BIC TALKS

Join us for an engaging conversation as Amitav Ghosh discusses Wild Fictions, a collection of his writings from the past twenty-five years, with Julia Wheeler. This expansive work explores the themes that have defined Ghosh’s literary journey: literature and language, climate change and the environment, human lives, travel, and discoveries. Through topics ranging from the commodification of the clove to the rich diversity of Bengal’s mangrove forests and the radical fluidity of multilingualism, Wild Fictions offers a critique of imperial violence and the fictions we weave to navigate history. It is a call to sensitivity, empathy, and the urgent need to repair our relationship with volatile landscapes. With his unique combination of moral passion, intellectual curiosity, and literary elegance, Amitav Ghosh invites us to see the world anew in this thought-provoking discussion. The session will be followed by a book signing with the author. In collaboration with: Bangalore Literature Festival & Harper Collins In this episode of BIC Talks, Amitav Ghosh will be in conversation with Julia Wheeler .This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in January 2025. Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favorite podcast app! BIC Talks is available everywhere, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast, Audible, and Amazon Music.

Being immune to the charms of poetry is a crime that is its own punishment, the Sanskritic tradition tells us. Join us as we discover the allure of Sanskrit and Prakrit love poetry and the travails of translating doe-eyes and elephant-thighs into English with Anusha Rao and Suhas Mahesh, co-translators of the verse anthology, How to Love in Sanskrit (HarperCollins 2024). How to Love in Sanskrit is a poetic exploration of the maze of modern dating: flirting, daydreaming, yearning, and breaking up, through the eyes of Kalidasa, Bana, Vidya, and many other, often anonymous gifted poets. Moderated by Radhika Chadha, the translators will discuss their inspiration for the book, their approach to translation, misconceptions about Sanskrit poetry, and the challenges of translating pre-modern poetry, drawing from both classic and forgotten texts to paint a picture of what love feels like in Sanskrit. The session will conclude with a reading of their favourite verses from the book and a Q&A session with the audience. In this episode of BIC Talks, Anusha Rao and Suhas Mahesh will be in conversation with Radhika Chadha .This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in January 2025. Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favorite podcast app! BIC Talks is available everywhere, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast, Audible, and Amazon Music.

In March 2020, when the world went into lockdown to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, poets and friends Marilyn Hacker and Karthika Nair—living mere miles from each other, but separated by circumstance, and spurred by this strange time—began a correspondence in verse. ‘Renga’, an ancient Japanese form of collaborative poetry, is comprised of alternating ‘Tanka’, beginning with the themes of ‘Toki’ and ‘Toza’: this season, this session. Here, from the “plague spring”, through a year in which seasons are marked by the waxing and waning of the virus, Hacker and Nair’s Renga charts the “differents and sames” of a now-shared experience. Their poems witness a time of suspension in which some things, somehow, press on relentlessly, in which solidarity persists—even thrives—in the face of a strange new kind of isolation. Between “ten thousand, yes, minutes of Bones”, there’s cancer and chemotherapy and the aches of an ageing body. There is grief for the loss of friends nearby and concern for loved ones in the United States, Lebanon, and India. And there is a deep sense of shared humanity, where we all are “mere atoms of water, each captained by protons of hydrogen, hurtling earthward.” At turns poignant and playful, the seasons and sessions of A Different Distance display the compassionate, collective wisdom of two women witnessing a singular moment in history. Karthika Nair will be in conversation with Prem Panicker. An audience Q&A session will follow. Presented by: Contxt In this episode of BIC Talks, Karthika Nair will be in conversation with Prem Panicker .This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in January 2025. Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favorite podcast app! BIC Talks is available everywhere, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast, Audible, and Amazon Music.

Did Rajaraja Chola, who built the world-renowned Brihadisvara temple in Tanjore, and Suryavarman II of Kambuja Desa (Cambodia), who built the world’s largest temple complex, Angkor Wat, erect these enduring marvels with a magic wand? Surely not. How did they nurture prosperity? What were the economic models that enabled them to leave the world awestruck? Sriram Balasubramanian’s sequel to the pathbreaking Kautilyanomics answers these questions by examining Common Era empires and kingdoms ranging from the Cholas, Pallavas, Pandyas and Vijayanagara to Southeast Asian kingdoms. Balasubramanian audaciously puts forward a novel, indigenous and sustainable framework called Dharmanomics—a function of Kautilyan Dharmic capitalism, of a Dharmic ecosystem driven by temples and Sreni (corporate guilds) Dharma—that spans thousands of years. It was put into practice much before the likes of Adam Smith and modern economic thinkers. Dharmanomics seeks to present a coherent and structured economic framework based on the idea of Dharma for at least 1500 years. In the session, Sriram Balasubramanian is in conversation with Vikram Bhat. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in November 2024. Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favorite podcast app! BIC Talks is available everywhere, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast, Audible, and Amazon Music.

This talk will reflect on broad trends in the study of caste including debates and discussions drawing on poststructuralist, Marxist, and anthropological approaches which have tended to approach caste as a distinctive form of hierarchy and social distinction. This framing will help to illuminate the challenge of new approaches and intellectual formations, which center critical caste and Dalit studies, scholarship on anticaste thought, and studies of global caste. How does a politics of the present inflect social transformations of caste, as well as the resistance to its inequities? What are the potentials and the perils to studying caste through global fields of power and comparison? How might we bridge institutional logics and disciplinary constraints in effecting novel forms of critique? In this episode of BIC Talks, Anupama Rao delivers a talk. This is an excerpt from an event that took place in the BIC premises in December 2024. Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favorite podcast app! BIC Talks is available everywhere, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast, Audible, and Amazon Music.

To find a rare bird is the ultimate dream of ornithologists and birdwatchers. But doing it requires a combination of skills including an understanding of habitats, animal behaviour and people skills as well as plain old good luck. But the ornithologists, naturalists and birdwatchers, who tracked down the most difficult to find birds of the Indian subcontinent, got lucky because they worked really hard at it. In this session authors Shashank Dalvi and Anita Mani will be in conversation with contributors to the book ‘The Search for India’s Rarest Birds‘, Atul Jain, Radhika Raj and Aasheesh Pittie  who will be speaking about the challenges of species discovery and what makes a bird ‘rare’. In addition, the session will explore conservation issues and solutions to prevent such rare species from going beyond the brink, as well as future directions on where the next raft of discoveries could come from. In collaboration with : Juggernaut, Indian Pitta and Center for Wildlife Studies In this episode of BIC Talks, Shashank Dalvi and Anita Mani are in conversation with Aasheesh Pittie, Radhika Raj and Atul Jain. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in December 2024. Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favorite podcast app! BIC Talks is available everywhere, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast, Audible, and Amazon Music.  

Every joke, facial expression, song and stick of furniture we inherit from those we lived with and loved tells its own story. Of continuity, of pasts and the present. Writers A.T. Boyle and Shinie Antony, who put together the collection exObjects, The Art of Holding On, Letting Go (Om Books), delve into the micro histories and macro memories of things left behind. The eleven authors have re-envisaged people, places and things lost, but certainly not forgotten. Join Vikram Sampath, whose late, beloved mother infused him with her love for classical music, and Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri, the editor of this volume, along with Boyle and Antony, as they talk about the hum and heart of belongings. Presented by: International Music & Arts Society In collaboration with: OM Books International In this episode of BIC Talks, AT Boyle, Vikram Sampath and Shinie Antony will be in conversation with Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri. This is an excerpt from an event that took place in the BIC premises in December 2024. Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favorite podcast app! BIC Talks is available everywhere, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast, Audible, and Amazon Music

The annual U.R. Ananthamurthy Memorial Lecture, 2024, hosted by Bahuvachana, Rujuvathu, and BIC, features Prof. Harish Trivedi delivering a talk titled How (Not) to Write the History of Indian Literature. The talk will explore the challenges that complicate any effort to write a history of Indian literature. It will self-reflexively examine several such histories, including a recent volume, Indian Literary Historiography (published by the Sahitya Akademi, 2024). Prof. Trivedi will propose some radical ideas for writing a popular history of Indian literature in about 250 pages. The lecture will also discuss a short history authored by the speaker, which deliberately sets aside pedantic conventions. In this episode of BIC Talks, Harish Trivedi delivers a talk. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in December 2024. Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favorite podcast app! BIC Talks is available everywhere, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast, Audible, and Amazon Music.

Sanjay is the musician’s musician—a revered vocalist with a devoted following in the Carnatic music community. Known for his profound theoretical understanding and intellectual engagement with the art form, he is a connoisseur of music. In this conversation with Anita and his co-author, novelist, journalist, and screenwriter Krupa Ge, Sanjay delves into his artistic journey and the world that shaped him. The three panellists, united by their shared passion for Carnatic music, discuss the essence of classical music and explore what lies beyond the classical realm, touching on the fluid exchanges between various musical genres. Candid and introspective, Sanjay reflects on the personal and artistic ruminations that led him to write about his musical life, even as he stands at a crossroads in his career, eager to explore new horizons and grow further. Presented by: Westland Non-fiction In this episode of BIC Talks, Sanjay Subrahmanyan and Krupa Ge will be in conversation with Anita Nair. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in January 2025. Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favorite podcast app! BIC Talks is available everywhere, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast, Audible, and Amazon Music.

What does it mean when vulnerable groups end up in Court for their right to love? This session with the author of Urban Elite v. Union of India Rohin Bhatt will discuss a wide range of issues surrounding the queer community in India. Amongst others, the author will seek to answer the following questions: How should social impact and public interest legislation be undertaken? What goes through the mind of a queer lawyer when homophobia is masqueraded as a legal argument? In this episode of BIC Talks, Rohin Bhatt will be in conversation with Arvind Narain. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in January 2025. Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favorite podcast app! BIC Talks is available everywhere, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast, Audible, and Amazon Music.