Frontline At 40 | ‘Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions are the only record of old Tamil’: Interview with Iravatham Mahadevan
Iravatham Mahadevan, an epigraphist of international repute. | Photo Credit: T.A. HAFEEZ Iravatham Mahadevan was an administrator-turned-scholar who did acclaimed work on the Tamil-Brahmi and Indus scripts. His Early Tamil Epigraphy, published in 2003, was based on 40 years of labour on Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions. His earlier work Corpus of Tamil-Brahmi
Best of 2024: Frontline’s Top 12 Stories on Books and Culture
Cultural performances at the INS Khukri Memorial Amphitheatre in Diu on November 14, 2024. | Photo Credit: President of India-X/ANI In his essay in Frontline’s 40th anniversary special, the artist and curator Shuddhabrata Dasgupta writes: “In any society, the health of culture depends on the willingness of practitioners to set
Tabla Legend Zakir Hussain Dies: Grammy Winner, Global Music Pioneer Was 73
His fingers flew, fluttered and floated in quicksilver changes of raga and rhythm, drumming up music and magic. Zakir Hussain was the maestro of tabla, percussionist, composer and even an actor—a legend who was India’s very own and yet belonged to the world. Hussain died from ‘idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis’, a
Does Rasam Hold the Secret to Transforming A Glum Day Into A Flavourful Experience?
As the sun slouches westward, are you having a day like mine? Snail-slow, all grimace and growl, stagnant, the very air in aspic—in a word, glum? Breakfast is a memory from deep time, lunch is a receding mirage—did I just see you reach for chai? Toxic masala or green detox?
‘The Dystopian Times’ by Appupen
‘The Dystopian Times’ by Appupen Source link
INTERVIEW We Now Have Means to Actively Build a Community and Train and Help Emerging Translators: Daisy Rockwell
The creative partnership of Daisy Rockwell and Geetanjali Shree is embodied in Daisy’s moniker, Shree-Daisy. But before her International Booker–winning partnership with Geetanjali Shree, Rockwell had already translated and curated a panorama of epoch-defining Hindi-Urdu novels probing the heart-wounds of the subcontinent. Over the past two decades, Rockwell has brought
Avtar Singh’s Into the Forest: An Exploration of Isolation, Loneliness, and Human Fragility During the COVID-19 Pandemic
A homeless person sleeps on a storefront during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, in Lyon, France, in 2020. | Photo Credit: Getty Images/ iStock There is a moment (around the 40-page mark) in Avtar Singh’s new novel, Into the Forest, that does not directly engage with the COVID-19 pandemic but
Freedom at Midnight Review: Book vs Web Series-Partition Through Two Lenses
Inside 10 Downing Street, the rhythms of a relentless clock fill the air. “May I have time to think?” Lord Mountbatten pleads, facing the burden of a crumbling empire. “You may,” Prime Minister Clement Attlee responds, “but be warned, Mountbatten—time is the one thing we’re running short of.” The ticking
Review: Payal Kapadia’s ‘All We Imagine as Light’ Challenges Traditional Film Criticism
Sometime in late November, you can feel Mumbai entering winter. Many can point to the exact day, the exact moment. It could be midnight at home when the skin suddenly prickles in the cool wind. It might be the night-time desire to actually cover yourself with a sheet. It might
Book Review| Weena Pun’s ‘Kancchi’: A Captivating Tale of a Mother’s Search for her Missing Daughter in Nepal
One dark November morning in 1995, Maiju surreptitiously escorts her 16-year-old daughter down the slippery, rain-drenched slopes of Torikhola in Nepal to help her catch a bus to her aunt’s house in Pokhara. Maiju never hears from her daughter again. Kanchhi never reaches her aunt’s place. What happened to Kanchhi?