For centuries, paan occupied a central place in social, cultural and ceremonial life across the Indian subcontinent, serving as a symbol of hospitality, refinement and elite status.

Yet by the early 20th century, the practice had been increasingly recast by colonial authorities as an unsanitary habit, reflecting broader changes in social norms under British rule.Historical paintings, travel accounts and literary sources suggest that paan was once deeply embedded in the etiquette of royal courts and elite households.

Its consumption was associated not merely with personal enjoyment but with rituals of hospitality, conversation and social interaction.Among the visual records illustrating this tradition is an 18th-century portrait attributed to artist Dip Chand depicting an East India Company official, believed to be William Fullerton.

Alongside symbols of elite leisure such as a hookah, attendants and richly decorated furnishings, the painting prominently features a paandaan, or betel box, a spittoon and containers likely holding ingredients used in preparing paan.The arrangement of these objects indicates that paan consumption formed part of accepted courtly etiquette.

The inclusion of a spittoon within the composition also reflects how the physical aspects of chewing paan were accommodated within established norms of decorum.Similar motifs appear in depictions of British official David Ochterlony at the Mughal court in Delhi. In these works, paan-related objects occupy the same visual space as performances, carpets and hookahs, emphasizing their place within a broader culture of leisure and refinement.

Other paintings from the Mughal and regional courts similarly portray paan as an integral component of social life. In scenes of aristocratic gatherings, paan paraphernalia appear alongside writing instruments, floral arrangements and ceremonial objects, suggesting that hospitality, intellectual exchange and sensory pleasure were closely intertwined.Historical evidence also links paan to romance and personal relationships.

A 16th-century Mughal illustration from the Tuti-nama manuscript tradition includes prepared paan within a scene depicting anticipation of a romantic encounter. Classical Indian texts such as the Kamasutra similarly identify the offering of paan as part of courtship rituals and intimate social interactions.

European visitors to India frequently encountered these customs and recorded their observations. In the early 17th century, English diplomat Thomas Roe described receiving paan directly from Mughal Emperor Jahangir’s personal betel box, interpreting the gesture as a mark of exceptional honor and favor.

By the late 18th and early 19th centuries, however, European descriptions increasingly shifted from participation and curiosity toward documentation and classification.British writer and illustrator James Forbes, for example, recorded detailed observations of the betel plant and areca nut while also describing the social customs surrounding paan consumption.

He noted that many Indians carried paan much as Europeans carried tobacco and observed that it was routinely offered to guests as a sign of hospitality.Forbes also described the preparation of ceremonial paan, which combined sliced areca nut, cardamom and lime folded within a betel leaf and often secured with a clove.

According to his account, the offering of paan at the conclusion of a visit sometimes functioned as a subtle signal that social proceedings were drawing to a close.As colonial rule expanded, representations of paan increasingly reflected a desire to catalogue Indian customs through an ethnographic lens. Rather than appearing within scenes of social interaction and courtly exchange, paan began to be depicted as an isolated cultural practice.

Works such as Charles D’Oyly’s portrayal of a high-status Indian chewing paan focus attention on the individual and the associated objects rather than on the social environment in which the practice traditionally occurred. Images of paan vendors similarly emphasized occupation and commerce rather than hospitality or ceremonial exchange.

This shift reflected a broader colonial tendency to classify and document Indian society through categories that often detached customs from their historical and cultural contexts.The history of paan itself reveals extensive cultural connections across South and Southeast Asia.

The term “paan” is derived from the Sanskrit word parṇa, meaning leaf, while another Sanskrit term, tāmbūla, entered Persian and Arabic usage through centuries of cultural exchange.The areca nut, commonly known as supari, also carries linguistic traces of regional adaptation and trade.

Various forms of the word appeared across South Asia, while European colonial powers adopted local terminology as they encountered the practice.Paan was cultivated and consumed across a vast geographic region. Historical sources indicate that it carried distinct meanings in different societies, ranging from expressions of apology in the Malay world to digestive and medicinal uses in Sri Lanka.

Classical Indian texts recommended betel consumption after meals and associated it with various therapeutic benefits.Despite this rich cultural history, colonial attitudes increasingly focused on questions of sanitation and bodily discipline. As British administrative institutions expanded during the 19th century, new standards of hygiene and public conduct reshaped perceptions of practices that had long been socially accepted.

The decline of princely courts also weakened patronage networks that had supported the production of ornate paandaans and spittoons. Meanwhile, colonial offices and administrative spaces left little room for customs associated with public chewing and spitting.

As a result, the material culture surrounding paan gradually disappeared from many formal public settings. Although consumption continued in homes and informal environments, its visibility declined within spaces governed by colonial standards of propriety.English novelist and essayist E.M. Forster observed this transformation in a 1923 essay, contrasting the curiosity shown by early European visitors with the disdain later exhibited by many Anglo-Indians.

Forster described paan as a social ritual that facilitated interaction and hospitality, praising the skill involved in its preparation and presentation.By then, however, paan had largely ceased to function as a visible symbol of elite sociability in the way it had during the Mughal and early colonial periods.Paintings from the late 18th and early 19th centuries provide a record of that transition.

They show how an object once associated with honor, refinement and hospitality gradually became redefined through colonial frameworks that emphasized classification, regulation and hygiene. In the process, a practice deeply woven into the social fabric of South Asian life was increasingly reduced to a cultural curiosity rather than understood as part of a sophisticated tradition of etiquette and human interaction.

Venezuelan-Canadian director Jorge Thielen Armand and Italian actor Asia Argento are using surrealist psychological thriller Death Has No Master to examine questions of ownership, historical violence and inherited trauma against the backdrop of contemporary Venezuela.

Premiering in the Directors’ Fortnight section at Cannes, the film follows Caro, an Italian-Venezuelan woman played by Argento, who returns to Venezuela to reclaim a plantation inherited from her late father. The property remains occupied by caretakers who have continued living on the land, setting up a broader conflict over legitimacy, colonial legacy and power.

“The film has multiple layers of meaning,” Armand said ahead of the premiere. “Recent events only make those multitudes greater.”Armand said the project has taken on additional political resonance following recent developments in Venezuela and increased international involvement in the country.

The director referenced the deployment of US warships near Venezuela in August last year, officially linked by Washington to anti-narcotics operations, as filming began on the project.

He also referred to the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro by US authorities earlier this year amid longstanding allegations of corruption and human rights abuses against his administration.

“It’s very worrisome, what’s happening,” Armand said. “I think that the movie can speak to the collective darkness that Venezuelans feel, and the betrayal of domestic and international systems.”

The film revisits themes Armand previously explored in La Soledad, his 2016 feature debut set during Venezuela’s economic collapse. That earlier project blurred documentary and fiction while focusing on residents occupying a deteriorating mansion formerly owned by Armand’s family.

In Death Has No Master, Armand shifts perspective toward the descendants of property owners returning to spaces shaped by abandonment, displacement and class divisions. The story was partly inspired by recurring dreams the director experienced involving dark buildings, fragmented memories and disorientation.

“When I wake up, I think of home and everything I left behind,” Armand said. “So the film is that nightmare of going back, finding that the people and things you left behind are no longer there.”

The film places colonial imagery alongside modern industrial symbols. Cacao plantations and oil refineries operate as recurring visual motifs, linking Venezuela’s colonial history with contemporary struggles over resources and political control.

Argento described the filming process as emotionally consuming, saying she isolated herself in shooting locations to better inhabit the character’s psychological state.

“I drove myself pretty much insane,” she said. “And I had a lot of fear; something primal; something unspeakable that I think my character felt in going back there.”Argento said Caro’s memories of her abusive father intersected with aspects of her own personal history.

She is the daughter of Italian filmmaker Dario Argento and actor-screenwriter Daria Nicolodi, collaborators behind the influential horror film Suspiria.While Argento declined to detail specific parallels, she said the project resonated with her understanding of family inheritance and emotional trauma.

“It’s dealing with my own nightmares, and my own childhood, and the way I was brought up, and my own blood, and my inheritance,” she said.Argento also noted stylistic similarities between Death Has No Master and the Italian psychological thrillers associated with her parents’ generation of cinema, particularly the visual techniques of 1970s giallo films.

“This is like a serious Italian psychological thriller from the 70s, with the zooms and the way it’s shot,” she said after watching the completed film.

The central conflict of the story unfolds between Caro and Sonia, an Afro-Venezuelan caretaker played by Dogreika Tovar, who lives on the plantation with her son and asserts her own claim to the land.

A third figure, Johnny, an Indigenous associate connected to Caro’s father, further complicates the question of legitimacy.Armand said the film intentionally avoids presenting a clear moral hierarchy among its characters.

“I wanted to make something where nobody is a victim, per se,” he said.

According to the director, the conflict reflects overlapping systems of legality, morality and historical entitlement shaped by colonialism and economic power.

“There’s a legal, moral and historical conflict,” Armand said. “But these are notions that we’ve conceived as a society. In the end, land isn’t owned, ever. It’s just controlled by the use of force. It’s occupied until it’s not.”

Speaking in interviews with Jeune Afrique and The Africa Report during a two-day economic summit in Nairobi, Macron said Europe remained committed to multilateralism, the rule of law and open trade while global powers increasingly pursued confrontational economic policies.

“Europe defends the international order, effective multilateralism, the rule of law, free and open trade,” Macron said, drawing a distinction between European policy and the intensifying trade rivalry between the United States and China.

The French leader accused China of creating economic dependencies through its control of critical minerals and rare earth supply chains, arguing that Beijing prioritizes domestic processing while limiting broader industrial development elsewhere.“China operates according to a predatory logic,” Macron said, adding that Europe instead aimed to build “a strategy of autonomy” shared between African and European economies.

Macron’s remarks come as France attempts to recalibrate its relationship with Africa after years of deteriorating influence in several former colonies, particularly in the Sahel region where anti-French sentiment and military coups have weakened Paris’ regional standing.

France withdrew troops from Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger following military takeovers between 2020 and 2023 that brought juntas to power and led to demands for French forces to leave.Macron defended France’s former military deployments in the Sahel, saying French troops had operated there at the request of local governments to combat jihadist insurgencies.

“When our presence was no longer wanted after the coups, we left,” Macron said. “That wasn’t a humiliation but a logical response to a given situation.”Despite acknowledging the enduring legacy of colonialism, Macron argued that Africa’s current political and economic difficulties could not be attributed solely to European imperial history.

“We must not exonerate from all responsibility the seven decades that followed independence,” he said, urging African governments to strengthen governance and institutional accountability.Macron, who has previously described colonialism as a “crime against humanity,” has sought since taking office in 2017 to redefine France’s relationship with Africa through economic partnerships and reduced military dependence.

He also called for reforms to international financial systems aimed at expanding guarantees capable of attracting larger volumes of private investment into African economies.

“A new era is about to start,” Macron said, expressing confidence that the Sahel region would eventually return to democratic governance under elected civilian leadership.

Eric Walrond’s 1926 short story collection Tropic Death is receiving renewed critical attention for its portrayal of violence and social hierarchy in Caribbean colonial societies, alongside a reassessment of the author’s complex literary and personal trajectory.

The collection foregrounds structural and interpersonal violence through a series of narratives set across the Caribbean basin. In one episode, a labourer is shot without cause by a drunken U.S. marine lieutenant. In another, a boy diving into the sea to retrieve coins thrown by passengers aboard a German ocean liner is killed by a shark. These accounts, drawn from Walrond’s fiction, depict environments shaped by economic inequality, colonial authority, and social vulnerability

.A central story in the collection centres on Bellon, a British plantation owner in Barbados. During a storm, Bellon encounters what he assumes to be an abandoned infant and criticises local residents for what he perceives as neglect. He takes the child to shelter, but is found dead the following morning, described as “utterly white and bloodless.” The narrative reveals that the figure he rescued was a vampire bat, presenting an instance in which racial assumptions obscure immediate danger.

Upon publication, Tropic Death received significant recognition, including a Guggenheim award, and was noted by critics for its stylistic approach and subject matter. However, responses among Walrond’s contemporaries were divided. Marcus Garvey included Walrond in a list of writers he described as “literary prostitutes,” alleging that their work was shaped to appeal to white audiences.

Claude McKay characterised Walrond as a “rotten imposter,” arguing that his experimental language masked what he viewed as problematic racial representations. At the same time, Walrond’s patron, Edna Worthley Underwood, discouraged his plan to write a historical account of the Panama Canal, advising him instead to focus on Caribbean themes.

Following these responses, Walrond relocated to Europe. He spent time in Paris before moving to London, where he published short fiction in established periodicals. His work during this period is considered among the earliest contributions by a Caribbean author to British literary outlets.

The outbreak of the Second World War marked a turning point in his career. Walrond moved to Bradford-on-Avon in Wiltshire, where he worked in a rubber factory. During this period, he continued limited journalistic activity, including reporting on racial discrimination and the arrival of the HMT Empire Windrush, which carried Caribbean migrants to Britain. However, his literary output declined significantly. He lived largely in isolation, described as the only Black resident in the town at the time.

Walrond’s correspondence from this period indicates increasing personal and professional dissatisfaction. He described his circumstances as a “quest for stability in a world in which nothing is stable,” linking his inability to sustain creative work with a broader sense of displacement.

In 1952, he admitted himself to Roundway Hospital, a psychiatric institution, referring to himself as a “depression casualty.” He remained there for five years.While at Roundway, Walrond resumed writing, contributing fiction to the hospital’s internal magazine. Accounts from this period suggest that the institutional environment provided a temporary sense of community, which he described as “brotherliness.”

Despite this renewed activity, his post-hospital efforts to re-establish a literary career in London did not achieve significant recognition.Walrond died of a heart attack at the age of 67. Contemporary records indicate that his death received little public notice, and he was buried in an unmarked grave.

Subsequent academic research has revisited Walrond’s contributions, situating Tropic Death within broader discussions of colonial literature and diasporic identity. Scholars have examined the collection’s thematic focus on labour exploitation, racial hierarchy, and environmental context, as well as its narrative style.

Walrond’s work is increasingly referenced in studies of early 20th-century Caribbean writing, particularly in relation to migration and the cultural exchanges between the Caribbean, the United States, and Europe. His experiences in multiple nations and his shifting literary reception have been cited as reflective of the challenges faced by writers operating across colonial and metropolitan contexts.

The renewed attention to Walrond’s writing coincides with broader scholarly interest in recovering overlooked or marginalised authors whose work addresses historical inequalities and social transformation.

His fiction continues to be analysed for its depiction of communities shaped by economic extraction and racial stratification, as well as for its representation of individual agency within constrained environments.