439. We Need to Talk about Ritwik Ghatak
BIC TALKS
If he wasn’t feted in his time, Ritwik Ghatak most certainly is today. Since his death in 1976, at just past fifty, Ghatak’s stature has only grown. His humanist cinema, his uncompromising vision, his deep engagement with the history and culture of the land, have made him one of the most indelible figures in Indian film history. With Meghe Dhaka Tara, Subarnarekha, Komal Gandhar, Ajantrik, and Titas Ekti Nodir Naam, Ghatak changed the very nature of Indian cinema. As a teacher at the Film and Television Institute of India, he shaped the next generation: Kumar Shahani, Adoor Gopalakrishnan,...
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438. Mothers of Daughters
BIC TALKS
Idolised, worshipped, immortalised. A mother is asked to be everything while making it look effortless. Alas, a mother is also a daughter. In the face of her humanity, we know not what to do. Meyeder Mayera is a Bangla anthology of mothers written by their daughters. Not the idea of a mother, but the women themselves. Arundhati Ghosh joins four contributors to the book in a conversation about the legacies it carries, the relationships that shaped them, and what it means to truly see the person who raised you. In this episode of BIC Talks, Margaret Rosie, Nisha Abdulla, Sarbari Gomes and...
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437. Mother Mary Comes to Me
BIC TALKS
Memory and identity. Personal and political. Mothers and daughters. Mother Mary Comes to Me is Arundhati Roy’s most personal work yet. At its centre is Mary Roy, her mother: abusive, brilliant, impossible to understand, and impossible to forget. A woman who challenged the Travancore Christian Succession Act before the Supreme Court and won. A woman who was, as Roy writes, both shelter and storm. In conversation with Arundhati Ghosh, Roy reflects on the writing of this memoir, her journey from a rocky childhood to literary stardom, and what it means to reckon with a person you have spent a...
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436. India at the Inflection Point
BIC TALKS
Geopolitical realignments. Technological disruptions. The mounting urgency of the climate crisis. As the world undergoes multiple, simultaneous transformations, India is faced with charting its own course. Rajiv Kumar, Kamal Bali, Manish Sabharwal, Nitin Pai, and Mohandas Pai bring together perspectives from policy, industry, and innovation to examine what it will take to navigate this era of uncertainty. As India navigates frontier technologies like AI, strengthening strategic autonomy, addressing climate imperatives and fostering inclusive growth, the choices are critical. How can we become...
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435. To Be a Millennial
BIC TALKS
The world changes, life is hard. That’s not news. But are millennials uniquely misunderstood, or simply the first generation to document their own confusion so thoroughly? Deepika Arwind, author of Good Arguments, and AM Gautam, author of Indian Millennials, write from opposite ends of the same experience. One through fiction, the other through reportage. Both millennial. Both wrestling with power dynamics, divided loyalties, and what courage looks like when you have one foot in the old world and one inching towards the future. This conversation, moderated by Arundhati Sridhar, is...
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434. Her Labour, Her Law
BIC TALKS
This session is in English and Kannada. Domestic work keeps the country running. But the women who make it possible, often after tending to their own homes first, have no contracts, no fixed hours, and no legal protection. The proposed Domestic Workers Bill in Karnataka aims to regulate the industry, bringing in protections enjoyed by employees in the formal sector. This panel examines what the Bill actually means: for the women it seeks to protect, for the households that depend on them, and for a labour movement that has long treated domestic work as an afterthought. A Q&A with the...
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433. The Long Game: Opportunity, Excellence and Institutional Power
BIC TALKS
Opportunity is abundant. Outcomes, however, are strategic. The three women on this panel have navigated all of it. Venture capital and enterprise strategy. Global talent transformation. The slow, necessary work of making the technology industry legible to the women coming up behind them. Startups built from scratch and careers that kept becoming something new. They have done this inside institutions that weren’t built for them, in markets that moved before they were ready, in moments that required a decision before the picture was clear. Together they examine how signals and opportunities...
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432. Left Off the Blueprint
BIC TALKS
Good design is invisible. Bad design is something women navigate every day. In public spaces, designers have rarely looked closely enough at how women actually move through streets, neighbourhoods, and informal gathering spaces. In digital infrastructure, women’s needs and safety are an afterthought, if considered at all. In healthcare, the gap is starker still. A space meant for healing leaves too many women negotiating their right to be there, be it fair inclusion in clinical trials or access to safe examinations. This panel examines what it would take to change these systems to include...
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430. Living Authentically
BIC TALKS
Courage is not the beginning of self-knowledge. It is the constant condition of it. Courage to Be You follows two people asking that question from very different lives. Amit and Najib are a gay couple navigating not only their relationship but the religious and social distance between them. Rajeshwari, Amit’s childhood friend, is quietly working to reclaim an identity fractured by early trauma. Their stories run parallel, but their questions are the same: what does it take to choose yourself, and what do you risk when you do? Rashna Imhasly-Gandhy draws on Jungian psychology and...
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431. Cities We Carry
BIC TALKS
Two questions plagued her for five years, living between Delhi, Venice, and Istanbul: how do we lose what we lose, and why do we love whom we love? Drawing on her collection of essays Place: Intimate Encounters with Cities (2026), written across 25 years and 13 cities, Ananya Vajpeyi will explore what cities hold for us. The memory and meaning held in street corners and corridors of light; the way personal loss and political trouble have of finding each other in the very same spaces. Architect Prem Chandavarkar brings his own lifelong reckoning with cities to the table....
info_outlineThis conversation will shift your understanding of power, and of possibility.
In this session Rahila Gupta will examine how male dominance persists across radically different societies from theocracies to democracies, dictatorships to socialist states. Her co-authored book Planet Patriarchy asks what makes patriarchy so resilient, and where feminism is not just surviving but genuinely thriving.
In conversation with Ashwini Jaisim, content strategist and editor, the session centres on a revelation: a little-known women’s revolution in Rojava, Northeast Syria. Here, women are building a bottom-up democracy rooted in multi-ethnic inclusivity and ecological sustainability. It’s a radical reimagining of power that challenges everything we think we know about governance and gender.
Concluding with an audience Q&A, this session invites you to rethink power, resilience, and the possibilities of feminist futures, one where gender equality isn’t an afterthought but the foundation.
In this episode of BIC Talks, Rahila Gupta is in conversation with Ashwini Jaisim. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Dec 2025.
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