Can I Get A Heya From Everyone Who’s Also Stuck In The Horror That Is Exam Season 😔✌️

A Guide to Desi Dark Academia

since the dark academia aesthetic is awfully eurocentric, here is a little post about desi dark academia :) writing this made me romanticize my culture so much...i fell in love with it all over again!

Literature:

A few classic literary works include:

The Mahabharat by Vyasa

Devdas by Sarat Chandra Chottopadhay

Parineeta by Sarat Chandra Chottopadhay

Amost everything by Rabindranath Tagore( e.g Kabuliwala , Gitanjali, Shesher Kobita, Chokher Bali, Charulata etc)

Toba Tek Singh by Saadat Hasan Manto

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

Film:

Satyajit Ray's works like Charulata, The Apu Trilogy, Shonar Kella etc

Dipu Number Two, based on Mohammad Zafar Iqbal's novel

Haider , an adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet

Padmavat

Kai Po Che

Rang De Basanti

Masaan

Lootera

3 Idiots

Music:

Oldies by Lata Mangeshkar and Mohammad Rafi

Sufi music like Qawwali and Kafi, by Kazi Nazrul Islam, A.R Rahman, the Pakistani sufi-rock band Junoon etc.

Ghazals (a form of poetry)by Pankaj Udhas, Jagjit Singh, Ghalib and Ghulam Ali

Flutist Hariprasad Chaurasiya

Sitarist Ravi Shankar

Fashion:

Jamdani sarees made of dhakai muslin (a delicate ancient fabric made by the Mughals that were given names like "baft-hawa", meaning "woven air")

Chikankari kurtas!!

Wearing gajras (flower garland made of jasmine) in your hair

Colourful bindis and bangles (the larger your collection of bangles the cooler you are, its the south asian dream)

Payals and jhumkas <3

Old silk shawls and dupattas during winter >>

Using attars(alcohol-free perfume)

Wearing mehendi on your hands

Styling almost anything with gorgeous nagras

Classical Dance: a few forms

Bharatnatyam

Kathak

Odissi

Manipuri

Kathakali

Activities:

Roaming around historical sites and grand havelis

Visiting old zamindar baris and mosques and temples then being enchanted by the architecture

Watching jatras ( folk-theatre performances)

Growing up listening to your grandparents read folktales to you ( e.g Thakumar Jhuli, meaning grandma's bag of tales)

Trying to learn ancient languages like Sanskrit and Persian

Learning classical dance since you were like 4 and bragging about how many different forms you know (look me in the eye and tell me madhuri dixit was not your childhood idol)

Boat trips on the Padma river, pretending to be Tagore

Waking up to the azaan at the break of dawn

Having steaming hot tea at a small tea stall on a rainy day

hope y'all enjoyed this :)

Being friends with crust punks is wild. I knew a guy who got a tattoo of a train on his leg and then the next week he lost his legs trainhopping. When I was like 16 I was on the roof of a house during a party and the cops rolled up. I stayed put figuring the cops weren’t gonna look on the fuckin roof and I watched this same guy roll out in his wheelchair and slash the cops tires.

to quote junoon, chain ik pal nahi

ahh nothing like your tutor saying they are proud of you after you finally manage to not let them down

that urge to climb the rooftop of ur house. where does it come from.

hate it when people tell me calm down bro my 'jiya' is extremely 'beqarar'

someone needs to buy me jhumkas and put gajras in my hair immediately