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Focus – Hindi-Urdu Literary Cultures

Feature - Indian Short Verse

GALLERY

In this section devoted to Arts, we present the inspired work of one of the most celebrated painters of India, Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906). He was the first to use modern, European style with great effect in paintings on Indian themes, particularly mythological. Here we have chosen paintings that show his visualisation of innate beauty of Indian women.

ARTICLES / DISCUSSIONS

In a free-wheeling discussion with Jaydeep Sarangi on her work, the noted Oriya writer Sarojini Sahoo says, “Unless a writer has entered into a character, he/she could not write about that character. The writer has to live inside the character and has to see the other from his side. So, in a sense, you can feel my presence, my feelings, and my experiences in my writings but on the other hand, they are never mine; they couldn’t be mine.”

The section also features musings of S Murali on Mahanadi and Fewzia Bedjaoui’s article on Meera Syal’s Anita and Me.

BOOK REVIEWS...

Reviewing This Gift of English, A Giridhar Rao writes, “In (British-)colonial and postcolonial India, English has been a critical “social and symbolic capital” in consolidating and challenging “hegemonies” – in arguing this, Alok Mukherjee's new book joins the already quite substantial body of writing on the place and role of English in India.”

Also featured are Ambika Ananth’s review of G Kameshwar’s Bend in the Sarayu and Sailen Routray’s analysis of Rabindra Swain’s two books of poetry.

FICTION...

The Flight is the story of a twenty-seven year old girl locked up in a hospital…only to be rudely and inhumanly treated…ostracized by society and given up by parents…see how it unfolds in the hands of her narrator Megha Subramanian…

Other fascinating short fictions included in this section are – Ashok Patwari’s Birdie, Come!, Ashutosh Ghildiyal’s Ghori and Barnali Saha’s The Headmaster. Read the absorbing tales of a headmaster, a retired Colonel and school children tackling the various emotional upheavals of life.

POEMS...

Read young, talented Shikha Gupta’s simple and charming poems. On the agonies left behind by Kargil war, she writes of a grieving mother –
When she lost three sons, oh so fine / In the year of nineteen ninety nine.
A sense of pride and sadness, still / Echoes loud, through memories of Kargil!

Also enjoy – K V Dominic, V Kondal Rao, Megha Subramanian, Nuggehalli Pankaja, M Poonkodi, Sanjukta Dasgupta, Sasenarine Persaud, Srilakshmi Adhyapak and Sudhir Garimalla. Selections from Your Space are by Ambika Ananth.