literature

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.
— O’Brien to Winston Smith in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four

Guest Post by the group THE MOCKING BIRDS आज की रात न फ़ुट-पाथ पे नींद आएगी सब उठो, मैं भी उठूँ तुम भी उठो, तुम भी उठो कोई खिड़की इसी दीवार में खुल जाएगी ये ज़मीं तब भी निगल लेने पे आमादा थी पाँव जब टूटती शाख़ों से उतारे हम ने उन मकानों को ख़बर … Continue reading Paean – A Song for Triumphs, For Usha Ganguly and Irrfan Khan: The Mocking Birds →

It is the best of times, it is the worst of times. It is a bright cold day in April and clocks are striking thirteen. You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.
Gary and Yves Engler, father and son authors, discuss being funny, being serious, cancelled book tours, exploding sacred myths, pandemics, their latest books, and writing in the time of COVID-19.
(This conversation has been edited, because that’s what happens to writers.)

This sense of viral isolation, dread and global make-over (for good and worse) gets the proverbial juices flowing of our local and national bards. It’s not a stretch to say there are many people on our coast and farther east who consider themselves to be “poets.”
With a liberal dose of simile, any number of cultural and natural events hearken the phrase, “Blank is like poetry in action.”

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 time…”
Now there is plenty of it – plenty of time. The world has stopped. Something terrible is happening; something we never wanted to occur. We sense it, we are terrified, but we do not know precisely what it is. Not now, not yet.

From the far distance sounded the muffled howling of a family of monkeys, monos gritones, passing the night in the crowns of the mighty trees. It echoed through the jungle like the roar of an angry mountain lion. Gruesome and terrifying, it seemed to tear the night apart, but it did not disturb the jungle. It sang and fiddled, chirped and whistled, whined and whimpered, rejoiced and lamented its ever-unchanging song with the constancy of the roaring sea.

Lukács, 1913

Vladimir: Let us not waste time in idle discourse! Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late!
— Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

( Note : To be published in the Annual Number of ‘Mainstream’) In this conversation academician, writer and social activist Zaheer Ali talks about his latest book ‘Romancing With Revolution : Life and Works of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’ (Aakar Books, Delhi, 2019) and why Faiz is ‘ extremely relevant in today’s India’ This is the … Continue reading Talking Faiz: ‘In This Hour of Madness’ →


#fahrenheit451 #raybradbury The 1953 novel by Ray Bradbury predicted the social media governed dystopian society we now inhabit with stunning accuracy. We were warned, but no one heeded the warnings of science fiction … or was it scientism conditioning?