Bookshelf
Rashmi Narzary’s heartfelt yet detached narrative of three generations of a family search for roots, as its village changes its identity from being Indian, to Pakistani, then becoming Bangladeshi. An excerpt.…[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Thamizhachi Thangapandian’s view of the harmony in nature as part of her own internal ecosystem as well as the society’s collective heritage ensures that she does not alienate herself to gain perspective but unapologetically remains one with it. A. J. Thomas reviews her latest, translated by K.S. Subramanian…[Read More]…
Bookshelf
The Absent Color is an impossible invitation – difficult to accept and difficult to refuse; to ask questions and to be asked by questions in turn. a/nil is the poet of questions, whose songs are essentially cries in the wilderness, so that even stones lament, finds Saitya Brata Das.…[Read More]…
Bookshelf
The most militaristic power on the planet goes unchecked by a population indifferent to the destruction it causes around the globe and within. Joan Roelofs attempts an answer to this manufactured consent/indifference. Reviewed by Manali Chakrabarti…[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Rashid Khalidi’s seminal work on a century of war on Palestine by Zionists provides a much needed context to the armed resistance of the besieged and the Israeli’s establishment’s backlash. H. Masud Taj reviews with words and calligraphy. …[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]…
Bookshelf
In the Adi Parva, Vyasa comments on the nature of the epic he has composed, its structure and its intention. Addressing Brahma, Vyasa says that he has ‘imagined’ a ‘poem’; a visionary ‘history…’ Allah Baksh’s Mahabharata neither begins by illustrating the long prelude about the visionary form and ahimsic intent of Vyasa nor by first visualising some act of heroism and sacred revelation.…[Read More]…
Bookshelf
George Thadathil’s Democracy in Darjeeling is both an inquiry and a repository of research-based outcomes that highlight fresh insights about Darjeeling’s society, history, culture, democratic ideals, and religious pluralism, highlights Sreetanwi Chakraborty. . …[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Simple, yet deeply philosophical, the poems in this volume have the power to resonate with readers everywhere, an inherent universality that gives Sukrita’s poetry a timeless appeal.says Girija Sharma, yet inviting us to put on trial many a myth we have partly perpetuated in her review of Salt and Pepper. …[Read More]…
Bookshelf
The film Oppenheimer and subsequent publicity focuses primarily on the individual actions and angst of a “Great But Troubled Man” but scant attention has been paid to how a leading public university participated in creating a weapon of mass destruction that changed the means of warfare forever. Public Intellectual and historian Tony Platt on the hidden facets of the troubled history of University of California, Berkeley – known locally as “Cal” and worldwide as “Berkeley”…[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Caustic wit and passionate humanity mark Avay Shukla’s writing, a no-holds-barred scrutiny of India’s political culture and current affairs, the environment and conservation, governance, societal peccadilloes, and much more. An extract. …[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]…
Bookshelf
Radhavallabh Tripathi’s novel, self-translated from Sanskrit is dedicated to Salim Ali and forms a parable on our degraded environment for children to hear and pay heed to. …[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Darius Cooper does a deep reading of Booker prize winner Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand in translation by Daisy Rockwell and ends up with a lot of sand. …[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
In this excerpt from Meeting Lives, Tulsi Badrinath hones in on the fraught relationship between a son and mother, a son who would go on to become Swami Vivekananda and what it means to the protagonist.…[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Bharani Kollipara reads The Gita and begins his review of Allah Baksh’s miniatures put together by Alok Bhalla and Chandra Prakash Deval with the observation that these paintings unlike others of the same genre, draw their meaning from the propositional content expressed in a couplet. …[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
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
From the 16th century onwards, a tremendous misconception has prevailed: there is something called ‘Hinduism’; that it is a religion and that Indian civilization is really Hindu religious civilization. Chaturvedi Badrinath avers that the central concern of all Indian thought is dharma, the concept enshrined the totality of the Indian understanding of man. To understand India is to ask: What is dharma? Not what is Hinduism?…[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
In this collection of poetry from across the multiple languages of South Asia in translation, Ashwani Kumar provides a context that is itself a meditation on poetry as liminal geography of human experience…[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Wandana Sonalkar takes a critical look at Shrayana Bhattacharya’s work on how and why the women she meets with identify with Shah Rukh Khan; women divided by class and privilege, united in their search for self-identity. …[Read More]…
Bookshelf
In February 2019, Harmony Siganporia walked from Dandi to Ahmedabad, retracing the route of Gandhi’s Salt March of 1930 in reverse. In the process, the author explores explores the story of modern Gujarat, tracing the contours of the state’s seismic shift towards vikas and modern ‘Hindutva’. Harsh Sethi reviews…[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]…
Bookshelf
Bharat Dogra and Kumar Gautam map the roads taken, despite criticsl opposition, towards unsustainable farming. They offer solutions but the question remains: who will bell the cat? Review by Ashoak Upadhyay…[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]…
Bookshelf
Sami Ahmad Khanoffers a critical reading of Indian Science Fiction (ISF) based on mythology (M), ideology (I) and technology (T) that shape it and its fictional re-imaginings as an alternative to a male Eurocentric perspective of the genre. …[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Amitav Ghosh makes us aware of contemporary geopolitics regarding the environmental crisis and connects the dots drawing attention to the migrant experience during the Covid pandemic, the lives of people who suffered in the hands of market forces and European colonialism. Pradeep Trikha reviews..…[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Indira Goswami author, peace activist and passionate critic of women- disenfranchisement is much read in her native Assam but needs to be read and re-read widely in this world of toxic divisiveness says Jahnavi Gogoi reviewing the edited volume on the author-activist by Namrata Pathak and Dibyajyoti Sarma. …[Read More]…
Bookshelf
In this age of falsifications of India’s cultural multiverse to the point of a violent toxicity and homogenizing banality, India’s Greatest Minds by Mukunda Rao offers a glorious restorative narrative of the South Asian ‘dialogic’ tradition.…[Read More]…
Bookshelf
In C: A Novel by Anupama Raju ‘place’ is a category “foregrounded not as a formative influence on character nor as the venue for the unfolding of a plot intrinsically tied to maps, but as an exploration of a life’s possibilities, or as a journey, internal as much as it is external.” Annie Zaidi does a deep reading of a work “heavily invested in itself.”…[Read More]…
Bookshelf
“Sanctions” as an economic blockade were first applied by the United States to the small island of Cuba in February 1962 constituting the most comprehensive and brutal blockade of trade/economic relations in human history. Yet Cuba did not buckle. In fact it has become a shining example of regenerative/radical humanism. John Kirk’s book on its medical internationalism explains how and why. A review by Don Fitz.…[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Our reckless pursuit and addictive use of fossil fuels is a ‘dangerous’ one. How we will be perceived by our future generations; will we write ourselves off as a failed society who let climate change lead us to a well-merited oblivion? Suniti Namjoshi muses. Suhasini Vincent reviews. …[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Anjali Singh casts a critical eye on the key writings on indenture labour in Fiji and the Caribbean. This is a valuable contribution to the study of Indenture, avers Pradeep Trikha. …[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road, a tale of cross-country treks, jazz joints, and midnight meditations, has been continuously in print since 1957. Kerouac, has however been criticized, among other things, as being incapable of producing a well-crafted sentence, let alone quality literature. Matt Theado contests this view. Curated by Jennie Skerl…[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Sayandeb Chowdhury describes Satyajit Ray’s discovery and casting of Uttam Kumar in Nayak (1966): on paper a rags-to-riches story, film that, rather than boasting the idea of a hero, probes against the phenomenon itself– Uttam’s formidable and forbidding stardom. …[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Sami Ahmad Khan and Upamanyo Pablo Mukherjee offer indispensable discussions of science fiction and its relationships with utopia, dystopia, fantasy, mythology, and ideology. Barnita Bagchi reviews both…[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Don’t look back at the twentieth century alone to ask: what brought on so much tyranny, violence bigotry because such heinous inhumanity continues and we are still, if not more, indifferent. But the voices of the victims, of the courageous reach out to us in the poems of Frank Stewart, as cracks in this gloating darkness …[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]…
Bookshelf
Anitra Nelson’s Beyond Money focuses with unusual care and intensity on the destructive power of money and the ways that monetary values pervade and distort all aspects of society and render us incapable of seeing their baneful effects on communities and, on the Earth. John Clark reviews…[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Peasants in our colonial and pre-colonial pasts didn’t write, they were written about. In 1917 Gandhi arrived in Champaran, Bihar and the indigo peasants speak for the first time; their recorded testimonies foreground Gandhi’s own destiny. Shahid Amin, Tridip Suhrud and Megha Todi offer us a glimpe into the archives of peasant articulation. …[Read More]…
Bookshelf
In Amitav Ghosh’s fiction and non-fiction, parables as an art of rhetoric work to reconfigure official Western versions of history, politics and culture. Suhasini Vincent looks at his work as an alternative site for a new epistemology of the environmental crisis confronting the world.…[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Mayank Bhatt reviews Canadian author, poet, editor, lexicographer Fraser Sutherland’s memoir about his son’s unsuccessful battle with schizophrenia, and recalls a few anecdotes that made Fraser at once endearing and infuriating to his friends …[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]…
Bookshelf
John Lang (1816-1864) was a man of many parts: wanderer, slanderer, lawyer for the Rani of Jhansi and a prolific writer of travels and fiction. Amit Ranjan’s book probes those parts. Mridula Garg reads and offers her own insights from her excavations into the site called John Lang. …[Read More]…
Bookshelf
This debut collection of poems by Sayan Aich Bhowmik is marked by an aesthetic of dewdrop gentleness, often turning to absences — of people, places, memories and even a self in search of its own skin. Bhaswati Ghosh reviews this slim but not insubstantial volume …[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Annie Zaidi sets new trends in the genre of the city novel with her mode of presentation that interweaves the lives of six women and six men in ways that none of the nameless protagonists could have imagined but may have foreseen. A review by Ashoak Upadhyay …[Read More]…
Bookshelf
A selection of four poems from Sukrita Paul Kumar’s latest collection, Vanishing Words that betoken the disappearance of words when verse transcends meaning and emerges as pure experience, lingering silence. Accompanied by her own artwork.…[Read More]…
Bookshelf
This volume of south Asian Science Fiction with its hybrid, genre-bending stories and poems adds a new dimension to the corpus of south Asian literature with their attempt to represent the contemporary moment with all its myriad nuances finds Shweta Khilnani…[Read More]…