In the year 1974, when the womenfolk and children of village Reni, under the leadership of the gutsy Gaura Devi were chasing away labour contractors and their crony forest officials bent upon felling trees for commercial exploitation, writing perhaps the most glorious chapter in the history …
Studies on tribes range from colonial misrepresentation to critical processes of identity formulation against forces of dispossession. The most recent trend, however, is that of self-representation and search for adivasi epistemology[1]. Though tribes of India are no longer considered a stagnant community…
Havan, the English translation of the novel by Mallikarjun Hiremath, is a well-told story. Mostly linear, the novel does veer off this track occasionally, to recall stories of ancestors, or perhaps to narrate a lore. In the Author’s Note, Hiremath speaks of his attraction to the Lambada tribe from his childhood…
Rumble in a Village is an entertaining addition to literary representations of twentieth century rural India. In some ways reminiscent of Sri Lal Shukla’s Raag Darbari, this novel is a collaborative effort of the Belgian born Indian economist Jean Drèze, and his friend and writer Luc Leruth…
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…