Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.- Italo Calvino, Invisible CitiesDo the cities with their sensorial excesses of sights, sounds, smell, and touch shape the way writers experience their quotidian lives or do the bodily experiences of writers as inhabitants…
The Courage to Exist: A Philosophy of Life and Death in the Age of Coronavirus was published in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. The book suggests that the pandemic has lain bare the limitations of modern socio-political institutions as well as those of modern technology and science in protecting the lives and securing the well-being of human beings…
A real translation is transparent; it does not cover the original, does not block its light, but allows the pure language, as though reinforced by its own medium, to shine upon the original all the more fully. (Benjamin, The Task of The Translator 162)Distinguished writer, editor, memoirist, and translator, Poonam Saxena, wears many hats with élan. Besides launching Hindustan Times’s Sunday magazine, Brunch, her distinguished writing…
‘People put birds in cages for their own amusement. Well, I was like a caged bird. And I would have to remain in this cage for life. I would never be freed.’This quote is from Rassundari Devi’s autobiography, Amar Jiban. Written in 1876, this book is considered the first autobiography written by a Bengali woman. I mention this book because of the echoes that one finds occasionally…
A late bloomer, the Indian novel at the turn of the nineteenth century was a form in transition. As it started to edge away from the dominant themes of romance and domestic bliss, it became both socially engaged and self-conscious. Interestingly, these two divergent trends…
