Literature

Build something you care about and benefits others

Everyone seems to want “scale” and “impact” and seems to think that means having a massive operation. But doing something right on a small scale breeds imitators—it is like a seed. Great Books institutions were always small, but they have been enormously influential. There’s nothing more “scalable” than wheat or bread, but no one owns all the wheat nor the bread-making recipes. It doesn’t take much thinking to see that this…

What does it mean to translate something?

Translation is the act of removing that ladder and replacing it with another ladder, replacing one language with another. In this view, a successful translation can be seen as one that is able to produce the experiences and imagination of the original novel. If this is the aim and consequence of reading, questions of equivalence and felicity are not as significant as it is made out to be by many translators. A good…

I have always felt alright in my company

I was an untroublesome child who looked after herself. For a short time I went to the village kindergarten, but I didn’t feel too good there. My strongest memory of the place is of being made to have a lie-down in the middle of the day and of sitting in a tree when I didn’t want to play with the other children. But I did have a lot of freedom, which these days would be unimaginable. I used to spend a lot of time at the…

Can books teach you anything?

This is perhaps tangential, but I think the "books can't teach you anything" argument comes from the accurate observation that most modern novels honestly can't teach you anything. Classic literature was consumed with the struggle between good and evil; it obsessed over the question of humanity and its greater purpose; it scrutinized what it means to find true happiness. It was philosophy wrapped in the glory of a very human…

Writing as a way to converse with yourself

I have come to see that writing has become a way for me to be in the deepest conversation with myself while also sensing the hovering presence of another. I don’t know who that other is – perhaps a gentle future reader. This personal conversation feels forbidden, in a way, given my work in journalism. But I find treasures in my thoughts and feelings, and I rush to put them on the page. Then a story takes shape and tells me…

Another lament for literature

It was P.B. Shelley who once framed this faith with prophetic clarity: “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Literature, to him, was a subversive parliament of feeling — moving hearts, unsettling moral certainties, giving form to what was yet to be imagined. Today, that vision lies blurred. The poet, or novelist, or essayist is no longer a legislator but a content provider. What was once conjuration is now…

Oral traditions in India

It would be wrong to apply Western theories of folk literature to India’s oral traditions, Kumar cautions readers. Local beliefs and worldviews seep into the songs and tales that evolve in any particular community. Moreover, in the telling of the tales and in the mode of singing as well, the local forms and styles inevitably exert an influence. This is why alien norms and paradigms cannot be imposed on indigenous modes of…

Dhwani: A directory for Indian public domain works

Built a small site to collect links to Indian literary and historical works in the public domain. While looking for books, I realized the sheer extent of our cultural apathy. Also, there are some amazing books just waiting to be read. Visit https://dhwani.ink

Odds and ends

The 'Instagram Generation' now experiences the present as an anticipated memory. - Daniel Kahneman

Why read?

Rose: So what's happened to us that gives us that kind of society in which people of the best young minds have not read? Harold Bloom: Well, the screen. The screen, the screen. Television screen, movie screen, the television screen, the movie screen, and now overwhelmingly, computer screen, and yes, in particular, the great gray ocean of the Internet, which frightens me deeply because if young people go into, or onto,…