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Showing posts from February, 2017

The Politics of Language- Rekhta

Languages live and die with human interests. Language does not have with in it to carry itself through public apathy. Language cannot survive vacuum and apathy. One of the biggest loss of the 21 st century is the death of languages. While technology has been one cause of it, religious appropriation and attribution is another important reason. Suddenly we have Latin for Christians, Sanskrit for Hindus and Urdu for Muslims. Absolutist religions have brought clash of civilization to our doorsteps. This reflects in the election of Donald Trump in the US and the books on Islamic supremacy being in best-sellers in France. It is not totally unfounded. Technology connects the mankind in unprecedented manner. Therefore, famines of Bengal in 18 th and 19 th century could not cause mass transfer of humanity from Asia to Europe nor could most bloody of wars in 7 th century push people westwards, as much as it could today. One can easily call names to people who are simplistic and intelle

Book Review- The Red and The Black - By Stendhal

Book: The Red and The Black ( Le Rougue et Le Noir) Author: Stendhal ( Marie-Henri Beyle) Pages: 608, Published by- A Levasseur (1830) Amazon Page - Click Here Recommendation: Must Read. A novel and an Education. 

Home- A Story of Divorce and Devastation

Dev sat on his knees as if in a confession, staring at the bright red shirt spread on the bed in front of him, his eyelids dropping with a sadness that sits so heavy on the soul that it makes one’s shoulders droop. Tears welled up in his eyes, fogging his spectacled vision, as he ran his palms over the soft fabric lying in front of him. He felt as if he was trying to touch the person for whom it was meant. His eyes narrowed as if trying to find something in a distance. He looked from one side of the wall to another, as if trying to ease out the lump in his throat, as if trying to loosen the sudden stiffening of the neck. He threw his head back and stared at the blank ceiling for a while as if looking for some sign from above. He could feel his desperate silent prayers rising up and eventually falling on his face unanswered. Sadness does not come at once, it comes in waves, one after another, each more cruel than the one that went before. He felt as if the space and heaven was shrin

The Unbearable Agony of Unwritten Words

The weather has changed. Skies are clear once again, fog lifted. Azure, cloudless skies; trees bare. The dawn descends with the shy, blush of a fair, newly-wed woman. The days are not yet jaundiced with the pale, bright yellowness of the summers. There is a distinct hint of red in the yellow.  Writing is sporadic, very less. A few intermittent blog post. Unwritten words sit heavily on the soul of a writer. To accept oneself as a writer is to embark on a dangerous path. It is a solitary profession and a hard one at that.  I read to prepare to write. I tell myself. Be at some point, even reading has to make way for writing. Writing is not a quick job. It takes time, time and sitting all agitated inside and all peaceful outside, the incongruous internal and external world pulling one apart, in diverse directions. Writing takes time. One needs to tie that heavy stone to the neck of a reckless, wandering mind and allow it to sink to the depths. Bubbles of air escaping to th

The Necessity and the Difficulty of Writing History

" To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history. " - Cicero Cicero, the unauthorized historian to record to history of Rome has put it so aptly. This necessity of history makes the past so relevant not only to our present, rather also to our future. Any decision, any idea, not pivoted in the lessons of past is essentially flawed. The decision, the idea and the action which follows through could be innovative, brave, new but it needs to have its reasons in the dark alleys of the history. It is a great advantage to Human beings that we have a sense of continuity from our times, our children's times to a history dating back to the first known human being who ever walked on this planet and told how his day went while sitting around the fire after a long hunt in the jungle.  Our history defines us as people. There