A literary memoir on the raptures of discovering Urdu literature, this lyrical essay is the Pakistani-born, London-based writer’s eloquent and poignant testament of the mysterious and plural ways in which reading shapes one’s creative writing. The essay mentions the range of narrative techniques and aesthetic refinements of Urdu literature that has, for centuries, flown alongside the river of rasa explorations.
The story of Nala and Damayanti is an integral part of the Indian narrative repertoire. It is a story of love, of desire and temptation, of separation and diguise, of faith and spiritual evolution, of struggle and transcendence of misfortune.
In this incisive essay poet Robin Ngangom delineates the terrain of poetry in English in the long troubled Northeast. The textures and tensions of singing a variegated land and its diverse peoples—whose gods are also living hills and streams but who often face shades of discrimination from the centers of power in India—makes for vivid and necessary reading. This is a narrative of rupture and rapture, resistance and suffering and renewal.
The incredible diversity of cultural practice and the bewildering plurality of aesthetic style and sensibility across South Asia might presuppose an indecipherable state of ongoing chaos. But there is, possibly, an invisible thread, an intangible pattern and purpose running through it.
Philosophy
‘Creation myths’, basically stories and lore that explain how the world and life began, are universal, and diverge across states, countries, indigenous communities, and even religions such as Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. In fact, to paraphrase Levi-Strauss, we may not even realise the impact they have on our minds without our being aware of it. Sahapedia explores the significance of creation myths in tradition (Photo Source: Pixabay)
Hind Swaraj shows that Mahatma Gandhi's sense of Indian civilisational ethos draws from both the literary canon and oral folklore. Gandhi in this little booklet combines his cultural, political, and economic ideas succinctly.
