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MAY 3rd is World Press Freedom Day, a reminder that the role of news organisations is to speak truth to power. Not to manufacture consent – to use Chomsky’s famous words – for the government and the ruling classes. While doing that, I want to remember two men who exemplify the need to speak the truth: Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame and Julian Assange of WikiLeaks. And also of Chelsea Manning, without whom we would not have the proof of what the US was doing, not only in Iraq and Afghanistan but all across the globe. In doing so, I will also deal with the changing nature of government “secrets”, what outing them means then and now, and the response of our rulers.

In director Stephen Williams’s big-budget new film Chevalier, now playing in US theatres Joseph Bologne (Kelvin Harrison), the illegitimate son of an African slave and a French plantation owner on the lucrative French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, rises to improbable heights in Parisian society as a celebrated violinist-composer and fencer. After witnessing Bologne best France’s top fencer in a celebrated match defined as a contest between racially superior France and the pollution of African and Caribbean people who have settled there, Queen Marie Antoinette (Lucy Boynton) personally anoints him the Chevalier de Saint-Georges as “a true man of France.”

The Indian filmmaking legend Satyajit Ray stepped into his 102nd year on May 2, 2023. The maestro died in 1992, at the age of only 71. He left us without finishing many of the proposed film and writing projects which he had undertaken in his last years. Bengal lost not just a great filmmaker, but also a writer of extraordinary calibre, who opened up the Bengali children and adults to a new world of adventure and science fiction in their mother tongue.

The legend of the Indian cinema, Satyajit Ray, has crossed two more years after his centenary celebrations began on May 2 of 2021. The last icon of what is termed as Bengal Renaissance, died at the age of only 71 on April 23, 1992. Though his last film ‘Agantuk' was released in 1991, just a year before his death, the last eight years of his life since 1984 was controlled with strict medical supervision in view of his heart disease.

The multi-talented, widely admired performer Harry Belafonte died Tuesday, April 25, at age 96. He was born on March 1, 1927, in New York City as Harold George Bellanfanti, Jr. His ancestry is Jamaican and Martiniquan, and his paternal grandfather had Dutch Jewish origins.

It’s a strange thing to discover that Harry Belafonte got to be a big star faster than his old friend and early rival Sydney Poitier for good roles. Poitier became so famous and remained such a respected actor that his screen eminence rose over time, whereas Belafonte walked away from top film stardom early. He couldn’t reconcile his serious political principles with what he regarded as the demeaning roles he was offered — some of which went to Poitier after Belafonte turned them down. Belafonte had nothing but scorn, for example, for what he considered the grotesque racial stereotypes of Porgy and Bess (1959), and he claimed to have rejected the script for Lilies of the Field (1963), which won Poitier the first Academy Award for Best Actor ever given to a black man.

Andaleeb Wajid is back at her mother’s house, this time for a month. It is Ramzan—the months of fasting and praying. She logs in from her refuge—the desk in her peppermint green room. A romance writer, love is her business. In 2021, she spent six months in her room, writing happy ending, even as she dealt with the other side of the four letter word she has based her career on—loss.

For the first time we face the challenges against whatever we have held sacred till now. Our Constitutional values, our composite culture rooted deep in the society with all its beauty and love, our economy built democratically with a strong public sector, with rights to live, work and express ourselves freely and then finally the right to chose our government. Today, people’s elected representatives are not allowed to function. Bills in Parliament are passed without debate. Efforts are made to mute the Opposition.

Pyre—Tamil writer Perumal Murugan’s novel about caste—based hatred, along with 12 other books—made it to the long-list of international Booker Prize 2023. Murugan’s 2013 book was translated into English by Anirudh Vasudevan in 2016.

Rapid integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into both workplace and domestic settings poses serious challenges to women’s opportunities for work, their position, status and treatment in the workplace.