Even occasional listeners of Carnatic music may be familiar with the pot occupying the stage. After the great success of Vikku Vinayakam, the ghatam has become a part of the pantheon of percussion instruments in classical and experimental music. Sumana is part of that extraordinary narrative, of courage
Helle Jørgensen is an honorary research fellow at the Department of History, University of Birmingham. She analyses the urban landscape of Pondicherry as a postcolonial palimpsest by examining its three symbolically significant features: first, the memorial traces of the mid-18th century French Governor-General Joseph François Dupleix; second, the sole Hindu Manakula Vinayagar Temple in the ‘White Town’;
From chapter 16, the reviewer has compiled an arbitrary list of Mumbai’s planning agencies, plans (some with World Bank support), and acts: the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM); Bombay Building Repairs and Reconstruction Board (1969); Maharashtra Slum Improvement Board (1973), later renamed Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (1976); the Development Plan (1964); Maharashtra Regional and Town Planning Act (1966); Bombay Metropolitan Regional Planning Board (MMRDA, 1967),
In the second essay, Ramnarayan S Rawat demonstrates the significance of the 16th century Dalit saint-poet Ravidas, whose legacy inspired the Chamar led Sant-Mat community of north India in the 1920s to seek paths to dignity. Through the mediation of the spiritual leader Swami Achutanand
…I have attempted, foolhardily, to document and narrativize the pathologies of the hyper-visible yet perennial blind spot that is the world of elite ‘savarnas’, who critique everyone and everything but never themselves. No matter what method I use, this venture is doomed to fail in many savarna eyes. They will inevitably find clever and creative ways to dismantle its mediocrity in ways that I cannot imagine.
Can we reach an understanding of reality through only language models and with perhaps a little plus of something else? I would have liked the authors to have given us some overview of these and other issues, rather than simply reproducing the marketing hype of AI, particularly from those who seek continuous investments in their companies, such as Sam Altman of OpenAI. Remember how