That’s Life!!!
At the Mumbai Press Club’s annual RedInk Awards 2022 this month, Justice B. N. Srikrishna laid out his warning of the dangers to democracy when the fourth estate falters or is endangered. …[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Sri Aurobindo was a prolific writer and engaged with the multiple dimensions of living: political thought, historical inquiry, cultural critiquing, literary and aesthetic thinking and Vedic exegesis. But he never let go of poetry that afforded him the unique blending of inspiration and expression, says Murali Sivaramakrishnan delving into his philosophy and poetics.. …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
The Edict Project, by TM Krishna, in collaboration with Ashoka University aims at creating vibrant academic, socio-political and aesthetic conversations around the edicts of Ashoka. The first edition came out in 2020. In this Edition the theme of Ashoka and Memory is explored through T.M. krishna’s musical enditions, conversation with historian, Professor Nayanjot Lahiri and a play by MK Raina in Kashmiri shot in Kashmir that reimagines Ashoka’s words. …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Krishna Sobti had a lot to say about the tangled interweave of religion, politics, Partition in the lives of the communities they affected and still do. Alok Bhalla offers a critical preview of her vison followed by extracts of his conversation with her that is remarkable for its relevance today.…[Read More]…
Literary Trails
With her fearless spirit that exuded an irrepressible and bold articulation of freedom, and a fierce commitment to her vocation, Krishna Sobti (February 1925-Janury 2019) was a rare fusion of monumental writing and a monumental personality, remembers Geetanjali Shree…[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]…
Between The Lines
Karnatik musician TM Krishna did not do justice to his ethical commitment to diversity by accepting the Indira Gandhi Award for National Integration. Suddenly and sadly, the exalted sank into the banal….…[Read More]……
Between The Lines
This year TM Krishna received the Indira Gandhi National Integration Award for 2015-16. In his acceptance speech, the Karnatik vocalist pays tribute to his “art’s generosity” for giving him, “a preferred citizen” the gift of empathy and finds India’s pluralism under threat. ……[Read More]……
Personal Notes
Sequestered within binary logics divinity straightens gender and sacralizes “the heterosexual matrix.” With lila as a lens, we might glimpse ways divinity can unlock possibilities of gendered and sexual being and doing says Lucinda Ramberg.…[Read More]…
Personal Notes
Never before has India witnessed such an “Organization of Hatreds” targeting minorities and the questioning, disobedient mind. Writers across languages and genres appeal for change. …[Read More]…
Literary Trails
Anubhav Tulasi’s poetry is suffused with the colour and odour of the Assamese soil and the sensibilities of the Assamese mind. He considers himself an Indian poet with his Assamese identity, intact A selection rendered from Assamese by various translators. …[Read More]…
Personal Notes
In this riveting talk, Chaturvedi Badrinath casts light on the symbiotically spiritual relationship Swami Vivekananda had with some of his American women-followers and femininity in general. They were not ‘instruments for use:’ he never used any human being for his own ends or for his work’. …[Read More]…
Literary Trails
Asokan Charuvil’s stories are sharp commentaries on societies torn apart by competing ideologies. The Sea of the Dead is an allegory on times changing, from a more simple nature-friendly life to a modern consumerist one.. Translated from Malayalam by K. M. Ajir Kutty …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Folklore is the artifice of enchantment; liminal, it includes the sites of both sorrow and joy; death and life but boundaries are fluid, forest-covered, unmapped. Alok Bhalla on folklore as gateway to life’s renewal.…[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Allah Baksh’s critically distinctive and inspired engagement as a later-day reader and painter of Vyasa’s text is that he creates scenes framed like sacerdotal space or a mandala. Alok Bhalla and Chandra Prakash Deval curate a painter’s imagination alongside the poet’s song. …[Read More]…
That’s Life!!!
Vidya Vanam is a school in a village called Anaikatti, at the foothills of the Nilgiris, about 30 kilometres from Coimbatore on the border of Kerala. Part of the village is on the Tamil Nadu side and the other on the Kerala side. …[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Valson Thampu’s Beyond Religion demystifies spirituality, distinguishing it from any one religion and locates it in the individual’s search for God in this life, without middlemen, with the recognition of the diversity of paths to divinity. Ann Harikeerthan reviews. Followed by an excerpt from the book. …[Read More]…
Literary Trails
A.J. Thomas poet and former editor of Indian Literature of Sahitya Akademi introduces the reader to Assam’s well known poet Jiban Narah. Steeped in the culture of the Brahmaputra Valley Narah’s poetry is influenced by his Missing tribe identity but expands his poetic presence at the national level. …[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Romila Thapar meditates on the uses and misuses of history to weaponise a past that never was to for a future that should never be. An extract from her latest collection of essays …[Read More]…
Literary Trails
Jocelyn Wright delves into a close reading of Kashmira Sheth’s Keeping Corner as an example of what she calls Peace Literature preceded by an overview of the conceptual terrain of that term.…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Wildlife and conservation journalist/film-maker and writer .Swati Thiyagarajan. dwells on what it means to be a Hindu, a Brahmin no less and offers up a portrait of a composite, historically-rooted woman and an Indian. …[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Radhavallabh Tripathi shows how vital vāda – the practice of debate, dialogue and discussion — has been, not only for the growth of our knowledge systems and ideologies, but for our socio-political fabrics as well. An excerpt.…[Read More]…
Bookshelf
The Mewar Gita (1680-1698) is an incomparable visual assemblage that demands a compelling attention and an immersive response to its stunning visual schema (the festivity of colours), the delicate and effortless carve of the figural contours, embodiment of actional figuration, finds D. Venkat Rao in this deep reading of Allah Baksh’ rendition of the Gita and Alok Bhalla’s commentary on them. …[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Salman Rushdie’s Victory City is the epic tale of a woman who breathes a fantastical empire, Bisnaga into existence in fourteenth century southern India only only to be ruined by hubris. Rushdie employs his usual ‘narrative engineering’ to weave a historical epic, moving across time and from politics to poetics and back, says Pradeep Trikha…[Read More]…
Bookshelf
The miniature paintings of The Gita by Allah Baksh, from the late 17th century Mewar. commissioned by Udaipur’s Maharana Jai Singh. Allah Baksh’s luminous work on the Gita has no precedent in India’s art tradition. He has illustrated Krishna’s ecstatic song, verse by abstract verse. His images, meditative and unostentatious, are free from both heroic posturing and spiritual pride points out Alok Bhalla in this perceptive Introduction to the volume he edited with Chandra Prakash Deval…[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Vinay Lal’s new publication is a visual delight and an invigorating look at how dynamic history is, and how political imagination, historical sources, and national narratives can be constantly reread and reinterpreted. Pooja Sancheti engages in a critical reading.…[Read More]…
That’s Life!!!
Set aside the maps of misreadings into India’s grand role on the world stage and look inwards at its abyssal lines with Subodh Varma who offers two contrasting scenarios: booming corporate profits and zooming economic distress…[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Mayank Bhatt finds that in The Great Hindu Civilization – Achievement Neglect Bias and the Way Forward, Pavan V. Varma speaks softly about Hindu Satya (acceptance and tolerance) but carries a big ideological stick of Hindutva (bigotry and intolerance)…[Read More]…
That’s Life!!!
Radio communications made their appearance in India in 1929 with the British – controlled Indian Broadcasting Company, and with emergence of regional centres such as the Calcutta Radio Station. Against this backdrop Nandini Bhattacharya examines the importance of Manimala, the epistolary novelette by Leela Mazumdar in a dialogic format produced by the structure of letters to the radio hosts seeking advice, guidance companionship …[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Geetanjali Shree joins the longlist for this year’s international Man Booker award with her novel Tomb pf Sand translated by Daisy Rockwell in a first for a Hindi –language fiction to be considered for the prestigious award. The Beacon republishes the extract from the translation that appeared last November. Get a glimpse of its unique flavor!…[Read More]…
Personal Notes
In this second part of his meditation on violence and modernity, Dilip Simeon traces its roots and finds in Gandhi’s satyagraha an answer with a noble, Socratic tradition of piety and truth-telling.…[Read More]…
Personal Notes
In this second part of his meditation on violence and modernity, Dilip Simeon traces its roots and finds in Gandhi’s satyagraha an answer with a noble, Socratic tradition of piety and truth-telling.…[Read More]…
Personal Notes
Geetanjali Shree, Hindi novelist and essayist, remembers Intizar Husain whose death anniversary falls on February 2nd as an affectionate friend with a disposition that helped him cross cultural boundaries in dialogic immersions. ..[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Sukrita Paul Kumar introduces the reader to a forthcoming series on Indian writing, ‘Writer in Context’ she is co-editing with Chandana Dutta. The first two volumes, on Krishna Sobti and Joginder Paul respectively are out …[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]…
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
Sardar Udham offers Nandini Bhattacharya the terrain to examine the concept of Ressentment as an ethical response to violations and genocide, counterposed to the prevailing discourse of forgetting nd/or forgiving crimes against humanity…[Read More]…
Personal Notes
On October 09 2017, V.C. Harris, polymath literary critic. translator social activist and teacher-mentor met with a fatal accident. His students, poets A.J. Thomas, S. Jospeh and translator-critic Cheri Jacob K. pay tributes. ..[Read More]…
Between The Lines
He died with the name of Ram on his lips. Who was this Ram he invoked all his life? The historical Ram? What did the name siignify for Gandhi? Tridip Suhrud offers some clues into a moral vision Ramanama held for him.…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Indulging in a flight of fantasy, Tridip Suhrud hones in on remembrances of Gandhi that reflect our desires to do away with him, not with bulllets but with statues and spectacle. And yet he lives……[Read More]…
Personal Notes
A year after he learnt of his fatal illness, its traumatic coping and chemotherapy, Mayank Bhatt dwells further on his struggle to find meaning to life and death, in love and writing...[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Interrogating notions such as “national identity” through the lens of creative writers can be rewarding feels Nicola Pozza as he delves into texts of S. H. Vatsyayan ‘Agyeya’ (1911-1987), who had regarded essentialist categories–“Hinduism”, “Indianness” or “Hindutva” — with much suspicion. …[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Madhav Hada in this translation by Pradeep Trikha revisits long-neglected historical records and her poetry to reveal the real Meera Bai, less a romantic ascetic poet of legend, more an independent woman of substance. Reviewed by GJV Prasad
…[Read More]…
Bookshelf
In these two extracts from Land Lust, Joginder Paul traces the history of colonial Kenya through multiracial characters drawn with fine brushstrokes. The Slump translated by Chandana Dutta; Jambo Rafiqui by Usha Nagpal…[Read More]…
That’s Life!!!
Curated by Tarun K. Saint for The Beacon, South Asian SF Dialogues series continues conversations about SF from the subcontinent, with authors who have helped shape the genre such as Anil Menon
…[Read More]…
Bookshelf
The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction (2019), a first-of-its-kind compilation offers a fascinating display of South Asian writing. In the Introduction, Tarun K. Saint takes us on a journey over its rich past and the exciting future of this genre..…[Read More]…
Personal Notes
Indira Goswami’s life and work interrogate facets of women’s empowerment in India, foremost among them attitudes to the girl-child, marriage, widowhood, mapping a continuum of social change says Malashri Lal.…[Read More]…
Bookshelf
An excerpt from her forthcoming novel Ret Samadhi offers a glimpse of what to expect from Geetanjali Shree; translated as Tomb of Sand by Daisy Rockwell……[Read More]…