Teaching Botany
As beauty is bound up with the rationale of symmetry there are two different forms of the life, categorised as the taxonomic groups and interrelations of the plant life and the animal life. Botany is variously known as the plant sciences or phytology. It is also called as plant biology. The applied science and scientific […]
Steven Pinker Continues to See the Glass Half Full
BY: SARAH BAKEWELL Optimism is not generally thought cool, and it is often thought foolish. The optimistic philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote in 1828, “I have observed that not the man who hopes when others despair, but the man who despairs when others hope, is admired by a large class of persons as a sage.” […]
Fifty years later, Shrilal Shukla’s ‘Raag Darbari’ is being reborn as modern Indian literature
The world is upside-down, provincialism has replaced cosmopolitanism, and exoticism is dead in today’s fiction. Just like in ‘Raag Darbari’.
By: Ulka Anjaria A conference was held recently at Delhi University to commemorate 50 years of Shrilal Shukla’s Hindi novel Raag Darbari. Shukla was an IAS officer who wrote Raag Darbari based on his experiences in rural UP, winning the Sahitya Akademi award for it in 1969. The book went on to capture the imagination […]
Remembering Dulla Bhatti, the landlord who stood up to the mighty Akbar
By: Haroon Khalid Surrounded by thousands of others, there is nothing remarkable about the grave of Dulla Bhatti, on a raised platform, plastered with cement under the shade of an old tree. There is no mark on the grave but a board next to it identifies its occupant. Occasionally, an odd visitor brings flowers or […]
Humanity is doing fine, just don’t ask about individual humans
BY: JENNIFER SZALAI Steven Pinker doesn’t just want you to be happy; he wants you to be grateful too. His new book, “Enlightenment Now,” is a spirited and exasperated rebuke to anyone who refuses to concede that the world is becoming a better place. “None of us are as happy as we ought to be, […]
A HOUSE DIVIDED
By: Sajid Iqbal In a world where belief and militancy are becoming fused, there are peaceful yet puritanical forms of religion that still capture peoples’ imagination. One such form is advanced by the Tablighi Jamaat (TJ), a worldwide Islamic missionary movement popularising the concept of inner reform among believers. What makes TJ fascinating and relevant […]
How Life as a Foreigner Helped Shape a Man of Letters
By: DWIGHT GARNER The Dutch-born historian and New York Review of Books editor Ian Buruma spent several years in Tokyo when he was in his early 20s, and he picked up a nickname. Because “Buruma” sounds a bit like the word “bloomers” in Japanese, at least one acquaintance — Hijikata Tatsumi, the father of Butoh […]
Sheela Reddy’s book Jinnah in a positive light
Well researched book recreates those times in a thoroughly enjoyable if not, at times, scintillating manner
BY: Tariq Bashir A highly successful barrister in his early forties – known for his icy and incisive demeamour and having a dashingly impressive personality – was making waves in the political and social circles of the Bombay high society. The tall, lean and slightly greying Mr Jinnah did not so much owe his success […]
Sridevi: The diva who lit up Indian cinema screen
Tributes pour in as legendary actor Sridevi passes away at 54
The sudden demise of veteran actor Sridevi has sent shockwaves throughout the Indian film industry with many Bollywood celebrities such as Amitabh Bachchan, Rishi Kapoor, Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan mourning and expressing their condolences. The actor, who was 54, died late at Saturday night reportedly due to cardiac arrest in Dubai, where she had gone […]
‘The thing about writing sex is that it is as complicated as humans are’: Abubakar Adam Ibrahim
An interview with the Nigerian author of ‘Season of Crimson Blossoms’, a searing novel about a taboo relationship set in a conservative Muslim community.
When Nigerian writer Abubakar Dam Ibrahim published his first novel in 2015, he was prepared for a fatwa against it. The Season of Crimson Blossoms, featuring a 55-year-old Muslim widow’s romantic and sexual relationship with a 25-year-old criminal, was unlike anything that had come out of Nigerian writing in English until then. Set in the […]
