The most lauded and quoted Sanskrit poet after Kalidasa, Bhartrihari’s genius and his continuing popularity lies in the fact that he speaks to the wholeness of human life. In his Three Hundred Verses (Shataka Trayam or Trishati), he identifies and addresses three universal human preoccupations in one hundred verses each—worldly pleasure, love and renunciation or, more accurately, detachment from the vicissitudes of the world.
This book seems to have been published with the primary motive of proving me wrong. You see, for the past fifteen years or more, I have been going around the world proudly proclaiming that there was no translation in India before the British came (—as indeed there was no Calcutta or no English). When I made this brave assertion at a conference at Columbia University in 2004…
Among the different incarnations of energy, electrical power occupies a unique position for its ease of use and range of applications. Switch off electricity from modern life and you might as well turn off all industrial development, agricultural prosperity, urban and rural services and indeed lose most of the amenities that help improve our quality of life. It is therefore not surprising that successive Indian governments since Independence have given top priority to the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity.
The books under review are two collections of short stories by wife and husband Annie Chandy Mathew and P.Chandy Mathew—their first creative efforts. As writers they acknowledge their debt to each other as their lives enrich each other’s ‘story’, yet their short stories need to be looked at as independent works (even though both the collections are imbued with a yearning for basic human values which will restore some order to the chaos of divisive voices, warring interests and frenzied passions.
With the rising popularity of Comparative Literature as a subject of formal study, comparative critical theory has assumed fresh importance as a complementary discipline, and received greater scholarly attention, including curricular provision. But, the discipline suffers from the paucity of adequate primary materials—the literary principles of target literatures essential for the appreciation and evaluation of their individual genius and interrelated aesthetic bearings.
