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Literature Archive
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Are you Spending your Life Abusing Others Girish Karnad?
Posted on November 6, 2012 | 21 CommentsNote: This is a translation of Pratap Simha’s piece that appeared in today’s Kannada Prabha. Girish Karnad image courtesy: IBN Live. The Mumbai Lit fest on Friday witnessed major drama when veteran actor and theatre artist Girish Karnad slammed Nobel prize laureate VS Naipaul and... -
Girish Karnad’s Toxic Tantrums
Posted on November 5, 2012 | 58 CommentsSo Girish Karnad is back again. In style. And with a fury I scarcely expected he was capable of. It’s really a monumental pity that a fine actor like Girish Karnad can nary control his itch to mouth inanities. On Friday afternoon at the Tata... -
Festival of the Politically Correct Sissies: Part 2
Posted on January 26, 2012 | 303 CommentsPick a name. Pick any name from the loathsome galaxy of the Politically Correct Sissies that I listed in the Part 1. Let’s start with the head honcho, the White Mughal himself. Hartosh Singh Bal’s searing piece elicited the predictable accusation of racism from the... -
Festival of the Politically Correct Sissies: Part 1
Posted on January 25, 2012 | 30 CommentsThere’s nothing literary about the Jaipur Literary Festival. It’s as political as political is. The list of who’s who that make up its firmament year after year reads like the Forbes List of Liberal Fundamentalists. Perhaps Dalrymple’s List of Liberal Fundamentalists is a more accurate... -
Saraswati’s Son Honoured
Posted on April 6, 2011 | 34 CommentsIt’s more than befitting that Dr. S L Bhyrappa has been awarded the Saraswati Samman this year. Kannada writer S L Bhyrappa was on Tuesday chosen for the prestigious Saraswati Samman for his novel ‘Mandra’… The jury which selected Bhyrappa was headed by former Chief... -
Art Doesn’t Change Anything
Posted on December 1, 2009 | 31 CommentsOverdoing 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... -
Sunday Special: Excerpts from an Autobiography: 4
Posted on November 1, 2009 | 2 Comments1971 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.... -
The Sublime and the Mundane
Posted on August 11, 2009 | 67 CommentsA 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,... -
The White Tiger Redux
Posted on October 20, 2008 | 20 CommentsMeera 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... -
When an Award is not Just an Award
Posted on October 16, 2008 | 23 CommentsIn 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... -
Ramanujan’s Ramayana
Posted on March 15, 2008 | 73 CommentsThe 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... -
On Government
Posted on January 24, 2008 | 27 CommentsGovernment 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. Tweet