Reading the Great Wave
by H Masud TajBetween The Lines
Poet-Calligrapher H Masud Taj contemplates the wave as a form and phenomenon in our lives via a woodblock print of the Japanese Master: Hokusai.…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
How the hill state ignored environmental rules and traditions to fill its coffers—and those of the ‘connected’ miners. Report by Tapasya & Aggam Walia.…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
In a misguided ‘development’ push for more housing and four-lane highways, the state is going down the same road as Uttarakhand, and will pay a heavy price, unless…warns Avay Shukla …[Read More]…
That’s Life!!!
A vital Atlantic Ocean system could collapse by 2060, eventually spelling catastrophe for the people who live in countries that border the Atlantic Ocean, warns Siri Chilukuri. …[Read More]…
That’s Life!!!
Once again the Uniform Civil Code has surfaced with Prime Minister Narendra Modi opening that Pandora’s Box as a as a electioneering talking point that does not create consensus through debate on its intricacies and complexities. Compare that with Nehru’s vision on the Hindu Code Bills from the late 1940s on meant to explain the grounds for reform and take the Opposition along. Debate as praxis …[Read More]…
Visual Spaces
While there have been many books on Hindi films, there is a need to look at the adverse impacts films may have n society. Bharat Dogra and Madhu Dogra attempt this exercise in their book on the subject. What follows is an edited version of an extract from the book. …[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]…
Literary Trails
A searing allegory of the way women are treated in a society governed by misogyny, lax moral codes and a political discourse that sanctifies both. Asghar Wajahat translated by Alok Bhalla.…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum reports, “In July 1995, Bosnian Serb forces killed as many as 8,000 Bosniak men and boys from the town of Srebrenica. It was the largest massacre in Europe since the Holocaust.” Calligrapher-Poet H Masud Taj recalls verses from Song for the Besieged that he composed while killings were in progress in 1992-1993 simultaneously in Mumbai and Sarajevo, along with a found poem, The Butcher of Bosnia, based on the subsequent ruling of UN: The International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague…[Read More]…
Visual Spaces
As Chandrayaan-3 heads for the moon, H. Masud Taj recalls as a 13-year-old wannabe poet twirling radio knobs tuning in to the moon landing in a medley ranging from moonrock to alternative rock and featuring Neil Armstrong, Ibn-e-Safi, R.E.M. and Andy Kaufman (yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah).…[Read More]…
“Electronic voting is unconstitutional because the average citizen could not be expected to understand the exact steps involved in the recording and tallying of votes by the electronic voting machines …[Read in full]…
Literary Trails
“Paksha” lit: “side”, a paksha is the period either side of the Full Moon Day (Purnima); so, an aspect, facet or part of something; derivatively, “take the side of someone in an argument” or “to support something.” In ancient India, there was a rule, during debates, that a proponent could proceed to his next point only if he first repeated in his own words a point made by an objector, and then answered that point to the objector’s satisfaction. Prabhu S. Guptara reflects on this word, lyrically. .…[Read More]…
Visual Spaces
Calligrapher H. Masud Taj reflects on why a letter from the seventh century continues to offer solace in moments of grief and personal loss.…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Nehru was convinced that India’s salvation lay in social and economic change. “The alternative is fascism,” he insisted, “the last weapon which vested interests can employ to keep what they have” Sounds familiar! …[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]…
Literary Trails
Welcome to the new India, a mirror of image of our colonial past with its crippling inequalities, authoritarian rule and a smug elite feasting off both.Avay Shukla with his stinging wit and critical gaze on the new India that is Bharat. …[Read More]…
Personal Notes
At the Juma prayers, the khutba elaborated on a saying of the Prophet that the roof that covers the five pillars of Islam (kalma, prayers, zakat, fasting, hajj) is the tongue of the believer, i.e. care must be taken while addressing others. H. Masud Taj ponders over this…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
The Sanskrit word saha, meaning ‘together’, ‘in togetherness’, is a prefix to a very large number of words in that language that denote relational contexts of every variety; perceived as the natural foundation of all relationships, personal and collective, not just in Indian civilisation. Saha opens up the whole history of human living, says. Chaturvedi Badrinath. …[Read More]…
Literary Trails
A riveting and deeply philosophical story on changes in a traditional artisanal family pondered over by a carpenter working on a scaffold in a heavy downpour on a high-rise construction site. By Balwant Bhaneja. …[Read More]…
Personal Notes
A deeply moving memoir of his parent’s tangled roller-coaster relationship and its impact on children coping with them by Ratnakar Tripathy …[Read More]…
Literary Trails
The film exposes the tell-tale symptoms of a nation in the grip of a post-truth reality …[Read More]…
Literary Trails
What are the means to knowledge? How do we know that what we know is free from error? What is the nature of error in knowing? What is truth and what are its criteria? These questions relate in the first place to the knowing of the self and the knowing of the other in their mutual relationship; questions not just for philosophers alone but for rdinary people, Chaturvedi Badrinath averred. …[Read More]…
Literary Trails
H Masud Taj contemplates love and poetry via a calligraphic tribute to Kaifi Azmi, who passed away on 10th May in 2002.…[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]…
Literary Trails
When religions divide hearts and hearths, love can flourish only if both remain open to vaad-samvaad; in life and death. Zakia Mashhadi’s fiction translated by Faruq Hassan and M. U. Memon throbs with contemporary relevance. …[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]…
Between The Lines
Extra-judicial killings in ‘encounters’ draw applause on social media (and indifference among the general public) especially when the target is from the minority community. Mohd Asim Khan finds recent Bollywood films playing a major role in creating endorsements of the ‘trigger-happy cop’ …[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]…
Between The Lines
While celebrating the birth of their daughter Zahra, with jalebis, Architect-Poet-Calligrapher H Masud Taj had an epiphany… …[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
Shruti Kapila’s groundbreaking work Violent Fraternity… embodies a major history of the evolution of foundational Indian political thought that shaped the country’s modernity. Ganeshdatta Poddar reviews …[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]…
Personal Notes
What does it feel to realize you have become the ‘Other’, separated by grafted-on identities from the community of fellow humans? Romana Shaikh unpacks the trauma of that ‘Otherness’ and searches for that space of connectedness, where silence does not hurt, stillness is beautiful.…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
In dialogic encounters that recall a ‘looking glass world,’ Asghar Wajahat conjures up a grim reality where words and meanings are their own masters, painting the grotesqueries of our contemporary landscape. Alok Bhalla translates.…[Read More]…
Literary Trails
In Rajasthan’s Anandpuri block, Bhil (tribal) communities are redefining their lives by moving away from labour-migration back to their roots in sustainable, biodiverse-rich farming to meet their livelihoods, finds Bharat Dogra. Photographs by P.l. Patel …[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]…
Literary Trails
Michel de Montaigne’s birthday, February 28 is celebrated as National Essay Day. Academician H. Masud Taj reflects on the essay’s tenacious tentativeness. …[Read More]…
Literary Trails
The exposures of financial malfeasance are by the Adani group a reflection of the neo-liberal policies that have been followed by the Indian state for decades, says C. P. Chandrasekhar
…[Read More]…
Literary Trails
Poet and essayist Bibhu Padhi ponders the devastation of the earthquake in Sumatra, its tsunami- effects on India’s eastern coast and is haunted by a child’s tired eyes. Five poems on how “unfaithful life can be” …[Read More]…
Literary Trails
How does one cope with grief and loss, the onset of loneliness? This extract from a novella, Resurgence by Balwant Bhaneja, traces with elements of gothic horror, the journey of its grief-stricken protagonist …[Read More]…
Literary Trails
Bilingual poet, essayist and literary critic Asif Raza offers up elegiac verses from his collection of poems, self-translated from Urdu, Whispers From the Shadow Side. Exclusive to The Beacon …[Read More]…
Visual Spaces
When we pay homage to someone, is the real recipient someone else? H Masud Taj reflects on his choice of B V Doshi quotes.…[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]…
Literary Trails
The ‘Essay’ has usually occupied a secondary position in the world of literary creations despite its rich history starting with Montaigne down to Borges, Orwell. Chesterton, Nirmal Verma to name a few. Riyaz Latif’s essays that appeared in The Beacon variously, confirm the luminousness of the genre. …[Read More]…