Dr. Pranab Sharma has accused the prestigious National Academy of Performing Arts (Lalit Kala Akadami) of acting whimsically. Senior Hindi poet, critic Ashok Vajpayee is the president of this Academy. Sharma’s accusation is that the academy did not permit him to exhibit his paintings, which is a violation of freedom of expression. He made a nude portrait of Arundhati Roy which he wanted to display publically. According to him the senior officers of the Academy gave him verbal permission and asked him to come to the office to take the approval letter and deposit the fee on 2nd March. When he reached the office all of a sudden the officers changed their minds and denied permission.

Professor Kamla Prasad is no more. He was a senior writer, general secretary of Progressive Writers Association and Editor-in-Chief of Vasudha magazine. His sudden demise is a huge loss for the progressive writers. He did a lot to promote leftist ideology among the writers. I knew him for the last 12 years but never got [...]

One day we started a discussion on the poetic style of today’s poets in our office. A question which was troubling me again and again was that why we don’t have any more poets like Dinkar, Bachchan or Shyam Narayan Pandey. Only a particular section can understand the poetic style of the current lot. It gets popular among them and they even get rewarded within the same circle only.

American writer Jonathan Franzen’s fiction Freedom has been among the bestsellers for the past many weeks. This book has been appreciated by readers and critics alike. This book garnered a lot of popularity in America and Europe. The New York Times dubbed this book as the master piece of American fiction. This huge popularity helped Jonathan Franzen to figure on the cover page of world famous Time Magazine which declared Jonathan as the most popular fictionist of the world.

Have you ever seen a dream translate into reality? It sounds so enthralling to hear about those who lived with their dreams, felt and experienced it. Same happened with me few days back. It was my unforgettable trip to Narkanda, a beautiful town of Shimla district in Himachal Pradesh. All kudos to our boss Sanjeev [...]

Ram Chandra Guha is a great historian. His writing style is quite interesting and different from the other writers. His book India after Gandhi received huge applauds from all. This book was termed as Book of the Year by popular magazines like the Economist, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. He has a vast experience of teaching in various universities of the world. He has also taught in the famous Indian Institute of Science of Bengaluru. Now, he is a freelancer and a columnist. After India after Gandhi he wrote another book called Makers of Modern India. In his book he has talked about 19 Indian leaders who influenced India with their writings, speeches or acts, those who played a pivotal role during pre-independence and post-independence era. As per the author these people gave new direction to the society with their writings.

Chhattisgarh court has given life sentence to a human rights activist and People’s Union for Civil Liberties Vice President, Binayak Sen for keeping contacts with Naxalites and helping them. Soon after his getting life sentence, some handful of left-wing writers and intellectuals came on roads for protesting against the verdict of the court. They are feeling that court has done injustice to Binayak Sen

Congress organized its 83rd Plenary Session in Burari, Delhi. Many high profile leaders of the party gathered here and celebrated the completion of successful 125 years of the congress party. On this occasion Dr Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi inaugurated a book published in two volumes called The making of the Indian Nation. The Editor [...]

This year’s Shitya Academy Award has been declared. It has gone to the famous Hindi novelist Uday Prakash for his book “Mohandas” (Vaani Publications, New Delhi). He truly deserves this award and infact the award should have been conferred upon him even before Arun Kamal, Rajesh Joshi and Gyanendrapati. I piqued the jury when just two days before the declaration I wrote about all this on my blog.

The year has ended and the new one is about to come. In the wake of this let us examine the publications of the last year. Last year I read very few Hindi books and all those failed to impress me. English books were many to come. The first one to be discussed is one by Ramachandra Guha, titled “Makers of Modern India”. The book discusses 19 Indians who helped shape Indian democracy and also through their writings influenced the direction of democracy.