Nations love their armed forces and nationalism thrives on war but wars have consequences for which neither the nationalists nor their leaders are usually prepared. Military and political histories also feast on war but in general do not pay adequate attention.
Following from Javed Akhtar’s lament in the Foreword to this volume, there is much to be said for re-focusing our collective attention on the shabd (literally, word) or the text as a proxy for language (and not just in music), as the richness.
The large majority of books on Kathak that offer a historical, theoretical and practical approach to the study of the dance form are in Hindi. Some are also available in other vernaculars like Bengali. This itself makes Kathak: The Dance of Storytellers.
Whether or not it is correct to term George Abraham Grierson’s 21-volume Linguistic Survey of India (produced over more than three decades: 1894-1927) ‘monumental’ is a query that Majeed’s set of two volumes seems to propose as key for studying.
This cracker of a debut novel opens with a house on fire—La Kay, a house that is one of the protagonists, a sentient house, that is actually attempting to commit suicide. The house has had enough of its ‘owner’ Lucien, an immigrant from Haiti who had moved.
The year is 2041. A huge fortress named Bombadrome, 500 sq. km in an area housing thirty million people stands against a towering sea wall on the soil of erstwhile Bom Bahia, Bombay or Mumbai. Equipped with the finest transport network, efficient.