Odds and Ends

If you came this way, 
 Taking any route, starting from anywhere, 
 At any time or at any season, 
 It would always be the same: you would have put off 
 Sense and Notion."

	                  T.S.Eliott (Little Gidding)   
	

Poetry

The Poems of Keki Daruwalla.
In 1987, Daruwalla's collection of Poems called "Landscapes" won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for Asia. But Daruwalla, the poet, was well known in India much before that. He along with a set of other Indians writing in English had transformed the literary scene in India during the 1970s by asserting that "English" was very much an "Indian" language and could be a legitimate creative medium for Indians. In this section, we present the poems from Daruwalla's award winning collection, Landscapes.

Ways of Escape

Travels in the Subcontinent. Written by a backroom bureaucrat, who never quite recovered from the infusion of Western Liberalism dished out by the Saihibs and who remains eternally dissatisfied with the state of affairs around him and with his own schizoid personality. Everything, according to him is the fault of the bloody colonialists or the brown babus who took over from the last rulers. The question is: I'm not ok but who the hell is?

Religion

An account of Devraha Hans Baba, the yogi from Vindhyachal. This is a short piece written for people who expect miracles and when they don't get any, start believing in advertising.

Madhobima

Madhobima is for most appearances just another Indian housewife, living out a frenetic existence in a dusty corner of Delhi. Her house is perpetually full of people - family members, visitors and servants. Her courtyard covered with a fibre glass canopy is crammed with a small temple, potted plants and a cage full of singing birds. All signs of domestic contentment. Yet, beneath this obvious mudane exterior, Madhobima hides a mysterious profundity. This housewife is an ordained Tantric guru, cloaking awesome mystical powers.

Art Direction in Bollywood

Travel to Bollywood, the land of movies, magic and makebelieve. And find out about Desh Mukerji, whose movie sets have mounted many a blockbuster.

Our Music Maker

A bit about Gautam Ghosh, the man who brought music to this site.

India celebrates its Destiny
India signed its tryst with destiny at the stroke of midnight on 15 August, 1947 - a destiny to emerge as an independent, liberal, secular, multi-ethnic republic.

Churchill said India wasn't a nation, just an "abstraction". John Kenneth Galbraith, more affectionately and more memorably, described it as "functioning anarchy". Both of them, in my view, underestimated the strength of the India-idea. It may be the most innovative national philosophy to have emerged in the post-colonial period. It deserves to be celebrated-because its is an idea that has enemies, within India as well as outside her frontiers, and to celebrate it is also to defend it against its foes.
Salman Rushdie, novelist

1971 India-
Pakistan War

Remembering a Liberation War:
Twenty five years ago, India and Pakistan went to war over the issue of Bangladesh. Mukti Bahini guerillas and Indian soldiers swept past Pakistani defences and forced the Pakistani Army to surrender within two weeks. On the western front, Indians and Pakistanis fought a series of even deadlier battles. This 1971 War web exhibition commemorates that war...