The 2023 Bollywood blockbuster movie Pathaan marked the whopping Rs 1050 cr box-office collection, creating records, and heralded in changes empowering visually impaired people to “watch” movies despite their disabilities. Besides reaffirming SRK’s stardom, the film gave new contours to the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, by holding giant Bollywood production houses responsible for producing user-friendly films for People with Disabilities (PwD). The courage of young Akshat Baldwa, a visually impaired student of the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, has now enabled the screening of movies for the visually impaired people in Chennai and other parts…

Padma Shri awardee 87-year-old R. Muthukannammal is known to be the only surviving artiste of the Devadasi tradition in India. Hailing from the Viralimalai village of Pudukkottai district in Tamil Nadu, she is the seventh generation of the ‘Sadir’ dance community. Viralimalai village is known for the Subramanya Swamy temple, where 32 Devdasis have served as a goddess. Sadir dance origin Sadir is an ancient dance form dating back to the 16-17th centuries, then known as ‘Sadirattam’. It got widely popular in the reign of Martha Kingdom – a solo dance performed for centuries by Devadasis in temples, and later…