First posted October 25, 2011 I’ve learned that you can’t hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk. (age 6) I’ve learned that I like my teacher because she cries when we sing Silent Night (age 7) I’ve learned that when I wave to people in the country, they stop what they are… Read More What I have learned (humans aged 6 to 92)
First posted October 24, 2011 Whoever embraces a woman is Adam. The woman is Eve. Everything happens for the first time. I saw something white in the sky. They tell me it is the moon, but what can I do with a word and a mythology. Trees frighten me a little. They are so beautiful.… Read More Happiness. By Jorge Luis Borges
Sreedeep Bhattacharya What are the essential ingredients of a pristine, romantic association? Introduction, anticipation, initiation, expectation, complexity, eccentricity, intimacy, reward and recognition. Not to forget the garnish of conflicts and contradictions; pathos and pleasure; tantrums and traumas; itches and aches—and, possibly, a lot more. Whereas these elements may have remained somewhat unaltered, there seems to… Read More In The Postmodern World, Intimacy Has Become A Strange Thing
Rebecca Root The violence began when the military set out to quash what it said was a communist coup sparked by the deaths of six generals. This has since been identified as a government pretext to launch a large-scale pursuit of communists and sympathisers. About 500,000 people were murdered in six months and 1 million… Read More ‘Truth is one of our rights’: victims of Indonesia’s bloody past want more than regret from their president
NB: This article was posted recently on social media under the title ‘The murder of a divine geography’; and was written by Amitabh Pande. His lines ring very true. Thanks are due to the writer. The video report below by Hridayesh Joshi is also a valuable piece of journalism: A sinking city: Fear and anger… Read More The sinking of Joshimath and the commercialisation of sacredness
SIMRIN SIRUR Joshimath: The land below their feet sinking, helpless residents of Joshimath town were gathered in front of the battered Malari Inn hotel for a second consecutive day of protests Wednesday. They were demanding “fair compensation” for being driven out of their homes and possibly the town itself. Tensions between the displaced residents on the one… Read More ‘Only place we’ve ever known’: As Joshimath crumbles, the displaced demand ‘fair compensation’
First posted October 18, 2013 NB – The outstanding feature of this report is that is written not from a communal standpoint, as in Hindu, Muslim or Sikh; but solely from the standpoint of common humanity: DS A scanned copy of the Communist Party of India’s pamphlet Bleeding Punjab Warns (File CPI/108 – 1947); is available at… Read More Archival document of the CPI from 1947: ‘Bleeding Punjab Warns’ by Dhanwantri & P.C. Joshi
By Becca Rothfeld Literature usually reaches us in its finished form, when it has already ossified into irrevocability. By the time a book is bound and printed, it is easy to forget that the words were once in motion. Franz Kafka’s fitful fiction provides a reminder. Most of his work was published posthumously, through the efforts of… Read More The Diaries of Franz Kafka
By Soutik Biswas and Raju Gusain Early in the morning of 2 January, Prakash Bhotiyal woke up to a “loud sound” in his house in Joshimath, a small Himalayan mountain town in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand. The 52-year-old tailor switched on the lights and surveyed his newly-built, double-storey house to find gaping cracks… Read More Joshimath: The trauma of living in India’s sinking Himalayan town
German police warned they would not allow their officers to be targeted with violence amid growing tensions with climate protesters in the condemned village of Lützerath on Monday. The village is set to be swallowed up by the local coal mine, run by Germany’s energy giant RWE. But organizations such as the Last Generation and Fridays for Future… Read More Germany: Police, coal protesters face off in Lützerath
