It is wonderful to see a reissue of the translation of Volga Se Ganga by Rahul Sankrityayan with a fine introduction by Maya Joshi. The original translation by VG Kiernan has been edited by Kanwal Dhaliwal and Maya Joshi with an additional translated chapter that had been missed out in the original edition…
‘ I remember a river flowing inside my father and never growing old, …’. This opening line of Apurva Narain’s Introduction beautifully brings out the essence of Kunwar Narain’s poetry. The book is a tribute to a man who was not just a father, but also an artist par excellence…
We inhabit a noise-saturated world. The enveloping noise has not only stunted our sensibilities and sensitivities but has, as a consequence, tended to insulate us from ourselves and our surroundings. The crass materiality of the contemporary civilizational curve has taken its toll on our elemental connectedness and communicative empathies…
Urdu Dastan refers to an extant mode of storytelling where popular fantasies, literary tropes and a hint of history is melded to produce utterly entertaining and absorbing stories. Often about legendary characters, the charm of the dastan rests on its flamboyance, verbal excesses and a fine entanglement of the ordinary…
The blurb in the inner cover of this book describes it as a rich and lively first-hand account of life in the royal court of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal Emperor, in the Red Fort. The author Munshi Faizuddin lived in the Red Fort in his capacity of being a long-time servant of Prince Mirza Ilahi Baksh…
Does profoundness stem from simplicity? Do the unending complexities and deeper truths that elude religion, psychology and politics, become viewable in verses made up of simple words charged with captivating verbal richness? Does elegant and sophisticated simplicity stamp…