yet again ... getting lost ... then enjoying self-discovery ...

Jashn E Deccan, festive indeed Mumi asked if this December too the music festival we had been to, during the previous year, at the outskirts of town was being organized. Some days later we came across the flier for the 2 nd edition of the Jashn E Deccan and, as they say, blocked the dates.   During the previous edition Pandit Biswajit Roy Choudhury, one of the artists, had beautifully described event as, ‘ Everything here is so beautifully unconventional ’. Ustad Abdul Rashid Khan’s performance at the event unfortunately turned out to be his final performance; that evening at the age of 108 he had stunned all present and for me redefined few terms.   This year’s edition, held at the same venue, Sreenidhi International School , had performances by 6 artists spread across 2 evenings. Pandit Uday Bhawalkar began the proceedings with Raag Yaman and moved on to Raag Shivranjani. Seeing him perform I recalled Piyush Mishra state that an artist had to enjoy his perfo...

After my first experience at the Jaipur Literature Festival ( 2017 edition ) a friend called and asked if it was about fun ( read food ), glamour ( read wardrobe ) or books ( read buying, reading, knowing, listening to and interacting with authors ). It is about all of this and more, you need to savour the experience once, get a feel of the scale and fervour, and develop your own understanding of the festival. A friend says we are a nation of melas, and this is a wonderful one! Not very easy to choose favourites in such scenario but if I had to pick two threads it would be the books on history and one liners. It was story-telling at its finest and changed the way I understood history could be discussed. Suzannah Lipscomb talked of ‘The lovers who changed history’ and Giles Milton of ‘The spice trader who changed history’. The later, to quote William Dalrymple, “a master class in history”. What I share (and discuss) below are one-liners that I came across and that stayed...

The Toll of Ambiguity in the Government’s Culling Orders This piece finds place on The Wire Please find the edited version on The Wire here The unedited version in text below Thanks are due to Kartik Shanker, Abi Tamim Vanak, Arpan Sharma, Vasudevan Mukunth, The Wire and Dharmendra Khandal. The scenario. Media extensively covered the debate around culling during May and June 2016. A spat between two cabinet ministers underscored the sound and fury. The Supreme Court has since refused to ‘Stay’ the Central Government notifications allowing for Nilgai, Rhesus Macaque and Wild Boar to be declared vermin under section 62 of the Wildlife Protection Act (WLPA); Bihar, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh were the states affected. We have very little understanding on how the situation has shaped in these states post the culling decisions. This also stands true for Maharashtra and Telangana where the state governments (under section 11(b) of WLPA) have permitted cull...

The Mammals of India: A Systematic and Cartographic Review Anwaruddin Choudhury 2016    Gibbon books and The Rhino Foundation for Nature in NE India Forestry Bureau, COA ISBN 978-93-80652-04-7 Some random observations Glance Significantly more details of mammals occurring in the region east of Calcutta owing to the Author’s almost unparalleled experience of the region. Mammals in the region, as he states in the preface, cover 65 per cent of our country’s mammals. Colin Groves, in the foreword, describes the book succinctly as ‘ this book fills a real gap, it lists synonyms, cites relevant literature and importantly makes thoughtful assessments of taxonomic claims and counter claims ’. He adds that ‘ the author begins with surveys of environment and biogeography, and then conservation, before going on to his listing ’. Chapters There are topics that one does not come across in books on similar lines. While these additions are...

Let us have a meeting Published at Raiot  on 28th November 2016 Thanks are due to Raiot , Angela and Tarun. At a recent meeting it was a pleasant surprise to hear an agitated voice state that we need to move beyond talking of what was discussed during the previous meeting and what we could possibly discuss during the next meeting. We need to talk of work progress ( and lack of it ) between these meetings and ask ourselves why meetings have become an end in themselves. Angst in the tone ensured silence for the 5 odd minutes that followed. On way back home that evening I recalled the different categories of people I have encountered during meetings, people who left me – well, wondering. People who fly half way across the country or the globe for a meeting and then are busy checking emails and face-book. They have little idea of what has been discussed and suddenly they wake up to the discussions around them. This happened recently at a gathering ( at Lamakaan )...