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“You’re the only writer in English, after RK Narayan and Mulk Raj Anand, to be Sahitya Akademi’s Fellows. What will you do with it? I don’t know, yet. Translations from bhasha into English. Could you influence a quality improvement there? I really wonder why those translations are done and who reads them. I don’t know if there is room for me to do anything. They have a board.” This is an excerpt from an interview with Anita Desai published in December last year. As a creator, Desai may not be happy with the level of translations available. Or maybe even with the idea of translation itself. Or with the quality of translations Sahitya Akademi publishes. Whatever may be her view, I still look for Sahitya Akademi translations. The little I know of writers like Masti, Basheer and a few other writers in regional languages has been through Akademi books I had bought at very low cost from at the annual book fairs in Chennai. One may never really be able to enjoy the beauty of a particular lang...

Bhairappa;s article - English version IT HAPPENS ONLY IN INDIA (English translation of the article written by Kannada writer S. L. Byrappa on religious conversions. The article is translated by Shri. Manoj Deshpande)Saturday, November 1, 2008 http://medsyn.blogspot.com/2008/11/it-happens-only-in-india.html For the last four decades, Christian missionaries in India have been indulging in religious conversions and this trend has become fairly aggressive and far more pronounced with Sonia Gandhi’s coronation. However, the mass media have chosen to ignore reporting this. States like Orissa and Karnataka have reacted sharply to the scale of operations of Christian missionaries. This has been dutifully reported by all newspapers and TV channels across India. Self-proclaimed ‘Secularists’ and Left parties have taken this opportunity to announce that India has met its doom in this backlash and have thereby supported the missionaries! It is certainly a pity that they do not care to recognise th...

http://www.hindu.com/fr/2007/06/08/stories/2007060852190300.htm Masks of untruth Haven’t we been a culturally responsive society which enriched the creative consciousness of its literary and artistic community? Sadly, we now negotiate with a hegemonic socio-political order N. MANU CHAKRAVARTHY The mark of maturity and dignity of a society is when it conducts debates, cultural or political, with fierce conviction and intensity without slandering those involved in them. But it would not be quite out of place to offer a few examples of cultu ral debates to underline the relationship between art and social and political order The great writer Joseph Conrad was so committed to his vision of life that he declared quite vehemently that the works of Dostoevsky seemed like the barbaric howls of a prehistoric monster, and also went on to declare emphatically that there was not a single sincere line in the writings of Herman Melville. While none would endorse the views of Conrad, by no stretch of...

View of Great Rann of Kutch from the highest point in Bhuj district, Kaladungar hills. Down below in the white surface is the India bridge, the last civilian point before the desert spreads around to reach the neighbouring Pakistan.

The border security post is the last point of life as one goes past village Dordo into the white Rann at the Great Rann of Kutch in Bhuj district. Civilians got to set foot on the white Rann after having their baggages checked as they troop in as guests of the Rann Utsav hosted by Gujarat Tourism.

It is an exotic sight to uphold and cherish. As the salt freezes on the surface of the barren stretch of Kutch in the winter months, it allows one to walk across and be engulfed in the whiteness of the landscape and the eyes can catch nothing but an unreachable horizon all around.