Cold SnapDragon

An Inner Fury

2009-10-31T00:59:00.000Z

Most Indian writing in English isn’t very good. perhaps because you can actually see the author thinking in some other language before he translates what he has to say into English.However, I’ve begun to wonder whether there was a time when English educational policies in India did create a class of people now no longer in existence who had the ability to think in English and who did in face

The Lives of Anglo-Indians in India

2009-10-20T05:57:00.005Z

Queenie by Michael Korda is the story of an Anglo-Indian girl who became a film star and moved to the West. While the story, which begins during the last days of the Raj, is clearly about one woman, and her struggle to make 'it', it also contains fascinating insights into the lives of Anglo-Indians in India, in general.If the book is to be believed:The Anglo-Indian community, being a 'people' who

A Thousand Splendid Suns

2009-10-12T10:16:00.001Z

Lying on the table next to me is a book --- Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns. I’ve been trying to read it for over a fortnight now, and for someone who regularly reads a few hundred pages a day, it is unusual for a book to be left unfinished for so long.It’s impossible to say that it’s unreadable because the author doesn’t write well, or that the subjects he deals with are uninteresting

Not Becoming My Mother by Ruth Reichl

2009-10-12T09:50:00.008Z

I came across this book review and have reproduced part of it below. The review is from Blogpourri by Sujatha and has been published under a CC licence.The sub-title to her book is 'and other things she taught me along the way'. .... At first blush, the memoir is a woman's effort to draw lessons from her mother's life. But it is so much more than that. If a child wrote a letter of love,

Morphology: Inflectional v. Derivational

2009-09-27T11:08:00.001Z

The inflectional morphology of a language is the study of the ways in which bound grammatical morphemes combine with stems to be realised as grammatical words. On the other hand, the derivational morphology of a language is the study of the ways in which bound lexical morphemes combine with stems to be realised as lexical words.Classical grammarians of Latin and Greek generally divided grammar

Hair cuts

2009-09-15T05:34:00.001Z

According to the Metro:"The eye-catching cut was invented in 1909 by Parisian hairdresser Antoine Paris, whose inspiration was Joan of Arc. It was picked up in upper-crust Bloomsbury circles in the early 20th century and then by flappers. But its arrival in America in the 1920s sparked controversy, which reached fever pitch when preachers declared: 'A bobbed woman is a disgraced woman.' "

An Officer of the Raj

2009-08-19T06:49:00.000Z

Sometime ago, I read a book called 'Trials in Burma' by an Englishman named Maurice Collis who worked there during the Raj. It was an interesting account of life there, of the spread (or lack thereof) of Indian nationalism in the area and of relationship of the Burmese with the Indians who lived there which, as I hadn't realised earlier, were less than smooth.Frankly, the interaction between the

An English Girl's Indian Childhood during the Raj

2009-07-22T08:34:00.001Z

Studying Indian history in India, one gets a picture of British rule in India being truly awful in many ways. Yes, the British built railroads, but the railroads had more to do with themselves and their trade than with Indians. And yes, the British were also responsible for developing the country's post and telegraph systems but those systems probably served their own interests more than they

The Last Flicker in the Lamp of Mughal Architecture

2009-07-19T06:50:00.000Z

Safdarjung's Tomb is a strange place. It's not an important monument, so its not very crowded.The average person on the road where it stands has no idea what on Earth it is, let alone where it is. They'll give you directions to the locality Safdarjung, to Safdarjung Enclave, and, if you ask, to Lodhi road. But God help you if you ask for the Tomb: all you'll probably get is a blank stare. You'll

A Moment of Madness

2009-06-28T02:54:00.005Z

The first thing I read after I got up this morning was a piece called A Moment of Madness by Vinita Nangia in the Times of India. I read the text below the title and wound up annoyed. I then skimmed through the piece and felt furious. Do I not think that people have their moments of 'madness'? No. Do I think that they should be unaccountable for their actions? Absolutely not.The author begins the

Brojaweli

2009-06-19T06:48:00.000Z

I’ve always been aware that my knowledge of Assamese is truly abysmal but recently, I’ve been hearing people speak in what they tell me is Assamese without understanding a word of what they’re saying, and I’ve begun to think that small though the state is, its language, like Marathi, could be different not only in different parts of the state but also among different classes of people. To me, as

Not for Sale

2009-06-01T05:27:00.003Z

I've been reading a book called 'Not for Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography' edited by Christine Stark and Rebecca Whisnant. It comprises a collection of essays on the subject by various authors and is both interesting and well written.From the book:Pornography is the documentation of prostitution. It is a technologized form of prostitution -- prostitution at one remove.(

Torture as Art, Hate Mail and Privacy

2009-05-27T12:02:00.001Z

In 2007, Guillermo Vargas, a supposed artist, paid local children to catch a stray dog. He then tied the dog to a leash next to a bowl which said, "You are what you eat," and let the animal starve to death. He was later invited to recreate the installation at the 2008 Bienal Centroamericana Honduras. Personally, I quite like the idea of showing that one is what one eats but that's what you have

Charity Hospital for Birds

2009-05-25T06:21:00.001Z

A pigeon got into my balcony. I saw it yesterday in the afternoon. There was some form of massive outgrowth over its right eye -- which looked like blobs of cement stuck over the eye -- and, having lost a number of feathers on that side of its body, it looked rather scrawny. I thought that it was just resting for a while and went back indoors. It was only late in the evening that I went back on

Niccolao Manucci

2009-05-21T10:16:00.001Z

Touted as a Pepys of Mogul India, Shrishti Publications published an abridged version of the autobiography of Niccolao Manucci years ago which I just came across. It says that in 1653, he ran away from Venice aged 14 as a stowaway on a vessel bound for Smyrna. Luck and his own resourcefulness seem to have stood by him though. The English Viscount Bellomont took him under his wing, and the young

Photographs of Pune University

2009-05-11T01:38:00.000Z

During the days of the Raj, what is now the Pune University campus was the monsoon residence of the Governor of the Province of Bombay. The photo below is of what was once his swimming pool and is situated just next to the residence itself (which has a 300 metre high tower) constructed in the Italian-Gothic style. Usually, the swimming pool — such as it is — has very little water in it and

NE India

2009-05-10T17:14:00.000Z

On a blog I usually enjoy reading, I came across this: Maybe if Kashmir hadn’t been dragging us [Indians] down it would have been the north-east. And yeah, it stung the way it does when an MCP makes some extraordinarily sexist remark without even meaning to be sexist. Is that what the rest of India actually thinks? And it's still surprised that the NE isn't thrilled?

Canterbury Tales

2009-05-02T06:49:00.000Z

The ‘Canterbury Tales’ are the most famous of Chaucer’s works. He began to write them in the 1380s and although they display the style he developed in his English Period, they also include some material he had written earlier. (for example, there is evidence of earlier works being revised in the ‘Clerk’s Tale’ and the ‘Monk’s Tale’.) Chaucer also specifically referred to ‘The Legende of Good

Enough Already! Another Dowry Story

2009-04-30T15:26:00.002Z

Today, I read a report in either the Hindustan Times or the Times of India -- I don't remember which -- of a bridegroom who was beaten up by villagers when he demanded even more dowry in what must have been not more than a few hours after the marriage ceremony.He was given the keys to an Alto but wanted a Scorpio and one and a half million rupees in cash. The villagers beat him and his father up,

Informed Consent

2009-04-21T16:09:00.002Z

In most countries, when you go to a doctor to have some procedure performed, the doctor is required to obtain your consent to the procedure being performed. He isn't simply supposed to give you the name of the procedure. Instead, he's required to explain the procedure to you, and tell you about precautions you need to take, what the risk factors are, what the possible consequences are, whether

Learning to Respect Religions

2009-04-20T08:51:00.001Z

It would be hard to argue that there are no Catholic schools which are intolerant of other religions. Greg Laden, for example, speaks of how he learned to be an anti-Semite at his school. And I remember often hearing of nuns who did things like tear up pictures of Hindu gods when they found them in students' textbooks.Personally though, I don't have a single memory of ever seeing a nun do

Online Impersonation ?

2009-04-18T16:23:00.002Z

Sometime ago, I deactivated my Facebook account primarily because of the 'duplication of social networks' argument. Besides, I keep in touch with most of the people with whom I want to be in touch without Facebook; I'm not overtly fond of social networking sites. As a result, I was a bit surprised when I received a message from Orkut saying I had approved someone's 'Add friend' invite. Soon after

Fictional Biographies

2009-04-17T13:34:00.002Z

I love impressionism. The light and airy feel which so many of their paintings have. It doesn't matter to me that they -- or Renoir, at any rate -- have been written off as chocolate box painters; being inaccessible is not in itself a mark of great talent. So far, I've read fictional biographies of four of the Impressionists: Renoir, Pissarro, van Gogh and, by Charles Gorham, Gauguin. There's

The Eternity of Nature

2009-04-07T17:29:00.000Z

A shallow glass bowl sits on the coffee table beside her. Inside, lie eggs of jade submerged in water. The rays of the late afternoon sun reach the bowl from one corner of the room and make the eggs assume an almost effervescent quality.Seed pods lie in her hand. Each of them is only a few millimeters thick and not more than an inch long. They’re dark brown and she absentmindedly throws them into

Gurgaon

2009-04-07T06:02:00.000Z

For some reason, having discovered that Gurgaon is accessible without spending 1000 INR on each trip, I’ve suddenly found that I spend half my time not in Delhi but in Gurgaon. The cheapest way to get to reach Gurgaon that I know of is to go to Dhaula Kuan and take another bus from there to Gurgaon – there’s one which leaves every few minutes. It costs between 10 and 14 rupees depending on where