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Aug 21, 2024 | 
hazlitt.net | David Huebert |John McGrath |Richa Kaul Padte
What it means to be modern is to be creatures of oil. —Stephanie LeMenagerWhat if oil could speak? Is it already saying something to us? — Jaspreet SinghiI wanted to write an oil story, different from the narratives I’d encountered, and a scene from Homer’s Odyssey kept gurgling through the murk of me. To find his way home, the lost seafarer Odysseus must travel to the underworld to receive a prophecy from the blind seer, Tiresias.
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Jul 17, 2024 | 
hazlitt.net | Richa Kaul Padte |Amitava Kumar |Mayukh Sen
My nani was born in Lahore. As a child, whenever I stumbled upon this fact, shelved neatly away in my mind, I would pick it up gently, like a dark gleaming jewel, examining it from all sides. What made the stone precious I couldn’t exactly say, but I didn’t doubt its value. It had a distinctive sheen. But then again, so did many things about Nani. When I was young, Nani—my mother’s mother—was the grandparent I gravitated toward. For an “old” person, she seemed the least old.
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Jul 17, 2024 | 
hazlitt.net | Rollie Pemberton |Abhrajyoti Chakraborty |Richa Kaul Padte
Welcome to Mind in Bloom, a column deconstructing current events, music and art. On “Speed Drive” from last year’s Barbie soundtrack, Charli xcx dropped the iconic line, “on the mood board, she’s the inspo.” Now the tables have turned and she’s the one leading the PowerPoint presentation. Brat is what happens when an auteur is given a budget and the catbird seat in the boardroom.
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Jun 5, 2024 | 
hazlitt.net | Krista Diamond |Kelly Boutsalis |Richa Kaul Padte |Rachel Gerry
I saw the tin foil on the windows of the trailer as I climbed the rusty, metal steps to the door. It was unlocked. Inside, it was dark and dusty. The smell of propane hung in the air. There was an ominous quality to the stained corduroy couch, a sense that something poisonous lay dormant in its cushions. A hulking, nonfunctional CRT television rested in the corner. In one bedroom, there was a pile of used mattresses. In the other, an empty box spring, wood panelling, a garbage bag of clothing.
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Jan 31, 2024 | 
hazlitt.net | Mayukh Sen |Kelly Boutsalis |Richa Kaul Padte |Hanna Phifer
Welcome to the third and final instalment of “Brown Hollywood,” a three-part series of essays by Mayukh Sen exploring undertold stories of South Asian performers in Hollywood’s Golden Age. She has no name; they call her, simply, “Hindu lady.” In the 1956 Hollywood adventure flick The Mountain, all the characters gaze upon this preternaturally beautiful Indian woman as if she’s arrived from another stratosphere.
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Jan 17, 2024 | 
hazlitt.net | Kelly Boutsalis |Alison Motluk |Matthew Braga |Richa Kaul Padte
I have the fuzziest recollection of the first time I heard a land acknowledgement, likely at an artist talk at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2016 or so. I would’ve been around thirty-five years old, and when the event host recited the acknowledgement, I was…confused. It turned out that this was my first of many land acknowledgements I would experience. They would roll out time and time again, in educational, entertainment and sporting spaces, gaining steam over the last decade.
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Dec 13, 2023 | 
hazlitt.net | Richa Kaul Padte |Anne T. Donahue |Georg Barkas |Don Gillmor
What were we obsessed with, invested in and plagued by in 2023? Hazlitt’s writers reflect on the issues, big and small. I live in a village in North Goa, in the last of four houses lining a quiet lane. On my first “practice walk,” I take barely fifteen steps away from my gate before becoming unbalanced, breathing under a cluster of bamboo trees. I then continue down the roughly tarred road, each step a victory.
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Dec 6, 2023 | 
hazlitt.net | Georg Barkas |Anne T. Donahue |Richa Kaul Padte |Andrew McMillan
What were we obsessed with, invested in and plagued by in 2023? Hazlitt’s writers reflect on the issues, big and small. I recently stepped back into an arena that, in truth, I had not fully left. And yet I had needed that distance, whether to have my eyes opened again or, at least, to open my eyes again and look at things seemingly unrelated. I am an intimacy educator and researcher. I teach rope bondage, and I try to expand its range, definitions, and options.
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Dec 6, 2023 | 
hazlitt.net | Anne T. Donahue |Georg Barkas |Richa Kaul Padte |Hanna Phifer
What were we obsessed with, invested in and plagued by in 2023? Hazlitt’s writers reflect on the issues, big and small. In 2023, it seemed like a tide was finally starting to turn. Strikes blossomed across entertainment, education, and federal sectors and expanded into hotel, automotive, and publishing industries. The wealthy were sent up spectacularly through series like Succession. Critics and audiences revelled in skewering the unlikeable, venomous rich character.
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Sep 27, 2023 | 
hazlitt.net | Richa Kaul Padte |Alison Motluk |Lana Hall |Anne T. Donahue
It’s April 2021, the start of India’s deadly Covid-19 Delta wave. I am standing in the parking garage of a hospital in North Goa. Hospitals around the country are so overburdened that doctors have begun to plead for oxygen supplies on social media. Here, the Covid wing has spread to the garage. Patients are being treated with IV drips on makeshift beds where cars were once parked. I am trembling with fear. I have tested positive for Covid.
