Digital RepublicThursday, May 16, 2013,09:53:50 AM
I was intrigued by one of the sub-titles of Mathai Joseph’s Digital Republic: India’s rise to IT Power, which described the book as a combination of “History and Memoir.” They are rather different genres, one personal and anecdotal, the other relatively factual. ....
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The cause of the effectThursday, May 09, 2013,12:38:34 AM
Even if you’ve fortified yourself with a cup of tea, do the morning papers leave you with these feelings? “How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable/Seem to me all the uses of this world!/…..Tis an unweeded garden, /That grows to seed; / things rank and gross in nature/Possess it merely.” Do you read....
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And then is heard no moreSunday, May 05, 2013,09:09:31 AM
One of the texts I studied in my final year in school was Shakespeare’s Macbeth. As it so happened, it was also the play that my students performed the year I was retiring from the college. Directed by Pushan Kripalani, it was a stunning production performed in one of those derelict mill....
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What the soul is to the bodyThursday, April 25, 2013,08:50:55 AM
I can’t be certain, but I think that the work of the great Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral is less known here than that of her illustrious younger contemporary, Pablo Neruda. Why am I writing about her now? One reason (pretty feeble) is that she has an April birthday, April 7, 1889. ....
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Photographs as historyThursday, April 18, 2013,08:17:00 AM
I love old black and white and sepia photographs and have a number of them of my mother and her sisters wearing saris Parsi style, with long-sleeved blouses covered with frills, a fancy pin on the bit covering the shoulder, and shoes with pointed toes. ....
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When you set out for IthakaThursday, April 11, 2013,07:55:25 AM
This year marks the 150th birth anniversary of one of the great modern Greek poets, C P Cavafy. He was born on April 29, 1863, and died of cancer on his 70th birthday, April 29, 1933. ....
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The living momentThursday, April 04, 2013,08:53:25 AM
Looking through Ketaki Sheth’s luminous book of black and white photographs, A Certain Grace sub-titled The Sidi: Indians of African Descent, (Photoink 2013), I was reminded of two of my favourite quotes about the power of great art. ....
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Send my roots rainThursday, March 28, 2013,07:34:56 AM
Please don’t waste words? That doesn’t sound like me. I don’t normally advise, admonish or preach. But I feel driven to it by an event I was part of more than a year ago. It was a memorial church ceremony for the mother of a dear friend who had died a year ago. ....
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Poet and architectThursday, March 21, 2013,08:38:35 AM
When talking about a poet, one has to say “Poet and…” poet and doctor, poet and editor/journalist and so forth. Very few can afford to be “just poets.” So with Mustansir Dalvi: poet, translator, architect, columnist and urban theorist, whose very fine first book brouhahas of cocks has been published by....
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A spinster, but she’s niceThursday, March 14, 2013,07:56:50 AM
When I was a youngish lecturer at St Xavier’s College, I remember a student who said, “I have an aunt who’s a spinster, but she’s nice.” I cannot remember the context of this remark. ....
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Memoirs and all thatThursday, March 07, 2013,08:53:23 AM
Some years ago, I was asked to write my memoirs. I didn’t want to refuse, because the guy was “my publisher.” On the other hand, I couldn’t think of anything about which I wished to write — except the dogs on the street on which I live. ....
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Awell-versed eveningThursday, February 28, 2013,11:37:41 AM
Getting to Kala Ghoda from Santa Cruz was particularly trying that evening. A cab journey which should have taken an hour took two-and-a-half hours. Were all those people heading to the David Sassoon Library for an evening of poetry? (But of course. And the moon is made of blue cheese).....
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However, said the universeThursday, February 21, 2013,08:20:06 AM
I don’t have to spell out for you the self-important behaviour of most of our netas, and the even more self-important behaviour of the neta’s betas. “Do you, know who I am?” said one of these betas when ticked off for breaking a parking rule. (Hardly the first person to ask such a question, and certainly ....
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How do I love thee?Thursday, February 14, 2013,07:52:06 AM
Today, February 14, seems as good a day as any to recall some of the most famous and popular lines of a love poem written by Elizabeth Barrett (1806-1861) to Robert Browning (1812-1889) when he was courting her. The poem, a sonnet reads, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways./I love thee to the ....
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Under the bell jarThursday, February 07, 2013,08:10:24 AM
Sylvia Plath’s first and only novel, The Bell Jar, was published in 1963, a few weeks before she killed herself. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of this publication, Faber, which published the book as apaperback in 1966, have re-published it. ....
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Poems for presidentsThursday, January 31, 2013,08:18:42 AM
Richard Blanco, endlessly described as the first Hispanic and openly gay poet to be asked to read a poem for Obama’s inauguration on January 21, says he was “speechless” when he was approached by the White House in December to write three poems specially for the occasion. ....
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The business of poetryThursday, January 24, 2013,08:17:36 AM
Do Business and Poetry have anything in common? Do poets make good managers? Here’s a news report which should bring cheer to students pressured not to “waste time” on the arts: The appreciation of poetry is the “latest management mantra for managers and executives… It’s vital to personal ....
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Differences of degree?Thursday, January 17, 2013,08:13:34 AM
In the context of the Delhi gang-rape case, an orthodox gent proclaimed that such things happen in “India” not in “Bharat.” He was quickly shown to be wrong by statistics which showed that most rape cases take place in rural areas where ....
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When I wrote about Mathai Joseph’s combination of history and memoir in Digital Republic last week, he wrote to me saying that he was intrigued by my comment about the memoir I might have written.....
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