At a time when trolls act as gate-keepers to power and a motley group of hecklers, vigilantes, and vandals define what is permissible to speak, eat, dress, and consociate, definitions and redefinitions of democracy, even if qualified as Indian democracy, are required.
Armed conflicts have a devastating impact on children, and despite records and documentation of the use and abuse of children in conflicts, the international community has been unable to create measures for safety, security or adequate rehabilitation for such children.
Those who partake of Sahitya Akademi’s frequent hospitality at the India International Centre in Delhi may not as frequently find use for the Akademi Library. And those who do use the Library may not know of the various bibliographic aids prepared or published from time to time by the Akademi.
Thumri’s relationship with dance is evi¬dent even in its name which many musicians consider to derive from the word ‘thumak’—roughly translatable as the gait of the dancer, at once graceful, coquettish, sensuous. And almost all thumri singers will also say that thumri is (gale se bhav batana, gale se nirat karnd), showing bhav, dancing with the voice. So at the very deepest, inmost level, in its essence, thumri is dance.
An enormous metallic container of an unknown alloy, and a perfect cube at that, is uncovered during excavations for a deep underground gravity experiment. A scientific curio to be left to scientists to examine? But the container has strange carvings and symbols on its surface and is self evidently a relic of the past which only the archeologists should be able to decipher. Given this start a straightfor¬ward sci-fi tale would have a joint task force start work without much ado.
There is something strangely appropriate about Anjolie Ela Menon’s painting which is featured on the cover of Mrs. Baig’s book. A female, oddly nun-like, with a portrait on her lap, and another on a locket, stands framed in a window, seeing through shut eyes. Mrs. Baig is, of course, far less detached in her observa¬tions on the people she has known but she is at a secluded distance when she writes.