Exploring Love Across Divides: The Complex Lives of Hindu-Muslim Couples in India
What is it like to be a Hindu married to a Muslim or a Muslim married to a Hindu in a country like India where families are deeply involved not only in wedding ceremonies but also in the everyday life of the newlywed couple? Why do they choose to marry
Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy and the Golden Age of Indian English Literature
In the summer of 1997, a gathering of 10 leading Indian novelists was “herded” into a small New York studio for a group photograph. The New Yorker was putting together a special issue to celebrate India’s golden jubilee—its 50 years of Independence from British rule—and this photograph was to be the centrepiece
How Private Archives are Making Indian History More Accessible and Inclusive
It was research for my historical novel, Wanderers, All, that led me to the police headquarters in Mumbai. My enquiry about the Bombay Police Gazette from 1911, among other information, was met with a blank stare. A helpful constable then led me to the in-house library that comprised a large
Short Story | ‘No one like Appa’: A Tamil story in translation
Translated from Tamil by Prabha Sridevan. An eccentric father mentors his family, ignoring societal norms. Appa was a strange person. My thatha, my grandfather, said that his strangeness was due to the fact he had left home when he was sixteen and wandered around before returning. But that was not the only
Abu Abraham (1924–2002), the political cartoonist who bore witness
In the world of journalism, there is enough scholarship on the role of reporting as bearing witness, investigative journalism, design elements, editorial judgment, and the balance between the public interest component and another powerful component called “what the public is interested in”. If this scholarship has to be more effective,
Obituary | Surjit Patar, the poet who explored Punjab’s collective consciousness
The celebrated poet, who passed away at 79, explored the region’s cultural richness and pluralism, giving voice to its struggles and aspirations. As I think of Surjit Patar, this following verse, which I had first heard on radio during my college days, reverberates in my mind: Je ayi pathjhar taa
Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro dies aged 92
One of the most esteemed contemporary writers, Canadian author Alice Munro, has passed away at the age of 92 in her home in Ontario, a spokesperson for her publisher confirmed on Tuesday. A titan of short-story writing, Munro revolutionised the architecture of short stories and demonstrated that the format was worthy of the Nobel Prize.
K.G. Subramanyan (1924-2016): Artist, activist, provocateur, teacher
The exhibition “One Hundred Years and Counting: Re-Scripting KG Subramanyan” (April 5-June 21), at Emami Art, Kolkata, organised in collaboration with Seagull, and the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University (MSU), Baroda, is an invigorating, brilliant, and multifaceted celebratory show worthy of the master. Curated by the cultural theorist Nancy Adajania,
International Booker Prize 2024 | In ‘Kairos’, Jenny Erpenbeck offers an East German perspective
Ask your average German about Jenny Erpenbeck, and they may very well respond, “Jenny who?” Yet the contemporary German author has made a name for herself beyond Germany’s borders; she’s showered with prizes and has even been predicted to one day win the Nobel Prize in literature. Her books have
Book Review| ‘The Big Book of Odia Literature’: An Anthology of Odia Literature in English Translation
An inscription in the 13th century Siddham script, from which the modern Odia alphabet has been derived, at Ananta Vasudeva Temple, Bhubaneswar. | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement The Big Book of Odia Literature is indeed big, at 672 pages, in addition to 50 pages of front matter that includes