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Showing posts with the label 6 Assagao

Stories Set to Music

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There is a new trend in the literary world in Goa: one that promises to set your foot tapping while listening to engrossing tales. That’s right – we are to be entertained by musical book readings. The author of Fair-Weather Brother , Pogoat, has already dipped his toes into this new experience at 6 Assagao with much success. Pogoat tells us that combining music with book readings is not an invention of the 21st century, beginning somewhere in the 1950s with great credit to the efforts of Jack Kerouac, American novelist, poet, and leader of the Beat Generation literary movement. Pogoat says, ‘Book readings with music go back a very long way, back into the 1950’s when the blues and jazz scene began to explode in America and the beat writers mixed it all up with prose and poetry. But the writer who took the art of musical reading to the mainstream media was Jack Kerouac. Jack claimed to know jazz more than any other writer, and his book readings with jazz music were culture defining momen

6 Assagao: Awakening the Social Conscience

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6 Assagao appeared on the scene in Goa three and a half years ago as a confluence of art, intellect and social activism. Nilankur Das, who is part of the team that makes the events at 6 Assagao a reality, reflects on a social awakening birthed by the turbulent atmosphere of Assam in the '80s. Marked by political unrest, student agitation, secessionist movements, the Indian Army’s combing operations and the President’s rule, this time period shaped his motivation to work in the development sector, and later in outreach and communication programmes. People Tree, which was founded by Orijit Sen and Gurpreet Sidhu and functions as a space for products of unique design, began as an alternative bookshop in Delhi housing textile products and accessories. Far more than an ordinary store, People Tree boasts of having been the nurturing ground for social movements and the mentor of 6 Assagao. Nilankur says of People Tree, where he once used to have his activism T-shirts on display, ‘People T

The Loss of Online Anonymity

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The internet has the power of the Big Brother of George Orwell’s 1984. What was once predicted to happen twenty years ago has already become a reality in the present day and age. ‘We always thought it would be far off, but we are being surveyed right now,’ says Baishampayan Ghose, the co-founder and CTO (Chief Technology Officer) at Helpshift, a company that offers web and mobile customer service software. He goes as BeeGee and has taken it upon himself to create awareness about the perils of the internet and how we can safeguard our anonymity. Anonymity is important to avoid providing an Achilles’ heel that can be wounded. The internet, however, preys on our vulnerability by placing us at the whim of government agency scrutiny, and much darker, predatory forces. At its least dangerous position, the internet subjects us to targeted advertising. Whenever we like a post or article it is carefully monitored, along with our internet searches and so on, and information connected with our on