Angelo Ripellino’s ‘Magic Prague’
Chrestomather'Ancient folio of stone parchments, city-book in whose pages there is "still so much…
When The Rivers Run Dry
When The Rivers Run Dry is about water, especially fresh water – where it comes from, how it flows and what happens to it. The news is not…
Aatish Taseer’s ‘Stranger to History’
I met Aatish Taseer in New York last year, at the prize-giving ceremony of the National Book Awards of the USA …
Pankaj Mishra’s ‘From the Ruins of Empire’
A few weeks ago the Wall Street Journal (Asia) wrote to me asking for a short recommendation of a soon-to-be-published book. My pick was Pankaj Mishra's From the…
Turkish POWs in India and Burma: First World War – Part 2
Guest post by Vedica Kant: The Turkish POW camp at Sumerpur was a self-sufficient camp on a large plain bordered by rocky hills and intersected by a river…
Turkish POWs in India and Burma: First World War – Part 1
Guest post by Vedica Kant: A number of posts on this blog over the last few months have focussed on the experience of Indian soldiers and…
A Kolkata Tragedy
On Saturday, February 11, 2012, the Telegraph, a Kolkata daily, carried this report: The body of a Class XI student of La Martiniere for Boys was found in…
Letter from Guangzhou/Canton
'A Plan of the City of Canton and its Suburbs', 18th Century August 12, 2012 Dear Mr. Ghosh, After reading Sea of Poppies and River of Smoke…
Poem inspired by ‘Sea of Poppies’ and Agha Shahid Ali’s Ghazals
Sent: Saturday, 14 July 2012 8:34 AM Subject: Poem inspired by your work and my English Ghazal's based on Agha Shahid Ali's 'Real' Ghazals Dear Mr.Ghosh,…
From Iraq 1915-17: Lost Treasures of Indian Writing
Race, Empire and First World War Writing (ed. Santanu Das, Cambridge University Press, 2011) is an ambitious collection: it attempts to cover the whole spectrum of non-European…