Jaag Musafir: Pagdandi Collective

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

Encountering the Bhakt: Transformation in Religious Thought

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

Motherland

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

Pakistani poet was abducted because of human rights activism, says wife

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

Sunset of the Century

Rabindranath Tagore (Written in Bengali on December 31, 1899) THE LAST SUN of the century sets amidst the blood-red clouds of the West and the whirlwind of hatred. The naked passion of self-love of Nations, in its drunken delirium of greed, is dancing to the clash of steel and the howling verses of vengeance. The… Read More Sunset of the Century

Daughter of prominent Palestinian poet killed in Israeli airstrike in Gaza. Khuda Hafiz

NB: There are three kinds of wrongdoing: mistakes; crimes; and sins. Mistakes can be corrected, crimes may be punished; but for a sin, you can only repent: These lines are taken from the 1987 Georgian Soviet film Repentance, by Tengiz Abuladze. The American-backed Israeli Defence Forces call themselves the most moral army in the world. Their… Read More Daughter of prominent Palestinian poet killed in Israeli airstrike in Gaza. Khuda Hafiz

Watch Brian Cox read ‘If I Must Die’ by murdered Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer

GAZA casualties live statistics On December 7, the beloved Palestinian poet, writer, literature professor, and activist Refaat Alareer was killed in a targeted Israeli airstrike that also killed his brother, his sister, and four of her children. In the week of mourning since, tributes to Alareer’s life, writing, mentorship, and activism have flooded in from around the… Read More Watch Brian Cox read ‘If I Must Die’ by murdered Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer