book excerptise: a
book unexamined is a waste of trees
book excerptise : snatches of conversation with books
How this project started
i find it difficult to read a book without a pencil - or increasingly -
without a text editor where i can take notes... over the years, thousands of extracts and
quotations and reviews have accumulated in a huge file. after every
book, there would be lots of excerpts...
then one day, i
discovered i had more than one copy of several books.
it was a time for lists. that list swelled
with keywords linking them
to the shelf. and then one day I wanted to share some of my favourite
excerpts from several books (one of them was Jared Diamond's
The Rise and
Fall of the Third Chimpanzee, 1991). i ended up writing a
fairly elaborate script on my favourite editor, emacs, that converted my
raw text file into a webpage. thus was born
book excerptise. This was around 2004. Since then more than
two thousand books have been added to this site...
I also have a compilations of my poetry book collection -
a list of Poetry Anthologies, with a "top ten" list
covering all genres, and sublists for
Indian poetry, World poetry, British/American poetry, Humour and Children's
poetry (81 of them, all told).
The following is a sort of blog - a chronological record of new entries...
The index
master-09.html has an older (pre-2009) list
of book excerpts which are topic-indexed.
Sometimes people ask me about copyright, since many books are _extensively_
excerpted. Where the excerpts are so extensive, they are almost all
from various sources on the web. I am not sure that the presence of excerpts
on the web justifies this concatenation at a single site, but if anyone
objects, I will be happy to replace the texts with their links. The problem
is that in the ten years that this site has been up, hundreds of links have
died or moved...
Recently added
- The case of the missing servant by Tarquin Hall (2009)
The residents of number 76, D Block, the house that Puri was
watching, retained
the services of no fewer than seven full-time people — two drivers, a cook, a
cleaner-cum-laundry-maid, a bearer and two security guards....
...
- The Literary History of England: Vol 1: The Middle Ages by Albert C. Baugh and Kemp Malone (2003)
The English of heathen times knew how to write, it is true. They brought
with them from the Continent a futhark (ᚠᚢᚦᚨᚱᚲ) or runic alphabet of twenty-four
letters
...
- Growth and Structure of the English Language by Otto Jespersen (1905)
I select at random, by way of contrast, a passage from the language
of Hawaii: "I kona hiki ana aku ilaila ua hookipa ia mai la oia me ke
aloha pumehana loa." Can
anyone be in doubt that even if such a language sound pleasantly and
be full of music and harmony the total impression is childlike and
effeminate? You do not expect much vigour or energy in a people
speaking such a language... p.3
[Though this sounds almost racist
in today's postcolonial world, I am a great admirer of Jespersen, I
use this quote only to show the colourful nature of his narrative...]
...
- The Spring Thunder and After: A Survey of the Maoist and Ultra-leftist Movements in India, 1962-75 by Asish Kumar Roy (1975)
The failure of the urban proletariat to bring about an "intertwined" socialist
revolution through a series of lightning strikes, together
with the successful operation of the Telengana peasant revolt under
the leadership the Andhra Communists since 1946, brought about a Maoist
turn in the CPI leadership in 1952.
...
- The man who mistook his wife for a hat and other clinical tales by Oliver W. Sacks (1987)
He had found "someone’s leg" in the bed — a severed human leg, a horrible
thing! He was stunned, at first, with amazement and disgust — he had never
experienced, never imagined, such an incredible thing.
Then he realized that it must be a monstrous joke!
He was much relieved at the explanation; but feeling that a joke was
a joke, and that this one was a bit much, he threw the damn thing out of the
bed. But — and at this point his conversational manner deserted him, and he
suddenly trembled and became ashenpale— when he threw it out of bed, he
somehow came after it — and now it was attached to him.
...
- Everyone here spoke sign language by Nora Ellen Groce (1985)
Ebenezar and Thankful Hamblin, both hearing. Of their eleven children,
three were deaf. p.25
...
- On the Education of the People of India by Charles Edward Trevelyan (1838)
the Orientalist group [in the Committee, argues for
native modes of education,] by
all which means fresh masses would have been added to an already unsaleable
and useless hoard. [Anglicist group : more emphasis on English and
vernacular languages.] This state of things lasted for about three
years. (1832-35)
...
- Marxism, Socialism, Indian Politics: A View from the Left by Randhir Singh (2008)
Although this is an work on Indian politics, there is hardly any
discussion of Indian experiments. Kerala is never mentioned, and Bengal is
a purely negative example.
The entire narrative is about the outside world -- Russia's October
revolution, Cuba's heroic struggle, and Mao's China. Singh seems sadly
stuck in a half-century time-warp.
...
- Maoist "spring thunder": the Naxalite movement 1967-1972 by Arun Mukherjee (2007)
Gorachand Sanyal, who declined to move because he was like a loving
grandfather or uncle to most of the young boys and girls of the area...
was brutally murdered by the Naxalites
near his house in Baranagar... the severed head was put on a thali and from
the oozing
blood, a young Naxalite girl decorated her own hands, feet and forehead
...
- Ballads of Marathas by Harry Arbuthnot Acworth (1894)
But Shiwaji the raja
In answer made him feel
The twin sting of the scorpion,^-
The deadly claws of steel.
...
- A History of the Mahrattas, Volume 1 by James Grant Duff (1826)
As is to be expected, his history is laced with considerable colonial
prejudice - "Afzool Khan had all the vanity of a Mahomedan noble", "No
Bramin could resist such [a bribe]", etc.
...
- 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff (2002)
Hanff doesn't like fiction:
I never can get interested in things that
didn't happen to people who never lived. [Feb 1952, 43]
[But later we fine her praising Jane Austen, Wind in the Willows, etc.]
...
- India's 2009 Elections: Coalition Politics, Party Competition and Congress Continuity by Paul Wallace and Ramashray Roy (eds) (2011)
When he became the Chief Minister in Oct 2001 by ousting Keshubhai
Patel, he lacked a social base in Gujarat.... The party was in
disarray as it lost power in most of the local governments, and Modi himself
won a later election from Rajkot, a traditional stronghold of the RSS,
with a thin margin
...
- The Mughal Empire: The new Cambridge history of India, v.I.5 by John F. Richards (1993)
Within the tent an initial embrace of greeting between the two principals
abruptly became a mortal struggle in which Afzal Khan tried to strangle
[the much shorter] Shivaji. The latter used his concealed "tiger
claws" to disembowel his larger enemy. At their commander's signal hidden
Maratha troops surrounding the site attacked and slaughtered the confused
Bijapur soldiery. p.208
...
- The Oxford India Anthology of Modern Urdu Literature: Poetry and Prose Miscellany by Mehr Afshan Farooqi (ed) (2010)
The last part, literary anecdotes, translated and presumably compiled by
Baran Rehman, is a goldmine.
...
- Trail of paint by Anjali Raghbeer and Soumya Menon (ill.) (2009)
"True art is creating, not copying." the man said, and suddenly he wasn't
whispering any more.
...
- From Sepoy to Subedar: Being the Life and Adventures of Subedar Sita Ram, a Native Officer of the Bengal Army Written and Related by Himself by Sita Ram Pandey and James T. Norgate (tr) and James D. Lunt (ed) and Frank Wilson (ill) (1970)
The prisoners were to be shot at four o'clock in the afternoon and I must be
my son's executioner! Such is fate! I went to the Major sahib and requested
that I might be relieved of this duty as a very great favour.
...
- The Mughal Empire: The new Cambridge history of India, I.5 by John F. Richards (1993)
Within the tent an initial embrace of greeting between the two principals
abruptly became a mortal struggle in which Afzal Khan tried to strangle
[the much shorter] Shivaji. The latter used his concealed iron "tiger
claws" to disembowel his larger enemy. At their commander's signal hidden
Maratha troops surrounding the site attacked and slaughtered the confused
Bijapur soldiery.
...
- The Bonfire of the Vanities: A Novel by Tom Wolfe (2002)
one day, in a fit of euphoria, after he had picked up the
telephone and taken an order for zero-coupon bonds that had brought him a
$50,000 commission, just like that...[the name of this lurid toy] bubbled up
into his brain. On Wall Street he and a few hundred others had become
precisely that ... Masters of the Universe.
...
- We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo (2013)
How old are you? the woman asks Chipo, looking at her stomach like she has
never seen anybody pregnant.
She is eleven, Godknows replies for Chipo. We are ten, me and her, like
...
- Pathways to Language: From Fetus to Adolescent by Kyra Karmiloff and Annette Karmiloff-Smith (2002)
Yara (four years old): What’s that?
Mother: It’s a typewriter.
Yara (frowning): No, you’re the typewriter, that’s a typewrite.
...
- Asoka by Radha Kumud Mookerji (1928)
the southern legends are
far wide of the truth in making asoka a fratricide, the murderer of 99
brothers for the sake of the throne, for which he is dubbed chaNDAsoka...
[he does seem to have killed his eldest brother, susima, but
these buddhist histories are] interested in
blackening his earlier character so as to to glorify the religion which could transmute base
metal into gold, convert...
...
- When Bad Things Happen to Good People by Harold S. Kushner (1981)
Why do terrible things happen to people who have been pious?
How can religion
justify a God who wills such disasters upon the faithful? Classifies the
arguments given into eight philosophical strands, e.g. guilt at having
missed some ritual recently, that it was done for the improvement of
...
- Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet (2007)
Days of the week are coloured for Tammet - all
Wednesdays are "blue days". On Icelandic TV, he convincingly demonstrated
that he could learn an entire new language – grammar, inflection and
comprehension - in only one week. The number 9 is large and threatening. Primes
...
- An anthropologist on Mars: seven paradoxical tales by Oliver W. Sacks (1995)
[Virgil is a patient who was born blind and had recently gained
eyesight through surgery]... He could recognize large alphabets - esp capital letters - but had a
lot of difficulty recognizing faces, or the cat, and with shapes generally...
He told me that he had learned the alphabet by touch at school, where
they had used letter blocks, or cutout letters, for teaching the blind.
...
- Barber at the Zoo by Pratibha Nath and Jagdish Joshi (ill) (1984)
badlu the barber is on his round. he trims the giraffe standing
on a ladder. he trims
the baby elephant (who is throwing tantrums for a haircut though he really
doesn't need one). while he is trimming the chimpanzee, it steals a
scissors. it then follows badlu to the lions cage.
the lion hasn't
had breakfast yet. while badlu is trimming his mane, the chimp sets to work
on his tail fringe. [go read the rest!!]
...
- A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder by Shamini Flint (2009)
Mahathir,
the previous prime minister, was convinced that as long as he built the
biggest, the best and the most expensive of everything, Malaysia would be
treated with respect by the international community.
Instead, Malaysia has become a byword for constructing white elephants.
...
2015 aug
- Soldiers of Reason: The Rand Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire by Alex Abella (2008)
On March 1, 1946, Project RAND was officially
launched with it's first assignment: an
inquiry into
the possibility of launching an orbiting satellite by spaceship.
Within a month, its four employees, with the help of consultants, wrote a
farseeing report, breathtaking in its intellectual daring and self-assured to
the point of arrogance: Preliminary Design of an Experimental World-Circling
Spaceship
...
- Poems by Faiz by Faiz Ahmad Faiz and Victor Gordon Kiernan (tr.) (1971)
the Panjab was still in many ways a Sleepy Hollow where life moved at
the pace of the feeble cab-horses drawing their two-wheeled tongas; where
young men could indulge in old carefree idle ways, with long hours of
debate in coffee-houses and moonlight picnics by the river Ravi.
In this mode of living, verse-making played a part it has long since
lost in the busy practical West. It was a polite
...
- The Indian Muslims A Documentary Record v.III : The Tripoli and Balkan Wars by Shan Muhammad (1970)
Aligarh became the nerve-centre of Muslim radicals. Meetings of
students were organised and British policy condemned. The students resolved
to take the simplest food and contribute the savings on delicious dishes to
the Turkish Relief Fund. A batch of students listed themselves to go to
Turkey with
the Medical Mission.
...
- Language and Information by Zellig S. Harris (1987)
Reading this text in the era when probabilistic models of language have
seem to have decisively overthrown the logical / formal models of syntax,
it is refreshing (and humbling) to find so much of that approach already
foreshadowed in these ideas from the 1960s.
...
- The evolution of cooperation by Robert M. Axelrod (1984)
I invited experts in game theory to submit programs for a Computer
Prisoner's Dilemma tournament — much like a computer chess tournament. ... To my considerable surprise, the winner was the simplest of all
the programs submitted, TIT FOR TAT. Why would
...
- The Select Nonsense of Sukumar Ray by Sukanta Chaudhuri (1987)
When summer comes, we hear the hums
of Bhisma Lochan Sharma.
You catch his strain on hill and plain
from Delhi down to
...
- Wordygurdyboom! (Abol Tabol) : The Nonsense World Of Sukumar Ray by Sukumar Ray and Sampurna Chatterjee (tr.) (2004)
Come happy fool whimsical cool
Come dreaming dancing fancy-free
Come mad musician glad glusician
beating your drum with glee
... even preserves the rhythm of the original "Ay re bholA kheyAl kholA"
...
- Kanpur Indo-American Program - Final report (1962 - 1972) by Norman C. Dahl and R.L. Halfman and R.S. Green and J. Mahanty and G. Oakley and J.G. Fox (1973)
In particular, the KIAP team found the first director, P.K. Kelkar,
remarkably open in his thinking, and ready to make a break with the
narrow traditions that had animated the Indian universities.
...
- Nucleus and Nation: Scientists, International Networks, and Power in India by Robert S. Anderson (2010)
during the Sommerfeld visit
of 1928, after Raman's lecture on the spectral
scattering later called the Raman effect, Saha stood up and
with Sommerfeld present, said that the discovery was no more
than a confirmation of what Smekal had predicted.
...
- Preference, Belief, and Similarity: Selected Writings by Amos Tversky and Eldar Shafir (ed) (2004)
When I play squash, there are days when I find that every shot becomes a
winner, I am invincible. Many others have had this feeling. We justify
it by saying that the mind wields a lot of power on our body. But is it
really true?
...
- The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in India by Gail Minault (1982)
thre were enormous discrepancies in the [khilafat committee]
accounts, and the balance of
sixteen lakhs supposedly in the keeping of Seth Chotani and his son
had vanished. p.190
...
- Indian Mathematics and Astronomy: Some Landmarks by S. Balachandra Rao (1994)
In 1657 Fermat proposed to his friend Frenicle to solve in integers
the indeterminate equation 61x² + 1 = y², but the solution was not
found until 1732 by Euler. But coincidentally, the same equation was
completely solved by Bhaskara who obtains the lowest values x =
226153980 and y = 1766319049. [p.7]
...
- A Young People's History of the United States: Columbus to the War on Terror by Howard Zinn and Rebecca Stefoff (ed) (2011)
Part of the premise of Columbus' trips to the new world was that the court
could get "as much gold as they need - and as many slaves as they ask.”...
Unfortunately no gold was found, but after numerous slave raids, five hundred
captives were sent to Spain. Two hundred died on the voyage. The rest were
sold by a local church official. Columbus said: "Let us in the name of the
Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold."
...
- A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies by Bartolome De Las Casas and Franklin W. Knight (ed.) and Andrew Hurley (tr) (2003)
the (native) population of Hispaniola went from three million
(others suggest 1+ mn) to 46,000 between 1492 and 1510. While
many died from illness, a large fraction were also killed in wanton
violence and for opposing the repressive measures. The total number killed
over the entire Spanish new world numbered between 12 and 15 million.
...
2015 Jul
- The Scientific Edge: The Indian Scientist from Vedic to Modern Times by Jayant Vishnu Narlikar (2003)
Narilkar is particularly scathing about the sutras introduced by the
late Shankacharya of Puri, Bharati Krishna Tirtha maharaj, in his widely
read book Vedic
Mathematics... The formulas in the book are claimed to be "vedic", but
when pressed, Swamiji said that they appear in only his copy of the
atharva veda.
...
- Alex's adventures in numberland by Alex Bellos and Andy Riley (ill) (2010)
One asks a Munduruku who had six children: ‘How many kids do you
have?’
Pica's response: ‘He will say "I don’t know". It is impossible to express.’
...
- While I Write by K. Satchidanandan (2011)
To love a woman is
to exchange the harshness of your muscles
for the tenderness of a flower,
...
- My Story by Kamala Das (1991)
Was it no longer possible to lure a charming male into a complicated and
satisfying love affair with the right words, right glances, and the right
gestures? Was I finished as charmer?
...
- Soldaten: on Fighting, Killing, and Dying : The secret World War II transcripts of German POWs by Sonke Neitzel and Harald Welzer and Jefferson Chase (tr.) (2012)
It seems to have been common, accepted practice to execute Jewish women
after sex so that soldiers would not have to worry about sanctions
following a “racial crime,”
...
- Ajab chhaRA by mamatA banerjee (2004)
তোমার নাম? হ্যালো-হাই
বাবার নাম? সি ইউ বাই
মায়ের নাম? হাই ফাই
বোনের নাম? সুইটি পাই |
...
- The Chinese Maze Murders: A Judge Dee Mystery by Robert van Gulik (2010)
This person is very impressed with the erudition of Master van Gulik. This
person reads his stories in one big gulp, and this one was no exception.
This person humbly pleads that you, honourable reader who have strayed onto
this page, read as much of van Gulik as you can lay your hands on.
...
- A History of Kashmir: Political, Social, Cultural, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day by Prithivi Nath Kaul Bamzai (1973)
[Kashmir has seen] a happy blending of cultures, at once tolerant and
sympathetic towards the ideas and beliefs of others.
[Tarn, The Greeks in Bactria and India, p. 155]
...
- The Cambridge History of India: v.5 : British India, 1497-1858 by Henry (ed) Dodwell and Rapson, Edward James and Sir Wolseley Haig and Sir Richard Burn (1858)
[Richard Barwell] made a great fortune in India, and, as Sir
James Stephen says, this fact
of itself raises a presumption against his official purity. ... his standard
was low.
...
- Kuppuswami Sastri Commemoration Volume: Studies in Indology by Chittenjoor Kunhan Raja and S. Kuppuswami Sastri and Palamadai Pichumoni Subrahmaṇya Śāstri (1935)
the general tendency to see a gradation in terms of simplicity and
directness vs ornamentation and force seems true of all art.
bhAmaha's dictum - that a minimum of vakratA (indirectness) is needed to
avoid _grAmyatA_ (peasant speech) also seems quite universal.
...
- Civil disturbances during the British Rule in India, 1765-1857 by Sashi Bhusan Chaudhuri (1955)
A gentleman sends a Gomastah here to buy or sell; he immediately
looks upon himself as sufficient to force every inhabitant to
buy his goods or sell him theirs; and on refusal,
a flogging or confinement immediately ensues. -
letter from a companyh Sergeant, on difficulties in
maintaining law and order in East Bengal.
...
June 17, 2015
- gaRgaRiye tartariye by Sunirmal Chakrabarti (1989)
টিকটিকি চিঠি লেখে -
গিরগিটি ভাই
তুমি ঘোরো মাঠে বনে
তাই দেখা নাই
...
- The Devotion Of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino (2011)
At 7:35 A.M. Ishigami left his apartment as he did every weekday morning.
Just before stepping out onto the street, he glanced at the mostly full
bicycle lot, noting the absence of the green bicycle.
...
- The emerald lingam by Madhavi S. Mahadevan and Sujasha Dasgupta (ill.) (1989)
Murugesha, the fat proprietor, was a jovial man with a penchant for wearing
bright lungis and listening to loud music.
...
- From Home to House: Writings of Kashmiri Pandits in Exile Paperback by Arvind (ed) Gigoo and Adarsh Ajit and (ed) and Shaleen Kumar Singh (ed) (2015)
It must have been around 11.30 in the night. I was trying to sleep,
with my wife and younger son, when I heard loud banging on the window.
I had hardly come out of bed when the window shattered and four
masked men broke in. They were in khaki with guns in hand
...
- bidyApatir padAbalI by khagendra nAth mitra and bimAnbihArI majumdAr (eds) (1952)
This scholarly edition includes a 160 page analytic introduction
by
bimAnbihArI majumdAr, who hails from a noted
vaishNav (boshtom) family, and collected manuscripts from far and wide.
later, he also lived in mithila, teaching at the haraprasAd-dAs jain
college, Arrah and was therefore well-placed to follow up on maithilic
sources.
...
- Dacoitee in Excelsis; or, the Spoliation of Oude by the East India Company by Robert Wilberforce Bird (1856)
Unlike the typical colonial history, Bird is vehemently against the
unethical means by which the Company kept enriching itself on
the accumulated surplus of the Oudh state. This particular history,
with its provocative title, was published at the juncture when Wajid Ali
Shah had already been deposed (Feb 1856) and exiled (Mar).
...
- The Cobrapost Affair: The Adventures of Rhea by Aniruddha Bahal and Neelabh (ill) (2015)
Cross-gender dressing, israeli martial art krav maga mixed in with kung fu,
a fascinating array of guns and gadgets,
foreign spies disguised as ascetics, afghan
ministers working for the taliban, and other farfetched stories very much in
the Tintin spirit. Herge's art style is also a clear inspiration...
...
- Colours of the cage: A prison memoir by Arun Ferreira (2014)
More than despair, one is angry. Who are the police decision-makers who
decided to abduct Ferreira after his release in September 2011? What can be
done in a democratic setup to bring these police
_criminals_ to book?
...
- One Night at the Call Centre by Chetan Bhagat (2007)
- Yes, sir. I am in India.
- So what did you have to do to get this job? Degree in nuclear physics?
- Sir, do you need help with your [vacuum] cleaner or not?
- C'mon, son, answer me. I don't need your help. Yeah, I'll change the
dust bag. What about you guys? When will you change your dusty country? 58
...
- kAnpur kA itihAs v.1 by Surya Kant Tripathi and Narayan Prasad Arora (1950)
by the end of the 18th c., the kanpur area was largely operating
independently of the subahdar and of awadh. in 1801 the district of jajmau
(including the area that is now kanpur) was transferred to
the east india company by wazir ali shah, and the first collector Abraham
Welland was appointed in march 1802. he writes that the district was
utterly mismanaged and that the people are suffering from the rapacity of
the rulers, and that large tracts of the district lie barren. p.76
...
- The Indo Aryan races by Ramaprasad Chanda (1916)
Anthropometric data was an integral part of of
the census report in 1905. It
soon became apparent that dolichocephaly [longer ratio of length to width
of head] prevailed in highest frequencies ... among many living brAhmaNs.
...
2015 may
- Images of Lucknow by Roshan Taqui (ed) (2005)
luT gaye bashindgane lucknow ghar khud gaye
khak uDAte hain bagoole khana-e-barbAd ke.
the citizens of lucknow are now looted, their houses dug up /
the wind blows the dust of their destruction.
- Imdad Ali 'Bahar' (q. naiyyar masud) p.40
...
- An Account of Chang and Eng: The World Renowned Siamese Twins by TW Strong (publ) (1853)
Mrs. Eng is now the mother of six children, and Mrs. Chang of five. 78
...
- Justice: what's the right thing to do? by Michael J. Sandel (2010)
I was in
Uttarakhand in 2012, right after heavy Himalayan rains caused severe floods.
Thousands of people died, and
hundreds of thousands were stranded precariously, without food or shelter.
In these circumstances, news started arriving of shopkeepers at Guptkashi
charging rs. 250 for a paratha. Everyone was fuming at this price gouging.
This, says Sandel, is the argument from _virtue_, a visceral shared morality
that is hard to reason about. Arranged against it is the argument from
utility , which says that by raising price, you are incentivizing more
suppliers to come, thereby increasing welfare.
...
- The Cambridge History of India, Volume 1 : Ancient India by Edward James Rapson (1955)
QUIZ: Who do you think is the king or person that this book
talks about most frequently? (Hint: it isn't Ashoka or Chandragupta or Buddha].
...
- Ramanujan, the man and the mathematician by Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan (1967)
G. V. Narayansawamy Ayyar, a reputed astrologer and mathematics student, was
visited by Ramanujan's mother during his illness in March 1920. He was
impressed that "the lady not only remembered the details of tbe horoscope
without the aid of paper, but could also read the results from it." This is
a skill that usually involves some mathematical ability.
So did Ramanujan inherit some of his abilities from his mother? I do not
find this question investigated in any of his other biographies.
...
- The Mughal State, 1526-1750 by Muzaffar Alam and Subrahmanyam, Sanjay (eds) (1986)
Once in a very long while something happens to stir the shallow, turbid
and yet extensive waters of Indian historiography. The publication of
Irfan Habib's The Agrarian System of Mughal India is generally recognised
– even in the most unlikely quarters – as one of these rare occasions.
...
- Rethinking 1857 by Sabyasachi Bhattacharya (ed) (2007)
a number of modern historians have strongly argued that
the revolt was initiated by the sepoys, but fed into a long history of
grievances across the countryside, fueled by the rapaciousness of the
merchant-rulers.
...
- History of Bengal (v.II) - Muslim Period 1200-1757 AD by Sir Jadunath Sarkar and Ramesh Chandra Majumdar (ed) (1948)
most bengalis know little of the history of bengal. many of us
know the nitti-gritties of oliver cromwell's machinations or paul
revere's ride, but we know little about how AlivardI came to power or how
murshidAbAd got its name.
...
- Radhakrishnan; Selected Writings on Philosophy, Religion and Culture by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Robert A. McDermott (ed) (1970)
Radhakrishnan’s determination to defend Indian philosophy
and the Vedantic system provided his work with
a coherence and forcefulness that the subject desperately
needed at the time, but it also bore an apologetic tone from
which his writings are never entirely free.
...
- Modern South Asian Literature in English by Paul Brians (2003)
An external view of Indian literature. Most of the writers
live outside India
...
- sanskrit rAmAyaNas other than vAlmikI's : adbhuta, adhyAtma, and Ananda rAmAyaNas by V. Raghavan (1988)
adbhUta rAmAyaNa: here sItA is the daughter of rAvaNa. there are
two
rAvaNas - one with
ten faces; and an elder brother who has a thousand. it was this ravaNa who was destroyed by sita assuming the form of
kAlI. ...
- Indian Literature in China and the Far East by Probhat Kumar Mukherji (1931)
The Mahabharata mentions china as a people sprung from
vashiSTha's cow... The Cinas brought presents at the rAjasuya
sacrifice of YudhiSThira. On the way from Himalaya to king SubAhu the
PANDavas cossed the country of the Cinas. p.3
...
- Funny boy by Shyam Selvadurai (1997)
"You're a pansy," she said, her lips curling in disgust.
We looked at her blankly.
"A faggot," she said, her voice rising against our uncomprehending stares.
"A sissy!" she shouted in desperation.
It was clear by now that these were insults. p.11
...
- Indian Philosophy, Volume 1 by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1931)
An interesting point highlighted by Radhakrishnan is that Gods in India are
closer to the devotee - they are friends, they are lovers.
In contrast, in the judeo-christian gods seem to be distant
and vengeful. zeus is bent upon destroying the human race, and prometheus
and hercules have to defend mankind against the divine vengeance. [see p.41]
...
- Religion in Transition by Vergilius Ferm (ed) (1937)
S. Radhakrishnan : When
Napoleon's eagle eye flashed down the list of officers proposed for
promotion to higher rank, he used to scribble in the margin of a name "Is
he lucky?" I have luck, and it is this that has protected me thus far.
I enjoy the special care of providence.
...
- The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India by Philip J. Stern (2011)
In July 1715, the Surman embassy to Farrukhsiyar entered Delhi behind a vanguard of drums and
trumpets, “flinging” rupee coins into the crowd,
...
- Violence: six sideways reflections by Slavoj Zizek (2008)
Systemic violence is
like the notorious "dark matter" of physics. It may be invisible,
but it has to be taken into account if one is to make sense of what
otherwise seem to be "irrational" explosions of subjective violence.
...
- In Defence of the Terror: Liberty or Death in the French Revolution by Sophie Wahnich (2012)
Nowhere is the dictum ‘every history is a history of the present’ more true
than in the case of the French Revolution: its historiographical reception
has always closely mirrored the twists and turns of later political
struggles. [from intro by zizek]
...
2015 apr
- Classical Indian Philosophy of Induction: The Nyaya Viewpoint by Kisor Kumar Chakrabarti (2010)
when fire is actually found [based on smoke], does not that
justify, because of the
coherence (samvāda) with expectation, a necessary acceptance of
inference as a source of knowledge?
the reply is: no. success of action prompted by expectation does not turn
expectation into knowledge. but such success and coherence suffice to
generate confidence in expectations and make them appear as
knowledge. "appearing as knowledge" is all that is needed
...
- The Case of the Man who Died Laughing by Tarquin Hall (2010)
Jha looked calm, in spite of having been told this was the day he was going
to die. p.12
...
- The East India Company and the Economy of Bengal: From 1704 to 1740 by Sukumar Bhattacharya (1969)
Gerald Aungier, who became Governor of Bombay in 1669,
wrote a striking despatch to the Directors in 1677, recommending
"a severe and vigorous [policy]...
Justice and necessity of your estate now require that in violent
distempers, violent cures are only successful; that the times now
require you to manage your general commerce with your sword in your
hands. [this is 80 years before plassey.]
...
- The Stupendous Timetelling Superdog by Himanjali Sankar and Pooja Pottenkulam (ill.) (2013)
The Marmaladies [are] very sad. They might be waving their hands in
your face as you read this page, but you may be looking through them
to continue to read, as if they do not exist. ...
It's not your fault, but it does make the Marmaladies
quite mad at you.
...
- Oops the Mighty Gurgle by RamG. Vallath (2012)
This whale was not thrashing around and spouting in the sea as good,
well-mannered whales should. This one seemed to be absolutely clueless...
It was floating in the sky right above them.
...
- The Moscow Puzzles: 359 Mathematical Recreations by Boris A. Kordemsky and Martin Gardener (ed.) and Albert Parry (tr) and Yevgeni Konstantinovich Argutinsky (ill) (1992)
Kordemsky's _Matematicheskaya Smekalka_ (1954) is probably the world's
best-selling book of mathematical puzzles, with more than a million copies sold
...
- The Art of Spanking by Jean-Pierre Enard and Milo Manara (ill.) and Elisabeth Bell (tr.) (1993)
Too much beauty is chilling. You admire it without wishing to touch.
...
- Monastery, sanctuary, laboratory: 50 years of IIT-Bombay by Rohit Manchanda (2008)
an IITB faculty member, Chatterjee, was a frequent swimmer in
the lake, sometimes as late in the night as one or two am. once, after
getting onto the island, he found a crocodile. They eyeballed each other
for a bit, then the croc left. Faced with a dilemma now, Chatterjee waited
a few hours, and then swam back nonetheless.
...
- The Gita: The Song of Eternal Wisdom by Luis Fernandes (1977)
Those who worship other gods with faith and
devotion also worship me...
...
- Ramanujan: Twelve Lectures on Subjects Suggested by His Life and Work by G. H. Hardy (1999)
... great mathematicians are commoner than thieves or humbugs
of such incredible skill.
...
2015 mar
- Medieval Mysticism Of India by Kshitimohan Sen (1930)
the present lecturer has seen
in pushkar, ajmer, a class of people who call themselves husaini
brAhmaNs. they are neither orthodox hindus nor orthodox mahomedans.
they have hindu beliefs, customs and rituals, together with mahomedan
ideas and practices.
...
- The Cognitive Neurosciences IV by Michael S. Gazzaniga (2009)
All scientifically oriented accounts should agree that consciousness is in
some sense based in the brain; once this fact is accepted, the problem
arises of why the brain basis of this experience is the basis of this one
rather than another one or none, and it becomes obvious that nothing now
known gives a hint of an explanation.
...
- An Introduction to Mathematics by Alfred North Whitehead (1911)
Equations are of great importance in mathematics, and it seems as though
"For what numbers x is x+2 > 3"
exemplified a much more thorough-going and fundamental idea than the
statement "For some number x, x+2 > 3" (defining the set).
This, however, is a complete mistake.
...
- Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language by Robin Dunbar (1997)
To be groomed by a monkey is to experience primordial enotions: The initial
frisson of uncertainty in an untested relationship, the gradual surrender to
another's avid fingers flickering expertly across bare skin, the light
pinching and picking and nibbling of flesh as hands of discovery move in
surprise from one freckle to another newly discovered mole.
...
- Classical Hindu Mythology: A Reader in the Sanskrit Puranas by Cornelia Dimmitt and Johannes Adrianus Bernardus Buitenen (1978)
so while you get a riveting narrative, it also serves as a scholarly
text...
...
2014 jul
- Outliers: the story of success by Malcolm Gladwell (2008)
In the end, if you get to have 1000 hours a year of practice for 10
years, you become a genius in that area, whatever it may be!
...
- Love in Hindu literature by Benoy Kumar Sarkar (2010)
Vidyapati's Radha is all flesh.
...
- A critical survey of Indian philosophy by Chandradhar Sharma (2000)
inference, according to nyAya, is neither from the universal to the
particular nor from the particular to the universal, but from the
particular to the particular through the universal. ·
...
- The character of logic in India by Bimal Krishna Matilal and Jonardon Ganeri (ed) and Heeraman Tiwari(ed) (2000)
right from the start,
the main question in Indian logic relates to induction - what are the
valid mechanisms for arriving at
the major premise - the inductive relation or
...
- Bicycling science by Frank Rowland Whitt and David Gordon Wilson (1982)
If the same rider (75kg) on a road bike frame (10kg) expends 100 watts
energy on a 20kph ride, he would take about 140W for the same speed
ride on a city bike frame, and about 1.3P on a hybrid bike
frame.
...
- Short History of Aurangzib 1618-1707 by Jadunath Sarkar (1960)
[At Zainabad, Aurangzeb] beheld Hira Bai unveiled among his aunt's
train. The artful beauty "on seeing a mango-tree laden with fruits,
advanced in mirth and amorous play, jumped up. and plucked a mango, as if
unconscious of the prince's presence."
...
- Studies in Mughal India by Jadunath Sarkar (1919)
in the west, children can read intricate details about roman
times, but the average indian citizen is completely in the
dark about much of our history. i feel sad that many of us are more
knowledgeable about guy fawkes or joan of arc than about sher shah or
rani laxmibai.
...
p
- History of Shahjahan of Dihli - 1526-1765 by Banarsi Prasad Saksena (1932)
Saksena derides the accounts of European visitors, whose
description are from a great distance when compared to the writings of
those present at court... though the latter may be
very biased towards the patron
...
- History of Kanauj: To the Moslem Conquest by Rama S. Tripathi (1959)
Sadly, the text is brimming with a nationalistic viewpoint.
...
- khAi khAi by sukumar rAy and debabrata ghoSh (ill.) (2007)
আমরা ভালো লক্ষ্মী সবাই তোমরা ভারি বিশ্রী,
তোমরা খাবে নিমের পাচন, আমরা খাব মিসরি |
...
2014 may
- Adhunik bAM_lA byAkaraN আধুনিক বাংলা ব্যাকরণ by jagadIsh chandra ghosh and anil chandra ghosh and [জগদীশ চন্দ্র ঘোষ and অনিল চন্দ্র ঘোষ (1985)
15 shAnach_ শানচ ["An"] : shI + shAnach_ = shaYAn [he who lies];
শী + শানচ = শয়ান ; বৃত + শানচ = বর্তমান; বৃধ = বর্ধমান ; মৃ = ম্রিয়মাণ
...
- History of Bengali Literature by Sukumar Sen (1960)
The Portuguese traders and adventurers
brought many new commodities in India, and these commodities with their
Portuguese names came to stay permanently.
...
- sharadindu amnibas v1 by Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay and Pratulchandra Gupta (ed) (1966)
ব্যোমকেশের মুণ্ডের দিকে দৃষ্টি নিবদ্ধ রাখিয়া স্যর দিগিন্দ্র:
"তোমার করোটির গঠন থেকে বুঝতে পারছি তোমার মাথায় বুদ্ধি আছে।...
খুলির মধ্যে অন্তত পঞ্চান্ন আউন্স ব্রেন ম্যাটার আছে।
sir digendra held byomkesh's head in a fixed glare:
"looking at the structure of your skull one can say you are
intelligent. cranial volume - 55 ounce of brainmatter or more.
...
- The Art of Poetry: How to Read a Poem by Shira Wolosky (2008)
Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And tomorrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But today,
...
- We didn't stand a chance: Forced evictions in Bangladesh by COHRE (Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions) (publ) and ACHR (2000)
Next morning at 7:00 am the settlement would be surrounded by police
and the demolition bulldozers. ...
announcements would be made to gather all belongings and vacate their
homes. Usually, the men and women would try to plead with the
police. [Meanwhile, the bulldozers would start demolitions.]
...
2014 mar 11
- Nicolaus Copernicus: Making the Earth a Planet by Owen Gingerich and James MacLachlan (2005)
In the 1500s, medicine students had to learn "medical
astrology". Here one determined appropriate "bleeding" points
guided by astrological signs.
[This may seem laughable today, but I wonder how many of today's
measures in medicine would appear as laughable in the
2500s.]
...
- Understanding the Heavens: Thirty Centuries of Astronomical Ideas from Ancient Thinking to Modern Cosmology by Jean-Claude Pecker (2001)
Up to the time of Copernicus, al-Bitruji's book was the new gospel
and it was an anti-Ptolemaic one. ...Undoubtlessly, it made room for the new
and original thinking of Copernicus two centuries
later. p.154
...
- A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionised the Cosmos by Dava Sobel (2011)
Working at a remote outpost in Poland, often under the shadow
of war from Albrecht of Prussia and others, Copernicus formulated the heliocentric
theory that changed our vision of the universe.
...
- Movement by Etienne-Jules Marey and Eric Pritchard (tr.) (1895)
The term chronophotography was coined around 1895, and had a short vogue in
the 1890s; OED has only two citations from 1895 and 1899.
...
- Caste in Indian Politics by Rajni Kothari (1973)
Politics is... identifying and manipulating existing
allegiances in order to consolidate positions. p.4
...
- Great masters of Hindustani music by Susheela Misra (1981)
... the book is still useful as an unfiltered collection of
legends collected from the lucknow-centered musical culture and possibly
farther afield...
- Contemporary Linguistics : An Introduction by William O'Grady and Michael Dobrovolsky and Francis Katamba (1996)
that something with the properties of a soleme could
be called solemic. You also know that to make something solemic is to
solemicize it, and you would call this process solemicization.
Further, you know that the c is pronounced as s in solemicize but as k in
solemic.
...
- Sight Unseen: An Exploration of Conscious and Unconscious Vision by Melvyn Goodale and David Milner (2004)
[patient Dee has lost shape vision after CO poisoning].
When we held up a pencil, we were not surprised that she couldn’t tell us
what it was... In fact, she had no idea whether we were holding it horizontally or
vertically. But then something quite extraordinary happened. Before we knew
it, Dee had reached out and taken the pencil. [This required her to form the
hand so that it knew how the pencil was oriented etc.]
...
- State and politics in India by Partha Chatterjee (ed) (1998)
Mathura, a 16-year-old tribal girl, was raped by two policemen within
a police compound. ... The Supreme
Court acquitted the policemen
and held that since Mathura had not raised any alarm, her allegations
of rape were untrue. Her 'consent' was not a consent which could be
brushed aside as 'passive submission'.
...
- Delhi and its monuments by Surendranath Sen (1954)
Who gave this unique tower its name, Qutb the king, or Qutb the saint?
...
- Prayers, praises and psalms: selections from the Vedas, Upanishads, Epics, Gita, Puranas, Agamas, Tantras, Kavyas & the writings of the Acharyas and others by V. Raghavan (1938)
may night be sweet and dawn also sweet unto us,
may the region of Earth be
sweet and also Heaven [madhu vAtA vitayate]
...
- An anthology of Indo-English poetry by Gauri Deshpande (1974)
They looked for words\\
with the knives and forks of silence. [Parthasarathy]
...
- Art Experience by Mysore Hiriyanna (1954)
dhvanyAloka starts by distinguishing between two kinds of
meaning - the explicit and the implicit - and estimates
the worth of a poem by reference to the implicit... the explicit meaning is
merely the outer embodiment it is clothed in...
...
2014 jan 9
- Waiting for the Wind: Thirty-Six Poets of Japan's Late Medieval Age by Steven D. Carter (tr.) (1989)
the kamakura and muromachi period witnessed one of the
longest lasting and most bitter literary feuds in history.
The dispute, which lasted more than a century, had "a profound impact
upong the whole future course of Japanese poetry."
...
- The Rain of Wisdom: The Essence of the Ocean of True Meaning by Chögyam Trungpa and Nalanda Translation Committee (tr.) (2010)
you who bind the secret joy,
Sri Heruka, i supplicate you.
...
- shudhu Abrittir janya by bratatI bandyopadhyay (2006)
five out of six poems are from
poets born in the twentieth century. with 153 poems by 30 poets, this is
a treasure trove of modern bAnglA poetry, and an AbrittikAr's delight:
জ্বর হয়েছিল? বাড়িতে তো ছিল টেলিফোন
জানালে পারতে। থার্মোমিটার সাজতাম।
...
- The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima by Henry Scott Stokes (2000)
Blood spurted from the cut and ran down his stomach into
his lap, staining the fundoshi a bright red.
With a final effort Mishima completed the crosscut, his head down, his neck
exposed.
...
- nirbAchita 100 kobitA নির্বাচিত ১০০ কবিতা by goon (2004)
পুলিশ স্টেশনে ভিড়,আগ্নেয়াস্ত্র জমা নিচ্ছে শহরের...
শটগান,রাইফেল,পিস্তল এবং কার্তুজ,যেন দরগার
স্বীকৃত মানত,টেবিলে ফুলের মতো মস্তানের হাত।
...
- Computational methods of linear algebra by Vera Nikolaevna. Faddeeva and Curtis D. Benster (tr) (1959)
in 1959, the terms "eigenvalue" / "eigenvector" had not yet been
standardized; they are called proper numbers" and "proper vectors"
of a matrix.
...
- Chaos and Nonlinear Dynamics: An Introduction for Scientists and Engineers by Robert C. Hilborn (2000)
in a 3-D space, two 2-D
surfaces cross transversely to form a curve (a 1-D manifold). If the
surfaces are slightly perturbed, the crossing moves but remains a one-dimensional
manifold. But two curves crossing at a point [is nontransverse, and] a slight
perturbation will cause the intersection to disappear. [bifurcations arise from
such non-transversality]
...
- Photographic guide to birds of India by Bikram Grewal and Bill Harvey (photo) and Otto Pfister (photo) (2002)
Each of the 668 birds also comes with a map indicating summer and winter
ranges, which is very helpful. The standard BNHS book - Salim Ali's
Book Of Indian birds ed. J. C. Daniel (2002), does not have maps.
...
- Awakenings by Oliver Sacks (1973)
In July 1971, Mrs B., who was not
given to 'hunches', had a sudden premonition of death, so clear and
peremptory she phoned up her daughters: 'Come and see me today ... Nothing
is bothering me, but I know I shall die in my sleep tonight.'
She went to bed and she died in the night.
...
- Lost Worlds: Indian Labour and Its Forgotten Histories by Chitra Joshi (2006)
By the 1830s, Kanpur's milliners, dressmakers and glovemakers
were famous... a young bride in Kanpur no longer had to wait for her
bridal trousseau to arrive from England: she could buy almost everything
locally.
...
- Evening is the whole day by Preeta Samarasan (2009)
stretching delicate as a bird's head from the thin neck of the
Kra Isthmus, is the land that makes up ...
Malaysia. Where it dips its beak into the South China Sea, Singapore hovers
like a bubble escaped from its throat.
...
- Male Anxiety and Female Chastity: A Comparative Study of Chinese Ethical Values in Ming-Ch'ing Times by Tien Ju-Kang (1988)
the origin of the cannibalistic practice [of ko-ku] has been
ascribed to [a text from] 739 AD, which listed human flesh as an effective
medicine for the physical and mental decay of senility
...
sep 4 2013
- An introduction to non-classical logic: From if to is by Graham Priest (2008)
vagueness requires us to reject a simple dichotomy between truth
and falsity. ... truth values must themselves
change continuously.
...
- Narrative of a Three Month's March in India: And a Residence in the Dooab by Harriette Ashmore (1841)
I never saw the ravages of famine so dreadfully displayed as at
Cawnpore. A great scarcity having occurred in the interior, the poor Ryots, or...
- Eighteen fifty-seven by Surendra Nath Sen (1957)
If Nana meditated treachery from the first, one wonders why so much money
and labour were wasted on the boats, for once out of the entrenchment, the
English would be as helpless in the midst of a hostile crowd on land...
- Modern Indian Stories, Volume 1 by Pritish Nandy (1983)
AMRITA PRITAM : Gulyana's Letter KA NAA SUBRAMANYAM : The Debut
...
- Indian English by Pingali Sailaja (2009)
Quiz: How many Indian-English-isms can you spot in this:
a) Are you the loud noisy type who loves rasta rokos and chakka jams?
b) No - you are the kind who adores pin-drop silence, isn't it?
...
- rAt bhore brishTi by Buddhadeb Basu (1967)
i, mAlatI mukhopAdhyAy, someone's mother and somebody's wife, have done it.
i did it with jayanta. he wanted me, and i him. nayanAngshu may
...
- rabijIbanI 2nd 1285-1291 by prashAnta kumAr pAl (1990)
at the time of her suicide, kadambari devi was not quite 25 years old.
...
aug 29 2013
aug 16 2013
- Dutch Ships in Tropical Waters: The Development of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) Shipping Network in Asia 1595-1660 by Robert Parthesius (2010)
By 1669, the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) was the richest private
company the world had ever seen.
...
- Cross-Cultural Psychology: Contemporary Themes and Perspectives by Kenneth D. Keith (ed) (2011)
inhabitants of Murray Island (whose language only has words for the colors
black, white, and red) typically grouped green and blue tiles
together.
...
- A Psychology of Picture Perception by John Miller Kennedy (1974)
surely when a white
man pulls a black laborer away from his daily work and sits down in an office
with the laborer, and begins to show the laborer little pictures, the laborer
begins to feel a little anxious. Especially when the setting is South Africa
...
- The grammar of words: an introduction to linguistic morphology by G. E. Booij (2005)
Why is income tax to be considered as a word rather
than a phrase? After all, its constituents are separated by a space... p.5
...
- A Jewelled Splendour: The Tradition of Indian Jewellery by Asharani Mathur (2002)
Harappan necklace, ca. 3000 BC, with a styling that remains amazingly
contemporary! Steatite and gold beads with pendants of banded agate and jade.
...
- The Book of Ram by Devdutt Pattanaik (2009)
Dasarath's first child, from Kaushalya, is Shanta, daughter, not Rama. She
is married to ekashringa. 19
[Shanta's story does not appear in Valmiki Ramayana, but in various parts
...
- The Ancient Indus Valley: New Perspectives by Jane McIntosh (2008)
Mehrgarh, with parts dating from 7000 BCE, is the oldest site showing a
a farming culture - around the same time as in much of West Asia. However,
its isolated status poses a mystery.
...
- sarbaneshe bhul aMka by Sirshendu mukhopAdhyAy (2013)
byachArAm pramANik: tAi bhAbi - chAl-DAler dAm bARla, tel mashlAr dAm bARla,
paTal beguner dAm bARla, shudhu bAmuner dAmdar kena paRe JAchchhe seTA
bujhte pAri nA.
...
- Understanding Design by Kees Dorst (2006)
Most of the time, you are
intuitively flowing with patterns of reasoning.
It's only when the flow breaks down that you become aware of the wider
context around you. It's as if you wake up.
...
- Language of Space by Bryan Lawson (2001)
Space has to communicate this ‘right of ownership’ clearly so that we can all
behave in an ordered manner
...
- Gorillas by Miriam Schlein (1996)
Gorillas, like chimpanzees, don’t seem to be able to swim. Several times,
when zoo gorillas fell into moats, they drowned. p.10
...
- Phonology: a cognitive grammar introduction by Geoffrey S. Nathan (2008)
july 2013
- বক্সার রতন [boxer (baksAr) ratan] by Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay (2009)
তোমাদের ইংরিজি ভাষার প্রতি একটা হ্যাংলামি আছে
you indians have this lust for english.
...
- Eating people is wrong by Malcolm Bradbury (1959)
It amuses me, you know, the way you seem to see women. You think of them as
sort of loose-fitting men. 159
...
- Indiscrete Thoughts by Gian-Carlo Rota and Fabrizio Palombi (1996)
memoirs of a mathematician, full of acidic
observations.
...
- A Long Day's Night by Pradip Ghosh (2002)
electricity was cut off to the campus community by [striking]
workers, and in that darkness there were processions by hundreds with
flaming torches. p.61
...
- The pleasures of counting by Thomas William Korner (1996)
mathematical modeling runs as a leitmotif in this fascinating history
of technology and operations research, unveiled often in military contexts.
...
- Sikkim, land of mystique by Eicher Goodearth Limited and Sikkim Tourism (2002)
1890: China signs treaty w Britain. Cedes Sikkim for Tibet
...
- The Frightful First World War by Terry Deary and Martin Brown (ill.) (1998)
june 4, 2013
may, 2013
- The theory of Citrasutras in Indian painting: a critical re-evaluation of their uses and interpretations by Isabella Nardi (2006)
Once upon a time a brahmin came to an wise and powerful king, lamenting how
his young son had been snatched away by death.
So the King called on Yama, who explained that his powers were limited
by the reward that their own deeds (karma) merit.
...
- The Mirror of the Sky: Songs of the Baul's of Bengal by Deben Bhattacharya (1969)
Never plunge
into the river of lust
you will not reach the bank.
...
- Arab Women Writers: An Anthology Of Short Stories by Dalya Cohen Mor (ed., tr.) (2005)
I stood in front of the big mirror with the golden
frame. ... I drew closer
and closer, until my face filled the mirror. I looked at my face
closely. It was only then that I decided to be unfaithful to my
husband.
...
- The Nothing that Is: A Natural History of Zero by Robert Kaplan and Ellen Kaplan (ill.) (1999)
an amazingly euro-centric view of the zero.
You can try pushing back the beginnings of zero in India before 876,
if you are willing to strain your eyes to make out dim figures in a
bright haze.
...
- Doctor Who: Ghosts of India by Mark Morris (2010)
‘Calcutta,’ he said, ‘1937. Brilliant city, full of bustle and colour. Still
ruled by the British Raj, but it’s the heart of India. Centre of education,
science, culture, politics—’
...
- A History of India by Peter Robb (2002)
The continuities of a civilization are like a storehouse in which
things decay or are lost... Civilizations differ because these inheritances
do...
- Discourse Strategies by John J. Gumperz (1982)
When does a usage constitute a regularized borrowing, and when is it mixed
code? Clearly, if we look at etymological roots, most words in all
languages are foreign.
...
- Guide to Tipitaka by U. Ko Lay (1995)
Apatti = transgression;
most serious (garukApatti) = pArAjika : cannot become
a bhikkhu - as if head has been cut off from a body, cannot be
re-attached. among the causes: sexual intercourse
...
- রবিজীবনী rabijIbanI 6th, 1315-1320 by prashAnta kumAr pAl (1993)
[published in jun 1911 as a song praising king george v]
বঙ্গ আমার জননী আমার ধাত্রী আমার, আমার দেশ
বাজাও শঙ্খ ভুলহ দৈন্য করহ সজ্জা ত্যজহ ক্লেশ
সপ্ত কোটি মিলিত নেত্রে দেখিবে আজি রাজার বেশ
...
- nirbAchita 100 kabitA by shAmsur rAhman (2005)
মনে হয়-ফুল নয়, ওরা
শহীদের ঝলকিত রক্তের বুদ্বুদ, স্মৃতিগন্ধে ভরপুর।
একুশের কৃষ্ণচূড়া আমাদের চেতনারই রঙ।
it seems as if these are not flowers
but bubbles in the blood of the martyrs -
the kriShNachuRAs of 21st February
...
- Victims of a map by Abdullah (tr.) al-Udhari and Darwish, Mahmud and Samih al-Qasim and Adonis (1984)
Can a people be born on the guillotine? - Darwish
...
- Poems of Love and War: From the Eight Anthologies and the Ten Long Poems of Classical Tamil by A. K. Ramanujan (tr.) (1985)
When love is gone,
What's copulation worth? - from Narrinai, 2nd c. AD.
...
- kabitA ekAttar Poems seventyone by Helal Hafiz and and Jubak anArjo (tr) (2012)
কোনো কোনো প্রেম আছে প্রেমিককে খুনী হতে হয় ।
(In some some kinds of love the lover has to turn murderer)
...
march, 2013
- Bhaktirasamrtasindhu of Rupa Gosvamin by Rupa Gosvamin and David L. Haberman (trans.) (2003)
Many religious traditions are suspicious of emotions. Emotional
agitation is considered to be an enemy threatening the ultimate
religious goal, defined as utter tranquility.
This view is challenged in the Bhakti traditions
...
- A student's introduction to English grammar by Rodney D. Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum (2005)
Usual definition of [past tense]: expresses or indicates a time that is in the
past.
But it's hardly as straightforward as that.
i a. The course started last week. b. I thought the course started next week.
ii a. If he said that, he was wrong. b. If he said that, she wouldn't believe him. ...
- Bangiya Shabdakosh - a Bengali-bengali Lexicon v.1 a-na by Haricharan Bandyopadyaya (1932)
surprisingly the word kAju does not appear in HB, not even in the
appendix. possibly a late entry into bAnglA food?
...
- Right Hand, Left Hand: The Origins of Asymmetry in Brains, Bodies, Atoms and Cultures by Chris McManus (2002)
Try this: quickly clasp your hands together with the fingers and thumbs
interlaced. Which thumb is on top; the right or the left?
Now try doing it the other way round - [Go ahead - TRY IT and SEE!]
...
- sabAr janya Abrittir kabitA by Rezina [রেজিনা সাফরিন] Sufrin (ed.) (2012)
The poets are lumped together
indifferently, with the same poet scattered without explanation in as many as
seven places.
...
december, 2012
- Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore (2003)
First of all, Gitanjali should be recited, sung. - Suko Watanabe
...
- Do and die: the Chittagong uprising, 1930-34 by Manini Chatterjee (1999)
Eamon de Valera, on British colonialism: We of Ireland and you of India must each of us endeavor ... to rid ourselves of the vampire that
is fattening on our blood, and we must never allow ourselves to forget
...
- Made in America by Bill Bryson and Bruce McCall (ill) (1995)
children in a small island between Denmark and Sweden recite
" Jack og Jill / Vent op de hill" - the doggerel was taught by occupying
Brit soldiers during Napoleonic wars and has been handed down ever
since...
...
- Encyclopedia of Erotic Literature by Gaetan Brulotte and John Phillips (2006)
Since the 1980s, the most widespread form of erotic comic aimed at men has
been "Lolita complex" stories referred to in Japanese as rorikon.
...
- Born Into Brothels: Photographs by the Children of Calcutta by Zana Briski ()
this book chronicles eight kids from these calcutta brothels and how they
are transformed when provided with a camera
...
- Selected poems by Jorge Luis Borges and Alexander Coleman (ed.) (2000)
My soul is in the streets
of Buenos Aires.
Las calles de Buenos Aires
ya son mi entraña.
...
- The Winged Energy of Delight: Selected Translations by Robert Bly (tr) (2005)
While telling the story, if each eyelash does not drip with blood
You’re not telling a love story, but a tale made for the kids.
- Ghalib
...
- The Closing of the American Mind by Allan David Bloom (1987)
We need history, not to tell us what happened, or to explain the
past, but to make the past alive so that it can explain and make a
future possible.
...
- sukAnta samagra {bn সুকান্ত সমগ্র} by sukAnta bhaTTachArya and subhASh mukhopAdhyAy (1967)
তোমাকে ভেবেছি কতদিন,
কত শত্রুর পদক্ষেপ শোনার প্রতীক্ষার অবসরে,
কত গোলা ফাটার মুহূর্তে।
...
- my mother's way of wearing a sari by Sujata Bhatt (2000)
A thigh bone
from a fully grown mammoth
... pockmarked
with small mollusks.
...
- buddhadeb basur shreShTa kabitA {bn বুদ্ধদেব বসুর শ্রেষ্ঠ কবিতা} by buddhadeb basu (1953)
রূপোলি জল শুয়ে-শুয়ে স্বপ্ন দেখছে... তোমার চোখে
কাঁপছে কত আকাশ, কত মৃত্যু, কত নতুন জন্ম
কেমন করে বলি।
...
- The Indian Mutiny 1857-58 by Gregory Fremont- Barnes (2007)
British children encountering the book in their school libraries
will encounter colonial views long past their "use-by" date, like:
"support for the mutineers was largely confined to the cities; whole
swathes of the countryside remained either passive or supportive of
attempts to restore British rule."
...
- Sources of Indian Tradition v.1: From the Beginning to 1800 by William Theodore de (eds.) Bary and A.L. Basham and R.N. Dandekar and Peter Hardy and V. Raghavan and Royal Weiler (1958)
43. Space is the cause of the notions of East, West, etc. That is to
say, it is that from which arise the ten notions -- of East,
South-East, South, South-West, West, North-West, North, North-East,
Below and Above
...
- Muslim woman's dress: Hijab or Naqab ?? by Sheikh S. M. al-Darsh (1995)
The overwhelming [islamic authoritative texts] are of the view
that it is not an
obligation or a strong recommendation [for a woman] to cover her face. p. 38
...
november, 2012
- Classifiers: A Typology of Noun Categorization Devices by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (2003)
[In Dyirbal] Birds are classed as
feminine by mythological association since women's souls are believed to
enter birds after death.
...
- Writing Love by Ashmi Ahluwalia (ed) (2010)
Tonight, I recall a lust that stormed
as comets crashing clouds, as the helplessness
...
- The Longman Anthology of World Literature volume B : The Medieval Era by David Damrosch and David L. Pike and Sabry Hafez and Haruo Shirane and Pauline Yu and Sheldon Pollock (2004)
Not a sober person in this whole town do I see:
One's worse than the other, stoned out of his mind
...
- The Longman Anthology of World Literature volume F: The Twentieth century by David Damrosch and Djelal Kadir and Ursula K. Heise and Sabry Hafez and Pauline Yu (2004)
to the memory of my friend SI-YA-U,
whose head was cut off in Shanghai
...
- The Longman Anthology of World Literature volume C : The Early Modern Period by David Damrosch and Jane Tylus and Pauline Yu and Sheldon Pollock (2004)
I don't know the count of iamb or dactyl.
My lord of the meeting rivers
I'll sing as I love.
...
- Sign Language in Indo-Pakistan: A Description of a Signed Language by Ulrike Zeshan (2000)
India has about 1.5mn signers (abt 3.1mn hearing handicapped)
abt 600 deaf schools, many of them residential
...
- Danny: the champion of the world by Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake (ill.) (1977)
I’ll tell you something about the old bullfrog. He often becomes so
pleased with his own voice that his wife has to nudge him several
times before he’ll stop his burping and turn around to hug her... we
men are not so very different from the bullfrog.
...
- The Four Hundred Songs of War and Wisdom: An Anthology of Poems from Classical Tamil, the Purananuru by George L. (tr.) Hart and Hank Heifetz (tr.) (2002)
Warrior! You who are wasting away all the flesh on your
body under the speckled shade, on this island in the river!
Are you angry with me?
...
- Empire, politics and the creation of the 1935 India Act: Last act of the Raj by Andrew Muldoon (2009)
What is interesting is how many of
the British officials considered themselves more well-informed on Indian
matters than many Indians. Thus, even after the completely unexpected
...
- The Major Languages of South Asia, the Middle East and Africa by Bernard Comrie (1990)
Sanskrit is used as a lingua franca by paNDitas from different parts of
India, and several thousand people claim it as their mother tongue.
...
- The Quilt & Other Stories by Ismat Chughtai and M. Asauddin (tr) (2001)
the stories are related with an intimacy and an innocence that undercuts
their often adult themes. several stories are related by a girl who
has just reached puberty, and is told in a language free of guile.
...
- kishor upanyAs samagra v.1 by sirShendu mukhopAdhyAy (2009)
juRiye gele khichuRite Ar gobare tafAt nei.
...
- Eye Movements: A Window on Mind and Brain by Roger P. G. Van (eds) Gompel and Martin H. Fischer and Wayne S. Murray and Robin L. Hill (2007)
sep 24, 2012
- The mechanical mind in history by Phil Husbands and Owen Holland and Michael Wheeler (eds) (2008)
[Capek about the robots] "If you were to read a twenty-volume
encyclopedia to them, they’d
repeat it all to you with absolute accuracy," ... (ironically): "They could
very well teach at universities."
...
- The philosophy of grammar by Otto Jespersen (1924)
Anyone who will listen oarefully to ordinary conversation
will come across abundant evidence of the way in which sentenoes
...
- Visual Perception: A Clinical Orientation, Fourth Edition by Steven H. Schwartz (2009)
the absorption of one photon is sufficient to activate a
rod.
...
- Early modern Japanese literature: an anthology, 1600-1900 by Haruo Shirane and James T. Araki (tr.) (2002)
"Please don't try to stop me. If love goes too far, it turns into
cruelty. ..."
Fusehime reached for her short sword, unsheathed it, and thrust it
into her belly.
...
- Contrary Imaginations: A Psychological Study of the English Schoolboy by Liam Hudson (1968)
- much of educational psychology becomes
trivial - "measurement" for its own sake.
One has visions of titles like "The Blotsky art appreciation
inventory: A study of test-retest reliability."
...
- The dancing girl: a novel by Hasan Shah and Qurratulain Hyder (tr) (1993)
But unlike in british narratives, we see the Britishers (Ming Saheb, Kallan
Saheb) from the standpoint of the educated indian, the munshi, a scholar
and a revered descendent of the prophet, Syed Hasan Shah.
...
- Evolution of building technology in early andhradesa by E. Siva Nagi Reddy (1995)
sep 15, 2012
- Multinational Enterprises in India: Industrial Distribution, Characteristics, and Performance by Nagesh Kumar (1990)
The policies of the Indian government were more often reactions to events
and crises, rather than a proactive policy. Crises seem to have come up at
gaps of about a decade starting at independence,
...
- Elite Forces of India and Pakistan by Kenneth Conboy and Paul Hannon (ill.) (2012)
In 1986, the Indian Navy started planning for a special missions force.
Two Navy officers, Lt Arvind Singh and Lt Shamsher Singh Deopa attended an US
Navy commando SEALS course at Coronado, California.
...
- Eighteen fifty-seven by Surendra Nath Sen (1957)
If Nana meditated treachery from the first, one wonders why so much money and
labour were wasted on the boats, for once out of the entrenchment, the
English would be as helpless in the midst of a hostile crowd on land, as they
were on the river.
...
aug 28, 2012
aug 20, 2012
- The State at War in South Asia by Pradeep P. Barua (2005)
most Indian casualties on the glacier have
come about due to natural causes. Many soldiers succumb to high altitude
pulmonary edema, which fills the victim’s lungs with fluid. Others are lost to
...
- Memories of the mutiny, Volume 1 by Francis Cornwallis Maude and John Walter Sherer (1894)
Reading [the reports] carefully and without bias to-day, one
must doubt whether the
Nana Sahib was as guilty of complicity in the murders of our women and
children as he is generally believed to have been.
...
- Shamsur Rahman: A witness of his times by Shamsur Rahman and Cour, Ajeet (ed) and Pankaj Bhan (ed) and Kabir Chowdhury (tr) and Kaiser Haq (tr) (2003)
Record my confession here and now:
I have hidden in my breast a rare treasure,
the face of my beloved.
...
- Fictions connected with the Indian outbreak of 1857 exposed by Edward Leckey (1859)
aug 10, 2012
- Indian Monuments by N.S. Ramaswami (1971)
In these days of discussion on Ilbert Bills... the question is whether
the natives of India are to be treated as equal to Europeans in all
respects. Under the present circumstances, it cannot fail to interest
...
- Semantic Structures by Ray S. Jackendoff (1992)
* Problem of Meaning : characterize the phenomena that a theory of
meaning is to account for, and to develop a formal treatment of
semantic intuitions. [?formal = based on logic?]
...
- An Anthology of commonwealth poetry by C. D. Narasimhaiah (1990)
no i don't want to be
a hotchpotch of culture
a confusion of language
a nullity of imagination
...
- 60 Classic Australian Poems by Geoff Page (2010)
- The Hobbit by J R R Tolkien (1985)
Gandalf to Bilbo: "You don't really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and
escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit?
...
June 6, 2012
may 16, 2012
may 10, 2012
- We Called the River Red by Uddipana Goswami (2010)
Perhaps there is bohAg in the air,
Perhaps death.
Perhaps dhol-pepA-gaganA sound
Perhaps bullets.
...
- taslima nAsriner premer kabitA by taslimA nAsrin and dhruba eSh (ill.) (1993)
এ আমার হাত
অথচ এ হাত আমি সঠিক চিনি না
এ আমারই ঠোঁট এ আমার জংঘা, উরু
...
- The Khasis by P. R. T. Gurdon (1914)
The skull may be said to be almost brachy-cephalic, the average cephalic
index [as] measured by Col. Waddell and Major Hare, I.M.S.,
being as high as 77.3 and 77.9, respectively
...
- Grounds for play: the Nauṭaṅkī theatre of North India by Kathryn Hansen (1992)
Hindi dictionaries do not include the term nautanki
before 1951... Of the Hindi-English dictionaries currently in wide use, Chaturvedi
and Tiwari's Practical Hindi-English Dictionary contains no entry
...
- The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia by Denis Sinor (ed) (1990)
An Indo-European impact as a reason for the so-called "sudden" growth of
civilization in China has been denied, and it is considered as settled that
"the Chinese civilization, on the whole, was built upon Chinese neolithic
foundation."
...
- Love in South Asia: a cultural history by Francesca Orsini (ed.) (2006)
Islamic understandings of love have been 'coloured by the strongly
anti-ascetic character of Islam... the well known
Prophetic saying that "there is no monkery in Islam"
...
- shahId Qadrir kabitA by shahId kadri (1993)
আমাকে রাঙাতে পারে তেমন গোলাপ
কখনও দেখি না। তবে কাকে, কখন, কোথায়
...
- Singing to the Goddess: Poems to Kali and Uma from Bengal by Rachel Fell McDermott (2001)
I'll make a curry of Your demons and witches
and boil into a soup
with spices and ghee
the heads from Your necklace.
...
- The Art of Poetry: How to Read a Poem by Shira Wolosky (2008)
Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And tomorrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But today,
...
- Britain and Indian Nationalism: The Imprint of Amibiguity 1929-1942 by Donald Anthony Low (1997)
compares the british in india against three other colonial traditions - the
americans in the philippines (most liberal), the dutch in indonesia, and
the french in indochina (most ironhanded).
...
- The Sepoy Mutiny and the revolt of 1857 by Ramesh Chandra Majumdar (1957)
The great outbreak of 1857 is a memorable episode in Indian history which
no educated Indian or Englishman has ever regarded without interest, and
few without prejudice. - p.xv
...
- Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India by Ranajit Guha (1999)
no matter which one of their three main oppressors - sarkar, sahukar of
zamindar - was the first to bear the initial brunt of a jacquerie, the
peasants often showed a remarkable propensity to
extend their operatiom [to the other two]
...
- The Indian mutiny and the British imagination by Gautam Chakravarty (2005)
- Psychology of language by David W. Carroll (2008)
- Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing by Christopher D. Manning and Hinrich Schuetze (1999)
apr 16, 2012
- Stallion On A Frozen Lake: Love Songs Of The Sixth Dalai Lama by Tsangyang Gyatso and Coleman Barks (tr.) (2004)
Lover waiting in my bed
do you mean me well?
What will you take off me,
Besides my clothes?
...
- Grammar and Conceptualization by Ronald W. Langacker (2000)
This theory takes the radical position that grammar reduces to the
structuring and symbolization of conceptual content and thus has no
autonomous existence at all.
...
- Science and Civilisation in China: v.4 Physics and Physical Technology, part I: Physics by Joseph Needham and Wang Ling and Kenneth G Robinson (1977)
The Indian [trigonometry] was taken over by the Arabs and transmitted to Europe, while
in the other direction Indian monks or lay mathematicians who took service
with the Chinese bureau of astronomy spread the new development farther
east. ...
- Folk-Tales of the Khasis by K U Rafy (1920)
day. Ever since then the light of the moon has been pale, marred by dark
shadows, and that is the reason he does not show his face in the day-time.
...
- Education in ancient india by Anant Sadashiv Altekar (1944)
The moment an individual is born in this world he incurs three debts, which
he can discharge only by performing certain duties.
...
mar 9, 2012
- Miguel Street by Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (1974)
[Bogart] was the most bored man I ever knew. p.1
...
- Metaphor: A Practical Introduction by Zoltán Kovecses and Réka Benczes and Szilvia Csábi (2010)
some expressions may become conventionalized and don't seem as "strongly"
metaphorical. (e.g. "sex kitten") --> "dead
metaphor".
...
- The Book of Indian Birds, 13th ed. by Salim Ali and J. C. Daniel (2002)
standardized "English names" were introduced at
the 1990 International Ornothological Congress, but there
were no Indians in the IOC's Oriental Birds committee. These English names were chosen not from the Ali/Ripley handbook but another competing list. J.C. Daniel notes that this was surely "uncalled for"
...
- Birds of East Asia: China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, and Russia by Mark Brazil (2009)
Asian avifauna may be significantly "overlumped"
relative to other regions of the world. p.7
...
- Introduction to Khasi Ethics by Barnes L. Mawrie (2005)
The Jaintias or Pnars as we call them today are only a name invented by
the British in pursuit of their policy of 'divide and rule'.
They are only one race of people. p.13
...
- Philip's atlas of world history by Patrick Karl O'Brien (2005)
A line of footprints discovered at Laetoli is vivid evidence that these now
extinct early hominids (human ancestors belonging to the genera
Australopithecus and Homo} walked upright. Hominid fossils from this remote
...
mar 1, 2012
- Sight May Strike You Blind by Sampurna Chattarji (2007)
Mysterious, though the smell of butter in my hair
and pepper on my tongue
seems familiar, like a witch's cat.
...
- Street on the hill by Anjum Hasan (2006)
We come in here from the long afternoon
stretched over the town’s sloping roofs,
its greasy garages and ice-cream parlours,
its melancholic second-hand bookshops
with their many missing pages.
...
- Malabar Mind by Anita Nair (2011)
Woman listen.
I am a man;
Only sometimes a god.
...
- Gita Govinda: Love song of the Dark Lord by Jayadeva and Barbara Stoler Miller (tr.) (1977)
nindati yaGYavidherahaha shrutijaatam | sadayahR^idayadarshitapashughaatam ||
keshava dhR^itabuddhashariira jayajagadiishahare || 1-9
Moved by deep compassion, you condemn the Vedic way
That ordains animal slaughter in rites of sacrifice.
You take form as the enlightened Buddha, Krishna.
Triumph, Hari, Lord of the World!
...
- Grace and mercy in her wild hair: selected poems to the mother goddess by rAmaprasAda Sen and Leonard Nathan (tr.) and Clinton B. Seely (tr) (1999)
Now cry kAli and take the plunge!
O my Mind, dive into this sea,
...
- The prism of grammar: how child language illuminates humanism by Thomas Roeper (2007)
While the excesses of chomskyan formalism are dying in cognitive sciences
in general Roeper continues to charge at the windmills.
...
- Learning how to mean: explorations in the development of language by Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday (1975)
feb 18, 2012
jan 22, 2012
- a mermaid in a stream of moonlight by Namita Chaudhuri (2011)
I left one of my hands
at Rahul's home
and one of my eyes at Monimoy's
in the streets some people enquired
about my hand
and some others about my eye
...
- Northern India according to the Shui-ching-chu by Luciano Petech and Daoyuan Li (1950)
- Indian food: A Historical Companion by K. T. Achaya (1998)
Some things seem to have remain unchanged from the days of Akbar:
The delicious cold kulfi was made at court by freezing a mixture of khoa,
pista nuts and zafran essence in a metal cone after sealing the open top with
dough.
...
dec 5, 2011
nov 17, 2011
- A Mauryan Adventure: Girls of India by Subhadra Sen Gupta (2013)
Madhura had never seen these women guards up close before. The first
thing she noticed was that they wore trousers, with a tunic and a
sleeveless leather jacket on top. Swords hung from their belts and they carried
...
- Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas by Romila Thapar (1973)
This inscription of Dhamma has been engraved so that any sons or great
grandsons that I may have should not think of gaining new conquests ... but
should only consider conquests by Dhamma to be a true Conquest
...
- Handbook of psycholinguistics by Matthew
J. Traxler and Morton Ann Gernsbacher (eds.) (2006)
thousands of languages in use around the world... most without writing
systems. in a survey of only 317 languages, Maddieson (1984) describes
558 different consonants, 260 different vowels, and 51 diphthongs
...
- A Metahistory of the Clash of Civilisations: Us and Them Beyond Orientalism by Arshin Adib Moghaddam (2010)
- Emergence: contemporary readings in philosophy and science by Mark Bedau and Paul Humphreys (eds) (2008)
- The Oxford India Anthology of Bengali Literature v.2: 1941-1991 by Kalpana Bardhan (ed) (2010)
Through the day I keep meeting the cat;
In the shade of the tree, out in the sun,
Amidst the dense shade of the leaves
...
- Computational explorations in cognitive neuroscience: understanding the mind by simulating the brain by Randall C. O'Reilly and Yuko Munakata (2000)
- Balzac and the little Chinese seamstress by Dai Sijie (2002)
The headman's teeth resembled a jagged mountain range. Three incisors
protruded from blackened inflamed gums like flames of prehistoric basalt
...
- A Cultural History of India by A. L. Basham (1998)
Clive, who was never able to give an order in any Indian language, spoke
Portuguese with fluency.
...
- Kangra Paintings of the Gita Govinda by Mohindar Singh Randhawa and Jayadeva (1958)
One cowherdess with heavy breasts embraces Hari lovingly
And celebrates him in a melody of love.
...
- Royal temples of Gupta period: excavations at Bhitari by Vidula Jayaswal (2001)
who, possessing strength of arm most abundantly in the world, is the
one hero of Gupta lineage; whose splendour is as profuse as renowned,
who is Skandagupta by name... (verse 2)
...
- Encyclopaedia of Indian Temple Architecture: North India: foundations of North Indian style, c.250 B.C.-A.D.1100, v.2; part 1 by Michael W. Meister and Madhusudan A. Dhaky, Krishna Deva (1988)
- Fibonacci's De practica geometrie by Leonardo Fibonacci and Barnabas Hughes (tr) (2008)
"the issue is no longer moot: Fibonacci was proficient in Arabic. ...
[That Fibonacci] had complete fluency in Arabic, is now accepted as correct..."
...
- The Lie of Dawns: Poems 1974-2008 by Jayanta Mahapatra (2008)
Afterwards when the wars of Kalinga were over,
the fallow fields of Dhauli
hid the blood-spilt butchered bodies.
...
- Door Of Paper: Essays And Memoirs by Jayanta Mahapatra (2007)
There is a door in the heart of man which never opens. Or if it does at
times, we are not aware of its opening
...
- Words and the Mind: How words capture human experience by Barbara C. Malt and Phillip M. Wolff (eds) (2010)
are there “basic” body parts
that are recognized across cultures in how people talk about the body?
...
- Arresting God in Kathmandu by Samrat Upadhyay (2001)
while the locales move across temples and other regions of nepal hover in
the background, the stories could just as well be anywhere.
...
- Another Republic: 17 European and South American Writers by Charles Simic and Mark Strand (eds) (1976)
During the fourteenth charge
of the French cavalry
she mated
with the brown-eyed male fly
from Vadincourt.
...
- In their own voice: The Penguin anthology of contemporary Indian women poets by Arlene R. K. Zide (ed) (1993)
Who speaks of the green coconut uterus
the muscles sliding, a deeper undertow
...
- Collected Poems In English by Arun Kolatkar and Arvind Krishna Mehrotra (ed.) (2011)
My loin has bared its teeth.
My thighs open like iron
Maidens. Guts whip out.
...
oct 31, 2011
oct 7, 2011
- No entry for the new Sun: translations from modern Marathi Dalit poetry by Arjun Dangle (ed) (1992)
How do we taste milk in this town
where trees are planted of venom?
...
- Implicit Learning and Tacit Knowledge: An Essay on the Cognitive Unconscious by Arthur S. Reber (1996)
I want to make it clear from the outset that this will be, in large
measure, a book about learning. A decade or three ago that would not
have been particularly unusual; today it is a genuine rarity.
...
- Urban Voice-4 by Sunil K Poolani (ed) (2011)
I'm now on the other side of the earth though
I can touch you now
I can close the book that remains open on your bosom
...
- Losing My Way: Poems by Shiv K. Kumar (2008)
Sly are the ways of temptation.
Birds with grains, children with peppermints,
and brunettes with bracelets.
...
- On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold J. Mcgee (1984)
In the late 1800s, a NY importer claimed duty-free status for tomatoes, which
he argued were "fruit"... the US Supreme Court...
decided on the grounds of linguistic custom. Tomatoes, held the
majority, are "usually served in the main part of the dinner, and not
like fruits, generally as dessert." So our litigator had to cough up
the 10% as tax. pp. 124-5
...
- Making love: the Picador book of erotic verse by Alan Norman Bold (ed) (1978)
When his mouth faced my mouth, I turned aside...
But oh, what could I do, then, when I found
My bodice splitting of its own accord? - Amaru
...
august 20, 2011
- Kavi Kala by Madness Mandali (2010)
I run my finger down
My collar between my breasts to where the
Neckline should be. He looks away and
Increases my wishes by an inch.
...
- How to read a poem: and fall in love with poetry by Edward Hirsch (2000)
death is inside the bones,
like a barking where there are no dogs,
...
- East window: the Asian translations by William Stanley Merwin (1998)
A poet should learn with his eyes
the forms of leaves
...
- Modern Indian Literature, an Anthology: Surveys and poems by K. M. George (ed) (1992)
By mistake I had left my head in the office when I started home.
My hands are still hanging from the bus-strap.
...
- The true subject: selected poems of Faiz Ahmed Faiz by Faiz Ahmad Faiz and Naomi Lazard (tr.) (1988)
critic Abdul Jabbar:
In Lazard's translation, the heartbeat one feels is that of Faiz
himself. Such an achievement is, indeed, rare in translations.
...
- Pippi in the South Seas by Astrid Lindgren and Gerry Bothmer (tr) (1959)
[Pippi, about her grandmother]: If she was walking on the street and a brick
happened to fall on her head, she'd start to scream and make such a fuss
you'd think something terrible had happened. 16
...
- Combined Methods in Indology and Other Writings by Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi and Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya (ed.) (2005)
[on sanskrit manuscripts:} the action of time, air, rain, white ants,
and all other vermin except scholars will surely destroy the greater number
that still survive the neglect and laziness of their possessors. p.574
...
- Women's eyes: being verses translated from the Sanskrit by Arthur William Ryder and Bhartrihari (1910)
Oh, fie on her and him and Love and HER and me!
...
- Bhartrihari: poems by Bhartrihari and Barbara Stoler Miller (tr.) (1967)
... a man distorted by trifling knowledge,
Brahma himself cannot sway.
...
- The Satakas: Or, Wise Sayings of Bhartrihari by John McFarland Kennedy (tr.) (1913)
The fundamentally ignorant man is easily led, and
the wise man still more easily ; but not even the
Almighty Himself can exercise any influence on
the smatterer.
...
- A Century of Indian Epigrams: Chiefly from the Sanskrit of Bhartrihari by Paul Elmer More (1898)
...minds by half-way knowledge warped and bent,
Not Brahma's self their fury may assuage.
...
- Masterworks of Asian literature in comparative perspective: a guide for teaching by Barbara Stoler Miller (ed.) (1994)
- Action meets word: how children learn verbs by Kathy Hirsh Pasek and Roberta M. Golinkoff (2006)
july 28, 2011
july 4, 2011
june 22, 2011
- Unforeseen affection and other love poems by Jayaprabha and Narasimha Rao, P. V. (tr.) (2005)
Harden
and enter the womb.
It's there that floral perfumes reside,
Unborn poems subsist...
...
- An anthology of Sanskrit Court poetry Vidyakara's "Subhasitaratnakosa" by vidyAkara and Daniel Henry Holmes Ingalls (tr.) (1965)
592. When the anklet has grown still
the girdle's sound is heard.
It's ever when the lover tires,
the mistress plays the man.
...
- The New Kid on the Block by Jack Prelutsky and James Stevenson (ill) (1984)
You may quarrel with centipedes, quibble with seals,
declaim to a duck in the park,
engage in disputes with cantankerous coots,
but never mince words with a shark.
...
- A bad case of the giggles : Kids pick the funniest poems, Book #2 by Bruce (ed) Lansky and Stephen Carpenter (ill.) (1994)
Rain, reign, rein,
English is a pain.
...
- The Oxford book of American light verse by William Harmon (ed) ()
David McCord : Epitaph on a Waiter p.412
By and by
God caught his eye.
...
june 15, 2011
- The Open Door by Latifa Al-Zayyat and Marilyn Booth (tr.) (2002)
Mother: If everyone said whatever was on their mind the world would have
gone up in flames long ago.
Layla: So people should just lie, you mean.
...
- Only the soul knows how to sing by Kamala Das [Kamala Surayya] (1996)
perhaps we need to talk more about the problems faced by men poets writing
in indian english.
...
- Summer In Calcutta by Kamala Das (1965)
... My eyes lick at you like flames, my nerves
Consume ; and, when I finish with you, ... I spit
Out small heaps of ash, nothing else.
...
- One hundred poems from the Chinese by Kenneth Rexroth (tr.) (1956)
I dreamt only that one day she would come with me
On a trip like this, and now she is only dust.
...
- The Iron, the Switch and the Broom Cupboard: A Jiggy McCue story by Michael Lawrence (2007)
"No one in their right minds would care if their underpants are pressed."
"I care," said Mum.
"My point exactly". 17
...
- Barmy British Empire by Terry Deary and Martin Brown (ill) (2008)
A Bristol historian wrote:
Every brick in the city of Bristol is cemented with the blood of a
slave. [p.27]
...
june 9, 2011
- Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan (2003)
Culture is like a smog. To live within it, you must breathe some of it in
and, inevitably, be contaminated
...
- French lover: a novel by Taslima Narin and Sreejata Guha (tr.) (2002)
- "Benoir, you don't love Pascale."
- "So who do I love?"
- "You love yourself, Benoir, your own self. No one else."
...
- The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee by Jared M Diamond (1991)
The genetic distance (1.6 per cent) separating us from pygmy or common
chimps is less than that between two species of gibbons (2.2 per cent),
or between closely related bird species such as red-eyed vireos
...
- The Home and the World (ঘরে বাইরে, ghare-bAire, 1916) by Rabindranath Tagore and Surendranath Tagore (tr.) (1919)
Nature surrenders herself, but only to the robber. For she delights
in this forceful desire, this forceful abduction.
...
- Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared M. Diamond (1997)
[QWERTY keyboard] designed to force typists to type as slowly as
possible, such as scattering the commonest letters over all
...
- Two Native Narratives of the Mutiny in Delhi by Charles Theophilus Metcalfe and Mainodin Hassan Khan and Munshi Jeewan Lal (1898)
I had been that morning to Captain Douglas, the Assistant Resident,
... It was a practice of the Assistant Resident to make a copy of my
diary, for his own information and that of the Resident, as to all
matters connected with the Court. - Munshi Jeewan Lall, May 11, 1857
...
- Salaam, Paris by Kavita Daswani (2006)
At Pasha de Hautner’s office, it didn’t appear that anyone ever ate. All the
girls ... were mere slivers of womanhood.
...
- The tiger ladies: a memoir of Kashmir by Sudha Koul (2002)
"Real food can only be prepared in traditional equipment." old-timer
cook, Sudarshan, p. 42
...
- Hymns from the Rig-Veda by Jean L Mee and Ingbert Gruttner (photo) (1975)
june 2, 2011
- Ganga Observed: Foreign Accounts of the River by Jagmohan Mahajan (ed.) (1994)
Mark Twain: Following the Equator, 1897
Experiments on Ganges water: Mr. Henkin, govt scientist at Agra, went to
Benares and got water out of the mouths of the sewers : a cubic cm of it
contained millions of germs; at the end of six hours they were all dead.
...
- The character of logic in India by Bimal Krishna Matilal and Jonardon Ganeri (ed) and Heeraman Tiwari(ed) (2000)
to me what is exciting in this discussion is how right from the start,
the main question is related to induction - what are the valid mechanisms
for arriving at the major premise - the inductive relation or the
universal.
...
- Jayadeva by Suniti Kumar Chatterji (1996)
particular emphasis on poems outside the gIta-govinda - a collection of
26 poems anthologized in sadukti-karNAmr^ta [saduktikarnamrita], as well as
...
- The Crucible: A Play in Four Acts by Arthur Miller (1968)
Miller's scripts are very detailed.
...
- Can Pakistan Survive?: The Death of a State by Tariq Ali (1983)
In theory, Islam was an egalitarian religion which tolerated no caste
distinction. All muslims were equal before God. In one of [Sir Syed
Ahmed's] speeches opposing the elective principle, however, he
revealed his prejudices extremely clearly: ...
The men of good family
would never like to trust their lives and property to people of low
ranks.
...
- World's Last Mysteries by Robert Davreau (1976)
- Umhu by Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay (2009)
may 27, 2011
- Dakater Bhaipo by sirShendu mukhopAdhyAy (2007)
sakaler nAk ek rakam DAke nA. kAr-o bAgher garjan to kAr-o shyAm-er
bnAshI, kAr-o bomA fATAr AoyAj to kAr-o gaRAgaRAr guRuk guRuk shabda. 89
...
- The Imperial Achievement: The Rise and Transformation of the British Empire by John Bowle (1977)
A sustained defence of imperial myths; the last gasp of an imperial tradition
going back to JS Mill's History of British India... what is fascinating
about this work is that it was written in the late 20th century, and not in
...
- An anthology of modern Hindi poetry by Kailash Vajpeyi (ed.) (2000)
Empty gunnysacks being darned... They
are the voids of my eyes. - Shamsher B Singh
[...]
may 2, 2011
- One Hundred More Poems from the Chinese: Love and the Turning Year by Kenneth Rexroth (tr.) (1970)
Think of the days
When we were happy together.
If I live I will come back.
...
- Song of Kali by Dan Simmons (1985)
Incongruous against this gory stereotypical background, the book has a
number of well-done translations from prominent bengali poets.
...
- A treatise on language: or, The relation which words bear to things, in four parts by Alexander Bryan Johnson (1836)
This book holds a number of insights for an 1836 author who was
doing philosophy on the side, as a successful banker.
...
- myth = mithya: a handbook of hindu mythology by Devdutt Pattanaik (2006)
i have been recently reading up on 1857, and was struck by how
much the construction of the mutiny in british eyes was
was essentially a mythological narrative - the
attempts to overdramatize - e.g. fantastic tales of sepoys
raping british women and skewering
babies... it is the grotesqueness of these stories, that like
a ten-headed demon, gives myths its staying power
...
- Confronting Love : Poems by Jerry (eds) Pinto and Arundhathi Subramaniam (2005)
The selections here are definitely on the fresher side. Even for the known
poets, the poems chosen, (Kolatkar's Lice, Ramanujan's Love 10) are among
the lesser known. Many poets are being anthologized for the first time, so
it has an edgy feel about it
...
- The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping (2010)
b The midnight drum has sounded
and your horse may slip with the frost so heavy.
Better not to leave.
...
- A Drifting Boat: Chinese Zen Poetry by J.P. Seaton and Dennis Maloney (1994)
- Beijing and Shanghai by Peter Neville Hadley (2007)
MARCO POLO: Whether Marco Polo ever visited China is much disputed. However,
according to the book he dictated to a ghost writer who embroidered it
...
- The Book of Numbers by John H. Conway and Richard Guy (1995)
- The Oxford Companion to the Year: An Exploration of Calendar Customs and Time-Reckoning by Bonnie Blackburn (2000)
- How Mathematicians Think: Using Ambiguity, Contradiction, and Paradox to Create Mathematics by William Byers (2007)
the moment i put my foot on the step the idea came to
me, without anything in my former thoughts seeming to have paved the
way for it, that the transformations I had used to define the
Fuchsian functions were identical with those of non-Euclidean
geometry.
...
- A concise history of modern India by Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf (2006)
There was no law in the Panjab in those days. Our instructions
were to decide all cases by the light of common sense and our own sense
of what was just and right.
...
- The Invention of Tradition by Eric J. (ed) Hobsbawm and Terence O. Ranger (1992)
april 27, 2011
- Waiting by Ha Jin (2000)
It dawned on him that he had never loved a woman wholeheartedly and
that he had always been the loved one. This must have been the reason
why he knew so little about love and women.
...
-
Kaye's and Malleson's History of the Indian Mutiny of 1857-8, v.3 by John Kaye and George Bruce Malleson (ed.) (1888)
- The Mutiny Outbreak at Meerut in 1857 by J. A. B. Palmer (1966)
- Tantric treasures: three collections of mystical verse from buddhist India by Roger R. Jackson (2004)
- pAtAlghar পাতালঘর by Sirshendu Mukherjee (1996)
- The 1857 Rebellion : Debates in Indian History and Society Series by Biswamoy Pati (ed) (2007)
clearly there was a vehement dislike for British rule, a groundswell of
feeling that the firanghis (Britishers) should chhoD re hamar deswa
(leave our country), as Badri Narayan's folklore studies reveal. But does
this make 1857 a "freedom struggle"? Like any term used in language,
there is no clear definition, and the debate can rage on.
...
- Kathamanabi: her voice and other poems by Mallika Sengupta (2005)
to bathe me were the rivers born
to dry me came sunshine
in the heat of my anger, flintstones
flashed into flickering fire.
my fierce need for love created man
...
- Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire by Don Nardo (2010)
modern scholars have significantly re-evaluated and refurbished the image of
Genghis Khan. They do not dispute that he was a ruthless conqueror
...
- Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia by Ayesha Jalal (2008)
- Ethics and epics: the collected essays of Bimal Krishna Matilal, Volume 2 by Bimal Krishna Matilal and Jonardon Ganeri (ed) (2002)
What kind of religious text is [the Gita], which incites senseless killing, and
a sort of amoral, if not wholly immoral, behaviour?
...
april 16, 2011
- The Peasant and the Raj: Studies in Agrarian Society and Peasant Rebellion in Colonial India by Eric Stokes (1980)
No contrast could be more absolute than that between the ferocity of Jat
rebellion in western Meerut (which later spread north into Muzaffarnagar) and
the conspicuous 'loyalty' displayed by the Jats of eastern Meerut and
Bulandshahr. The only sufficient explanation, [was better bhaichara organization]
...
- kAkAbAbu banAm chorAshikArI (কাকাবাবু বনাম চোরাশিকারি) by Sunil Gangopadhyaya (1995)
kAkAbAbu, jojo and santu are in kaziranga, where they run into a gang of
desperate rhino poachers, headed by a enigmatic bandit who announces his
...
- How languages are learned by Patsy M. Lightbown and Nina Spada (1993)
At birthday party:
Father (raises stemmed glass w juice): I'd like to propose a toast.
After [some time], David (5,1) raises his glass and says:
I'd like to propose a piece of bread.
...
march 23, 2011
- The sound of the kiss, or the story that must never be told by Pingali Surana and Velcheru Narayana Rao [Vēlcēru NārāyaNarāvu] (tr.) and David Dean Shulman (tr.) (2002)
Writing poetry is like milking a cow.
You have to pause at the right moment.
You have to feel your way, gently, with a good heart,
[if you fail] you get kicked...
- Beer by Michael Jackson (2007)
IBU Acronym for International Bitterness Units, a standard scale of
measurement for determining the bitterness of beers.
...
- The Sacred Wood and Major Early Essays by T.S. Eliot (1997)
Another essay, "Poets on
poetry", is mentioned in the blurb at the back but seems to have lost its
way during production; it's certainly not there in the edition I have.
...
- Literary theory: an introduction by Terry Eagleton (1996)
Nobody will penalize me heavily if I dislike a particular Donne poem,
but if I argue that Donne is not literature at all then in certain
circumstances I might risk losing my job.
[AM: a great example; but this still means "Donne = literature" is a shared
subjectivity rather than an objective fact.]
...
- Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction by Benjamin W. Fortson (2004)
[the picture of PIE has been in constant change over more than two centuries
of study, hence]
The account of linguistic history given in this book is not an immutable
truth.
...
march 7, 2011
march 1, 2011
- Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather: Stories by Gao Xingjian and Mabel Lee (tr.) (2004)
I ask everywhere and search street after street and lane after lane. I feel
as if I'm rummaging through my pockets; I've taken out everything, but still
can't find what i want. In despair I drag along my weary legs, uncertain
whether they still belong to me. 73
...
february 25, 2011
- Hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world by Haruki Murakami and Alfred Birnbaum (tr.) (2003)
The autumn sky was as clear as if it had been made that very morning. Perfect
Duke Ellington weather.
...
- The mammoth book of literary anecdotes by Philip Gooden (2002)
Many of the stories are prefaced by notes that indicate that they are
unreliable. Interesting-ness prevails over truth; but aren't there enough
truly interesting situations as well?
...
- Mental floss presents Instant Knowledge by Will (eds) Pearson and Mangesh Hattikudur, Elizabeth Hunt and Mental Floss (pub) (2005)
Reno’s first escalator was installed at Coney Island, and 75,000 people
rode Reno’s “inclined elevator” during a two-week exhibition in 1896. Let’s
be clear: The escalator was not the means by which one traveled to a
ride. It was the ride itself...
...
- Mental floss Forbidden Knowledge: A Wickedly Smart Guide to History's Naughtiest Bits by Will (eds) Pearson and Mangesh Hattikudur, Elizabeth Hunt and Mental Floss (pub) (2005)
During the 13 years he spent on the [Cook County] bench, from
1977 to 1990, Maloney
“fixed” as many as six murder trials, taking bribes from $10,000 to
$100,000 from gangs to convict members of other gangs of murder
...
february 17, 2011
- Right Ho, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse (1999)
I suppose it wasn't often that the boys of Market Snodsbury Grammar
School came across a man public-spirited enough to call their head master a
silly ass, and they showed their appreciation in no uncertain manner. Gussie
...
- jhiler dhAre bARi (ঝিলের ধারে বাড়ি) by shIrShendu mukhopAdhyAy (1988)
sripati thinks a while and says: "these are village ghosts, you
know - may be they don't have the guts to scare those city honchos."
- p.23...
Despite the enid-blyton-esque plot, the background and characters are far
more intimately portrayed, and the stories of the bengal countryside
makes it a much more compelling read.
...
- Siting Translation: History, Post-Structuralism, and the Colonial Context by Tejaswini Niranjana (1992)
translation depends on the Western philosophical notions of reality,
representation, and knowledge. Reality is seen as something
unproblematic, "out there"; knowledge involves a representation of
this reality; and representation provides direct, unmediated access
to a transparent reality.
...
- Semantics by Frank Robert Palmer (1981)
It is, or should be, clear that the study of semantics is not advanced by
being 'reduced' to logic. 113
...
- Marriage and Rank in Bengali Culture: A History of Caste and Clan in Middle-period Bengal by Ronald B. Inden (1976)
[Eurocentric distinctions] of clan rank,
"modified" to take into account Hindu concerns for purity and ritual
status, looked more and more like Ptolemy's attempt to account for the
motion of the heavenly bodies by adding epicycles. - p. 8
...
february 7, 2011
- The anti-Chomsky reader by Peter (eds) Collier and David Horowitz (2004)
Chomsky’s work manifests a deep disregard and contempt for the truth [1], a
monumental disdain for standards of inquiry, a relentless strain of
self-promotion, remarkable descents into incoherence[2] and a penchant for
verbally abusing those who disagree with him [3].
...
- Luka and the Fire of Life by Salman Rushdie (2010)
When Haroun had been Luka's age he had travelled to the earth's second
moon, befriended fishes who spoke in rhyme and a gardener made of lotus
roots, and helped to overthrow the evil Cultmaster Khattam-Shud who was
...
- The stuff of thought: language as a window into human nature by Steven Pinker (2007)
Spam is not, as some people believe, an acronym for Short, Pointless, and
Annoying Messages. The word is related to the name of the luncheon meat sold
...
- Encyclopedia of Perception, v.1 and v.2 by E. Bruce Goldstein (2009)
january 2, 2011
december 7
- Chinese theories of reading and writing: a route to hermeneutics and open poetics by Ming Dong Gu (2006)
The words of ancient poets contain within themselves unlimited
implications. When posterity reads them, they will come to different
understandings, depending upon their dispositions, which may be shallow
...
- Syntax: an introduction, Volume 1 by Talmy Givon (2001)
Both the extravagantly abstract structures proposed by extreme formalists and
the obsessively concrete structures embraced by extreme functionalists are
due, in large measure, to pre-empirical philosophical predilections. For over
...
- Grammar by Frank Robert Palmer (1984)
What sets man apart from the rest of the animal kingdom is his ability to
speak; he is 'man the speaking animal' - homo loquens. [other creature
may make meaningful sounds, but they lack grammar.] Man is not merely homo loquens ;
he is homo grammaticus. p.9-10
...
- Granta 85 : Hidden Histories by Ian (ed.) Jack and Jeannie Erdal and Diana Athil and Orhan Pamuk (2004)
The literary treatment of sex is beset with vexed questions. First
there is the problem of getting the characters to take their clothes
off -- buttons and zips and hooks can be so awkward, and you couldn't
...
- A History of Modern Japan by Richard Storry (1969)
In the middle of the fourth century, an empress named Jingo organized,
and, it is said, took command of, a military expedition to Korea...
[not the etym < jingoism]
...
- Mughal and Rajput painting, New Cambridge history of India I.3 by Milo Cleveland Beach (1992)
november 9, 2010
october 20
- The way we think: conceptual blending and the mind's hidden complexities by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner (2003)
It is far more useful to view computational science as part of the
problem, rarher than the solution. The problem is understanding how
humans can have invented explicit, algorithmically driven machines
when our brains do not operate in this way. The solution, if it ever
...
- Moin and the Monster by Anushka Ravishankar and Anitha Balachandran (ill.) (2006)
"_Owowowowow! What have you done? What have you done?" wailed the monster.
"Why? What's the matter?"
"This is not how I should look," wept the monster. "I'm fearsome. You've
made me look funny!"
...
- The Poetry of Men's Lives: An International Anthology by Fred (ed.) Moramarco and Al Zolynas (ed.) (2004)
the uncollected man in converse with himself,
...
- Three Chinese Poets by Vikram (tr.) Seth and Wei Wang and Po Li and Fu Du (1997)
Empty hills, no man in sight
Just echoes of the voice of men.
...
september 26
- Thousand cranes by Yasunari Kawabata and Edward G. Seidensticker (tr) (1959)
He gazed at it for a time. In a gourd that had been handed down for three
centuries, a flower that would fade in the morning. 88
...
september 22
- The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri (2001)
"What do you have there?" Sheetal said, pointing at his
nakedness and laughing.
...
- Indian literature, 227, May-June 2005 by Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee and Sahitya Akademi (2006)
You should write when you can still laugh at yourself and the world, before
you give yourself up to despair.
...
september 14
september 1
- Pulp Fiction by Quentin Tarantino (1994)
WOLF: It's about thirty minutes away. I'll be there in ten.
...
- The Culture and Civilisation of Ancient India in Historical Outline by Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi (1970)
Cotton textiles (even words like 'calico', Chintz', 'dungaree', 'pyjamas',
'sash' and 'gingham' are of Indian origin) and sugar are India's specific
contribution to everyday life, just as paper, tea, porcelain, silk are
China's.
...
- The Spirit of St. Louis by Charles A. Lindbergh and Reeve Lindbergh (2003)
[Lindbergh's thoughts on seeing Paris]
There are thousands of lights along one side. They probably come from a
factory. Surely Le Bourget wouldn't have a factory that size right next
to it. [they are the headlights of people who have come in the night to see him land]
...
- The ghost of Gosain Bagan [orig: গোঁসাই বাগানের ভূত, 1972) by Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay and Nirmal K Bhattacharjee (tr.) and Agantuk (ill) (2008)
An inconsistency in the story has to do with the fact that the ghosts are
very scared of the word "Ram" and disappear the moment it is uttered,
(e.g. Rambabu). Yet the leading ghosts name is Nidhuram.
...
- Sanskrit poetry, from Vidyākara's "Treasury" by vidyAkara and Daniel Henry Holmes Ingalls (tr.) (1968)
Like all compilers of verse, Vidyakara was a man of his times, and he liked
the poets and poetic taste flourishing around him. Thus, his choice of
...
- The Vintage Book of Marriage by Bel Mooney and Jonathan Dimbleby (1989)
august 24
- Collected Poems by Chinua Achebe (2004)
And the gentle butterfly offers
Itself in bright yellow sacrifice
Upon my hard silicon shield.
...
- Poems for the Millennium, The University of California Book of Modern and Postmodern Poetry, Volume Two: From Postwar to Millennium by Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris (1998)
Bei Dao:
I don't believe the sky is blue;
I don't believe in thunder's echoes;
I don't believe that dreams are false;
I don't believe that death
...
- Kamasutra by Vatsayana and Wendy Doniger (tr) and Sudhir Kakar (tr.) (2002)
It is not, as most people think, a book about the positions in sexual
intercourse. It is about the art of living -- about finding a
partner, maintaining power in a marriage, committing adultery, living as or
...
- Other Colours by Orhan Pamuk and Maureen Freely (tr.) (2007)
The seagull is standing on the roof, in the rain, as if nothing has
happened. It is as if it's not raining at all; the seagull is just standing
there, as still as ever. Or else the seagull is a great philosopher, too
...
- Old snow: poems by Bei Dao and Bonnie S. McDougall (tr) and Chen Maiping (tr.) (1991)
where is the pear
whose body shuts like a clam
where is the pre-doomsday carnival
where is the flag's victorious star
...
- Contemporary Indian poetry by Kaiser Haq (ed) (1990)
The white of the negro maid's eyeballs
is the only clean thing here,
...
- Commando 3-in-1 : Battle Stories by Commando comics (publ) (1989)
august 8
July 26
- Vision and the emergence of meaning: blind and sighted children's early language by Anne Dunlea (1989)
echolocation - bright blind children
spontaneously learn to clap and echolocate around age 1.5-2... 10
congenitally blind, if vision is restored as adult by surgery, have
difficulty recognizing objects visually - need training. [Molyneux problem] 11
...
- Mr. Tompkins in Paperback by George Gamow (1940)
Mr Tompkins lifts a bike and starts to pedal, he doesn't become
shorter, but the world becomes narrower in his direction of motion
...
july 21
july 4
june 26, 2010
- I can, but why should I go by Sakti Chattopadhyay and Jayanta Mahapatra (tr) (1994)
এখন গঙ্গার তীরে ঘুমন্ত দাঁড়ালে Now, when I stand, drowsy on the Ganga's bank
চিতা কাঠ ডাকে আয়, আয়, আয়। The wood of the pyre calls: Come!
...
- padyasamagra 1 by Shakti Chattopadhyay (1989)
- Recipes worth their lack of salt by Michael E. deBakey and Antonio M. Gotto, Lynne W. Scott and John P. Foreyt (1984)
june 22
the past month i've been bicycling in the himalayas. had rented some rooms
in a village gazing at the snows across a vast valley - so wasn't
connected, and some patches of reading had accumulated... incidentally, we
rode a total of 890 km including some rather steep slopes
(birthi-kalamuni-munshiyari, joshimath-badrinath-mana, bageshwar-song,
gagas-ranikhet, kosi-almora, etc).
- The Science of Empire: Scientific Knowledge, Civilization, and Colonial Rule in India by Zaheer Baber (1996)
The dominant "colonialist" perspective articulated by Grant, Mill, and
Macaulay... conceived the pre-British India as a veritable tabula rasa onto
which modern science and technology had to be inscribed
...
- The child language reader by Kate (eds) Trott and Sushie Dobbinson (eds) and Patrick Griffiths (eds) (2004)
Slobin, on the basis of Miket 1967, saw the possibility of
conceptual understanding prior to linguistic structure. Miket studied
...
- Science, technology, and medicine in colonial India by David Arnold (2000)
Although the history of science, technology and medicine continues to be
presented in general histories as a record of Western discovery and
dissemination, it has become more widely acknowledged than a generation or
two ago that not all such histories can be conflated into a single story of
European achievement or saga of European enterprise overseas. p.1
...
- A 2nd Helping of Chicken Soup For the Indian Soul by Jack (eds) Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen and Raksha Bharadia (2010)
- The book of general ignorance by John Lloyd and and John Mitchinson (2006)
Most dangerous animal:
45 bn people - half the humans that ever lived - may have been killed by
diseases borne by mosquitoes. Today, one person dies every 12 seconds
...
- Learning Syntactic Structure by Yoav Seginer (2007)
While Amit was washing the dishes crashed to the floor.
...
- Introduction to Design by Morris Asimow (1962)
Engineering design is a purposeful activity directed toward the goal of
fulfilling human needs, particularly those that can be met by the
technological factors of our culture. p. 1
...
- From Scott to Fuchs by Gerald Bowman (1960)
- Great plays of Kalidasa by Kamlesh Pandey and D.H. Doongaji and AK Lavangia and Kamala Chandrakant and Anant Pai (ed.) and P.B. Kavadi (ill) and Pratap Mulick (ill.) ()
- Great Sanskrit plays: Swapna-Vasavadatta, Mrichchakatikam, Ratnavali by Kamala Chandrakant and Subba Rao and Anant Pai (ed.) and H.S. Chavan (ill) and G.R. Naik (ill.) and Pratap Mulick (ill.) ()
- The Sacred beetle and other great essays in science by Martin Gardner (ed.) (1986)
If physicists reduce all existence to a finite number of particles or
waves, one can always ask, "Why those particles?' or "Why those waves?'
There necessarily must remain a basic substratum - a "dark abyss," as
Santayana once described it, "before which intelligence must be silent for
fear of going mad."
...
- 60 Indian poets by Jeet Thayil (ed.) (2008)
Frost streamed the air. Our blood pulsed thin and shrill.
...
- The Oxford India Ramanujan by A. K. Ramanujan (2003)
It's terrible. I grow lean /
in loneliness,/
like a water lily /
gnawed by a beetle.
...
- Subtext: making body language work in the workplace by Julius Fast (1991)
how do you send out a subtext of confidence?
Smile, was his first suggestion.
...
- The Routledge companion to aesthetics by Berys Nigel (eds) Gaut and Dominic McIver Lopes (2001)
- How Language Comes to Children: From Birth to Two Years by Bénédicte de Boysson-Bardies and Malcolm B. DeBevoise (tr.) (2001)
He would have responded the same if yes was uttered in the same tone. So
separating the phonetic component from the prosody remains a challenge for
studies of word recognition.
...
- ShrinkLits: Seventy of the World's Towering Classics Cut Down to Size by Maurice Sagoff and Roslyn Schwartz (ill.) (1980)
may 15
Last week I took some time out while at Delhi and visited the cavernous
warehouse cum bookshop called Swati which is the only place where Sahitya
Akademi books are available. Although the place is touted by all Akademi
people as their main bookshop, it is really a sad, musty, bureaucratic place,
difficult to find (on the backside of what seems like a women's hostel on
Mandir Marg), and a far cry from the canons of bookshop-hood.
Nonetheless, since the Akademi is by far the leading publisher of works
related to Indian literature, this vault is worth a visit by lovers of Indian
lit.
Got some 14 books, all at ridiculously low prices - total bill was 1000
Rs.
- The sky of words and other poems by Sitakant Mahapatra (1996)
On the hill's sloping ground
I asked you to give me love, dreams,
A touch, tobacco leaves.
...
- When poetry comes: a selection of poems by contemporary Bengali women poets in English translation by Marian Maddern (tr.) (1999)
This too is the night of danger
covered with lotus leaves or washed by tears
...
- Modern Indian drama: an anthology by G.P. Deshpande (ed.) (2004)
Leader: What is the purpose of staging the play?
Sutradhar: The purpose is to earn my bread, Sir.
L: Tchi! Tchi! What a petty concern!
...
- Contemporary Indian short stories v.II by Bhabani Bhattacharya (2006)
- A Certain Sense by Jibananda Das and Sukanta Chaudhuri (ed) and Sumita Chakrabarti (ed) (2006)
may 10
may 2, 2010
- Thunder Gods: The Kamikaze Pilots Tell Their Story by Hatsuho Naito (1989)
I shall fall, smiling and singing songs. Please visit and worship
at Yasukuni Shrine this spring. There I shall be a cherry blossom
...
- Kalidaser granthAbalI, v.2 by Kalidasa and Rajendranath Vidyabhushan (ed.) (1929)
वर्णप्रकर्षे सति कर्णिकारं दुनोति निर्गन्धतया स्म चेतः ।
प्रायेण सामग्र्यविधौ गुणानां पराङ्मुखी विश्वसृजः प्रवृत्तिः॥३.२८
...
- Celebrating the best of Urdu Poetry by Khushwant (tr. ed.) Singh and Kamna Prasad (ed.) (2007)
When my beloved raised her arms to gather up her tresses
A million desires gathered in my heart and got tied up in a tangle
...
- The blacksmith and the carpenter by Sun Li and Sidney Shapiro (tr) and Gladys Yang (tr) and Yu Fanqin (tr) (1982)
- Ritusamhara by Kalidasa and Rajendra Tandon (tr.) (2008)
na bhabati kimidAnIM yoShitAM manmathAya
is there anything [about women] that does not excite amour? (6.33)
...
- Ideologies of the Raj, New Cambridge history of India III.4 by Thomas R. Metcalf (1995)
Curzon, 1905: remember that the Almighty has placed your
hand on the greatest of his ploughs ... to drive the blade a little
forward in your time, and to feel that somewhere among these millions
you have left a little justice or happiness or prosperity, a sense of
manliness or moral dignity, a spring of patriotism, a dawn of
intellectual enlightenment, or a stirring of duty, where it did not
before exist. That is enough, that is the
Englishman's justification in India.
...
April 25
April 23
April 15
March 5
March 2, 2010
February 17
February 5
February 1
- How do you withstand, body by Gieve Patel (1976)
-- And the professors! O professors,
Stale, malodorous, with yesterday's coats
...
- bhojanshilpI bAMAlI by buddhadeb basu (2004)
There is nothing called "Indian literature," - as I have been saying in so
many forums - similarly, there is nothing called "Indian food". It would be
...
- A Matter of Taste: The Penguin Book of Indian Writing on Food by Nilanjana S. Roy (2004)
her breasts were like used tea bags. As the weight loss progressed, the
sachets deflated gradually, becoming little more than flaps of skin.
...
- Rabindranath Tagore: The Myriad-minded Man by Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson (1997)
Bela was married when she was 15 and Renuka at 10... although Rabindranath
was strongly opposed to child marriage.]
...
January 25
January 13, 2010
- Bicycle design: Towards the Perfect Machine by Mike Burrows and Tony Hadland (ed.) (2000)
Mike Burrows is among the best known bicycle designers today, with a wide
range of credits from the recumbent Windcheetah and Ratcatcher to the
...
January 7, 2010
`
- Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje (1984)
In Sri Lanka, a well told lie is worth a thousand truths.
...
- Representations of India, 1740-1840: The Creation of India in the Colonial Imagination by Amal Chatterjee (1998)
- Dreams: Mind Movies of the Night by Mary Herd Tull and Amy Ning and Amy Ning (ill.) (2000)
I interpret dreams, having the gods' mandate to do so.
[inscription on Egyptian temple door] 29
...
- It's not about the bike: my journey back to life by Lance Armstrong and Sally Jenkins (2000)
I didn't love the bike before I got sick...
It was a means to an end, a way to get out of Plano, a potential source of
...
- Fooled by randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2007)
[Wealth of a man should be measured not by his actual wealth, but by how he
would have done if things had turned out in some alternative ways. The
...
- A companion to twentieth-century poetry by Neil Roberts (ed.) (2003)
The phrase ‘in English’ is no mere neutral description, but signifies a
complex, violent and still bitterly felt political and cultural history: some
...
- The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Afanas'evich Bulgakov and Diana Lewis Burgin (tr) and Katherine Tiernan O'Connor (tr) (1996)
This is the book that inspired Rushdie's Satanic Verses. It has had a
...
- Chand Bibi : The valorous princess who withstood the might of the Mughals by Toni Patel and Anant Pai (ed.) and Ram Waeerker (ill) ()
- The uses of enchantment: the meaning and importance of fairy tales by Bruno Bettelheim (1976)
Reading it now, three decades later, many of the symbolisms uncovered by
Bettelheim seem way overboard, they could just as well have gone the other
...
December 5, 2009
- Traffic: why we drive the way we do by Tom Vanderbilt (2008)
Deaths by automobile were already, according to the New York Times [1903],
"every-day occurrences" with little "news value" unless they involved persons
of "exceptional social or business prominence."
...
- chhoToder AbrittikoSh by nIradbaraN hAjrA (2007)
bAbA Ar mA : sunIl gangopAdhyAy 80
bAbAo nAki chhoTTo chhilen, mA chhilen ek-ratti
...
- Ploughshares Spring 2008 by B.H. Fairchild (ed.) (2008)
November 15
- The foundations of mind: Origins of conceptual thought by Jean Mandler (2004)
Infants are interpreters of the world around them from an early age.
We don't know how early, but Werner and Kaplan's (1963) estimate of 3
months as the onset of contemplation of the world cannot be much more
...
September 29
- Longman anthology of world literature by women, 1875-1975 by Marian (ed.) Arkin and Barbara Shollar (ed.) (1989)
Europeans called [Kanhoji Angray a] "pirate", and such in truth he was; but
... what chief, or ruler, or founder of a dynasty was not a robber or a pirate?
...
- A Tower for the Summer Heat by Li Yu and Patrick Hanan (trans.) (1992)
This story from China of the 17th c., is about the potential of the
telescope. It is among the earliest science fiction in the world, well
...
September 9
August 24
- The Storyteller by Mario Vargas Llosa and Helen Lane (tr.) (1989)
Babies born with physical defects, lame, maimed, blind, with more or fewer
fingers than usual, or a harelip, were killed by their own mothers...
- Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman by Richard Phillips Feynman and Ralph Leighton (1985)
So the guy says, "What are you doing? You come to fix the radio, but you're
only walking back and forth!" I say, "I'm thinking!"
...
- The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen Scientist by Richard Phillips Feynman (1998)
"To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven. The same key opens
the gates of hell."
...
- Women, fire and dangerous things: What categories tell us about rhe nature of thought by George Lakoff (1987)
2. '''Balan''': women, bandicoots, dogs, platypus, echidna, some snakes+fishes,
most birds, fireflies, scorpions, criekets, the hairy mary grub, anything
connected with water or fire, sun and stars, shields, some spears,
...
August 17
August 14
- The courtesan's arts: cross-cultural perspectives by Martha Feldman and Bonnie Gordon (2006)
In the Persian literature, early tawa'if are often assigned a regional
origin from Kashmir or other NW locations associated w fair-skinned beauty
...
- The Great Masters: Profiles in Hindustani Classical Vocal Music by Mohan Nadkarni (1999)
At age 16, her aunt threw Siddheshwari out after she turned out
to be more talented musically than her own daughter.
- Love stories from the Mahabharata by Subodh Ghosh and Pradip Bhattacharya (tr.) (2005)
Manduka princess Sushobhana has many secret lovers, whom she meets without
revealing her identity, and then fends them off from permanence by feigning
...
- The Pigman by Paul Zindel (1983)
"You're not a pretty girl, Lorraine," [mother] has been nice enough
to inform me on a few occasions, "but you don't have to walk about
stoop-shouldered and hunched." 9
...
August 3
- The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, v.2 Contemporary Poetry by Jahan Ramazani and Richard Ellman and Robert O'Clair (2003)
my husband rejects the old type.
He is in love with a modern woman,
Who speaks English. - Okot p'Bitek (Uganda)
- Vice: An Anthology by Richard Davenport-Hines (1993)
The man who has not anything to boast of but his illustrious
ancestors is like a potato -- the only good belonging to him is
underground. - Thomas Overbury
- Trigonometric Delights by Eli Maor ()
did you know that the word "sine" is etymologically derived from Sanskrit
ardha-jya, the term used by Aryabhata for sine, meaning "half-chord"?
July 31
July 26
- Origins of human communication by Michael Tomasello (2008)
while chimpanzees have pointing gestures, they do not understand
that pointing is intended as an helpful signal. Thus, a
chimp who is hungry and searching for food may have a human caretaker point
towards a box, and it may even go to that box, but instead of turning over
that box, it may try some other one. ...
July 23
- India After Gandhi: The history of the world's largest democracy by Ramachandra Guha (2007)
On 19 October 1952, a man named Potti Sriramulu began a
fast-unto-death in AP
... 15 Dec: fifty-eight days into his fast, Potti Sriramulu died...
- The game in reverse: poems by Taslima Nasrin and Carolyne Wright (tr) with Farida Sarkar (tr) and Mohammad Nurul Huda (tr) and Subharanjan Dasgupta (tr) (1995)
This body of mine, known so long,
at times even I can't recognize it.
may 18
- Mathematics and the divine: a historical study by T. Koetsier and Luc Bergmans (2005)
Wilkinson felt that religious and scientific worldviews in Indian thought
were more or less natural enemies, and that adherents of the former had
caused, by their “superior address,” the “oblivion” of the latter.
...
- The palimpsest of Exile by Dipika Mukherjee (2009)
These words once knew the power of insousicance.
These words once danced in red jooties.
may 5
- Indian astronomy: an introduction by S. Balachandra Rao (2000)
Sometimes, the sun may remain in the same rAshi for more than a lunar
month; in such situations, one has an extra month (adhikamAsa, chapters 5 & 6)
...
- bAMlA kabitA : sriShTi o sraShTA by subal sAmanta (ed.) (1999)
madhyadin pIchgalA. janashUnya saRake hAm~Tchhe
ekTi kumArI meye, dui chokhe udvigna pratyay
...
- Violent Volcanoes by Anita Ganeri and Mike Phillips (ill.) (1999)
Toba, Sumatra, 75,000 BC - 8 - 2,800 km^3 ash spread all over the world
and caused frozen weather for years.
...
- Manto: Selected Stories by Saadat Hasan Manto and Aatish Taseer (tr.) (2009)
‘Your grandfather was MD Taseer, the poet, and you
don’t know Urdu?’
...
may 2
April 18
March 24
- What is Mathematics?: An Elementary Approach to Ideas and Methods by Richard Courant and Herbert Robbins (1941)
-
Elegant. Classic. All school children should do arithmetic in
non-decimal bases.
- Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics by John Derbyshire (2003)
-
overly verbose discussion of the riemann hypothesis.
March 21
- Way of Tibetan Buddhism by Jampa Thaye (2001)
- The simple, lucid story of Mahayana, and its Tibetan practice.
- Poems from the Sanskrit by John (trans.) Brough (1977)
- Excerpts include 53 Poems like this:
If a professor thinks what matters most
Is to have gained an academic post...
March 17
- The Hour of the Goddess: Memories of Women, Food, and Ritual in Bengal by Chitrita Banerji (2007)
-
History and practice of bengali food, including how we learned to make chhAnA
from the Portuguese.
- An Eye for Excellence: Fifty innovative years of IIT Kanpur by E.C. Subbarao (2008)
- Mediocre writing, but the facts are interesting.
Added March 9, 2009
- sukAnta samagra সুকান্ত সমগ্র by sukAnta bhaTTachArya and subhASh mukhopAdhyAy (1967)
-
Despite his nephew being the Chief Minister of Bengal,
Sukanta Bhattacharya's image has eroded a lot.
Are his poems too overwrought with
emotion?
Added on March 6, 2009
- Sruti Smrti by K.G. Subramanyan (2001)
A very brief reminiscence of KGS' days at Shantiniketan, particularly
valuable for his insights on the process by which innovation dies out as a
result of institutionalization. I found this particularly interesting
from the perspectives of an IIT Professor in the 2000s, watching the process
of this institution being increasingly bureaucratized with a resulting
ingress of mediocrity.
Other recent additions not in index
