The Well-Traveled Banyan: 2 of 2
ChrestomatherBanyan, 18th century, Victoria and Albert Museum The robes known as 'banyans' were not the only garments of that name in the 18th and 19th…
The Well Traveled Banyan: 1 of 2
No garment lies closer to the heart of the Indian male than the banyan.¶ Yet, despite its hundreds of millions of adherents, the ubiquitous undervestment of the…
Letters from Venice
Dear Mr Ghosh, I honestly "discovered your name" only few weeks ago, just by and for a lucky casuality. While walking in front of bookshop window, a…
Armenian retreats
In 301 C.E. Armenia became the first kingdom to adopt Christianity as the religion of the realm. This history has endowed the country…
‘Crossing the Bay of Bengal’ with Sunil S. Amrith
Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants Sunil S. Amrith (to be published by Harvard University Press in the fall of…
‘Sea of Poppies’ in Chinese/Memories of Hangzhou
'Sea of Poppies' has just been published in Chinese, by the publishing house Shanghai 99. The translators are Dr Guo Guoliang and Dr Li Yao. …
Yet another Indian First World War memoir found!
A couple of weeks ago Murali Ranganathan wrote to let me know that he had found a First World War memoir in Gujarati (see my post of Oct 15…
Can people from the past ‘channel’ themselves into contemporary fiction?
'Tell me whom you haunt,' André Breton famously said, 'and I'll tell you who you are.' It's always disconcerting when a character or a scene in a novel turns…
Europe and the Fate of the Earth – Part 7 of 7
Where then can leadership on climate change come from? It is clear that it will come neither from the United States nor from 'emergent nations' like India, China and…
Europe and the Fate of the Earth – Part 6 of 7
For a century the West has held up its way of life as the standard of living to be aspired to by everybody. It was assumed that the…