Literary Trails
A.J. Thomas poet and former editor of Indian Literature of Sahitya Akademi introduces the reader to Assam’s well known poet Jiban Narah. Steeped in the culture of the Brahmaputra Valley Narah’s poetry is influenced by his Missing tribe identity but expands his poetic presence at the national level. …[Read More]…
Literary Trails
A mini-fiction pared down to a quiet gothic-horror by Jyothi A, a senior psychiatrist practising in London and translated from Malayalam by poet and translator, A.J. Thomas …[Read More]…
Literary Trails
Anubhav Tulasi’s poetry is suffused with the colour and odour of the Assamese soil and the sensibilities of the Assamese mind. He considers himself an Indian poet with his Assamese identity, intact A selection rendered from Assamese by various translators. …[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Thamizhachi Thangapandian’s view of the harmony in nature as part of her own internal ecosystem as well as the society’s collective heritage ensures that she does not alienate herself to gain perspective but unapologetically remains one with it. A. J. Thomas reviews her latest, translated by K.S. Subramanian…[Read More]…
Bookshelf
The Absent Color is an impossible invitation – difficult to accept and difficult to refuse; to ask questions and to be asked by questions in turn. a/nil is the poet of questions, whose songs are essentially cries in the wilderness, so that even stones lament, finds Saitya Brata Das.…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Raimundo Panikkar (November 02 1918-August 26 2010) of Indo-Spanish descent was a theologian whose views on religion, the relationship between the divine and the human, on pluralism particularly, need to be studied for us to cope with the current narrow mindedness and toxicity. James L. Fredericks*
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Bookshelf
The most militaristic power on the planet goes unchecked by a population indifferent to the destruction it causes around the globe and within. Joan Roelofs attempts an answer to this manufactured consent/indifference. Reviewed by Manali Chakrabarti…[Read More]…
Literary Trails
All his life Jayant Mahapatra (1928-August 2023) tried hard to maintain a proper ecology in his linguistic environment, to keep alive what is essentially humane and aesthetic from erosion and obliteration. Poet and teacher Anamika pays tribute to this ‘Good Samaritan’ and his Inscape or moral geography.…[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Shruti Kapila’s groundbreaking work Violent Fraternity… embodies a major history of the evolution of foundational Indian political thought that shaped the country’s modernity. Ganeshdatta Poddar reviews …[Read More]…
Bookshelf
In February 2019, Harmony Siganporia walked from Dandi to Ahmedabad, retracing the route of Gandhi’s Salt March of 1930 in reverse. In the process, the author explores explores the story of modern Gujarat, tracing the contours of the state’s seismic shift towards vikas and modern ‘Hindutva’. Harsh Sethi reviews…[Read More]…
Literary Trails
A short fiction by Mridula Garg, rendered into English by Pooja Sancheti that opens the doors to differing perceptions on life-expectations, and nature’s vicissitudes leading up to a denouement that reflects the whimsical nature of male behaviour …[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Sami Ahmad Khanoffers a critical reading of Indian Science Fiction (ISF) based on mythology (M), ideology (I) and technology (T) that shape it and its fictional re-imaginings as an alternative to a male Eurocentric perspective of the genre. …[Read More]…
Visual Spaces
Thallumaala is an action-comedy film loaded with ‘a string/chain of fights’. Izza Ahsan reads the film dominated by the male gaze, against prevailing hyper-masculinity and homoeroticism. What does a film fuelled by testosterone with a female face that has very little to do with the plot, add up to?…[Read More]…
That’s Life!!!
IIn this age of power politics that breeds delusions and falsehoods we dance to the roiling chants of communal hatreds and war, stripped of all humanity, Mohandas K.Gandhi, appears with a lantern. Do we see him asks Ashoak Upadhyay. …[Read More]…
Literary Trails
China recently announced it would forgive 23 interest-free loans to 17 African countries and redirect $10 billion of its IMF reserves to nations on the continent in addition to a series of cancellations and restructuring of debt in Africa between 2000 and 2019. This disproves the West’s accusations of China’s ‘debt-trap diplomacy’ says Ben Norton …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
The new environmentalism in the form of ‘Deep Ecology’, very closely mirrors Gandhi’s philosophy. Thomas Weber analyzes the Mahatma’s contribution to the intellectual development of Arne Naess, arguing that an informed study of ‘deep ecology’ and particularly the philosophy of Naess, should go back to Gandhi for a fuller picture.…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Paul Schwartzentruber, a Canadian pays tribute to “one of the great blessings of my life that I encountered and then came to know—even though in my later years—Dr. S. Jeyapragasam”. JP, for the author, a seeker, “was not just a ‘Gandhian’ in the loose way that iconic metaphor is still tossed around in India. He embodied, like a true disciple, the values, sympathies and beliefs in human self-transformation that Gandhi himself had embodied.” …[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road, a tale of cross-country treks, jazz joints, and midnight meditations, has been continuously in print since 1957. Kerouac, has however been criticized, among other things, as being incapable of producing a well-crafted sentence, let alone quality literature. Matt Theado contests this view. Curated by Jennie Skerl…[Read More]…
Personal Notes
Mayank Bhatt explores coping with emotional desolation and economic destitution, the causes of pain, and sadness in this last essay in the series of his journey as a cancer patient that began mid-2020…[Read More]…
Personal Notes
Paul Zacharia’s ribald remembrance of college in Mysore where he arrives from his small village in Kerala armed with a ‘sin-agenda’ and injected with the ‘alien seed’ of literature that would inch him closer to his literary vocation ..[Read More]…
Personal Notes
On October 09 2017, V.C. Harris, polymath literary critic. translator social activist and teacher-mentor met with a fatal accident. His students, poets A.J. Thomas, S. Jospeh and translator-critic Cheri Jacob K. pay tributes. ..[Read More]…
Bookshelf
A.J. Thomas reviews Tea: A Concoction of Dissonance by poets P. Ahilan and Geetha Sukumaran and artist Vaidekhi who create poem-pictures of tea-meditations in this bi-lingual compilation translated by Vidhya Sreenivasan. …[Read More]…
Literary Trails
This collection of emails between Asif Raza, poet, essayist and M. U. Memon, literary critic, essayist and editor is a dialogic feast of literary influences that shaped them and an ode to friendship. …[Read More]…
Why The Beacon? The Beacon is a web-based only feature magazine of writing and reading (long-form essays, fiction and poetry) that believes in confluences more than in consensus. The Beacon …[Read in full]…
Literary Trails
Hindi poet Anamika interlaces themes of politics, society and domesticity in her poems, five from her first published collection in English and the rest from a forthcoming one. All translations by Vinita Sinha …[Read More]…
Personal Notes
Critiquing mainstream education as the legacy of the dismissal of colonized people as incapable of culture and epistemic pursuits, Sayan Dey casts around for alternatives he calls Pedagogy of the Stupid. …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
The insurrection by Trump’s supporters January 6th at the US Capitol building was viewed as an attack on the most ‘sacred’ site in USA. Laurie L. Patton deconstructs this idea to ask: who belongs in these buildings? …[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Awakening from the illusions of imaginary utopias promised by ‘historical Time’ Ashoak Upadhyay avers can help us discover the book of an expansive Present with no beginning or end.
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Literary Trails
After a dry spell and in the midst of a spiritual journey, poetry happens to A.J. Thomas as manifestations of the Great Mother explode in his consciousness.…[Read More]…
That’s Life!!!
The pandemic has not socially distanced us; social media had already started our self- isolation and it will do so even more in this age of the emoji says Ashoak Upadhyay in this fourth part of the Lives We Lead series.…[Read More]…
Literary Trails
Poet and translator A.J. Thomas meditates on the delights of fish eating and wonders about sardines in Sardinia …[Read More]…
Literary Trails
Poet A. J. Thomas turns his gaze to the city he didn’t want to love, did when he was away from it even though “It’s at once like an ocean that throws up/ Everything it takes in, and like a volcano/ That consumes anything thrown in” …[Read More]…
Between the Lines
Lokmanya Tilak’s death centenary (August 01) and the end of the annual celebratory Ganesh Chaturthi procession he launched prompts Mayank Bhatt to re-visit that leader’s shifting stances and his role as ‘nationalist’ leader. …[Read More]…
Literary Trails
Born in Kerala, poet and translator A.J. Thomas evokes a bond with the heart of Bengal in this poetic memoir, fusing the personal and the physical, seeking amidst its squalor and hopelessness “a familiar wag of humanity’s tail”.…[Read More]…
Between the Lines
In this first of a four part series on the lives we lead, Ashoak Upadhyay untangles the web of illusion obscuring the pivot on which mainstream media turns: a neo-liberal nationalist-statist iniquitous order. …[Read More]…
Personal Notes
Two poets discuss life and letters creating an aura of magic with words in conversations without maps. Time stands still as Shamsur Rahman Faruqi and Asif Raza engage with each other creating a dialogic musicality. …[Read More]…
Between the Lines
A wide spectrum of opinion admits the coronavirus pandemic is exposing inequality and poverty in stark terms. But its management (or lack of it) will do more says Ashoak Upadhyay.…[Read More]…
Literary Trails
Geetha Sukumaran, poet and translator blurs boundaries in her poems to negotiate multiple identities; diasporic Indo-Canadian, career woman and diverse inheritances of Western and a glorious Tamil women-poets’ tradition. …[Read More]…
That’s Life!!!
Both Aldous Huxley and George Orwell, authors of novels about dystopic futures penned thoughts on Gandhi that reflect their own visions of possible freedoms from the worlds they had created. …[Read More]…
Bookshelf
In this age of power politics that breeds delusions and falsehoods we dance to the roiling chants of communal violence, stripped of all humanity. Mahatma Gandhi,appears with a lantern,the last man standing in this bleeding darkness says Ashoak Upadhyay. …[Read More]…
Personal Notes
Never before has India witnessed such an “Organization of Hatreds” targeting minorities and the questioning, disobedient mind. Writers across languages and genres appeal for change. …[Read More]…
That’s Life!!!
The ‘iron cage’ of rationality, utility and control has stripped learning of creativity, Ananda and the play of imagination says Ashoak Upadhyay. And yet, in this ‘nullity’ you can hear voices of resistance and recovery as wisdoms of alternative futures.…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Our age is so deeply immersed in politics that we no longer have agency in the satisfaction of even our instincts and spiritual desires says Varis Alavi. In such an age what should the artist/writer do? …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Both Marx and Gandhi critiqued capitalism. Both advocated “socialism.” But for Marx it was predicated on the seizure of power and enhancement of modernity. For Gandhi it was built upon an ethical need for Swaraj and a non-hierarchical stateless society, says K.P. Shankaran, in which the individual’s freedom imprisoned by consuming modernity is restored. …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Historians have critiqued the assumed universality of western categories in explaining south Asian history; yet none have applied the notion of “difference” to Gandhi’s discourse of freedom. Mithi Mukherjee finds it differed, radically, from western notions of freedom: and, it had roots in the Indic tradition of renunciation. …[Read More]…