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Malgudi Days: A Journey Through India’s Heartbeat
For those who have ambled along the winding streets of literature, coming across R.K. Narayan’s Malgudi Days is like stumbling upon a hidden Indian café that serves the finest blend of chai — aromatic, invigorating, and deeply satisfying. Why, you might ask, should one dive into the tales of a fictional town set in the… Read more
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A Therapeutic Conversation with Our Surroundings
We may not always realise, but our surroundings are constantly trying to talk to us. They are telling us what they think, how they feel. One place might say: I care more about cars than about you; I care a lot about advertising, so I am going to make you look at a huge sign… Read more
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Padmavat (Part Two): Parrot Hiramani Goes to King Ratan Sena
In the first part of our Padmavat series, we discussed the life of Princess Padmavati in Lanka. Now, let’s travel all the way to Chittaur, which is in Rajasthan (India). Ratan Sena was born in the lineage of Chitra Sena, after whom the city of Chitrapur or Chittaur was named. Coming to our story, around… Read more
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Padmavat (Part One): Princess Padmavati and the Parrot Hiramani
Padmavat is an epic poem written in the Awadhi language by a Sufi poet Malik Muhammad Jayasi in 1540. A famous piece of Sufi literature from the period, it relates an allegorical story about the desire of three different kings for its central character, Padmavati. In the next few posts, I will be briefly narrating the… Read more
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Love in the Times of Shakespeare and Kalidasa
Kalidasa, the classical Sanskrit poet, is often referred to as the Shakespeare of India. While it offends a certain passionate section of Indians who insist on using the title the other way around (calling Shakespeare the Kalidasa of England), it also tempts one to make a comparison between the two great poets. Rabindranath Tagore did… Read more
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Indian Paintings: How to See, Understand and Reflect on Them
When a subject perceives an object, the experience of it not only depends on the qualities of the object but on the state of the mind of the subject too. The ancient Indian sages elucidated this point beautifully using the metaphor of a mountain lake. The clear still water of a mountain lake reflects the… Read more
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