A Voice for the Anthropocene
ChrestomatherBecause of my recently-concluded lecture series at the University of Chicago the Anthropocene has been much on my mind of late. It was serendipitous then that I happened to read Swimmer…
Some Recent Reading Recommendations
Elena Ferrante: The Days of Abandonment (Penguin, 2005): A novel of extraordinary power, written in a voice that is at once lucid and half-crazed with rage; the words explode…
Yangon’s ‘Kachin Land Traditional Restaurant’
The Jing Hpaw Myay Restaurant (or Kachin Land Traditional Restaurant) is in Sanchaung Township, close to the Myay Ni Ghone neighbourhood of…
Gandhi urged to make common cause with China on opium
My old friend, Ramachandra Guha, was kind enough to send me a copy of a letter that he found in Correspondence File No. 19 of the Gandhi Papers in…
Sleepwalking towards Disaster
Over the last couple of decades, largely because of changes in technologies of communication, the political sphere has become larger and more intrusive than ever before. The digital media…
Fractal buckwheat
As I've written elsewhere, what daffodils were to V.S. Naipaul, frangipanis were to me: As a child, while reading 'The Mutiny on the Bounty' I'd been fascinated by the…
The Psychological Effects of Partition: a letter from a reader
26 Oct 2014 Dear Amitav Ghosh, Sir,I am writing fan mail - for the first time as a a woman just turned fifty. The Hungry Tide is probably one…
Kolkata’s Once and Future Chinatown
Breakfast at the Sunday morning market in Chinatown is an old tradition in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta). Visitors have to be up early because the market's hours…
Prasenjit Duara’s ‘Crisis of Global Modernity’
Prasenjit Duara’s The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future (Cambridge University Press, 2015) is a wide-ranging overview of Asian environmental history…
Exodus from Burma, 1941-42; a Memoir by Captain Nadir S. Tyabji: Part 12
Troops of 11th East African Division on the road to Kalewa, Burma, during the Chindwin River crossing. By this time the DC had become a…