At The Edge

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...

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 wh...

Shared by Amandeep S. Sawhney. A special pilgrim visa meant for Sikhs visiting Pakistan. This one was issued in 1963 from Amritsar. "Good for single visit to Gurdwaras: Nankana Sahib Dist. Sheikhupura, Dera Sahib Janam Asthan, Shahid Gunj, Cheevin Padshahi (Muzung), Shahid Bhai Taru Singh Ji at Lahore..." -0- "To leave a country is like breaking out of jail and to enter a country is like going through an eye of a needle." ~  Charles Chaplin's A King in New York (1957) . -0-

Unidentified Indian model on cover of Jimmy Smith's Any Number Can Win (1963). -0-

Close on heels of  Sharmila Tagore's August Bikini cover , November issue of Filmfare had Mumtaz as beach babe on cover. 1966 was probably the hottest year in India or that was the year Indians profusely thanked Sardar Patel and Nehru, or either one of them, whoever it was, for bringing in Goa into India. -0-

Came across it in April 1985 issue of The Illustrated Weekly of India.