Amar Diwakar

1 month ago | restofworld.org | Amar Diwakar

On a chilly night in January, Ajay Sreekumar stood outside Dubai’s Museum of the Future and craned his head up to the sky. He watched a swarm of 600 drones whirl some 400 feet above in the dark, humming as they formed an LED-illuminated portrait of the city’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Over the next nine minutes, the drones transitioned seamlessly between multicolored and animated 3D images, including a spinning globe and a scientist inspecting the DNA double helix.

Oct 12, 2024 | flipboard.com | Amar Diwakar

Culture9 hours agoWomen in the Celtic World: Everything You Should Knowthecollector.com - Rachel Sweeney • 9hMany conventions from historical, Western societies have been patriarchal in nature.

Oct 12, 2024 | aljazeera.com | Amar Diwakar

On an early morning car ride from Tashkent to Samarkand after a performance in 1983, the Uzbek pop singer Nasiba Abdullaeva tuned in to an Afghan radio station by accident and found herself entranced by a song that was playing. “From its first notes, the song fascinated me, and I fell in love with it,” Abdullaeva recalled. She asked the driver to pull over so she could quickly memorise the lines.

Jan 17, 2024 | thejuggernaut.com | Amar Diwakar

The accessible, diasporic brew is a byproduct of Gulf modernization — and its insidious underbelly. Hani A. pulls up in a Toyota Land Cruiser outside Oyoun Al Reem, a cafe in Dubai’s Za’beel district, and honks twice. A young man hustles out and comes up to the car. Hani gestures using rapid finger movements: two orders of karak chai. We promptly receive the brew, piping hot, in six-ounce paper cups for 1.50 dirhams ($0.41) each.

Dec 30, 2023 | funkychapati.wordpress.com | Amar Diwakar

From infectious Scandinavian soul to ominous Irish doom-folk, alongside sumptuous electronic pop, uplifting spiritual jazz and disco revivals done right, 2023 was packed with sonic delights. It was also a year of comebacks, with Britpop icons Blur, Zamrock legends WITCH and shoegaze royalty Slowdive all dropping excellent LPs after decades-long hiatuses. For those with an end-of-year list fetish, these were my top 100 albums of the year (with a Spotify playlist at the end):