LiteraryTranslations
Irulappa Samy and the 21 Goats
In colonial India, the British passed the Criminal Tribes Act, which in essence, notified that people born into certain tribes or castes were criminals by birth. This piece of legislation gave the police power to restrict the movement of such tribes or castes, ghettoize them,...
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The Thousand Pillared Hall
Translator's note: In The Moor’s Last Sigh, Salman Rushdie describes the blue-and-white Chinese tiles in the Paradesi Synagogue in Kochi in vivid detail. He imagines these square tiles as portals—scenes of battles, marketplaces, horsemen, and swooning ladies—that shimmer with meaning across time. It’s a...
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Nenendu Vethugudura
Karukurichi Arunachalam, the legendary player of the nagaswaram, a wood-wind instrument of South India, was born in 1921, in Tamil Nadu. He died at the age of 43. In the year of Arunachalam’s 100th birth anniversary, I came across a moving short story about him, Nenendu Vethugudura, based on an incident from his short life. If Arunachalam was a virtuoso, turns out,...
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