Literary Trails
Diving into the imaginary of poetry, the “interiors of alphabets” Ashwani Kumar searches for the character that could have written those mythic-realist poems about Banaras and the Other and discovers they are his heteronyms. …[Read More]…
Literary Trails
On the 26th November 1946 J.D. Bernal (1901-1971) Irish-born scientist and communist , delivered this lecture at Birkbeck College, London. Seven decades later it’s theses are still relevant.…[Read More]…
Literary Trails
Tagore’s short fiction about birds that only want to sing and the attempts to “school” them is a savage allegory on our education as “thought control” and what we do to young minds. …[Read More]…
Literary Trails
Girijaa Upadhyay’s short fiction takes us back to the private moneylender early consumerism and the love of cooking. ..[Read More]…
Literary Trails
In the first of two short fictions Mayank Bhatt’s protagonist recalls Dadi, his “only parent” as his greatest teacher who taught him nothing. ..Read More…
Literary Trails
With his control over Urdu language and the modernity of his ideas, Sarwat Hussain was one of the most distinguished poets his life tragically cut short by a train accident. Ten poems translated by Riyaz Latif. …[Read More]…
Literary Trails
With the release of Nandita Das’ biopic on Saadat Hasan Manto we felt it pertinent to offer Muhammed .Umar Memon’s meditations on Manto’s creative obsession “with women who practice the oldest profession.”…[Read More]…
Literary Trails
For Ritwik Ghatak, contemporary historical reality could only be portrayed through characters slowly becoming abstract archetypal figures. The mythic method allowed him to cope with and portray this “deceived age.” …[Read More]…
Literary Trails
Scholar, translator, essayist multilingual poet Riyaz Latif is too modest when he informs the reader that his poem “Transience” that appeared in the original in Urdu in 1994 and which he translated himself might seem dated with its reference to Glasnost, the fall of the Berlin Wall and Bosnia. Not for us it isn’t!
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Literary Trails
In Asha Bage’s “Navas” Revati copes with the contending claims of modernity and tradition, memory and the present in this translation by Keerti Ramachandra. …[Read More]…
Literary Trails
A haunting story of gender, memory and longing amidst the trauma of the real and the comfort of imagined echoes; by Joginder Paul in this translation by Keerti Ramachandra.…[Read More]…
Literary Trails
A harrowing tale of deprivation, suffering and the search for love among the wretched of an Indian urbanscape. Noted Marathi dalit writer Baburao Bagul captures the entire range of human emotions in this story of one freezing night in the city’s lowest depths…[Read More]…
Literary Trails
: Born into a low-ranked Muslim jati, F.M.Shahajinde’s poetry draws inspiration from his life’s contrariness; a love ofKabir, Phule Gandhi Ambedkar and democratic values and the experience of being labeled ‘Muslim’ from a low jati.…[Read More]…
Literary Trails
In this poetic dialogue with a marginalized present, Gandhi’s truth of ahimsa gets through to the unborn, holding out the promise of redemption. …[Read More]…
Arthur in the rains
Literary Trails
A young man from Bombay reluctantly takes a job as a storekeeper in a sugar factory in Bahedi, a North Indian town where the past catches up with him in ways he could never have imagined. …[Read More]…
Literary Trails
Ashwani Kumar’s “Banaras and the Other” is a series of excursions to that enchanted confluence of fable and reality, the concrete and the ineffable; the outcome is a new poetics of mythic realism. …[Read More]…
Literary Trails
Isaac Babel’s story about the fraught entry of a frail, bespectacled intellectual into the closed, violent world of soldiers. Will the pressure to be a ‘man’ allow him to retain his identity? …[Read in Full]…
