Overdoing anything often results in several consequences. Among other things, the grand dignity of Brutus will suddenly resemble the character of the idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing. The latest exhibit: Mallika Sarabhai’s on-stage antics in the recently-concluded TED India event hosted at Mysore.
I admire the work TED is doing. It has [...]
1971 or ‘72. I had newly returned to Mysore. The Kannada translation of the Telugu Digambara poetry collection had just been published. The release function was held in Mysore at the public taxi stand. A hotel waiter was the chief guest to inaugurate the occasion. I was present there. The organizer, in his speech, announced [...]
A good way to take a break from sickening news, never ending political crap and even mundane life, and recover sanity is to turn the mind towards the more refined appeals. The kinds that we’ve lost the time and solitude to enjoy at will: music, painting, sculpture, plays, and literature. More specifically, the classical variety [...]
Meera beautifully weighs in with an open letter to Aravind Adiga. It proves one my pet-peeve theories that the biggest intellectual celebrity is also the one with zero commonsense.
I have read much about how you came to write this book. You have been quoted as saying,†So, where’s this Shining India everyone’s talking about? It [...]
In the beginning of an essay on contemporary literary criticism, S.L. Bhyrappa dissects a Kannada short story, entitled Rotti (a dish made of rice flour) and cites numerous similar stories written in that vein. He observes that the story, like U.R. Anantha Murthy’s novel, Bharatipura is merely a filler of a pre-set pattern, a template. [...]
The old suspect, A.K. Ramanujan emerges out of the woodwork on Outlook’s pages. The magazine’s leader to this article says:
…in a pocket of the Delhi University, right-wing student activists have taken exception to this essay by the celebrated scholar A.K. Ramanujan, on the many Ramayanas living across languages and narrative genres, each different but no [...]
Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.
It’s pretty easy, but I’ll still ask: who said this? No Googling.
This post is partly a response to several comments I received on my posts related to the Ram Sethu project. The greater part, however, is my education, an attempt to trace the Rama (and Ramayana) consciousness in Tamil Nadu.
This was waiting to happen.
Prof U R Ananthamurthy has declared he will not take part in literary functions in future.
The decision came in the wake of strong criticism for his reaction on S L Bhyrappa’s controversial novel Aavarana that appeared in a section of the media. Prof Ananthamurthy said he was “misquoted†and in the [...]
My literary tastes have turned more classical nowadays. That hasn’t however, dimmed my fascination for Byron. For some reason, he’s like a powerful spell not in the least because Don Juan was one of the poems that has influenced my growing-up years.
Anyway, here’s a superb review of Byron’s biography. The biography be damned, I loved [...]
