Like many Kolkatans, I have always had a complicated relationship with Kolkata. My feelings — and I’m sure the feelings of so many others — about this eqaully breath-taking, beautiful, and repulsive city is perhaps best summed up by Anjan Dutt’s Kunal Sen (inspired by Dutt’s mentor, the legendary Bengali filmmaker Mrinal Sen) from Chaalchitra Ekhon (2024): “I hate Calcutta, I love Calcutta, I am excited about Calcutta, I am disappointed about Calcutta, I am irritated by Calcutta, I am fascinated by Calcutta, Calcutta is my El Dorado.”
But I spent most of last weekend hopping across the city to cover ‘Counter Encounter’ — a four-day celebration of the 15th anniversary of Artsforward, a creative agency which promotes access to the arts by bringing the arts to unexpected spaces. And in doing so, I saw Kolkata in a new light.
We often call Kolkata the cultural capital of India, and often what we mean by this is retrospective — a nostalgic look at the Bengal Renaissance. For too long, the city’s critics have framed this as proof of the city’s slow, perpetual decline. But that’s not true. Kolkata’s culture is not frozen in the past. Counter Encounter was a reminder that, underneath the patina of colonial detritus and the glimmer of contemporary re-invention, it’s alive and thriving — pulsating through the city’s streets, bar counters, and built heritage. It was also a reminder that culture does not thrive in isolation; it develops over years, through peers, and builds on collective participation.
But that’s only part of the story. India is currently undergoing a remarkable cultural transformation. From Reble and OAFF redefining India's sonic identity at the XP Music Futures 2025 in Riyadh to Jashn-e-Rekhta reviving India's syncretic Urdu literature and music traditions, and Priyankar Patra’s intimate portrait of Influencer culture to Binglebog’s new single about slow love, here’s what we have for you this weekend:
Now in its fifth year, Saudi Arabia’s XP Music Futures returns to Riyadh’s JAX District from December 4-6, 2025. And this year has a certain homegrown touch to it: together, XP and Homegrown will present two sessions highlighting how Indian music is evolving beyond mainstream narratives and entering global conversations.
Mumbai-based composer-producer OAFF (Kabeer Kathpalia), known for his atmospheric, guitar-led electronic sound and breakthrough work on Gehraiyaan, will speak on a panel about India’s shifting sonic identity. He will also perform at XP Nite on December 6, bringing material from his 2025 Grammy-nominated album Between Flowers.
OAFF will be joined by Reble, one of the most compelling new voices in Indian hip-hop. Blending sharp lyricism with melodic fluidity, she has built a rising national and international profile. At XP, she performs on December 4 and leads an interactive rap masterclass on December 5, offering insight into her creative process.
On canvases of acrylic, ink, and watercolour, Mumbai-based artist Aditiya Singh persistently tries to depict the luminous presence of a single figure — a nod to Jennifer Aniston — but ends up creating distorted imitations, grotesque echoes, spectral doubles. The paintings showcase warped outlines, exaggerated features, or faces that seem to fade in and out of focus. Singh explains that the project is rooted in the absurdity generated by continual failure — the kind that happens when an image becomes more distorted through endless attempts to portray it. Learn more here.
Pottery’s growing appeal as a slow, tactile pastime forms the backdrop for Aura Life and Aura Pottery, the Chandigarh-based ceramic studio and retreat shaping a new culture of intentional making. Their latest collaboration, Phoenix, with clothing brand DUJA, advances this ethos. Ustat Kharbanda reworks discarded ceramic shards into sculptural, body-contouring forms that merge garment and object, exemplifying a shift toward reuse, material integrity, and slow, process-oriented creation where imperfection becomes both resource and story. Learn more here.
Priyankar Patra’s debut feature ‘Early Days’, selected for the Red Sea International Film Festival’s New Visions Competition, explores India’s influencer economy through a young couple, Preeti and Samrat. What starts as casual posting turns into content creation, revealing both digital promise and pressure. As they gain followers, boundaries break down, relationships strain, and the quest for virality leads to ethical compromises. The film portrays influencing as a fragile mirror to India’s informal economy, questioning how online aspirations reshape identity, intimacy, and survival. Learn more here.
Binglebog’s new single ‘Heart On A Richter Scale’, from the upcoming EP Fruits of Solitude, explores the enduring power of slow love. It combines warm acoustic sounds with gentle percussion to create a sense of intimacy. The music video, directed by Raabiya Marici and shot in Kerala’s Valiyaparamba village, uses unscripted scenes with locals- children, elders, and everyday life- to emphasise a relaxed rural rhythm. Both the song and video depict love as something to be experienced, not measured. Learn more here.
Urdu’s resurgence in India reflects a broader cultural reckoning with language, identity, and belonging. Once the lingua franca of the subcontinent, Urdu declined after Independence with policies favouring Sanskritised Hindi. Over the past decade, especially during COVID-19 lockdowns, young Indians have embraced the language for its emotional depth and countercultural appeal. The Rekhta Foundation has played a key role in this revival, making Urdu literature accessible via transliteration and digital archives. Its annual festival, Jashn-e-Rekhta, in its 10th edition at New Delhi’s Baansera Park, highlights Urdu’s contemporary relevance through literature, music, and dialogue. Learn more here.
The Kolkata Jazzfest — established in 1978 and revived in 2002 — remains a cornerstone of the city’s cultural heritage and the longest-running jazz festival in India. Since then, the festival has featured artists from more than 30 countries and remains Eastern India’s only dedicated jazz festival, even adapting to digital editions during the pandemic. This year, German saxophonist Stephan Mattner and his ensemble ZOOM headline, bringing a sound shaped by melodic openness, rhythmic interplay, and echoes of Pat Metheny and John Abercrombie, reimagined through Mattner’s contemporary sensibility. Follow Jazzfest here.
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