Sometimes my son asks in English: “Baba, what does <i>duniya</i> mean?” It means the world, beta, the world that I have lost. The world of Hindi
To return to Patna is to find the challenging thought of death, like the tip of a knife, pressing against my rib.
It wasn't just about standing up for freedom of expression in India: maybe I was doing something more humble and honest. I was trying to restore a sense of balance to my own personal practice of literary criticism.
He was indicted on charges of conspiring to kidnap Henry Kissinger. He never published a classic text nor did he achieve anything like fame. The publication of his <i>Selected Writings</i> is an occasion for sorrow as well as celebration.
Fidelity to his interlocutors, and to their detail and circumstance, as much as the intelligence and brightness of Mehta's own prose, makes it an extraordinary debut--a debut that will rival Arundhati Roy's in fiction.
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