Excerpts

Tajmahal “Tajmahal” by Kamala Vishnu Tilak Translated from Marathi by Anuradha Sovani The Taj Mahal, a poignant symbol of pathos, must have been a mute witness to so many heart rending sights; but the tragic events that unfolded on that day surely shattered its tender, marble heart. A hapless young woman was standing at the […]

Delhi, November 1984 1 November 1984, a Thursday, is a day I can never forget. I was a professor then at Hofstra University in Long Island, where I taught a heavy load of courses on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, each week. However, my most enjoyable teaching during 1984–85 took place every Thursday at Wesleyan University—a

Chapter One Sister Agatha Murphy surveyed the dusty, busy, noisy lane in front of the Delhi Haveli Hotel and knew she was about to give in to temptation. She was honest enough to admit to herself, if not to others, that she had a vice she could not quite kick. But not here. Not in

“During the Commonwealth Games in Delhi, 2010, there have been extensive discussions and media campaign for conferment of Bharat Ratna favouring certain sports personalities. Strangely, not once did the Indian media, print and/or electronic, ever recall the role and sacrifice of the legendary hockey player Jaipal Singh during the CWG or in the post-CWG period”

At first the missing man’s mates think he’s gone off for a swim in a nearby stream, one of our few pleasures in this warm weather, for his small pack of belongings is still very much in place, next to the mat where he slept. A search of the banks of the stream reveals no

In 1826, a seventeen-year-old Anglo-Portuguese aspiring poet, Henry Derozio, was appointed lecturer in the senior school of the Hindu College, established just about a decade before in 1817 at the insistence of Indian‘gentlemen of distinction’, who had emphatically asserted to Chief Justice Edward Hyde East (as he wrote in his correspondence) that they wanted their

Tamil Dalit Feminist Poetics: Resistance, Power and Solidarity (Rowman and Littlefield, 2024). ISBN 978-1-66692-132-8                 193 pp Fundamental to our understanding of Dalit feminist poetics in Tamil Nadu is our recognition of the influence of Periyar, Iyothee Thass, and Ambedkar on Dalit writing. Periyar’s strident voice decrying untouchability and espousing a radical feminism and atheist philosophy

2200 words approx. EXCERPTED FROM DIGESTING INDIA—(published in the UK/US as “The Great Indian Food Trip”) by Zac O’Yeah ‘Welcome to Bihar,’ says the student who wants to shake my hand as soon as the train rolls into Patna Junction, the modern incarnation of Pataliputra, the once-upon-a-time headquarters of Mauryan civilisation. ‘I hope you’ll come

Plants do not dream because they do not sleep, but birds dream: they dream about being eaten by larger birds, about being caged by humans, about flying so high they knock their heads against the base of heaven. Then they fly higher and turn into angels. They dream all that and when they wake up they think about worms and sometimes