There is a lot more in the simple title of this book than may appear to an unsuspecting eye. The words used in Urdu for the kinds of writings included in this volume are ‘Afsana’ and ‘Kahani’(the distinction between the two is not a settled issue in Urdu criticism). Both ‘Afsana’ and ‘Kahani’ lose something if translated casually as a short story or a tale…
To meet a poet of one’s own language in a different language is like meeting a friend or an acquaintance in an alien land. The strangeness of the medium turns into a torchlight which illuminates the hitherto unknown or unseen facets of the person. You are left wondering if it is the same person you were confident of having known well.
Struggles with Imagined Gods brings the ur ban phantasmagoria that one has come to associate with Hemant Divate’s poetry into the English language. This is a poetic hyper-reality in which you are assailed by an avalanche of fast-moving, colliding images of a culture dizzy on retail therapy, drunk on eternally deferred promise. Divate’s dominant poetic device is juxtaposition…
At first glance, Dweepa is a fairly simple novella. It is the story of Nagaveni and her farmer husband Ganapayya who are forced to stay back, even while their fields are under threat of being submerged by the waters of a newly built dam.
Every writer has this urge to write his life. Tales of Athiranippadam by S.K. Pottekkatt is a masterly attempt by the author to share the throes of his first love, admiration for father and muted love for mother in the guise of fiction. It takes the reader through the pranks of adolescence and anxieties of being an adult.
This powerful novel by Johny Miranda captures the life of the Parangis in Kerala, who see themselves as derelicts of history. The author represents them as grave diggers and sacristans of Catholic churches in Kerala. Community members are vehement that their legacy is dear to them, and the novel has its cadences in the description…