About the Book
The essays and transcripts of Dilip Chitre brought together here are valuable in themselves as they offer a commentary on the Indian sense of tradition and the contemporary attitudes to literature. Every piece is of interest in itself. But, their greater worth lies in that they articulate the perspective of one of our most admirable poets on many issues that mattered to him. Taken together, they provide a basis for fathoming his poetry and should help us in making a more nuanced sense of it. Chitre was a fascinating poet, but it is not possible to say that his poetry was easily accessible to most of his readers. Like W. B. Yeats, he weaves in his poems experiences that arise in a given moment (such as the felling of a tree in his father’s house) together with many layers of timeless human quests and anxieties. He brings together silence and euphoria in an imagistic mix that is difficult to name with any precision. It is hence that this
volume of his comments, essays, lectures and other texts should be of importance for the lovers of Dilip Chitre’s literary works.
– Ganesh N Devy
Related products
-
Obsessed with Life
$10About the Book
“Mozetič’s verse conjures a distinctly gay way of looking at the world. It is both placid and paranoid, opening the world into paper-thin layers of sex, loneness and non-disingenuous self-reflection. His lyric has a remarkable flow, his language is persuasively simple, and his tone is forthright, all of which give the shattered heart at the core of this book a strange magnetic force.”
– Akhil Katyal, poet, translator, scholar and queer activist
-
UNLIKELY JOURNEY
$12About the Book
As happens on all trips, in the pages of this book we find unforeseen questions and unexpected landscapes. These verses are transparent because they speak to us not about what is intuited or remembered but what is seen while trying to establish order, specify limits, and vanquish shadows.
-
The Magic Hand of Chance
$24ABOUT THE BOOK
Covering a range of subjects, mainly to do with poetry, its daily interventions, its work, this book adds to the selections of Adil Jussawalla’s prose that have appeared before: in Maps for a Mortal Moon, and in I Dreamt a Horse Fell from the Sky. In his chapter on Jussawalla in a forthcoming book, Vidyan Ravinthiran says ‘[His} time-shifts don’t feel erratic because his prose only becomes inexact when to do so seems the only option – when it comes to resisting subliminal pressures. Every sentence is saturated with thought, changes are rung on prior phrases, in a manner inspired by real-world vexations but not without an element of self-relishing play.’
Poetrywala is happy to offer you more such prose.
‘To observe, to give witness, to hold in the memory the bereaved cow, the boy who has come to deliver the groceries, the poet in transit, the little boy who wet his pants laughing and who wept because a bird died, all these pass under the Jussawalla scanner, all these are transformed by the act of writing. Jussawalla’s fight against the Indian predilection for amnesia is relentless. He will not let you forget.’ – Jerry Pinto, from his Introduction in Maps for a Mortal Moon
‘Jussawalla’s curiosity is patently omnivorous and extends far into many disciplines and knowledges, drawing not least on Parsi, Hindu and Christian sources, science and social science, local politics or birdwatching. A continual subtheme throughout is the memory of Britain and Europe in the post-war years… considered not from an outsider’s point of view but with the deepest sympathy.’
– Vivek Narayanan, from his Introduction in I Dreamt a Horse Fell from the Sky
-
The Compass Bird
$15About the Book
Observant and meditative, lit with gentle whimsy, Siddhartha Menon’s work on the animal world leads us from ornithology to ontology, detail to dazzling insight, in a wingbeat. Here is a book in which the reverie of snails, the ‘mynahness’ of mynahs, the unhurried gaze of nilgai, becomes a way to reflect on all the eternal questions—time, belonging, love, purpose, a world ‘stained with stillness’, in which ‘those who attend have the last word’. One of the most delightful new books of poetry I have read this year.
– Arundhathi Subramaniam
-
Greece, a modern Odyssey: selected essays
$24About the Book
This outstanding collection of personal essays, sharp analysis, unusual photographs, and poetic reflections focuses on Greece and its people as they found themselves in the eye of a storm that continues to shake Europe and the world. Ranging widely from economics and politics to social and environmental issues, and from cultural and diasporic interactions to literature and the arts, the essays and other materials have been put together in ways that attract, inform, and challenge the reader no matter where she or he may reside. Presenting a roster of distinguished contributors, the editors offer a variety of perspectives, points of information, and allusions, which substantially add to ongoing debates on how individuals and groups may proceed in challenging circumstances. Greece: A Modern Odyssey is being published by Mumbai-based Paperwall Media & Publishing, in memory of the late Hatto Fischer, the German poet and philosopher who lived in Greece and brought this volume together with his wife Anna Arvanitaki.
-
Three Stories – Jibanananda Das
$10About the Book
Reading Jibanananda Das’s stories is like entering straight into the middle-class Bengali mind with its desire, ambition, morbidity and despair. Through the narratives around three men whose melancholy defines the structure of these three stories, the writer re-examines the concepts of success and failure, desire and fulfillment, love and weariness, ennui and death. While the insights are those of a poet, these stories marked by Jibanananda’s deep involvement with Bengali landscape, cuisine and culture, transcend his lyrical impulse to become proper, if technically innovative, short stories with the touch of a master of the genre. Chandak Chattarji’s English versions have been able to capture the provincial setting and style of the original narratives keeping intact their nuanced psychological implications and larger insights into the human condition.’ – K. Satchidanandan ‘It has been a privilege to discover Das the writer of fiction through Chandak Chattarji’s elegant and sensitive translation of three of the master’s short stories, ‘Chhaya Nat’ (‘Shadow Play’), ‘Gram o Shohorer Galpo’ (‘Tale of City and Village’), and ‘Bilash’ (which retains its original title here).’ – Ranjit Hoskote
