Between The Lines
Intizar Husain (21 December 1925-2 February 2016) was a writer whose sensibilities were formed in the fires of the 1947 Partition but equally in the myths and memories of a ‘good’ life, Uprooted, he remained a rooted cosmopolitan feels Ashoak Upadhyay…[Read More]…
Visual Spaces
In this imagined dialogue between Intizar Husain and artist Akhilesh , words and colours are like nomads transgressing boundaries with impunity. By Alok Bhalla. Paintings by Akhilesh. …[Read More]…
Visual Spaces
In this beautifully sorrowful elegy to the peacock as bird of Paradise, Intizar Husain delves into the state of human consciousness bent on destruction of life and bemoans the impossibility of composing his Morenama, seeking clues (solace?) in Indic epic tales. Curated and translated by Alok Bhalla…[Read More]…
Literary Trails
In this “hermetically sealed nightmare”, Intizar Husain has three anonymous, faceless men describe their barbaric acts of rape and endless killing to each other, realize they are horrors with nowhere to flee or even bury their own corpses. Curated and translated by Alok Bhalla. …[Read More]…
Literary Trails
Intizar Husain tackles the theme of Man’s fall from grace and the Flood through the creation myths of various faiths in a brilliant weave of our contemporary condition of human vanities and planetary destruction. Curated and translated by Alok Bhalla …[Read More]…
Literary Trails
Drawing from the Jatakas, Intizar Husain tells us the story of a young Bhikshu with a begging bowl seeking grace through the Buddha’s teachings of renunciation, entranced by the temptation of earthly pleasure, aware sorrowfully of his failings. Curated and translated by Alok Bhalla. …[Read More]…
Bookshelf
,An anthology of Punjabi plays from both sides of the border that recall the horrors of Partition and the binding cordiality that persists amongst Hindus Muslims and Sikhs in divided Punjab. Extracts from the Introduction by Atamjit …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Vijay Tendulkar’s oeuvre portrays women in myriad roles across the social spectrum–housewife, teacher, mistress, daughter, film extra, servant—and their complex emotions that reveal truths in slant. Balwant Bhaneja unpacks some of the plays for us…[Read More]…
Literary Trails
: Guyana-born, of Indian-origin, Canadian poet Cyril Dabydeen ponders the parable of the remembered place, the rhythms of another country… civilization at one’s fingertips, constrained to being in one place. In verse and a short story. …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Digital platforms have been used by common people to create gender-inequality narratives that fuse the personal into the political, fact and feeling, to create “intimate publics” of solidarity avers Shweta Khilnani…[Read More]…
Personal Notes
Paul Zacharia’s ribald remembrance of college in Mysore where he arrives from his small village in Kerala armed with a ‘sin-agenda’ and injected with the ‘alien seed’ of literature that would inch him closer to his literary vocation ..[Read More]…
Literary Trails
All conversations have a purpose: to be heard, to perhaps make others understand that grief and anger can be shared rather than multiplied. Poet-essayist Annie Zaidi runs us through a history of south Asia in five verses to illuminate this idea in our gloating darkness. …[Read More]…
Literary Trails
Kunwar Narain’s long narrative poem Kumarajiva is an imaginative meditation on the life of Chinese scholar, teacher and translator of Buddhist texts, Kumarajiva, born in 344 CE. In it the poet attempts to imagine a society where a people could learn to pay ‘mindful attention’ to all sentient beings. Alok Bhalla translates. …[Read More]…