Monday 12 March 2018

ANCIENT INDIAN RIDDLE

Harappan / Indus Valley Civilization's historians love to speculate all the time - Who inhabited those early cities ? What were the people like and what trades did they practise ? Ancient India continues to live within the contemporary one. For proof that the sub-continent has preserved its traditions through past millenniums, witness the two images (TV grabs) the one above from Karnataka hills and one below from Sri Lanka. Cooking some food  comfortably and by preference in vessels made of clay, as folks did 2,000 to 3,000 years ago and much earlier; they illustrate how POTTERS and POTTERY were central to the HARAPPAN Civilisation. So yes, Potters too lived in those settlements.

Sunday 11 March 2018

GAYATRI DECONSTRUCTS

"Gayatri Spivak is an academic superstar" - reminds Kuntala Lahiri Dutt. Derrida's translator Spivak was back home from Columbia, where she teaches, and decided to lecture a bit. To a full house in attendance Spivak spoke on the impossibility and yet immediacy of the task of translation. Notice the deference she evokes among her followers.