Devanoora Mahadeva’s Kusumabale, ever since it was serialized in a Kannada magazine in 1984 and later published in book form in 1984, has evoked mixed responses from readers, activists and critics. However, everyone agrees that it is a great text, a classic in fact, unprecedented in its treatment of dalit experience both in its form and content.
Lalithambika Antharjanam’s work and life are ineluctably linked with the large-scale social and economic changes that Kerala experienced in the twentieth century.
K.R. Meera’s And Slowly Forgetting That Tree begins with an innocuous everyday scene that turns rapidly unreal.
My first thoughts on reading Apeetha in English is to wonder how a text considered difficult in terms of language in the original Tamil, reads with such an easy flow in English! The reverse is also usually true. Bharathiyar, who sounds poetically rich in Tamil becomes bland in English, most often. Padma Narayanan, who had already translated two stories of La. Sa. Raa (1916–2007) earlier, even while he was still alive, has translated this novella.
‘A man does what he must—in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers, and pressures— and that is the basis of all human morality.’ John F. Kennedy. ‘We could do it, you know.’ ‘What?’ ‘Leave the district. Run off. Live in the woods. You and I, we could make it.’ When Suzanne Collins wrote this in The Hunger Games, she probably was unaware of the kind of forest that exists in Forest Saga.
Nirgatasu na va kasya kalidasasya suktisu Pritir madhura—sandrasu manjarisu iva jayate Pleasure blooms in Kalidasa’s poems, Like a full bouquet of fragrant flowers! —Banabhatta’s Harsa-carita