Keki Daruwalla Perhaps I’ll wake up on some alien shoreIn the shimmer of an aluminium dawn,to find the sea talking to itselfand rummaging among the lines I’ve drawn;looking for something, a voyager perhaps,gnarled as a thorn tree in whose loving hands,these map lines of mine, somnambulant,will wake and pulse and turn to shoreline, sand. The… Read More Map-maker
First posted December 31, 2018 By Maria Popova “There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance…” By… Read More Against the Illusion of Separateness: Pablo Neruda’s Beautiful Nobel Acceptance Speech (1971)
Why do we never get an answerWhen we’re knocking at the doorWith a thousand million questionsAbout hate and death and war? ’cause when we stop and look around usThere is nothing that we need.In a world of persecution that is burning in its greed. Why do we never get an answerWhen we’re knocking at the… Read More Question (1970)
Dr Dwarika Prasad Uniyal
Hello, we are pleased to invite you to join us for a conversation with Dilip Simeon in Chandigarh on Saturday, August 3; 2024. More details here: https://pagdandi.substack.com/p/jaag-musafir Kindly RSVP if you plan to come: https://forms.gle/P7vAeWmWHWic7pgi6 My regards and gratitude to Pagdandi Collective for organising this conversation. What follows below is my personal addition to the matter above,… Read More Jaag Musafir: Pagdandi Collective
Two examples from mediaeval Odisha’s bhakti tradition show how debates and differences about the sacred were part of devotional practice, and not forced onto us after the institutionalisation of modern, secular, and democratic visions… Each bhakt’s quest toward their own self, or own language, was a gesture to a universal appeal. ABINASH DASH CHOUDHURY Over… Read More Encountering the Bhakt: Transformation in Religious Thought
A song by Single Gun Theory a long time agoI picked flowers and sang on a hillside far awayI’m still singinga long long time agoI felt love for the first timeit’s still with me now through the years, through the years,carried pain and loss with my love a long long time agoyou and I swam… Read More Motherland
The birds they singAt the break of day‘Start again,’ I heard them say‘Don’t dwell on what has passed awayAnd what is yet to be …’ – Leonard Cohen, Anthem +++++++++++ Hour by hour, life is kindly offered usWe have learned but little from yesterdayOf tomorrow, all knowledge is forbidden,And if I ever feared the coming… Read More The present is our happiness
Ahmad Farhad was pushed into vehicle hours after posting about threats from country’s spy agency, says Syeda Urooj Zainab Shah Meer Baloch in Islamabad The wife of a Pakistani poet and journalist who was abducted from outside his house last week has accused the country’s spy agency of responsibility, saying it acted because of his activism.… Read More Pakistani poet was abducted because of human rights activism, says wife
go upright among those who are on their knees / among those with their backs turned and those toppled in the dust / and let your helpless Anger be like the sea / whenever you hear the voice of the insulted and beaten… Two poems by ZBIGNIEW HERBERT (1924-1998) / TRANSLATED BY John and Bogdana… Read More The Adventures of Mr Cogito
After the truth-shower 