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Category Archives: Peepul

Peepul

R K Narayan

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

The New Yorker has a long essay on R K Narayan by Wyatt Mason, who tells the stories (of Greene helping Narayan and so on) and reviews the novels. Here are a couple of paragraphs from the essay.
Sainthood is a kind of legacy, but fiction writers tend to prefer devoted readers to ardent worshippers. To [...]

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Sick

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Yesterday as I watched Michael Richards aka Cosmo Kramer unravel and go after against a heckler in LA, I was reminded of a Seinfeld episode in which Kramer accuses Jerry of being an anti-dentite. Kramer has a brief but eloquent comment on discriminating against marginal groups, including dentists in this episode.
This sickness within us. I [...]

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Robert Fagles

Thursday, November 2, 2006

After his two superb (and best selling) translations of Iliad (1990) and The Odyssey (1996), Robert Fagles has just published a new translation of Virgil’s Aeneid. Paul Friedrich introduced many generations of his students (including me) at the University of Chicago to Fagles’ wonderful translations, which as Fagles himself says aren’t literal or literary. Still, [...]

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Gandhi in popular culture

Thursday, October 26, 2006

From Munnabhai to Kris Kristofferson, Gandhi seems to be the flavor of the times. Here is a song by Kristofferson (thanks Rajeev for the link) for your viewing pleasure.
Mahatma Gandhi - music video
Is any commentary necessary?

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Pamuk wins Nobel!

Thursday, October 12, 2006

The news flash from the Nobel foundation says, this year’s winner for literature is Orhan Pamuk,
who in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures.
I began reading Orhan Pamuk less than two years ago. By the time I finished My Name is [...]

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Kanshi Ram

Monday, October 9, 2006

Kanshi Ram passed away early monday morning. After suffering a paralytic stroke two years ago, he had been bedridden and continued to face multiple health problems.
Kanshi Ram’s was perhaps the most powerful independent Dalit political voice in independent India. Unlike other Dalit polticians who owed their power to their association with political parties, Kanshi Ram [...]

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