blue moon blog

'Bharatvarsa' or 'the land of Bharata' is evident in a literary tradition in the Indian subcontinent since Vedic times. In contemporary times, Dalit writings have become a 'subaltern literature', incongruent with the idea of 'Bharatvarsa'. A critical analysis of SK Das's idea of literature. How long will it take to accept literature produced by Dalits in mainstream Indian literature? Sisir Kumar Das | Picture Credits: Alchetron.com We make a singular picture when we think about literature in India. We always think about how the literature of India constitutes different languages. Owing to its vast lingual diversity, putting literature in India under one single idea becomes challenging. Its pluralistic nature tends to make it mutually exclusive. Taking the whole Indian literature under a single unit thus becomes challenging. To talk about literature in India, one must use the plural 'literature' due to various literary traditions across the co...

  Picture credit: The Time Samsa in love is a short story written by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami and is translated by Ted Goossen. It is a part of Murakami's collection of short stories called 'Desire' published by Vintage Minis. In his story, the character of Samsa is based on the character known as Gregor Samsa, the protagonist of Franz Kafka's very popular novel Metamorphosis. Kafka's novel revolves around a man (Gregor Samsa) who wakes up one day to find out that he has turned into a moth. It is a brilliant work around the idea of existentialism. However, in Murakami's story, Samsa wakes up to find out that he has turned into a human from a moth. It's the other way around. The initial sensations of both these Samsas are the same. They both find it difficult to adjust to a foreign body, taking in the consciousness of a totally different being. Both know nothing of how they come to be in this way. Gregor Samsa had his own set of ordeals which ended in ...

  " My characters will have, after a little bit of trouble, all that they desire" - Jane Austen Becoming Jane is a movie on the author Jane Austen, celebrated author of Pride and Prejudice.  It is believed that she wrote the novel when she was having an affair with the lawyer Thomas  Langlois Lefroy on whom she based the character of Mr Darcy. The movie traces this controversial love affair of Jane Austen.  Having grown up reading Pride and Prejudice and swooning over the dashing Mr Darcy, I anticipated that Thomas Lefroy would just be like Mr Darcy.  Alas, I was wrong. The movie is a whole 2-hour piece of irony. Characters of the movie look familiar to the characters of the book, but they behave in an unconventional way. Jane Austen herself acts differently (more humanely) than the character of Elizabeth Bennet of the book. Watching this movie I was busy noticing how these actors onscreen look much like the characters of the book but act in a more relatable, l...

Have you seen a human heart? It looks like a fist wrapped in blood! You go check a few facts while I get my hands dirty. -  Larry These are the words that were ringing in my ears long after I finished watching the movie Closer. Starting off as a typical rom-com it progresses into an arena of manipulations, power struggles, bitter truths, and lies. Characters resort to brutal truths (more like confessions) in their relationships, hurtful yet ashamed at the same time. The movie revolves around the idea of how intimacy is actually a lie. Closer, released in 2004, is based on a play written by Patrick Marber and is directed by Mike Nichols. It stars Jude Law as Dan (a writer and journalist), Natalie Portman as Alice (an American girl who says she was a stripper and fled New York to end a relationship), Julia Roberts as Anna (an American photographer), and Clive Owen as Larry (a dermatologist). The characters connect in a series of meet-cutes that are perhaps no more contrived than...

  Embroidery, which is the technique of weaving beautiful beads, stones, and threads on fabric, has never gone out of fashion. This technique or art has been practiced by many people throughout the world especially young women and girls. This art has its origin in rural communities in which women used their hands to decorate beautiful pieces of fabric that were patronized by the upper classes. In this way, women were able to contribute to the rural economy as well as getting recognition for their creativity and skill. In earlier times, when embroidery was done by hand (as handicrafts) it used to take a longer period of time depending on the intricacies of the style. Sometimes, three or four people were required to produce a piece of embroidered work. However, in modern times, due to advancements in technology and the availability of various machines for example sewing machines, embroidered works can be produced commercially. In India, different types of embroidery have been practic...

Sometime ago, when I was scrolling down my YouTube feed probably wasting my time, I cam across a clip of the popular Pakistani TV show 'Zindagi Gulzar Hai'. I begin to realize how the time has passed since 2014 when I first watched that show on Zindagi. The first ever TV serial I watched.  Television was never a norm in our family, and the cable was ought to get cut during school examinations, especially the Board ones. According to our father, it was a major distraction. If we speak of Indian schools, then there are numerous exams throughout the year. The best time was summer vacations as we used to have uninterrupted cable connection for two months. So watching serials would've been a bad idea as you'll be missing months worth of storyline. Honestly, I was never even interested in watching any serial as such because I knew most of them were dumb already.  I remember, while quickly switching between channels, deciding what to watch, I suddenly stopped at Zindagi channe...

'She felt a cozy solidarity with the big company of the voluntary dead' - Dorothy Parker All the beauty we are used  to associate with the feminine need not always be authentic. We fail to realize the fallibility in a woman's character. The hollowness behind that deep rouge lips, is sometimes all that she is. Nothing more. Its strange to comprehend it in such a way.  After reading three brilliant stories by Dorothy Parker, something I understood about the women around me including myself. We all are just tired. Its just that simple. No matter how much we caress ourselves in beauty saloons like pedigreed bitches, sweat profusely to perfect our hips or just read heaps of books to sharpen our intellect (which will get ignored anyway), its just the same.  The absence of any emotional reaction from a woman is always suspicious and if she manages to express it (rather haughtily) then she is creating a scene. What an overly dramatic bitch!  I find this...