Mad Woman in the Attic

“And so the child grows, his awareness expanding to encompass ideas and images larger than himself…” [1] Play is universal. Children of every culture engage themselves in play. Though play differs from culture to culture, generation-to-generation, it is clearly an instinctual and an essential part of growing up. The vast landscape of play, by itself, is an emotional experience of joy. Play is almost incomplete without toys. A toy gives form and reality to a child’s play. The young use toys and play to discover their identity, help their bodies grow strong, learn cause and effect, explore relationships, and practice skills they will need as adults. Adults use toys and play to form and strengthen social bonds, teach, remember and reinforce lessons from their youth, discover their identity, exercise their minds and bodies, explore relationships, practice skills, and decorate their living spaces. Toys are more than simple amusement, and the ways that they are used profoundly...

I have seen, I say, the Hereditary Princess of Potztausend-Donnerwetter (that serenely-beautiful woman) use her knife in lieu of a fork or spoon; I have seen her almost swallow it, by Jove! Like Ramo Samee, the Indian juggler . And did I blench? Did my estimation for the Princess diminish? No, lovely Amalia! - William Makepeace Thackeray, The Book of Snobs (1848) Ramo Samee (or “ Ramaswamy ”, probably the more accurate spelling), the most famous practitioner of his art in his era, inspired royalty, journalists, and famous essayists like William Hazlitt, who found him a performer of astonishing skill. Today he is, aside from the appreciation he receives from a handful of juggling history websites, completely forgotten. The kind of sword-swallowing and juggling he did is in fact a real historical profession in India , and goes back hundreds of years. So while clearly part of Ramo Samee’s appeal was his exotic otherness, he was doing what he did best -- what he had been ra...

India is a country of immense linguistic diversity and, thus, a country of many literatures. Many of the 221 language groups are small according to the latest census, and it is only the eighteen listed in the Indian Constitution as major languages that comprise the bulk of the population's speakers. In addition to the eighteen languages listed in the Constitution, four more are recognized by the Sahitya Akademi (National Academy of Letters) for reasons of their significance in literature (Assamese, Bengali, Dogri, Indian English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kankani, Kashmiri, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Panjabi, Rajasthani, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu). But in general, the perspective of India as a hegemonic language and literature area is ubiquitous. A writer in any one is counted as much Indian by the Sahitya Akademi as a writer in any other and no distinction is made between one literature prize and another. Thus, while we have a pl...

"Comparative literature," Earl Miner writes, "clearly involves something more than comparing two great German poets, and something different from a Chinese studying French literature or a Russian studying Italian literature." PRE-HISTORY… Comparative Literature is defined as "the study of literatures of different languages, nations, and periods with a view to examining and analyzing their relationships.  “In the Middle Ages the literatures of Western Europe were generally considered to be parts of a unified whole, mostly because they were frequently written in a common language, Latin.  In the nineteenth century, concurrently with the beginnings of the comparative study of religion and mythology, various European scholars began to develop theories and methods for the comparative study of the literatures of different languages and nationalities...Several different approaches to the examination of comparative literatures have developed:  the stu...

Welcome to my Wonderland! What has it got for you? Giving you respite from the heat, this place is snowy, fluffy, cool, even cold, and yet cosy. This cosiness gives me the feeling of comfort. The time to think, to reflect, to meditate, to enjoy, to develop new paradigm, to learn and create new things. This is very me. This whiteness reflects peace, comfort, serenity and yet a world of fancy. On the slide of library, I engage in learning, imagining and creating new things and ideas. This balances with the “Rose Mary” structure that inspires me to innovate constantly.  The waves in the background depict movement. So the imagery is that of constant balance between making and doing, thinking and being, creativity and enjoyment- amidst the purity of white, perked and spiced with the chillies at the top of the “Rose Mary” symbolic of the spiced fun and bliss that emerges out of the space.

The web of Technology encompasses me, takes me in it’s stride. It makes me what I am, what I think, what I represent. And when I look back I see the past glorious culture, traditions and technological innovations that my country stands for. I am here ,in the present and I am there too .The vivid colors ,the simplistic ,yet evolved processes of architectural rituals and materials tell me that I belong to a strong rich cultural entity and yet move beyond the past .These architectural structure and pots signify the ever evolving nature of technology and yet remain stood in time. The constant negotiations between traditional and modernity make the what I am -the essential Indian, symbolized by the turban on the clay pot.

George Steiner characterized the history of translation until Jakobson/structuralism, as “a constant rehashing of the same formal versus free theoretical distinction. Early translation theories used concepts like “literariness”, “primary”, “secondary”, “estrangement”, which reveal the hierarchical nature of a culture. Thus, translation always has been a device in the hands of the canon and victimized by the canon for its own purposes (post colonial theory critiques in the same manner). It is imperative to remember that all theories of translation evolved reflected the political and social turmoil of the age. The ages have reflected theories of translation. It was not until the 60’s that translation as a scientific activity was thought of. Translation was a marginal activity. But with the North American Translation Workshop, the practice of literary translation got recognition as alternate value systems. Scholars as Ted Hughes and Jonas Zydnas, the propagators of the workshop m...