This book is not a summary of any of the well-known Ramayanas; it is a full-fledged re-telling of the great epic . Indeed, as Shubha Vilas tells us , his friend ‘em-boldened’ him to ‘rewrite’ the Ramayana. A little later the author does clarify, ‘This book keeps Valmiki’s Ramayana front and centre, yet explores other versions…
Kanchana Natarajan’s discovery of an old Tamil text comprising Vedantic songs by Avudai Akkal at the Divine Life library at Rishikesh retraces a journey started by Avudai Akkal in the eighteenth century.
The indefatigable A.N.D. Haksar pulls out another gem from the Sanskrit texts that were composed in Kashmir around the turn of the last millenium. He returns to the irreverent and wickedly transgressive Kshemendra and this time, gives us a translation of Samaya Matrika or ‘The Courtesan’s Keeper’.
For someone not adequately apprised of the scholarly interests of its editor, the title given to this volume may prove somewhat ambivalent and open ended. After all, ‘devotion’ and ‘dissent’ are also broad sociological responses that could be revealed and read outside the domain of religion, as say in politics or everyday social relationships.
The Colour Book is mesmerizing. It invites you into a here-now, gone-now world that you dipped into happily as a child but which may have evaded you as a greying adult. A heady mix of poetry and science, The Colour Book evokes long-buried memories of the colours you once discovered.
Alice fell down a rabbit’s hole and discov- ered a wonderland! Neverfell fell down into Caverna and found a world of darkness that is strangely exquisite, of sinister characters that have a hundred faces without souls and a grotesque underbelly of faceless poor!