Just as I’m about to give up pacing and go back and sit down, I see Mother – or her ghost – right in front of me… oblivious of everything… walking toward me without even seeing me. Maybe she’s sleepwalking, looking for me in a dream. If I step to one side, she’ll stagger by. […]

1 Always a lone and little understood voice, despite the evidence of a massive reverential following, Gandhi seems no better understood a whole six decades after his assassination. Behind his calm and detached exterior, he was all his life a restless questioning soul, warring with himself and with the outside world. He has since refused […]

Two incidents immediately sprang to mind when, in response to the Pratilipi invitation, I began thinking of my own experience of terror. The first of these occurred in 1992 during the outbreak of Hindutva violence against the Muslims in Surat. Terror possessed me suddenly on that occasion. The second time I experienced terror, the feeling […]

Before I share my quasi-social-science experience of terror with you, I wish to suggest that following the tradition of classical Indian music, I begin with “Alap”, meaning rhythm-less, free elaboration on newer rags or moods/colours of violence in order to reflect, introspect and remember victims of violence, not just in India but elsewhere too. In […]

१. आखिर कैसे शुरू हुआ है यह सब? हिंदी में साहित्यिक प्रकाशन शुरू करने के पीछे क्या कारण थे? अच्छी पुस्तकें छापना, अलग तरह की पुस्तकें छापना, भारतीय भाषाओं के साहित्य के प्रकाशन के स्तर को ऊँचा उठाना और स्तरीय अनुवाद के ज़रिये अँग्रेज़ी और अन्य भारतीय भाषाओं के साहित्य को हिंदी में लाना. प्रकाशन […]

At the Film and Television Instititute of India, training to be an editor, I learnt the rules of storytelling first of all. The Hollywood textbooks were full of that sort of thing. Matching action across cuts, making dialogue sequences flow seamlessly, establishing space and time on the screen. We studied chases, comic scenes and songs, […]

“Your film is given life on the cutting-bench, but you cannot create life unless the necessary raw stuff is to hand. Cutting is not confined to the cutting room alone. Cutting must be present all through the stages of production – script, photography and approach to natural material – finally to take concrete form as […]

Pratilipi: What lead you to publishing books in Hindi? What broadly is the Harper Collins hypothesis about the ‘Hindi Sanskriti’? What were your observations about the Hindi market? Minakshi Thakur: HarperCollins Publishers is one of the three leading English language publishers in the world. It set up operations in India in 1995 and had till […]

How much does an official box measure? It’s best not measured! The size of anything official is deceptive. Basket, casket, box. Dali, peti dabba. Denoting bribes and amounts! This box containing the son fits no idiom, what dimension then should be suggested for its size? Big enough to hold a fistful of ash? Or as […]

भारत विभाजन पर एक शोधकर्ता की टिप्पणी वक्ताओं और श्रोताओं उत्तर भारत में एक लोकोक्ति प्रचलित है – रहिमन निज मन की व्यथा, मन ही राखो गोय। सुन इठलाइहें लोग सब, बांट न लीन्हें कोय॥ यह कहावत पीड़ा भोग रहे व्यक्ति के लिए एक तरह की सामाजिक चेतावनी है, या इसे एक मनोवैज्ञानिक सलाह भी […]