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Read Raymond Carver’s Short Stories
How should one read Raymond Carver’s short stories? Should one read them at all? Before we answer these questions, let’s try to understand the writer first. And before we understand the writer, let’s try to understand the man. When Raymond Carver was a little boy he was walking to school with a friend who got… Read more
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A Brief History of the Middle East (Part Two)
In the previous post we covered till around 1200 BC in the history of the Middle East. We learnt that Phoenicians escaped from Egypt and invaded the land of Canaan from the east. They seized Jericho and gradually subdued its settled population in the hills. But they had to contend with a new wave of… Read more
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Mandukya Upanishad: Four States of Consciousness
Upanishads are philosophical-religious texts for Hindus. The word Upanishad is generally translated as to “sit down closely” as one would to listen attentively to instruction by a teacher or other authority figure — which is how the education system worked in ancient India. There are more than a hundred Upanishads, of which ten (sometimes thirteen)… Read more
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A Brief History of News Media
It is difficult to pinpoint the exact starting point of the history of news media. Gossippers have existed ever since the first language arrived on the scene. In fact, gossip was one of the driving factors behind the evolution of language in human beings. Ibn Battuta, in his travel memoirs, tells us about some men… Read more
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A Brief History of the Middle East (Part One)
‘The Middle East’ is a modern English term for one of the most ancient regions of human civilisation. The history of the Middle East, therefore, is as old as our civilisation. But, before we go there, let’s just briefly talk about the term itself. Before and during the First World War, ‘the Near East’, which… Read more
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30-Year-Old Editorial Explains the Problems in Indian Secularism
India, to put the matter brusquely, has been a battleground between two civilisations (Hindu and Islamic) for well over a thousand years, and three (Hindu, Muslim and Western) for over two hundred years. None of them has ever won a decisive enough or a durable enough victory to oblige the other two to assimilate themselves… Read more
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