast will be available once every four weeks. If you like this episode, please share widely, rate, review, subscribe and download the show on your favourite podcast apps.

Extreme heat has immense economic and social impacts in Southasia, an area that is most vulnerable to heat, that is densely populated, and that has a large numbers of people living in poverty. Research says that extreme heat is here to stay and will likely only get worse. An analysis of the 2022 heatwave across India and Pakistan showed that human-induced climate change makes Southasian heatwaves 30 times more likely.

In this episode of State of Southasia, Nayantara Narayanan speaks to Chandni Singh, a senior researcher at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements who works on climate change adaptation across Southasia. Singh talks about how the current Southasian experience of heat is unlike anything the region has seen in the past.

State of Southasia releases a new interview every four weeks.

Episode notes:
Further reading from Himal’s archives:

As India’s election heats up, soaring temperatures from climate change find little mention in mainstream media: https://www.himalmag.com/politics/india-election-rising-temperatures-heatwaves-risks-climate-change-journalism-mainstream-legacy-media

Nepal’s unescapable trap of migration, farming and climate change: https://www.himalmag.com/politics/nepal-himalaya-migration-rural-farming-agriculture-climate-change

INTERVIEW: COP28, the transition from fossil fuels and the Loss and Damage fund: https://www.himalmag.com/podcast/cop28-dubai-climate-change-net-zero-simon-evans

Climate change in Bangladesh is driving a dengue outbreak in winter: https://www.himalmag.com/video/climate-change-dengue-outbreak-in-winter-bangladesh

Primacy and absence of climate change: https://www.himalmag.com/excerpt/primacy-and-absence-of-climate-change-bangladesh-threatening-dystopias-excerpt-2021

Chipko to climate change: https://www.himalmag.com/reportage/chipko-to-climate-change-2021