Lockdown Diaries

Our series of articles all about how people are making the best of the situations caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Lockdown Diaries: British Asian Trust’s emergency COVID-19 appeal for South Asia

His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, Royal Founding Patron of the British Asian Trust, gave his support to the British Asian Trust’s COVID-19 Emergency Appeal on Friday 24th April via a specially recorded video message. South Asia is home to 27% of the world’s poorest people with 750 million people surviving on less than $2.50 per day. Now...

Flowers – an environmental poem

I haven’t been able to make much music recently. Processing the news around us has been far from easy. So here’s a different kind of offering, with words and paint, this one is called — Flowers. It rained last night, From a monsoon sky, Soaked my soil, Burrowed its way Deep into my heart, Until I was swollen... Dark earth, Bubbled bright, And it hurt To be brimming with...

KASHISH 2020: South Asia’s biggest LGBTQIA+ film fest goes online, opens up for registrations

India’s first film festival and South Asia’s biggest LGBTQIA+ film festival, the 11th edition of KASHISH Mumbai International Queer Film Festival is going virtual this year due to the COVID19 lockdown. The festival is coming up with a full-slate of 157 films from 42 countries, making it the first Indian film festival to come up with a fresh bouquet of...

Lockdown Diaries: Reflections In The Wake of COVID-19

Most of us Indians across the globe perhaps share a similar story at this juncture. We are in the same boat, stranded mentally if not physically. For those of us whose families are far away in India, the question that has inevitably crossed our minds is: “When will we get to go home next?” It's my 83rd day today,...

Lockdown Diaries: Showing resilience in coping with Covid during the grey years

India has 110 million elderly, projected to become 177 million by 2025. Of this West Bengal has 750,000 senior citizens and Kolkata itself records 550,000 of them. In a recent research study the Calcutta Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology (CMIG), Regional Resource and Training Centre on Ageing, conducted individual case studies to explore how senior citizens were coping during the...

Not Namaste Trump but Phir Milengey: H-1B visas suspended, what now?

It looked like things were getting as close as could be between US President Donald Trump and Narendra Modi but a worldwide pandemic and a scourge of resulting unemployment in the States has put a spanner in the works of ‘Namaste Trump’, as an executive order signed this past week will suspend new visas for foreign workers, including the...

Dance to Nihira Joshi Deshpande’s authentic Cuban music with Hindi lyrics

Germany based Nihira Joshi Deshpande has created an independent song with Hindi lyrics set to the melody of authentic Cuban music. This song  Ishq Manayein Kya? has gone viral. Nihira is an internationally acclaimed popular singer, composer, independent music producer, Spanish translator come interpreter. Nihira Joshi Deshpande has been singing for many Marathi and Hindi films, worked with Shankar...

Ketan Dattani speaks on how to rebuild in the post Covid economy

No event in recent history has affected us as profoundly and pervasively as the pandemic. It signifies a completely unprecedented circumstance, as novel as it is life-changing. The virus has not only infected thousands, but has thrust us into an economic recession. How long, how deep and how many are impacted by the recession will be influenced not just by the...

‘Evening Shadows’ to screen in London marking LGBTQ+ History Month

Sridhar Rangayan’s gay drama kicks off series of films as part of London Indian Film Festival (LIFF) The UK and Europe’s largest South Asian film festival, the London Indian Film Festival  (LIFF) is kicking off its 2021 series of films and marking LGBT+ History Month with a screening of Sridhar Rangayan’s feature film Evening Shadows, a tender heart-warming story, set in...

Global Indian Stories – Top 10 stories so far

Global Indian Stories is back! We've moved our website onto a bigger, faster server and changed our domain to globalindianstories.org to better represent our ethos of being a non-profit organisation. Our goals are unchanged. We still aim to help increase literacy by supporting and encouraging writers, especially those who have never been published before, hopefully leading to a greater sense of...