Arts & Culture

As four short films, centred on the lives of the LGBT community, get theatrical release pan India, we speak to those who believe more representation of the community is the need of the hour.

Virginia Woolf’s quotes stand true most in our times. Here are a few that evoke feminist pride and show what a visionary this celebrated author and important voice was in literary history.

Researchers have developed new soft-material structures which can hold nearly 14,000 times their weight using the Japanese art form of kirigami -- a version of origami.

Only 2 years old and so ill she had to stay on for weeks after liberation, Eva Umlauf was one of the youngest prisoners to be freed from Auschwitz. Although she has no conscious memories stretching so far back, her early childhood in the Nazi death camp was to cast a dark shadow over her entire life.

Timkat commemorates the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan, was marred this year by the collapse of a wooden seating structure during a pivotal ceremony in the northern Ethiopian city of Gondar, an accident that left at least 10 people dead. But it is generally a sunny and joyous affair.

Ahdoos Hotel is set to expand, and it’s founder Haji Mohammad Sultan first started a bakery in 1918 under the patronage of Maharaja Hari Singh after learning the fine art in Calcutta (Kolkata) in West Bengal.

The winner of a record four best foreign language film Oscars, director Federico Fellini is famed for films set in Rome such as La Dolce Vita (1960), and most of his films were shot in Cinecitta’s Studio 5 outside the capital.

In much of the world, monosodium glutamate or MSG is a beloved ingredient. It’s in stock cubes and potato chips, and sprinkled on everything from soups to salads, adding a savoury flavour sometimes referred to as umami or the “fifth taste”.

Venice has long sounded the alarm about being reduced to a living museum, as tourism mushrooms and population levels shrink, threatening the city’s viability. Permanent residents in the historic center have sunk to 53,000, down by a third in one generation.

Jeanine Cummins’ American Dirt, one of the year’s most anticipated and debated novels, tells of a bookstore owner in Acapulco, Mexico, who loses much of her family to a murderous drug cartel and flees with her son.

Bestselling author, mystic and siddha Om Swami says one could achieve a state of bliss by practising kindness. The good news? The act of kindness doesn’t have to be out of the world. It is as simple as appreciating someone. He discusses the ‘kind’ road to happiness and his book, The Book of Kindness.

For the first time in its 220 year history, the famed Siddhivinayak Temple in Prabhadevi sports a gilded look courtesy a 35 kg gold worth Rs 14 crore, made by an ‘anonymous’ Delhi devotee.

The artist behind the creation is John Amanam, a 32-year-old former movie special effects expert. He developed an interest in prosthetics after a family member lost a limb in an accident.

In the old quarter of Morocco’s coastal city of Essaouira, a newly-opened House of Memory has been dedicated to the historic coexistence of its Jewish and Muslim communities.

Fish-leather has inspired some luxury fashion houses such as Dior and Prada to occasionally include it in their garments and accessories, but the fabric is still largely a curiosity.