The publication of Family Matters, an intergenerational saga of a Parsi family’s trials and tribulations amidst the politically tense and ideologically contentious atmosphere in 1990’s Bombay catapulted its author Rohinton Mistry to fame and solidified his status as one of India’s premier exponents of Indian Writing in English. The Parsi identity and experience, a subject Mistry has explored repeatedly throughout his literary career returns yet again in this novel as do the pitfalls of being part of a minority community in this diversity that is India that Mistry’s characters have to contend with in a futile attempt to preserve their Parsi heritage. That includes upholding the tradition of Zoroastrianism, performing sacred rites, initiating the uninitiated into Parsi faith as well as the impediments that have followed the Parsi community in India Post-Independence. Mistry’s novel particularly focuses on memory, both on a personal and social level to provide commentary on the growing dissatisfaction that have followed the Parsi community since independence well into the new millenium. Following Jan and Aleida Assmann’s ‘Cultural Memory’ model and of Memory Studies as a whole, the present paper attempts an analysis of Mistry’s novel and puts forth an argument that the characters’ attempt at negotiating their Parsi identity in the face of a tussle between ‘tradition and modernness’ serves instead to destabilize their identity.

In contemporary culture, increasing body weight or body becoming out of shape has become an alarming concern among people irrespective of age and gender. Having a body without the ideal body proportions or having a protruding belly or non-conforming body parts makes people vulnerable in public. The norms regarding body weight affect women more than men as the punitive mechanisms for having a fat body become harsher for the former. This paper focuses on the stigmatization of fat women in two Indian movies titled Dum Laga Ke Haisha (2015) and O.P.160/18 Kakshi: Amminippilla (2019) to analyze how fat shaming experiences traumatize and subjugate women with non-conforming bodies. By analyzing the experiences and trauma undergone by the fat women in these movies, the present study aims to explore how the stigma of fatness makes women vulnerable in the public and private spaces in Indian culture and marginalizes them from mainstream society.

Social exclusion is a practice that is evident in human societies across ages. It had many aspects and facets based on the social, religious, political, economic and cultural parameters which were followed in the societies. With modernisation (in the sense of scientific inventions became a part of everyday life), the concept of social exclusion got more organized in human societies. Notable social psychologist Susan Tufts Fiske lays out the framework of the practice called social exclusion among five core motives which are found among people which is called the BUC[K]ET theory. This article will discuss these core motives and will investigate how they are imprinted in the socio-cultural behaviours of human beings through select twentieth-century Bengali literary texts. The article will be interdisciplinary and qualitative in nature.

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the indie narrative-cooking video game Venba, developed by Visai Games. Set in 1980s Canada, the game explores themes of immigrant identity, familial bonds, and culinary heritage, focusing on a Tamil diasporic family. Players of the game take the guise of the titular protagonist, Venba, who endeavours to preserve her Tamil heritage by restoring her family's cherished cookbook. However, the cookbook is damaged in the move from India to Canada, and it is up to the players to engage in culinary puzzles to decipher and reconstruct recipes. Drawing from scholarly perspectives on cookbooks as cultural artefacts, this study examines the significance of culinary traditions in cultural preservation amidst migration. I suggest here that cookbooks like that of Venba’s serve as repositories for preserving cultural practices and collective memories, offering invaluable insights into the gastronomic traditions of ethnic communities. Venba employs culinary gameplay mechanics to invite players into the rich tapestry of Tamil cuisine and cultural mores, fostering cross-cultural understanding. The narrative architecture of the game underscores the transformative potential of food as an enduring medium for expression, connection, and cultural continuity amidst the vicissitudes of change. Ultimately, Venba emerges as a catalyst for introspection, encouraging players to embark on journeys of self-discovery and cultural appreciation while underscoring the imperative of embracing one's heritage with unwavering pride and authenticity.

Horkheimer and Adorno, in their book Dialectic of Enlightenment discuss the “Cultural industry” and how art is produced keeping in mind the consumer’s taste and acceptability to incur maximum profit. Using this concept in mainstream Hindi cinema, where the recurring themes are either patriotism, casteism, social hierarchy, love interests, or environmental concern, we notice how these movies are made for the audience to numb their thinking capacity or help them derive pleasure. In this paper, I am going to focus on commercially misogynist Bollywood spy films and how the East follows the tradition laid down by the West, which produced films like Mission Impossible or the James Bond series. Females in such misogynist films are either presented as mothers, seductresses, or as objects of love interest. I shall study the depiction of female characters in such films from a feminist perspective (keeping in mind what Mulvey discusses in her essay “Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema” as voyeuristic scopophilia and fetishism) using psychoanalysis and Frankfurt school theories. Through this paper, I shall explore the dichotomy of how females try to act as predators (to prey upon male spectators and lure them to the movie hall) but eventually end up being preyed by the system (as they are the object of desire and are subjected to the male gaze). In all these roles that a female plays, she does it only to be a part of this phallocentric society and help the audience obtain their promised pleasure. I shall also be dwelling upon the animal instincts in such women and how they are assigned qualities of wild beasts that often make them look like natural predators.