Irreverent, informed and downright eclectic books and reportage from Southeast Asia and beyond
Floating somewhere between the Hooghly River and Massive Attack, Tritha is a music ensemble from Kolkata.
The band played a couple of shows at The Space in Bangkok last month and performed an exalted mix of Indian ragas and folk-ways shuffled around sensuously, with a dash of trip hop thrown in. Shades of Bjork [...]
British newspaper The Guardian reports that the Jarawa, a tribe of Andaman Islanders who number just a few hundred, have been coerced by Indian police to dance naked for tourist ’safaris’. Unfortunately, this has been going on for many, many years.
When I visited the Andamans in 1997 and 2000, Indian [...]
Sorry, this entry is only available in Deutsch.
Kya poochho ho haal merey karobaar ka
Aaeeney bechta hoon andhon ke sheher mein
You ask me about my business, what I have in mind
I sell mirrors in the city of the blind.
Urdu Couplet
Courtesy of Kushwant Singh
I have just come to the end of an extended stay in India. I have been living in an old crumbling palace, the infamous and incredible Z Hotel in Puri, Orissa, facing the Bay of Bengal, hanging with my co-conspirator Aroon Thaewchatturat.
Puri, once a hippy haven for Japanese drop-outs, is now an all but forgotten [...]
The trailer for the first documentary film I worked on (screenplay and production manager), The Greatest Show on Earth, can now be viewed on director Marc Eberle’s website.
The 30 min documentary follows Alok Sharma, the top policeman in charge of the 2001 Maha Kumbh Mela, the largest gathering of people on planet earth, ever!
Being involved in [...]
Sorry, this entry is only available in Deutsch.
Indian media have been reporting that Charles Sobhraj, convicted serial killer, currently doing 20 years in Kathmandu Jail, has been visited by an alleged British lawyer, a ‘blonde bombshell’, as the Indian broadsheets claim, who runs a website called Sobhraj Services and has claimed to be making moves that might free one of the world’s [...]
Writer Tom Vater and photographer Aroon Thaewchatturat will be giving a talk on the history of Sak Yant at the Indian Cultural Center in Bangkok - Sukhumvit Soi 23, Jasmine Tower, 27th Floor - on June 30th at 6.30pm.
Signed copies of their brand new book, Sacred Skin, Thailand´s Spirit Tattoos, will be available at the [...]
In 2005 and 2006, photographer Aroon Thaewchatturat and myself traveled across Rajasthan, India´s popular north western desert state to visit some thirty heritage hotels. The two trips led to the publication of a photo book in Germany by Reise Know How Verlag, naturally called Rajasthans Palasthotels. To finance this venture we published stories on the [...]