I grew up in a country that thrived with diversity. I grew up in a country where we were taught to accept diversity of cultures, languages, religions as a normal way of life. The phrase used was ‘Unity in Diversity’. Of course, there were many issues in a country that was fairly young — bled anaemic by the greed of[Read More…]
Review by Mitali Chakravarty of Sanjay Kumar’s Performing, Teaching and Writing Theatre: Exploring Play, published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing About a hundred years ago, Tagore had tried to close social gaps with his work in Sriniketan. He had tried to bridge the chasm that separated ‘villagers’ with no access to technology and education and the ‘town dwellers’ with access to[Read More…]
As the war in Ukraine completes a year, different scenarios are being painted by different media. There can be no denial about the large-scale destruction of life, resources and environment, despite pacifist movements, despite the reality of climate change, despite the huge suffering of people. There were those who tried to continue in Ukraine, not just as soldiers but as[Read More…]
February, the month of love, is now coloured by incarnadined cries from battlegrounds. Irrawaddy has turned red. Dneiper weeps ashes and blood. Yet, red roses will distribute love bought in supermarket splendour. Bombings in Beirut, Peshawar. Ring the bells for love till bombs are incapacitated to hate. This February, ring the bells. Lay red roses on graves[Read More…]
Do they have a choice — all these unfledged young hands that crumble under the weight of guns— not to fight a war that is not theirs? Could his army choose to disobey Sauron? The world watches as they decimate towns, cities, humans in the name of a cause that grew out of a debt-ridden soul, a[Read More…]
Ideas are hard to curb even if voices are silenced. Ideas will float in the air, waft on a sunbeam till they embed themselves in more minds. Ideas will find wedges in time and ride over tides of violence, intolerance forced silences and crimes. They will invade dreams till the magic of stardust blows sandstorms of love. [Read More…]
What songs can we sing for you O Mother, on this Earth Day? Intercontinental missiles fly. You lie wounded by bombs. Wombs emptied into tombs of soldiers weep, decimated by the monsters of war. What songs can we sing for you O Mother, on this Earth Day? We should have sung of flowing fields, and waving trees[Read More…]
Long, long ago — a very clichéd way to start a narrative — but none the less, long ago, I remember there was a time when my grandfather would graft roses in his garden in Delhi. White and red were his favourite combination. Eventually, the roses would blend together to become a pink. Some would retain their shades distinctly, but[Read More…]
Let us write poetry in memory of peace. Let us write poetry of love in times of war. Erasing the anger, the hate, let us sing love songs for skies without warplanes, horizons without clouds of mushrooms. Let us with love deluge, fill human hearts with hope for the war to end, an ability to transcend walls drawn by[Read More…]
Stretching far beyond the distant horizons is a mountain where trod the gods on their way to heaven, where mankind prayed for redemption, for a broader vision, for union with universal, infinite energies. The peaks tower snow white — stretch out an awning. Long ago, these were not there. The ranges birthed as two ancient land masses embraced. [Read More…]
“Oddly enough, it (potato) was introduced to the Himalayas by two Irishmen, captain Young of Dehra and Mussoorie and captain Kennedy of Simla, in the 1820s. The slopes of Young’s house, ‘Mullinger’, were known as his Potato Farm. Looking up old books, I was surprised to learn that the potato wasn’t known in India before the nineteenth century, and now[Read More…]
Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori* It is never sweet to die. Death ends all. There is no sweetness in dying. Sweetness is only for the living. Is there a Heaven? Was there ever a Heaven? Or, is this all a make- believe by those who seek the ultimate gift from mankind, their lives, to perpetrate hate and[Read More…]
The climate is changing. Clouds thunder protests for trees turned to paper. Lightnings throw bolts on vehicle-filled roads. Viruses clog veins with fear, fear of what is to come. Life as we knew is threatened. Poppies whisper from weapon strewn fields: No point complaining. The climate is changing. The climate is changing. Ice caps are melting. Floods[Read More…]
Let us go there, you and I, hoping chocolates fall from the sky. Let us go into a hilly terrain, where flows the ancient Amu Darya, where Marco Polo watched sheep graze on the grass of Pamirs. Do they still browse or is it tamam shud with a rat-a-tat-tat? Has the river turned red? Incarnadined, gaze ghosts unwounded[Read More…]
Is this climate change? I asked as rains lashed out. Oh, that is a subject for experts, the bald man with a goatee said. We stood on the clouds and watched the water slowly submerge — seeping through the marshes rising, rising till it covered the fields, the houses. The cattle — did they swim? The cats and dogs?[Read More…]
Some countries are in shambles. Some countries are in a wreck — war torn, poverty-ridden, divided deeply from the world where such expressions are only hyperboles and not a reality. The major war in these fortunate parts of the world currently is mainly with the pandemic. These nations still have the bandwidth to explore how to make more money and[Read More…]
The pain of man wrings stories of pain from my pen I cannot write of happiness as the world weeps, weeps on pyres and graves with smoke spiralling up the scape; as bodies in desecration lie in bags and cardboard boxes; as democracy asserts amidst the chaos of dead bodies and unsensitised souls that have lost their conscience[Read More…]
To care, Nurture and Cherish till Death do us part — A day to celebrate the Fecundity Fertility and the Rites of the passage of Time. Make the Earth Green again. In darkness bathed, Starlight speckles out a Welcome — to the distant Nebulae that stream across the skies Celebrating the dimming of electric lights. Today,[Read More…]
Defaced by a virus, the Earth stands all alone. Humanity — will it survive the crackling of the coronal core? Write, write of the masked men. Faces forgotten. Lipsticks abandoned. How long will it last? Few frightened haggard monied move towards an exodus to Mars. Waterlogged, virus-worn stands the home, the hearth. Frightening in desolation, abandoned. But what[Read More…]
“…the destruction of what you people call evil, is less just and desirable than the conversion of this evil into what you call good…” — The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov We play with the colours of dawn, spraying the world with spring, with happiness, with birds that are willing to sing. Liturgies lace our lives with absolutes.[Read More…]
Left and Right. The witch finder’s army hunts each night. In stealth, the army seeps prowls, creeps under floorboards. The army, hooded and masked, takes tiny ants to task when they bite. Each bite costs the ant its Life. The witch finder’s army parades, drills. You better take sides. If you are not Left or Right, you[Read More…]
The tree, shimmering in a puddle, ripples as a bird pauses for a drink. The sun peeps from behind the grey lined with silver. The river mirrors the sky replete with clouds and sunshine. Water drifts over a lifetime spanning your story and mine — narratives of our Times, of an eon that sweeps the Earth, mankind’s own[Read More…]
An online conversation with Avik Chanda, the best-selling author of Dara Shukoh: The Man Who Would Be King While we grapple in the throes of not just the pandemic but worldwide disruptions of democratic traditions, protests gone awry and a questioning of divisions that deepen rifts among humans, perhaps it is time to explore more syncretic lore in history and to[Read More…]
kitnaa hai badnasiib zafar dafan ke liye do gaz zamiin bhii na milii kuu-e-yaar men Exiled in Rangoon in the colonial British India, the last Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar wrote these lines, which expresses regret for the fact that he was not allowed a burial in his own beloved country. Used emblematically as the figurehead for the 1857 revolt,[Read More…]
Freedom — All the while, they talk of freedom. What has freedom rendered them? Has it given them the ability to soar? To fly? Has it given voice to their inner souls? Has it helped them rise? Has it got rid of diseases? Has it got rid of prisons that bar the mind — of human constructs[Read More…]
‘Follow your dreams and don’t be frightened of orthodoxy’ A woman who at eighty-eight brought out her autobiography based on the urgings of among others, Alice Walker, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Colour Purple , and Doris Lessing, the Nobel Laureate — only much later. Like Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, her biography is called The Brass Notebook. Does it talk anti-war or feminism or[Read More…]
A woman who weaves stories from the past, from history, from what has been and makes them so real that they become a part of ones’ own existence – this has been my experience of Dr Aruna Chakravarti and her writing. A winner of the Sahitya Akademi award for her translation of Sarat Chandra’s Srikanta, Vaitalik award and Sarat Puraskar, Chakravarti was[Read More…]
With the farmers marching out to demand their rights in India, with more consciousness of the need to close gaps between the privileged and non-privileged worldwide, with climate crisis becoming a major force to redefine our thinking, perhaps the time has come to rethink how literature can be moulded to serve the needs of the masses. That we wake up[Read More…]
Aysha Baqir, an expat in Singapore, grew up in Pakistan. Her time in college sparked a passion for economic development. In 1998 she founded a pioneering not for profit economic development organization, Kaarvan Crafts Foundation, with a mission to alleviate poverty by providing business and marketing training to girls and women in low-income communities. Her novel Beyond the Fields was published in[Read More…]
“It has often been said that the only thing that could unite mankind was a threat from space.” I read this in Arthur C Clarke’s novel, 2061, Odyssey Three. The threat in Clarke’s science fiction was a second star — which mankind renamed Lucifer but was actually Jupiter set ablaze by superior space engineering by an intelligent species far more[Read More…]
Teresa Rehman is a journalist with a difference. She is woman who feels and conquers with her pen. She does not hanker for anything more than being the spokesperson for voices in the remote areas of North-eastern India. In that spirit, she started her own magazine: The Thumb Print, and also wrote a couple of books which have found their way[Read More…]
The mass migrants to Mars stood poised to take their first step. The Red Planet crimsoned further by the blood of scientists who realised the vision of a musky monied man odoured with fame, made into godhead. Out of deep freeze, led by the god who saved them, stood more monied men. They had left a planet in turmoil.[Read More…]
I watch with my lips sealed Watch each girl burn burn the stains of Predators’ Hands till their life is done I watch with my ears closed Watch rancid hands leap and lustfully Immolate last night’s Fun Clear the mess. The job is done. Unemployed, porn-ridden mobiles watch, watch with closed eyes the horror, horror of a life[Read More…]
Rome burnt as Nero* played the fiddle. Fiery flames walk highways, creep into homes, stalking, burning, killing not only coronal heat but hearths. Inflamed by the surreptitious smoke seeping under the smouldering trees, breeze rips incensing fierce fires that unquenched swallow clean air and belch apocalyptic hellish skies. Did Nero build palaces by burning Rome? I[Read More…]
Forgotten souls that weep for an Unfinished dream, for a life Half-lived that ended in an agony of twin blasted Implosions. Forgetting the past — Al Qaeda Osama the terror the horror of tumbling towers the cries that pierced the silences of death and yet triumphing Arabian perfumes silver bricks Clear the stench of corpses, Wars for Holy[Read More…]
Why does Hate extend her reign? Why do divides raise ugly sides? When will mankind unite? Casteist fervour, abhorrence and race Manmade borders that breaches create, tolerance break, love annihilate, rancours breed Marginalised, classified — we still remain broken, fragmented with spite When can love colour all our kind? There is no North, no[Read More…]
Cats came into Preeti’s life long before camels, around the time cows found a way out of her heart but into her life. She had seen cows ever since she could remember…while riding horse driven tongas in Haridwar in 1970s, creating traffic jams in Delhi, Haridwar, Kolkata, Dehradun, Lucknow and wherever she happened to visit in India. From long before[Read More…]
The best introduction to Kathleen Burkinshaw is that she a humanitarian. She wrote a novel that has been taken up by The United Nations as a part of its peacekeeping effort. She has been actively participating in efforts to ban nuclear weapons, including presenting with Nobel Laureates. Kathleen Burkinshaw, the author of The Last Cherry Blossom, a book that is in[Read More…]
A 40 kg silver brick overrides the threat of the grim Saffron coronal rim that explodes in the stomach of a fever-ravaged populace Hunger floods the Green challenging it to celebrate internecine borders crimsoned by the wheel, the sickle, the crescent Hatred bubbles under hooded jobless seekers of truth. Jails clang with differences between Left and Right. [Read More…]
Did the caveman laugh? Did he have a toothache? The cheering thing for him would have been, he would not have to visit a dentist. Or, is that a cheering thought for me? And he would continue in pain while his tooth rotted and fell! And mine gets pulled out or repaired by a dentist peering into my numb anaesthetised[Read More…]
Was Ram a Nepali, Indian or Thai Or was he from Indonesia? Celebrated worldwide human rights The story trumpeted with fanfare as Ravana inflamed burns evils to ashes and dust Exquisite dances with long- nailed grace Or wayang kulit puppets elaborate stories of a hero blue coloured ruler of democrats that to appease his protectorate questioned[Read More…]
Can you interview an online site? You can’t. So, I did the next best thing. I interviewed Binu Mathew, the man behind the award-winning million readers a month or three million-page views a month online journal, Countercurrents. Mathew claims this is not a big thing except that his journal is based on ideology and openness. He calls it a “people’s journal”[Read More…]
Am I white, black, purple or pink? Names given by mankind to diverse reflections of light Names given to create borders between colours Colours earlier that rainbow spelt Now lead only to bloodshed, violence, gore, hatred. Where is the love that Lalon sang? Where is the note that played on the flute harmonising black with[Read More…]
Where were we one hundred years ago? Mankind was out of caves long ago and Asia was learning lessons from colonials about drawing boundaries. Colonialism was still an accepted way of life — it was twenty-five years before a nuclear bomb condemned fascist aspirations in history. Historically, India was in the middle of the Non-cooperation and Khilafat movements. USA was[Read More…]
On the edge of annihilation, a tiny virus rimmed by an aging sun draws on the sap of bread earned by man The conquistador of Nature, the hunter, the seeker — all have stopped The seller sadly winds his words in a lonely home Television sets blare old shows Man depressed into unrest slowly crawls towards the rim[Read More…]
Dustin Pickering in conversation with Mitali Chakravarty He talks of love and religion and writes poetry that is often critiqued by some as similar to verses from the past. And his role model is from the Renaissance — Michelangelo. To some, he is a loyal friend in need, a person who whips up essays and articles on demand. He is[Read More…]
Sometimes, One needs to get away from the torrid darkness of words. A darkness that annihilates. Swirling, twirling a blackness laced with blood, anger, hate Marginalised — Sometimes from a brutal knee Sometimes a mob or a bloody bullet kiss — Violent Death Drops in the ocean connect all lands called continents Mourning Mothers’[Read More…]
How many people cried? How many people died? Sunderbans submerged Nearly five thousand starved Will they die of Corona Hunger or Amphan? And the animals? Biodiversity Day — what happened to them? Lakeside Gardens No water No electricity No internet Poles broken Cars shattered Distress, distress, distress. The cities are all in a mess! In Sunderban, Do they have access[Read More…]
Mutiu Olawuyi in conversation with Mitali Chakravarty He is a maker of dreams for writers – a man who believes in dreams that are woven in words and multimedia across the world. He connects writing with multimedia, not just by writing and YouTube screenings but also by putting upcoming writers on his television show to battle out challenging questions about how[Read More…]
Was Man made for Money? Was Money made for Man? On which side lies the land What is the truth? Did Man for Money walk straight — From Ape to Homo Habilis 2.8 million years ago? Where was the Money, the Economy? And then came Homo Sapiens — smart, intellectual, established Money, Capitalism, Communism, Socialism, all the isms that divide[Read More…]
To dream of uniting mankind, pieced and classified into multiple nations, religions, sects and sub sects is a mammoth, impractical and ideologically impossible task — but this time a little virus has taken it on and united us with its virulence. It was interesting to come across an imagined interview with the virus, in which the interviewer questioned the virus[Read More…]
I have to admit I suffer from acute katsaridaphobia — My Kastaridaphobia is stronger than my fear of COVID19 or cows. While COVID is being kept at bay with isolation, masks, lockdowns and quarantines and cows can be kept at bay by gates in India and can only be seen in restricted areas in Singapore, creatures that cause Katsaridaphobia cannot[Read More…]
Stay Safe. Stay Home. The birds flew home. They had nests. Stay Safe. Stay Home. But, men? Did all men have a place to stay? A place they could rest? A place that housed their beds? “1.6 billion worldwide lack adequate housing”. Stay Safe. Stay Home. A place that shelters them from Death by[Read More…]
In the 1990s, the three Cs — credit card, condo, car — defined “status” among the bourgeoisie. Now, another C has overtaken all the three Cs, the Big C — Corona. A tiny virus has brought mankind to its knees with all kinds of stories, rumours and the threat of depleted numbers and economies. As with anything big, many narratives[Read More…]
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…]
From the womb of the Earth, She rose — Fiery, like the volcanic core, unfolding each limb. soaring, phoenix like, from the ash left behind out of the gore the rotting Core of the Death Sun. Cremation smoke. From the womb of the Earth She rose — Death crept. Silenced factory smoke. She strode[Read More…]
Marginalised? Who said we are marginalised? We are humans walking side by side. Women, Men and Children Dalits, Tribals and the Abused — Who said we are different? Who said that Woman is born of Man’s rib? Who said caste is by God writ? Who said women cannot enter temples or mosques? Who said Menstruation[Read More…]
I have seen the world recede behind the trees; the world that was for you and me — a vibrant blue world, dotted with green, swirls of ocean and breeze painted by Van Gogh — A Starry Night, and then came a tsunami that wiped it all from site. A fakir overnight, as Lalan, I sing afloat in space[Read More…]
We see And yet we will see — The war clouds turn the sky aflame The razing ground do much the same Neanderthals died of unknown cause Homosapiens crossed a borderless world. Civilisation spread Nuclear Armament Bloodied wars Unhouse the ones who read Shroud them Beat them till they bleed Only one can lead[Read More…]
Rapes — How many a day? How many a week? How many a year? The victim stays till Doused with kerosene and burnt The victim stays till Pelted with stones and killed The victim stays till Lynched by mobs to death Twelve or twenty-three, What was their fault? Being a woman? Beasts drawn by untasted flesh Tempted by images drawn[Read More…]
Do these women have rights? These women who break rocks These women who carry bricks These women who in Temples please Gods What Gods? Devdasis? Can they Me Too? Farmers’ wives, sweepers, Women who clean dirt From homes and yet Live in dirt themselves. Women who could not go to school Can they Me Too? Women who remain Unlettered, Unfed,[Read More…]
Oh house of Gods! Oh house of Gods! Temples or Mosques Churches or Synagogues Displaced they stand— A black stone Rectangle or phallic Does it matter? In streams refugees pour out Bloodshed, Gore Hatred and More More and More Ring- a- round the roses Pocketful of doses You think when they Burnt, Singed, they would have learnt Flames should be[Read More…]
Children in unison rise Crying for the ultimate reprise. Bus fares hike Water jets strike Murderers walk free The land is no longer safe Asperger bound The world round Children protest In anger and unrest Where do they stand? Why have they become the voice of The angry clans? Why is it they scream In angst against the regime? Why[Read More…]
Oh, how weeps Mother Earth! Near her toes, the forests burn. Animals in death throes churn. Sumatran anacondas die. Smoke blinds the eye. Hazy skies, poison air People choke. Life comes to a halt. Brazil, her lungs they say, Now fiery flames breathe. With so much smoke, Will Mother Earth choke? Oh, how weeps Mother Earth! Young blood is spilt[Read More…]
Amazon burns Each flame licks a life Each ember leads to strife How will man survive? From the meat roasted by the flames That rise as if from Earth’s insides? The birds that no longer fly Lie roasted, toasted, drained of colour. The brilliant macaw with its plumes of blue and yellow, The golden monkey that leaps from tree to[Read More…]
Celebrate, Celebrate the Independence Day While Munch-like screams explode Like fireworks lighting the night sky Silent, vociferous, full of angst Unable to speak Bleak, bleak, bleak. Oh, the cruelty of life! The anger and strife Guernica revisited each time. This is not just about soldiers who die. But about all those who silently cry For a dozen different whys? A[Read More…]
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Tackling Global Emergencies – UN International Day of Peace 
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International Day of Peace: Fostering Harmony and Unity in a World of Diversity 
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My Amma (Malayalam word for Mother) passed away on August 22, 2023 at 3.10 AM. It is always difficult to deal with the passing of a parent, that too one’s mother. I thought the grief would go away. No it didn’t. All those bitter sweet memories won’t go away. At night I lie awake for hours. My friend, guide and[Read More…]
