Gatsby Meets Nietzsche on the Train to Town
“Time present and time pastAre both perhaps present in time futureAnd time future contained in time past.What might have been and what has beenPoint to one end, which is always…
Literary Musings
Musing on Gibran’s ‘A Poet’s Death is His Life’ and ‘Peter on the Neighbour’ in Trying Times
“Come, oh sweet Death, and deliver me from my neighbours who looked upon me as a stranger because I interpret to them the language of the angels. Hurry, oh peaceful…
The Parable of Food
There once was a little fish that swam happily in the sea. One day the little fish met a bigger fish. And the Big Fish said to the Little Fish:…
Late Stage imperium: Darkness visible “I can’t go on…I’ll go on”
When I contemplate what the future holds, I see a darkness visible. An inferno of tragic fuckwit inflicted by the ambulatory head wounds known as the political and financial elite.…
Echoes of Resistance: Music and Poetry in the face of tyranny
Music and poetry have long been part of dissent, a tool of resistance, and an art form to express concerns, jubilation, remembrance, and heartbreaks. They are worthy forms of summation…
Anecdote, History and Kashmir
An anecdote is a concise, frequently personal narrative that communicates a certain point or idea. Anecdotes are frequently used to shed light on a person, location, or occasion and can…
India: Tagore’s Music in the midst of intolerance, fear, and insecurity
"Fear not, comes the message fromthe direction of the rising sun,Those that will givelife to the last throbwill diminish not, never." -Rabindranath Tagore On May 8th in 2011, on the occasion…
Manto and Chugtai: Smell, Dog, Quilt and so much more
“Two or three years after Partition, the governments of India and Pakistan decided that just as there had been a cordial exchange of prisoners, there should now be a similar…
The Unexpected
Despite calendars and clocks and all the mental gymnastics we use to control life and time, surprises are at the heart of existence. This may seem like a truism, but…
An Immense Hunger
Now that our revels are ended, the holiday celebrations and feasts, if one had them, just a dream melted into thin air, our hungers perhaps richly satiated temporarily or not,…
Reading Hardy’s “The Darkling Thrush” in New Year’s Eve
The poem runs: I leant upon a coppice gate When Frost was spectre-grey, And Winter's dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day. The…
How the Personal Becomes Political
Looking into the long reflecting pool of the past, I find myself wondering what it was that made me an activist against injustice. I was born in New York City’s…
Letter from a Feline Friend
Well, hello human! It's me, your feline friend, and I am here to school you on a thing or two today. You see, I've been observing you for a while…
Listening to the Silence with Don DeLillo
In 1997, Don DeLillo, the author of seventeen novels, published what many consider his masterpiece, Underworld. It was a prophetic book in many ways, especially with its focus on the…
Why we need a Bunker Roy in Literature?
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…
In cinema, naked feet are not assigned sounds, but they gain them in poems
It's better to stay away from poetics to present in prose someone who wrote in verse that his poems have no forewords, critical studies or words of adulation. My patron…
God’s Own Fools
These are all very Kolkatan in nature and you really won’t get to see or hear them in any other parts of the country. What? Some years back a national…
The Weeping Cherry Tree
Jamal Uddin had lived an ordinary and extraordinary life at the same time. His life story is about hard work, determination, and resilience in living the life of an immigrant…
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