In many general and not particularly well- informed opinions on Islam there is an instinctive tendency to view it as hopelessly out of date and fossilized. Such opinions are often the product of hastily formulated media reportage. It is here that scholarship of the kind contained in Behnam Sadeghi’s book the Logic of Law Making in Islam: Women and Prayer in the Legal Tradition…
This book draws one into the world of rekhti (Urdu) poetry in the late 18th and 19th centuries and brings to attention the ground issues of gender and sexuality in those times. The colonial dismissal of diverse sexuality present in the societyhad led to the creation of a homogenized ‘mainstream’ that pushed many other realities into the margins.
There is a reason why this book is called Degree Coffee by the Yard. With an interesting word play on ‘yard’, it automatically evokes one of the many sensibilities that create and sustain Chennai: the action of cooling a ‘tumbler’ of coffee by pouring it from a height into another tumbler, seamlessly measuring out a yard of distance with the hot, flowing liquid between the two containers.
Lhasa,Tashkent, Gobi, Xian, Samarkand, Syr-Darya, Kashgar, Heaven Lake, Taklaman, Bukhara. Names that instantly evoke visions of adventure, mystery, antiquity, remoteness, bygone civilizations and trail blazing rulers and travellers. Tracing Marco Polo’s Journey : The Silk Route, is a record of the historic expedition undertaken by Major H.P.S. Ahluwalia and his team in the summer of 1994.
Ferdinand von Richthofen’s catchy meta- phor for an ancient trade route crisscrossing Asia and Europe symbolizing mystery and exotic splendour, the Silk Route seems to have returned to political consciousness today. Historically, this trade route facilitated not only movement of goods, but also linked various civilizations: transmitting cultures, traditions, beliefs, religions, languages and technologies.
A powerful voice on national security fell silent on 4 Aug 2013 when Air Cmde. (Retd.) Jasjit Singh, recipient of Padma Bhushan for a lifetime’s contribution to national security passed away. Many have mourned his loss at a time when India stares at an unpredictable world fraught with new faultlines and challenges. But, Singh was used to having the ‘last word’.