Rupture and Rapture The processes of creativity fascinate me as much as the act of writing itself. What are the transformations occurring in the writer’s imagination and persona that make for a spell of writing? How can this be sustained? Is there another, less explored aspect beyond or beneath the pull of creative expression that […]

The Impossibility of Translation Stammer is no handicap. It is a mode of speech. Stammer is the silence that falls between the word and its meaning, just as lameness is the silence that falls between the word and the deed. Did stammer precede language or succeed it? Is it only a dialect or a language […]

While both the title of the seminar and the concept note are slightly over-the-top for me, I wish to start by saying that in art and in literature, the self gets transmuted into the end product — poem, play, painting, sculpture — through the imagination. I am only stressing the obvious when I say that […]

Images and text from “On the Edge” – an exhibition of art from Far North Queensland, curated by Sasi Viktorie.

निराला का स्मरण मुश्किल है। उनकी स्मृति उनकी उपस्थिति की ही तरह मायावी है और पर्याप्त वैचारिक, कलात्मक, नैतिक और मानसिक दिक़्क़तें पेश करती हैं। मसलन यही दिक़्क़त कि वह स्मृति है या उपस्थिति, या यही कि निराला के प्रसंग में स्मृति और उपस्थिति का इतना स्याह-सफ़ेद विभाजन मुमकिन या जायज़ है। एक तरफ पाठ्यक्रमों-शोधों-अनुसंधानों-संस्थानों-समारोहों […]

Contemporary Italian critic and philosopher Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose is not a novel at all. In the modern period, there have been many novels which were claimed to be ‘non-novels’, but this particular novel does not belong to that category. It does not have any qualms about its being a novel, […]

A fool doesn’t like being called a fool. A mad man will call you mad if you call him mad. A villager will think you are insulting him if you call him a villager. A dog, a pig, or a donkey – surely they wouldn’t like being cursed by those names either? But call the […]

……जुबली सास्त्र नृपति बस नाहीं – गोस्वामी तुलसीदास …… हर पवित्र वस्तु जो अपनी पवित्रता बनाये रखना चाहती है, रहस्य में डूबी रहती है – स्टीफन मलार्मे अम्बर्टी इको (समकालीन इतालवी आलोचक, दार्शनिक)का उपन्यास द नेम ऑव्‌ द रोज उपन्यास नहीं है। आधुनिक युग में अनेक ऐसे उपन्यास लिखे गये हैं जिनको लेकर ”उपन्यास न […]

1. I wake up suddenly, as if after a long nightmare or dream. I cannot remember a thing. It is 5:30 in the morning and Bombay has just been through two days of furious rain. It is still raining, but gently now, like a balm to soothe the damage done. I fall out of bed […]

गार्सटिन बैसन रोड – अंग्रेज कलेक्टर के नाम रखी इस सड़क की ख्याति जी. बी. रोड के नाम से अधिक है। लाल किला, कुतुबमीनार, जंतर मंतर, चांदनी चौक, कनॉट प्लेस की तरह यह भी दिल्ली की पहचान का पुराना और अहम हिस्सा है। उसकी पुरानी रवायत का एक बदनाम सफा जिसके बारे में जानते तो […]