Beyond the Lines

On the finale episode of season one of Beyond the Lines, our co-host Chirag Thakkar gets on a call with Anoo Bhuyan, Soutik Biswas and Dr Kalpana Swaminathan to unpack the events spanning over a year of the Covid-19 pandemic as well as its second wave that wreaked havoc on India’s peoples. Over two summers, India woke up to the same cycles of news: people falling sick in hordes; a shortage of beds, medicines, emergency wards, ambulances, testing kits, information, systems, oxygen, the list could go on. Bearing witness to this ongoing disaster that we are, likely, still in the middle of, the special wrap-up episode tries to make sense of an India that never went out of the SOS mode since March 2020.Anoo Bhuyan is a journalist who covers health at Indiaspend.com; Soutik Biswas is India Correspondent and Features and Analysis Editor at BBC India, and Dr. Kalpana Swaminathan, who writes with Dr. Ishrat Syed under the pseudonym Kalpish Ratna is a writer and surgeon. Anoo, Soutik and Kalpana are also contributors, among others, to a publishers’ set of essays titled, The Dark Hour: India under Lockdowns, forthcoming in the fall of 2021 with Roli Books.We will be back with more in the second season of Beyond the Lines; stay tuned.Hosts and Executive Producers: Priya Kapoor and Chirag Thakkar.  Show Producer: Aria Nanji. Produced by Roli Pulse, a digital initiative by Roli Books.   Follow Roli Books @rolibooks on twitter, Facebook and Instagram.  Check out books published by Roli and other leading international art, design and illustrated publishers at CMYK Bookstore, among other online retail stores. Use code BTL20 at checkout on cmykbookstore.com to get a 20 percent discount on your purchase.  

Our co-host Priya Kapoor gets on a call with master historian and storyteller Vidya Dehejia to talk about her career and her new book titled India: A Story in 100 Objects. The richly illustrated book tells India’s richly layered historical story through objects that have come to define its people, culture and society.  Vidya Dehejia is Barbara Stoler Miller Professor of Indian and South Asian Art at Columbia University. Awarded the Padma Bhushan by the government of India, she is one of the most prolific figures in South Asian art history.  Hosts and Executive Producers: Priya Kapoor and Chirag Thakkar.  Show Producer: Aria Nanji. Produced by Roli Pulse, a digital initiative by Roli Books.   Follow Roli Books @rolibooks on twitter, Facebook and Instagram.   Read more about Vidya Dehejia here.    You can find a copy of Vidya’s new book India: A Story in 100 Objects here (India) and here (US).       Check out books published by Roli and other leading international art, design and illustrated publishers at CMYK Bookstore. Use code BTL20 at checkout on cmykbookstore.com to get a 20 percent discount on your purchase.    

Our co-host Chirag Thakkar gets on a call with food writer and blogger Dr. Nandita Iyer, who takes on heavy-duty questions that get to the heart of what we eat and how and why we eat what we eat, answers for which we all have sought for so long. Whether ghee is good for you, if diets work and are sustainable, what oil is good for desi cooking, why eating seasonal producce is directly tied to your wellbeing – all of this and a whole lot more on this episode. And oh, if she were a pickle or a chutney, Nandita thinks she’s likely to be a Punjabi mix pickle. Have you ever thought of what condiment or cocktail you would be? Nandita is the author of several cookbooks, most recently of ‘Everyday Superfoods,’ and the forthcoming book ‘Thali: Vegetarian Wholesomeness from India’ to be published by Roli Books.Hosts and Executive Producers: Priya Kapoor and Chirag Thakkar. Show Producer: Aria Nanji. Produced by Roli Pulse, a digital initiative by Roli Books.    You can follow Nandita Iyer on twitter @saffrontrail here, as well as on facebook, instagram and her blog.         Follow Roli Books @rolibooks on twitter, Facebook and Instagram.  Check out books published by Roli and other leading international art, design and illustrated publishers at CMYK Bookstore. Use code BTL20 at checkout on cmykbookstore.com to get a 20 percent discount on your purchase.      

Our co-host Chirag Thakkar gets on a call with political commentator and writer Rasheed Kidwai to talk about one of India’s most popular political dynasties – the Scindias. With political intrigue, palace conspiracies, cut-throat rivalry, an ugly, public feud, betrayals and property wars fought in courts, and siblings that do not look eye to eye, the Scindias make tantalizing headlines. Weeks before India announced a total lockdown to combat the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, Jyotiraditya Scindia dumped the Congress overnight for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) bringing down the former from power in the state. Many saw the return of the prodigal grandson as the reunion of the political dynasty of Scindias under BJP’s catch-all umbrella. Rasheed unpacks with Chirag what this moment means for Indian politics, going into the family’s political history and predicts what the Indian National Congress needs to do to revive itself.Rasheed Kidwai is a journalist, political historian, writer and columnist. He is Visiting Fellow with the Observer Research Foundation, Delhi, and has formerly been Associate Editor at The Telegraph. He is the author of the upcoming book 'The House of Scindias : A Saga of Power, Politics and Intrigue.' Hosts and Executive Producers: Priya Kapoor and Chirag Thakkar. Show Producer: Aria Nanji. Produced by Roli Pulse, a digital initiative by Roli Books.    You can follow Rasheed Kidwai on twitter @rasheedkidwai here   Follow Roli Books @rolibooks on twitter, Facebook and Instagram.  You can find Rasheed Kidwai’s forthcoming book on the Scindias on all platforms soon. His other books on Sonia Gandhi, the Indian National Congress, Bollywood and politics can be found here.   Use code BTL20 at checkout on cmykbookstore.com to get a 20 percent discount on Rasheed’s forthcoming book, others by Roli Books and by leading international art, design and illustrated books at CMYK Bookstore.        

Our co-host Priya Kapoor gets on a call with bestselling writer Shrabani Basu to chat about being a journalist to transforming into a writer, historian and biographer. She takes a deep-dive into what it takes to recreate the life of Noor Inayat Khan’s – India’s first female wire-operator-turned-secret-agent in Europe during World War II – now celebrated and commemorated widely in the UK. Shrabani Basu is an Indian journalist and historian based in the UK, and the author of several books including Victoria and Abdul, also adapted into a Hollywood film. Hosts and Executive Producers: Priya Kapoor and Chirag Thakkar. Show Producer: Aria Nanji. Produced by Roli Pulse, a digital initiative by Roli Books.    Follow Roli Books @rolibooks on twitter, Facebook and Instagram.  You can follow Shrabani on twitter @shrabanibasu_ here.   Find Shrabani’s book Spy Princess here (India), here (UK) and here (US).      Use code BTL20 at checkout on cmykbookstore.com to get a 20 percent discount on your copy of Spy Princess, and other books by Roli and many leading international art, design and illustrated publishers at CMYK Bookstore.     

Our co-host Chirag Thakkar gets on a call with historian Sumathi Ramaswamy to chat about Gandhi as a muse to India’s modern and contemporary artists based on her new book Gandhi in the Gallery, the power of viral images in protests in India and the U.S., and speculate over what Sumathi and Gandhi are likely to talk about if they had a chance to have dinner. Sumathi is James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of History at Duke University.  Hosts and Executive Producers: Priya Kapoor and Chirag Thakkar. Show Producer: Aria Nanji. Produced by Roli Pulse, a digital initiative by Roli Books.    Follow Roli Books @rolibooks on twitter, Facebook and Instagram.  You can find Sumathi Ramaswamy’s book Gandhi in the Gallery here (India), here (U.S.) and here (U.K.)

Our co-host Priya Kapoor gets on a call with Sunetra Choudhury to chat over writing about prisons and prisoners, doing news in print and television media, what it means to be a working mother in today’s India and a whole lot more. Sunetra is the author of bestselling books Behind Bars and Black Warrant that take a hard look at the sorry state of affairs inside India’s prisons. An award-winning journalist, she is currently national political editor at Hindustan Times.  Hosts and Executive Producers: Priya Kapoor and Chirag Thakkar. Show Producer: Aria Nanji. Produced by Roli Pulse, a digital initiative by Roli Books.    Follow Roli Books @rolibooks on twitter, Facebook and Instagram.  You can follow Sunetra on twitter @sunetrac here.   Find Sunetra’s books here and here.   Use code BTL20 at checkout on cmykbookstore.com to get a 20 percent discount on these and other books.   

Our co-host Chirag Thakkar gets on a call with newsman, music fanatic and Bombay historian Naresh Fernandes for the second episode of Beyond the Lines to talk about Indian jazz, statues and busts, and the pressures and joys of doing journalism in India today. As early as the 1930s, Jazz found its way into Bombay’s nightclubs, bars and cultural life and had a thriving career for the next three decades, influencing its cinema and music. Our guest tells this forgotten story of Bombay’s golden jazz age in his wildly popular and award-winning book Taj Mahal Foxtrot published by Roli Books. One of the most prolific voices in Indian media today, Naresh Fernandes is an acclaimed writer, editor and journalist at scroll.in, one of India’s leading digital daily.   Hosts and Executive Producers: Priya Kapoor and Chirag Thakkar. Show Producer: Aria Nanji. Produced by Roli Pulse, a digital initiative by Roli Books.    Follow Roli Books @rolibooks on twitter, Facebook and Instagram.  You can follow Naresh on twitter @tajmahalfoxtrot here and subscribe to scroll at scroll.in  Check out a personalized Indian Jazz playlist curated by Naresh here.       Find Naresh’s books on Bombay Jazz here and Bombay, the city here.     Use code BTL20 at checkout on cmykbookstore.com to get a 20 percent discount on these and other books.  

Our co-host Priya Kapoor gets on a call with Kobad Ghandy for the first episode of Beyond the Lines. Born in the cradle of upper-middle-class privilege in a Bombay Parsi household and educated at one of India’s finest schools, Kobad Ghandy’s life and career could have scaled heights in the bustling world of corporate finance. Only it did not. Instead, he chose to declass himself to become a radical activist working for the oppressed of the country. This is the story of an honest man and his partner, Anuradha’s, to a difficult destiny. Having languished in Indian prisons for over a decade, he talks about of his long incarceration, of his fellow prisoners, and of the Kafkaesque experiences with the Indian legal system sending shivers down one’s spine. This is the candid and unfiltered account of how an unjust system breaks the brave and bold hearted. Hosts and Executive Producers: Priya Kapoor and Chirag Thakkar. Show Producer: Aria Nanji. Produced by Roli Pulse, a digital initiative by Roli Books.    Follow Roli Books @rolibooks on twitter, Facebook and Instagram.  Use code BTL20 at checkout on cmykbookstore.com to get a 20 percent discount on Kobad Ghandy’s prison memoir Fractured Freedom.