It was a freezing day at the peak of winter, when a city newspaper in a European country reported that the police had caught a young man running naked on the international airport’s tarmac. No name was mentioned. Just the initials and that he was from a foreign country. The police had caught him running […]
DELINEATION OF VALUES-BASED APPROACH – THE BURRA CHARTER 10. The Burra Charter outlines the ‘ideals’ of the values-based approach and is considered to be the most definitive charter in conservation practice today. The Burra Charter was first adopted in 1979 in the historic mining town of Burra in Australia and substantial changes were made in […]
“Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly, you hardly catch it going?” – Tennessee Williams “I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met; all […]
The debate on values surrounding heritage conservation today has a come a long way from the romanticism of John Ruskin in the late 19th century Britain, who was poetic and utopian in his description of values, “there was yet in the old some life, some mysterious suggestion of what it had been and of what […]
Hiraman’s first vivid memory was of a grinning Jaglu lift his mother from behind and swing her around, her excited laughter circling, bouncing off the shiny-wavy Aluminium walls. He had never seen her happier than those days, when she would wake up in the mornings lazily doing her hair, eyes lost, smiling before shaking Jaglu […]
Dr. Sengupta was a transformed man as soon as he stepped behind the wheels of his battle-scarred Honda City, unrecognizable from the soft-spoken, urbane doctor examining an unending stream of patients at his CR Park clinic in the evening. Many of his regular patients were not well off; he treated them without charging any fees. […]
From the hammock, the sky was an oscillating, blue-green leaf-filigree as the morning rays gently warmed the tree trunks and rested on scattered patches of grass. A Magpie dapper in its black and white plumage hopped about in search of juicy insects that were out after an unusual morning rain. A nimble Rose Finch sidled […]
It’s not a type of banana, neither a nutritious root found in the jungles of India that sustained Ram, Sita and Lakshman during their long years in exile. It is a variety of local mango that floods the vegetable Mandis in Varanasi and neighbouring areas of Eastern UP soon after the first summer rains. Every […]
Father, sitting on the front seat besides the driver, a small hard-bound worn-out Ramayan in his lap: ‘Dekho beta Lomrhi’. Son: ‘Nomri? nomri… khanpal? Khanpal?’; missing the elusive animal with the bushy tail and legendary cunning, as the old Landmaster rumbled through the plains of Northern Bihar. Father, amused, solicitous, reassuring: ‘Kanu Ram nahin dekh […]
Supratik, the Chief of Police and Internal Security at Ujjain, walked hurriedly up to the riverside, just as the body was being fished out. The officer supervising the operation turned around and saluted his commander smartly. Supratik nodded, his mind preoccupied, struggling to make sense of the fast-paced happenings since yesterday evening. The pale body […]
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