At The Edge

The foot of a princess From 'India, by John L. Stoddard, illustrated and embellished' (1902) -0-

A note on one of the most violent modern Hindi poems.One more reason to hate wars. It makes old people blood thirsty. "From 22nd December 1962, the composition of the poem called Parshuram ki Pratiksha started and it was completed on 7th January 1963. Stirred by the Chinese invasion, he wrote several poems, but in this poem the anger of the whole country was articulated. By 25th December, 1962 most of the passages had been written. When his friend Manoranjan Prasad Sinha heard them, he thought that the poet was showing arrogance. But Dinkar was not at all receptive to such a comment. He wrote in his diary, Sivaji Ganesan in Ratha Thilagam, 1963. The Tamil China War movie. The poem has burst out from the abstruse part of the situation; it has emerged from its basic centre. If one is face to face with the centre, it becomes clear that a grave mistake has been committed. Those days he sat on the third floor of his house on Arya Samaj road at Patna, shed tears and kept wri

From title credits of Carry On film, released in 1968 Life Magazine 12 May, 1941 -0-

Not from wet dream of ultra-nationalist Indians and indo-pak peaceniks From 'This is India' by Peter Muir. Maps by Frances Muir.1943. It's a funny little book [ read here ], sample this from a chapter titled Gandhiana: "If Gandhi were on trail and under oath, he would unquestionably stick to what he believed to be the truth, but his technique of circumlocution, indirection, and irresponsible self-contradiction gives the impression that evasion, not clarification, is his aim.There is no necessity to interpret the language of Rajagopalachari, whose vocabulary in English is no larger that Gandhi's. But few Indians, even, would volunteer to translate the meaning of Gandhi's utterances, his style is so successfully abstruse." While in a chapter on Jinnah titled 'Mr.Jinnah rolls up a Rug' Peter Muir say's had Jinnah been head of a Christian organisation, he would have been named Jesus Christ Jones. Actually the chapter is a take on caste pol

"It is understood, too, that while Hélène's subliminal self can safely give itself up to the creation of a definite language in the freedom which the planet Mars affords, where there is no pre-existing system to be conformed to nor any objective control to fear, it would be very imprudent and absurd to repeat the process in connection with India: the few words of pure Sanscrit which were at its disposal kept it from inventing others, the falseness of which would be evident at the first attempt at a literal and verbatim translation. It, therefore, contented itself with these veridical elements, insufficient in themselves alone for the construction of complete sentences, being a jargon devoid of meaning, but in harmony through their dominant vowels with the authentic fragments." ~ 'From India to the planet Mars; a study of a case of somnambulism with glossolalia' by Th. Flournoy. Tr. by Daniel B. Vermilye , 1901. 

Photograph by great Brian Brake published in 'India, by Joe David Brown and the editors of Life', 1961 [complete book  available at Hathi ] as a visual aid to the text that deals with relevance of Gandhi in India, The Nation's Unsilenced Conscience. It would have you believe Gandhi was alive, in heart and spirit of Indians. As I looked at this beautiful picture, something about it made me realize that this can be a case study about  disjointedness of images, context and text. About giant sweeps of history. Of loss of footnotes. Of lost in footnotes. Of seduction by images. About loss. One may ask why. After all it does look like a perfect picture for an article on Gandhi. Children = innocence = unsilenced Conscience. Children in love with Gandhi = The Nations's un-silenced conscience. Simple and brilliant. The problem is with the details. The book only tells you that it is by Brian Brake and appears courtesy of Magnum. Place where is was taken in not mentioned

One of the responses of British to the events of 1857 was to try and better categorize the people that they had come to rule. They went around with their cameras and shot all kind of natives, all tribes, castes, races, religions, belonging to places all across the length and breadth of this land and put them in books and added neat captions to these photographs describing in brief the 'must remember' of each native type. All this in hope that it would help them govern these people and more importantly rule the land better. One of the gigantic product of such an exercise was the eight volume series titled 'The People of India' published between 1868 and 1875. Collected from these eight volumes of 'The people of India : a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan' (1868) by John William Kaye, Meadows Taylor, J. Forbes Watson,[available at archive.org ] here are 345 photographs of the people of In

A Muslim As "Krishna"! I cannot forget the words uttered by Khalil, a veteran among actors, at the Motion Picture Congress. Addressing Dad Phalke, he recalled how he, a Muslim, had been given the role of Krishna in dozens of films. In spite of the opposition from the orthodox element, Dada Phalke continued to cast a Muslim youth in the roles of Hindu gods. Art knows no barriers of caste or creed. And, looking through the pages of the history of the Indian film industry, you will come across numerous such instances. It was a Jewish producer who revived the glory of "Nur Jehan," a Hindu who dramatized the romance of the Taj Mahal in "Shiraz," a Muslim who produced "Chandra Rao More" and a Parsi who produced "Vaman Avatar". And even if some of these films were bad, I believe that they did bring the people of this vast country nearer in their understanding of one another's culture and traditions. Not only Art but Commerce too, dec

"Full of inappropriate words and phrases" Came across it in "Twenty-One Days in India, or, the Tour Of Sir Ali Baba K.C.B.; and, the Teapot Series" by George Aberigh-Mackay (1848-1881).

"There was nearly being a tremendous fight between the Faithful and the Heathen this Huli. It seems that a Hindu, who should have been an Irishman, conceived a plan for insulting the Mahommedans, and paraded the streets dressed in green (the religious colour of the Mahommedans), with a Koran slung round his neck, and a woman capering by his side, while he kept on shouting that he was the Prophet and this was his wife. The Mahommedans were infuriated, and with good reason; they seized the wretch, and, behaving far better than Irishmen in such circumstances would, dragged him before the magistrate. How the matter ended I do not know, but I should be glad to hear they had ducked the prophet in the river. It was an insult that was likely enough to have cost many lives."  ~ 'The diary of a civilian's wife in India', 1877-1882, Volume 2, (1884) by Augusta E. King. Entry for Saharanpur, U.P., dated March 6, 1882. An act like this would in today's information

Shah Jahan.  An average maharaja A Few statistics about princes are in order. On average each prince has 11 titles can wear three uniforms has 5.8 wives (or concubines) procreates 12.6 children lives in five palaces dies at the age of 54 owns 9.2 elephants kills 22.5 tigers during lifetime possesses 2.8 specially fitted railway carriages owns 3.4 Rolls-Royces ~  Life Magazine 31 April 1947

As Vice President of the Interim  Government  he visited the North- West  Frontier Province in 1946 in the company of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, 'the Frontier Gandhi', who shielded him from pelting by some goondas. From 'Jawaharlal Nehru in pictures', Edited by D.G. Tendulkar, 14 November 1964. This was the year that saw  Ghaffar Khan and Nehru getting attacked at Malakand Fort. This was the year which saw ' mass serial bombardment' in certain parts of  Wazirtstan as  punitive action . This was also the year of  kidnappings  and ransom.  [More about the scene in NWFP in 1946-47 here] -0- "In 1938 he was talking about her in an exotic setting before a strange audience and in an unexpected context. He was somewhere amidst the barren hills of the North Western Frontier, where a sniper was expected to be hiding behind each rock., and he was addressing a meetng of the supposedly wild and unruly tribes who were being accused of kidnapping hostages for r

Lala was a punk! This is one of the most illuminating things I have read in recent times. And yet, still doesn't explain why a book like Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games can be read in India but a film based on it cannot be made and screened in India without a lot of 'toning down' for Indian sensitivities. Forgot to add: Came across it at Digital Library here: Indian Cinematograph Committee (1927-28) vol. 1 , Indian Cinematograph Committee (1927-28) vol. 2 Aren't available in an easy to read pdf form there. So I took some parts of it and converted them to pdf. -0- While on the topic of cinema, information and crowd behavior: ironic,  Lala Lajpat Rai vs Babbu Maan -0-

conform. conform.conform or Chalo Murga Bano. A School in the time preceding annexation. (From a picture book said to have been prepared for the Mahárája Dalíp Singh.) Came across it in 'The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir' (1916) by Sir James McCrone Douie.

with the proverbial 'jol-bat'.  just hanging around Jack Wilkes and Indian Women Dress-up, 1945  Life Magazine Archive -0- J J Valaya's Decoded Paradox, 2011 -0- A Sikh Indian door-to-door salesman selling silk ties and cloth to a woman.  U.K. 1930. -0-

"I never have forgotten her, nor viewed her attraction with a detractory label. Since then my life has been a chiaroscuro of experience; at times Providence has wrought havoc on me, yet I can take pride in that I have never derogared the love of any woman...every woman's love is a favour...a flower that withers but the fragrance remains." ~ Rabindranath Tagore remembering his "England-returned-liberal" tutor Anna Pandurang Tadkhad, daughter of Dr Atmaran, founder of Prarthna Samaj , a Maharashtra based Hindu reformist organisation. In around 1878, 17 year old Tagore was sent to Bombay by his brother Satyendra Nath Tagore ( the first Indian member of ICS) to learn English manners and life-style which were to be taught to him by Miss Anna Pandurang. "I never could imagine why, of all the games, tug-of-war was thought of. Before I could even agree of this bout, she had slumped onto my body as a mark of defeat. But even this did not give me ecstasy no

A woman, her head covered, like she was on her way to a temple, praying aloud for the welfare of her family, like at a temple, walked past me and entered the chamber that is believed to house the grave of Akbar. The unconventionally plain walled chamber in fact houses the cenotaph of Akbar the Great.  The tainted spot where tourists test the 'Mughal Telephone'. Completed in around 1613, the mausoleums built to Abkar's syncratic taste, is believed to be the first Indian monument to have included the 'four minaret' design today associated with Taj Mahal. In most of the images of the mausoleum drawn by early western visitors to this site, the minarets look damaged with the top part missing in all minarets, even as late as 1875. [ref.  images at columbia.edu ] by William Hodges, 1783 The mausoleum of Akbar at Sikandra, shown both in plan and in elevation; Jaipur style, c. 1780-1800* According to 'A Han

The exact chronology of events isn't clear. What is known  is that by the end of October 1972, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant of British rock band Led Zeppelin, who were not yet the legends that they were eventually going to be, along with their manager Richard Cole had one night walked into a small pub named  'Slip Disc' in Bombay  and before a dazed Indian audience gave an impromptu performance with support from local musicians. The re-telling by these local rock musicians was going to become the primary source of  this lesser known, lesser documented story involving one of the greatest rock band ever. [Check ' One Muggy Night in Mumbai ... '( Published in Times of India Pune, on 7th July, 2001 ) by Nandu Bhende, one of the musicians who performed with the band.] All evidence suggests that this was in fact their third visit to the city. But for Indian fans of the band, it proved to be the most memorable event. With the easy on-line availability of the band's &