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Thursday, August 13, 2009

Kamila Shamsie - To Google or not to Google, Robert Pinsky, The long wait for Godot By Irfan Husain

But Google Earth is far from being immune to the imbalance of knowledge production in different parts of the world. When I needed to remind myself of tiny details about New York City, the program offered me everything I could want: 3D models of buildings, amazingly high-resolution images, links to photographs and video streams of Manhattan (this was before "street view" was unveiled as a Google Earth feature). But when it was Afghanistan I was researching, my attempts to locate a certain shrine near the Arghandab river led to failure: all Google Earth showed me of that - and of many other parts - of Afghanistan was an indistinct blur, and the only clues to topography came from the colours within the blur: blue for rivers, brown for desert, green for fertile land. The blurred images, contrasted with the details views of New York, spelt out a simple message: Here Be Dragons. Kamila Shamsie - To Google or not to Google

Life is not all grand passions, high spiritual aspirations, profound questions, and tormented inner feelings. Some of the time, our feelings are petty rather than grand, our aspirations worldly rather than spiritual, our questions trivial. Sometimes, our inner feelings—or is it just mine?—are irritable, even bored, rather than tormented. One looks a little sour; one hums a little tune. One plays with one's spoon or keeps checking the clock. Artists have noticed this. As a supreme example, Nikolai Gogol's novel Dead Souls is a great work about how petty we can be. It's not an empty paradox to say that Gogol explores the profound sadness of shallowness. Same-Old, Same-Old - Alexander Pope's "Epistle" and the art of making poetry from normal, banal, petty life.By Robert Pinsky

I have often thought about why Asia has produced so much outstanding prose and poetry, but is so barren where theatre is concerned. Certainly, political and social taboos have played a part. In fact, the only Asian name I can think of in contemporary theatre is Yasmin Reza, the Iranian-born French author of Art, the stunning play that took the theatre world by storm some 15 years ago. The long wait for Godot By Irfan Husain

am no expert but the tradition is alive and well in across the divide ... marathi and bengali theatre in the lead...and pre partition agha hash'r kashmiri was an icon ~~t

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as for the undivided land...have read agah hash'r kashmiri was an icon


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