MURTYMUSE

  MYSELF: Character in a Novel Not exactly a novel. A travel story of tours in India by an Australian author SEAN DOYLE. Who’s now a dear friend. Presently again in India. He is also likely to visit Lucknow for a meeting. May be next month in the New Year. Has been visiting India for the past many years. The sub-title of the book says : ‘India with my Daughter’ (Anna). The Blurb says: “Blending erudition, humour and paternal angst, this is a beautifully nuanced exploration of a father-daughter relationship set against the backdrop of one of the world’s most culturally and spiritually rich countries.” He had been coming to Varansi even in previous years, but that morning he met me in the train, he was travelling in India, for the first time with his daughter. The book retells the story of their visits cities across India, finally back to Delhi. Then, way back home a stopover in Kuala Lumpur. Absolutely UNPUTDOWNABLE! To be finished in a single spell of reading. Like the Anci...

Sonnet in a Bonnet [On the 108th Birth Anniversary of the modern Hindi poet Trilochan] The sonnet was born in Italy as a lover’s serenade, and soon thereafter became the most fashionable poetic form in Elizabethan England, and after a century-long eclipse, it re-appeared with a vibrance and velocity not only in all the various Englishes throughout the world, but in many other languages, too. In prosodic terms, the sonnet is perhaps the single most complexly rhyme-woven poetic form which has attracted poets everywhere for its rhyme-weave challenge. Rhyme has always been one of the cardinal musical devices in poetry in all languages, but its intricate braiding in a sonnet, with the content and the meaning interspersed, offers the most exciting creative pleasure for the poet. One aspect of handling of the traditional form is the syntax which in Italian is more congenial to the fluidity of rhyme-sounds than in other analytical languages like English and Hindi where the syntax is more...