Author Archive: interactive editor
Ghar Wapsi and the Need for a Principled Resistance
“One sordid motive violates the whole preaching. It is like a drop of poison, which fouls the whole food. Therefore, I should do without any preaching at all. A rose does not need to preach. It simply spreads its fragrance. The fragrance is its own sermon …The fragrance of religious and spiritual life is much […]
Of Mortality and the Limits of Medicine
We are struggling to cope with the constraints of our biology, with the limits set by genes and cells, flesh and bones. Medical science has remarkable power to push against these limits. But still, its power is finite. Medicine can improve our life and it has done a lot of things in life; it reduced […]
Life of ‘the Poet Laureate of Asia’
Allama Mohamed Iqbal, one of Indian subcontinent’s most versatile and controversial figures in the 20th century, defies easy categorizations. The myriad ironies and contradictions that defined colonial India converged in the life and works of Iqbal to such an extent that the exact opposite of anything ever said of him could equally be true! A […]
Return To Which Home?
On October 14, 1956, Babasaheb Ambedkar, along with several hundred thousand “untouchables”, embraced Buddhism. The moral and ethical strength of Ambedkar’s embrace of Buddhism lies in its cultural and intellectual capacity to sustain among the ex-untouchables a growing association with it. Conversion as a cultural-intellectual movement that took off in October 1956 from Nagpur continues […]
Books in 2015: A look-ahead
Clear space on your shelves or fire up your e-readers for the publishing highlights of 2015. A new novel from Kazuo Ishiguro, his first in 10 years, is arguably the literary event of the year. Ishiguro is one of a select band of authors who enjoys widespread critical acclaim as well as huge commercial success. […]
Big Screen 2014
Interstellar, Christopher Nolan Christopher Nolan is a name synonymous with super-realism or sci-fi surrealism. The Nolanisation of cinema was inaugurated by his Inception,a film about dreams and a dystopian condition in which dreams could be manipulated. The gloomy streets of Gotham-a bridge between the fantastical and the commonplace-are now grounds of countless fancies within the […]
2014 Events that Hogged Limelight
A year is bidding good bye. But are we so optimistic as to lay stress on the ‘good’ before the ‘bye’? Those who are optimistic have many things to single out to strengthen their belief. Firstly and most significantly, there is what many of us term progress in the generation-shifting technology. We have smart phones, […]
Books of the Year: Our Picks
1: Do Muslim Women Need Saving?- Laila Abu-Lugodh The author argues that in the aftermath of the 9\11, the paradigm of rescuing Muslim women from the ‘oppressive’, ‘unprogressive’ and ‘pre-modern’ Muslim lands has procured momentum as an undeniable necessity. This well-researched work is the result of Laila’s encounters as an ethnographer, of her interaction with […]
The Court Jester of Bollywood
Naseeruddin Shah is the court jester of Bollywood, the nickname of Hindi Cinema, which, despite being derogatory (meaning senseless imitation), it embraced in vigour. The reason why everyone else comes only second to Shah in being a wise clown is that unlike most actors in the Hindi cinema world, Shah is not a fool whose […]
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