A Digital Garden of Things That Interest Me
My younger one is bit of a reader. The Sunday market in Daryaganj has been our usual haunt for the book hauls. But I’ve realized that the books there are increasingly catering to the market and the probability of serendipitously discovering quirky books has been falling. So today I enrolled her at the British Council … Continue reading The British Council Library, KG Marg, New Delhi
According to legend, when Muthuswami Dikshitar visited Ettayapuram in Tamil Nadu, he was moved by the plight of the people suffering from a severe drought. To alleviate their misery, he composed the kriti Anandamrutakarshini in the raga Amritavarshini. And, as legends would have it, it rained! So Amritavarshini is always associated with rains and the … Continue reading Amritavarshini
Thanks to the Dusshera long weekend, I dashed off to Jaipur for a quick two-day visit. This was my first Uber Intercity trip, and I was impressed. The Delhi-Jaipur highway was marvellous (by Indian road-design standards). The only catch was that road trips rarely allow me to relax. One wrong-side parking, a stray animal or … Continue reading Jaipur Notes
I was browsing through Michael Pollan’s ‘The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World’ and the first chapter was on the Apple and its introduction to the New World. The apple originated in Central Asia, somewhere in present-day Kazakhstan. In fact, its capital Almaty owes it very name to the fruit – Alma-Ata … Continue reading On Apples
The struggling, misunderstood artist, aloof from the petty insecurities of the middle class and disdainful of wealth, is probably one of the most recognisable and done-to-death tropes in art, literature and popular culture. Such ‘artists’ even have a name – bohemians. David Weir in his 'A Very Short Introduction' to the topic defines them succinctly; … Continue reading Bohemians
Through a cracking CWT episode, I discovered Julia Ioffe’s ‘Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy’. The book traces the entire arc of Russian history from the Bolsheviks to Putin through a feminist lens and the lived experiences of Ioffe’s own family (who also happen to be Jewish and experienced the … Continue reading The Tragedy of the Russian Woman
Sikkil was accompanied by the legendary Umayalpuram Sivaraman (going strong at 91) on the mridangam, Delhi Sriram on the violin and B.S Purushotam on the Khanjira. Chalamela (Varnam) in Nattaikurinji Siddhi Vinayakam in Shanmukhapriya by Dikshitar Kanintharul Purinthal in Kalyani by Papanasam Sivan Nenarunichi Nanu in Maalavi by Thyagaraja Chesinadella in Todi by Thyagaraja I … Continue reading Sikkil Gurucharan at Chinmaya Mission Auditorium, New Delhi
Thanks to being the resident Social Science teacher at home, I got to read the content on Shivaji in the Class VIII NCERT textbook. The chapter made random references to Afzal Khan, Shivaiji’s raid of Surat, his defeat by Jai Singh, the famous escape from Agra, his coronation, Tarabai, Thanjavur etc. The mandatory reference to … Continue reading The Remarkable Shivaji
Until yesterday, the only Eden that I knew was Antony Eden, the British PM remembered for the disastrous Suez Crisis of 1956. Apparently, Lord Auckland, the Governor General of India from 1836-42 was an ancestor of Eden. When Lord Auckland was posted in India, he was accompanied by his sister Emily Eden who ended up … Continue reading Emily Eden’s ‘Ranjit Singh’
The Humayun Tomb Museum has a special exhibition called ‘One Mother, Many Mother Tongues’ which explores how the concept of motherhood has been a constant motif in civilizations across millennia both in the East and the West. With just a few pieces from various Indian and Italian collections, the exhibition was quite interesting. By focussing … Continue reading Botticelli in Delhi