The 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore in May 2011 generated so much of renewed interest in the writer and his work that every other day we now see the proliferation of Tagoreana in all possible literary and cultural forms.
The legendary Gandhian Narayan Desai died on December 24, 2015 at the age of ninety. He was the last of the ‘true’ Gandhians who lived his life practising and preaching Gandhi’s philosophy. His father Mahadev Desai was Gandhi’s close associate and also his personal secretary; hence, Narayan Desai’s upbringing had been under the tutelage of Gandhi.
The 1920s has been noted as an exciting decade for scholars tracking the histories of modern sound. Jonathan Sterne has shown how sound reproduction technologies amplified as well as grew out of the ‘maelstrom’ of modern life that was marked by the rise of industrial capitalism, massive population shifts and the rise of mass media.
One thing is apparent; the book, Mohammad Rafi: God’s Own Voice has been written by two earnest fans and ferocious defenders of the renowned playback singer Mohammad Rafi (1924–80).
Shashi Kapoor: The Householder, The Star is an almost heartbreaking account—of the fame, and untoward retirement and estrangement from the industry, the painful and premature aging of a once extremely popular and daring showman.
In the intense heat of the Indian summer of 1739, a Persian army could be seen heading in triumph away from the looted city of Delhi. Delhi was the capital of the great Mughals, the Muslim dynasty, originally of Central Asian origin, that had ruled much of India since the mid-sixteenth century.