The Digital Future of Books

By L. GORDON CROVITZ

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Remembering Maninder Singh Kang

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(18.5.1963-4.2.2013) By Rajesh Sharma I visualize him watching his own burning corpse and laughing a philosopher’s laughter. “Oye pandatā , this Kang was a dog’s tail of a man. Look, he is poking even the flames to laugh. What a struggle the wind and the fire are waging over his body. And look at the rain, it refuses to stop. His death seems to have released an excess of the five bhoots , making nature go berserk.”                 Listening to him, I try to make sense of his bizarre inner geography.                 “He’ll be impossible to replace. It’s such a loss,” he adds in an altogether different mood.       Maninder had this ability to move effortlessly between gaiety and gravity. He probably had found the thread that connects the extremes.        ...
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Remembering my teacher

By Rajesh Kumar Sharma A friend, who also is a teacher, recently sent an sms: satinder singh passed away this morning . Satinder Singh introduced me to the art of reading literature. He taught us to read patiently, to wait like birds even as reading hatched taking its own time. And he taught us to navigate literary works like wayfarers exploring the labyrinthine patterns of some Persian carpets. I remember the day -it must have been in 1980- I first went up to Satinder Singh. As always, he was there outside the classroom well before the class began. I had been reading a poem by Tennyson and had some questions. He heard me out and asked me to see him again the following day. 'Read this book over the weekend and come back to me,' he said, handing me The Complete Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson . I looked apprehensively at the forbidding tome but he reassured me, 'You'll read it through, I know.' And he smiled, patted my shoulder and walked into the class. ...
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Culture, Now

Rajesh Kumar Sharma (The following is a reconstruction, and translation from Punjabi, of the lecture given on 20 November 2009 at a seminar organized by Pragativaadi Sabhyacharak Manch, Chandigarh) When I received the programme chart for this seminar a few days ago , I discovered that its theme would be India's current policy on culture. I wondered if I was qualified in any way to speak on such a matter. The wonder has by no means lessened, but it has prompted me to formulate a few basic questions. The first question, expectedly, is whether India currently has any policy on culture. Assuming that it has, and assuming also that by India's policy is meant the government's policy, one may ask whether it fairly and adequately represents the wishes and needs of the Indian people at this moment of history. One may go further and even ask whether culture should at all be subject to policy-making. On the other hand, the brute fact is that whether or not there is a formulated polic...
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