Compassion is the radicalism of our time – The Dalai Lama Meeting His Holiness the Dalai Lama, listening to him is an effervescent experience. You leave light-hearted. And, if you are an Indian, it fills you with a deep sense of pride. Possibly, India couldn’t have had a more charismatic, popular and sincere Cultural Ambassador, […]
Pandit Gopal Shukla held the slightly squirming bundle tentatively and, looking at her big, watchful, unblinking eyes, announced without consulting the Almanac for once that they would call her Chaitali as the month of Chait had started and Ram Navami was round the corner. He beamed as he handed her back, his bow-shaped moustache straightening, […]
On Gandhiji’s birth anniversary, the day before yesterday, a cartoon of Bapu handing over his walking stick to a girl to defend herself was forwarded by a friend. It summed up what the believer in Ahimsa would have felt and probably done in times when news of horrific rapes, mutilation and murder of the victim […]
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 […]
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