"(In our times) Extreme manipulation of desires, private and collective, has become fine and fatal … economic powers have installed a subtle slavery on the minds and bodies of men, women and children of all strata of societies … To write poetry is to defy that diktat,” says the eminent Gujarati scholar-poet
Sitanshu Yasashchandra in his conversation with
Manu Dash.
Listen to what young Iranian poet Maryam Ala Amjadi tells GSP Rao in her chat and to
KD Singh in his with Nilanshu Agarwal. Read too the touching tribute to
Sathara Malathy by fellow writer Latha
Ramakrishnan.
Reviewing Representing India: Cultures, Politics, and Identities Devika Sethi writes, “Debates form the core of this book: debates about Indian identity, the past and future forms of the state, the origin and usage of languages and literatures, the role of the media in reflecting and constructing society …”
In the section also read Rajni Singh’s review of Contemporary Indian English
Poetry.
R Vasundhara Devi’s short fiction Haseena, written a quarter century ago, dealt with dilemmas and differences in attitudes and social mores of the higher and lower classes. Much of what she wrote then is still relevant today. The story makes absorbing reading.
Also read interesting stories penned by Chandra Ghosh Jain, Gujarati writer
Nazir Mansuri (translated by Hemang Desai), V Jayalakshmi and
R Vijayaraghavan.
Read Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih’s delightful haiku from hilly North-East:
monsoon runnels on hill slopes—
city folk
rushing from office
We also present haiku of A Thiagarajan, Mukesh Williams and the Urdu haikuist
Sohail Ahmed Siddiqui. Also read the poetry of Akella Ratnam, Meena
Kandasami, Sanjukta Dasgupta, Thara Ganesan and Uddipana
Goswami. And Ambika Ananth offers her selections from the poems in Your
Space.
