Arts/Literature

Pandemic and Poetry: How Writers in Pakistan react to COVID-19

There is a proverb in Persian and Urdu that could be roughly translated thus — ‘A collective death has an air of festivity’. The great Urdu poet, Ghalib, however, would have not subscribed to this notion as was made evident from an episode in his personal life. Once afflicted by his financial and existential miseries, he had foretold his own[Read More...]

Review of Ajnabi

(Adaptation of The Stranger by Albert Camus) Directed by Anil Kumar Chaudhary Performed at Veda Factory and Tefla’s Studio As strange as it may sound – is the philosophy of the world, condemned to death. If the purpose of literature is to comfort and disconcert, the actor is the promise of the world which, in Camus’ The Stranger, Meursault imagines.[Read More...]

Manusangada: The Grammar of Anarchy

“Constitutional morality is not a natural sentiment. It has to be cultivated. We must realise that our people have yet to learn it. Democracy in India is only a top-dressing on an Indian soil which is essentially undemocratic.”                             – Dr.B.R.Ambedkar       The above quote by Babsaheb Ambedkar in the times of Corona Pandemic which is proving to be a[Read More...]

The crackle of brilliance

A review of the play ‘Kusur’ Director & Lead actor: Amol Palekar Co-director & Playwright: Sandhya Gokhale Veteran script writer, costume and set designer, scholar of Hindustani classical music and lawyer, Sandhya Gokhale staged her play, ‘Kusur’ at the inaugural function of New Delhi’s National School of Drama’s 21st Bharat Rang Mahotsav – India’s International Theatre Festival spanning 21 days[Read More...]

COVID-19 And We Are Not Allowed To Watch, Listen And Read What We Want, Anymore

Now, that almost all of us, all over the world, have been forced into staying in what could be easily defined as house arrest, there is suddenly plenty of time to read books, to watch great films, and to listen to splendid music. Many of us, for years, have been sadly repeating again and again: “if only we would have[Read More...]

Bob Dylan’s Midnight Message to JFK’s Ghost

“For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak with most miraculous organ.”   – Hamlet On May 1, 1962, President John Kennedy was meeting in the Oval Office with a group of Quakers who were urging him to do more for peace and disarmament.  As he kept explaining the great political opposition he was facing within his own government, they[Read More...]

Poetry as Utopia and Apocalypse

The word “prophet” is rooted in the Greek word prophetes, a word that breaks down etymologically into “to speak before or foretell”. A soothsayer is considered a prophet in the sense that he foretells events. Such is the soothsayer in Julius Caesar who tells Caesar to “beware of the ides of March” when he was doomed to assassination. The Prophetic books of the Old[Read More...]

An Open Letter to my Deceased Father

Dear Dad, I am glad you did not live to see these.   You died.   Died before you saw them collapse by the roadside.   Gandhi called them his friend. And so did you.   Why did God not have mercy on them?   Why is it they have no food? No water, no shoes? Why is it they[Read More...]
The post An Open Letter to my Deceased Father appeared first on Countercurrents.