On 28 February 2026, the United States of America and Israel plunged the world into crisis when their unilateral “pre-emptive” strikes against Iran led to the death of the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as well as hundreds of civilians, including 165 school girls in the southern part of the country. Most of the Gulf Coast countries have become embroiled in strikes and counterstrikes since then, resulting in the suspension of oil and fertiliser exports from the Middle East to Asia and Europe over the past week. These are precarious times for the world.
As I have been following the news, almost hypnotised by the sheer thoughtlessness of the Great Power hubris on display, I have been thinking about Toni Morrison’s timeless words: “This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”
Artists, writers, and journalists across the world have always worked under less-than-ideal circumstances. Some of the greatest works of the liberal arts have emerged from periods marked by war, censorship, displacement, and political upheaval. From poets in exile to reporters documenting conflicts under threat and painters responding to violence, creative and intellectual labour has often emerged from moments of uncertainty when language, image, and testimony gain their deepest urgency. What we understand today as culture or history is often the result of people who chose to witness, record, and create even when the world was in turmoil.
From ‘One Night In Toki-O’ in Kolkata and three South Asian female pop artists redefining the region’s music landscape to Kalpesh Lathigra’s first solo exhibition in India, exploring migration and memory, here’s what we have for you this weekend:
When Kalpesh Lathigra first picked up a camera, law school was still on the table. Growing up in East London, he stumbled on a book of photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson and everything shifted. He quit law, took evening photography classes, and eventually completed a postgraduate diploma in photojournalism at the London College of Printing. Kalpesh worked as a photojournalist in the 1990s and won first prize in the World Press Photo Awards in 2000. In the years that followed, he moved toward long-term, idea-driven bodies of work, shaping a practice between documentary and personalinquiry. ‘The Lives We Dream in Passing’, his first solo exhibition in India, curated by Veeranganakumari Solanki, brings together three distinct projects made over the last several years: ‘Mémoire Temporelle’, ‘The Indian Photo Studio’, and ‘Junagadh’. Together, they map migration, identity, and positionality, Disha writes here.
In India’s pop landscape, female artists have long navigated a similarly prescriptive industry, one that often celebrates their voices but polices their image and ambition. The shift happens when the artist stops negotiating with expectation and starts defining it, like Priyanka Chopra did with ‘Exotic’ (2013) and Sunidhi Chauhan has been doing with her country-wide tour. That energy is something we’re seeing echo across a new wave of South Asian pop artists. From Shevya’s unapologetic and bold lyrics to Janani Jha’s firm and impassioned response to the West’s cultural appropriation of the East, here are three South Asian female pop artists that are, in their own way, reshaping what pop stardom can look and sound like, refusing to be curated into palatability, Avani writes here.
“I am Maya Kurian, I am 25, and this is pretty much the first real day of my adult life,” Maya Kurian, played by writer-producer Anita Kalathara, says at the beginning of each episode of ‘Something to Prove’, a coming-of-age micro-drama about a 25-year-old South Indian-American woman stepping into independent life for the first time. The premise is promising, and the execution is intermittently charming, but ‘Something to Prove’ is, at its core, more interested in relatability than revelation. It follows a much-too-familiar checklist of diaspora storytelling: the stern, overbearing Indian mother; the relative freedom given to male children; the delayed adulthood; and the implied sexual inexperience presented as cultural peculiarity rather than individual circumstance. It feels like a relic from the early-2000s that still sees the main function of brown womanhood in Western-adjacent stories as being gently exoticised by contrast with a sexually-liberated white peer. Learn more here.
Launched by Arcade Social Club in partnership with Don Julio Tequila, ‘Night Train’ is a new pop-up series that promises to do something different from the bar takeover routine India has grown accustomed to in recent years. Instead of importing a brand name and a handful of cocktail recipes, ‘Night Train’ aims to transplant the full sensory experience of some of the world’s best bars — the music, the atmosphere, and the philosophy — for one night only. Learn more here.
After two years of travelling across the country, ‘One Night in Toki-O’ arrives in Kolkata with a one-of-a-kind Japanese festival reimagined in a city known for its love of art, music, literature, and nightlife. This Saturday, 7 March, ‘One Night in Toki-O’, presented by Toki Premium Club Soda and Homegrown, transforms Miss Ginko, Kolkata, into a living slice of Tokyo. The one-night-only celebration of timeless Japanese culture brings together vinyl-led music performances from Sindhi Curry (@sindhicurry) and Phreshprince (@the_phreshprince), interactive art installations by Soumyodeep Roy (@shomow), Japanese design showcases, and a culinary program inspired by Japan’s rich food culture, reimagined through Kolkata’s deep appreciation for craft and detail. Powered by House of Suntory’s Toki — the Japanese word for “time” — ‘One Night in Toki-O’ offers an immersive glimpse into modern Japan, where culture, creativity, and craft converge across music, food, fashion, and art.
Here’s more from Homegrown:
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