An Indecisive Indian

  (  This blog describes the fun the author, other participants, and indubitably the audience had during the launch of the book “Fun with Chachā Ghālib and Uncle Shakespeare”. Before I begin, please note that interested readers may obtain a copy of the book on Amazon:   https://amzn.in/d/07UPbbtg   )   An evening when two immortals walked out of literature and onto the stage   "Shakespeare and Ghālib collide in an epic literary crossover!" proclaimed the invitation. It sounded improbable enough to be irresistible. On the evening of 1 August, at the intimate Kala Srot Gallery in Aliganj, Lucknow, improbability became reality. My eighth book, Fun with Chachā Ghālib and Uncle Shakespeare , was launched before a packed audience of literature lovers, friends and fellow travellers in the world of words. The book carries a foreword by Suhel Seth, noted columnist, actor, keynote speaker and television commentator, besides endorsements from an illustrio...

  Dr. Sudhanshu Mani I am no painter with a brush, nor a sculptor with a chisel in hand. I am just a humble novice in the cathedral of good art. Yet I do know how to cradle an idea, to carry it faithfully across the distance from thought to reality. It began, long ago, with the iron muse of my profession. In thirty-five years as an Indian Railways officer, the moment that etched itself deepest was not a groundbreaking project or a grand inauguration, but a quiet evening between Hindupur and Bangalore. There I sat, coffee in one hand, cigarette in the other, in the lookout glass of an inspection saloon, watching the world unfurl behind a racing train. The view was not a postcard, but a restless theatre: fields and dust, surging crowds and silent stretches, laughter, struggle, and stillness, all in one reel of light and shadow. I sat there bewitched, bewildered, almost chastened. What was I doing, gulping down this living poetry with my eyes and doing nothing about it? Art, after all...