Kabir is now widely acclaimed as one of our most eminent poets from any Indian language, but this wasn’t always so. Until about half a century ago, he was regarded in Hindi as perhaps the last of the quartet of the four great bhakti poets and ranked after Tulsi Das, Sur Das and Mira Bai. In a marked reversal, Kabir’s…
While telling a story the awakening of love and desire is an illusion, a chimera. The desire is the desire only for the story, the love only love for the story. (From Bhikshuni aur Nai).In Teji Grover’s recent collection of stories, seven stories have been strung together in a sequence. In English translation, roughly the titles would be ‘The Nun and the Barber’, ‘My Poets’, ‘Grey Flowers etc’., ‘Sindbad’, ‘Just a Story’, ‘Suparna’, and ‘Su’…
A lot is being said about Premchands tradition in Hindi, but only a very few fiction writers have an understanding of what it really means. While someone is burning Premchands books, someone else is holding on to his tail to cross the Vaitarani, the mythical river that divides the earth and the nether regions…
This is a novel by a journalist which is certainly an advantage. The journalist is always present inside the novelist and knows well that his opting for story telling is driven by his urge to catch and tell facts that are beyond the reach of journalism. This understanding gives Davanal a distinct tinge and flavour…
The more we conjectured and enquired the more facts and things deserving mention we gathered. But in regard to them it became more and more difficult to distinguish between truths and falsehood. Were they lies that looked like the truth Or were they truths that resembled lies Or were they both truth and lies…
These days I find the prettiest things growing in my garden are weeds. They are the ones I pluck and put in my singlerose vase. They stay fresh for days on end; true (to nature), hardy and beauteous. Shivam, satyam, sundaram: the righteous, the truthful and the beautiful the quintessence of literary aesthetics…