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Showing posts from 2009

1001 Cups : A Contemporary Ceramic Exhibition

Claude Presset, a Swiss ceramist and teacher has curated an exhibition of cups by a hundred different ceramists which is currently on display in Delhi. Each ceramist has created a series of ten cups each in which none of the cups are identical although each series has been created using only one technique. Each cup is approximately the same size as a kulhar : the traditional Indian teacup which was once commonly used but is now rarely seen -- the handcrafted, earthenware cup of yesteryear having now been replaced by mass produced cups often not even made of clay. And yet, the basic shape, structure and purpose of the cup has probably not significantly changed through the millennia. And so, as the exhibits -- displayed in packing cases -- demonstrate, the lines which demarcate 'tradition' from ' living tradition', and 'experimentation' from 're-interpretation' are in fact often amazingly thin. At the end of the day, there is only so much that can be done

The Area Around Humayun's Tomb

One of the first things which one notices about Delhi is that it’s full of monuments (or what could be monuments) but that hardly anyone knows what they are. This roundabout is on the way to Humayun’s Tomb, one of Delhi’s three much touted heritage sites: the others being Ferozshah Kotla and the Qutb Minar. Nonetheless, despite being just some 500 m away, all most people know is that it’s called Subz Burz and that it lies on the Grand Trunk Road. The area where the tomb stands is full of old structures. I was told when I first asked for directions that it’s in a very Muslim area of town – not information I had asked for and, as it turned out, information which was irrelevant. There are several tombs in the compound where Humayun’s Tomb is situated. When one first enters it, one sees the entrance to Isa Khan’s Tomb Enclosure to the right and Bu Halima’s straight ahead. The Compound Isa Khan’s Tomb Enclosure Isa Khan’s Tomb dates back to 1547 AD and includes both a mosque and a tomb. T

Morphology: Inflectional v. Derivational

The inflectional morphology of a language is the study of the ways in which bound grammatical morphemes combine with stems to be realised as grammatical words. On the other hand, the derivational morphology of a language is the study of the ways in which bound lexical morphemes combine with stems to be realised as lexical words. Classical grammarians of Latin and Greek generally divided grammar into accidence, word formation and syntax. They did not pay much attention to derivation because they did not really consider it to be a part of grammar. There are three main differences between inflection and derivation. Firstly, inflection refers to the ways in which bound grammatical words combine with stems to form grammatical words as mentioned earlier while derivation ultimately leads to the formation of lexical words. Both grammatical and lexical words ultimately surface as phonological and orthological words in which bound lexical morphemes can usually be identified as having been affixe

The Last Flicker in the Lamp of Mughal Architecture

Safdarjung's Tomb. Safdarjung's Tomb is a strange place. It's not an important monument, so it's not very crowded. The average person on the road where it stands has no idea what on Earth it is, let alone where it is. They'll give you directions to the locality Safdarjung, to Safdarjung Enclave, and, if you ask, to Lodhi road. But God help you if you ask for the Tomb: all you'll probably get is a blank stare. You'll be asked what it is, and be informed by the helpful that the road you're standing on is not Aurobindo Road but Arvind Road. And that's despite the fact the the Tomb's entrance is bang on the main road, at the T-junction of Lodhi Road and Aurobindo Road. Inside, the lawns aren't particularly well maintained; there are over 300 sq m of them. Nor is anything else as well maintained as it is in other more well known monuments. The good thing though is that there are few people around because it isn't, well, iconic. The Tomb is t

Canterbury Tales

The ‘Canterbury Tales’ are the most famous of Chaucer’s works. He began to write them in the 1380s and although they display the style he developed in his English Period, they also include some material he had written earlier. (for example, there is evidence of earlier works being revised in the ‘Clerk’s Tale’ and the ‘Monk’s Tale’.) Chaucer also specifically referred to ‘The Legende of Good Women’ and to ‘Lyf of Seynt Cecyle’ in the Prologue. There have been some suggestions that there exist close links between Boccaccio’s ‘Decameron’ (of which there is no evidence that Chaucer ever saw) and various other continental works. However, apart from the use of an enclosing narrative within which to frame the tales, ‘Canterbury Tales’ appears to be an original and distinctively English work. The work is a collection of tales told by twenty-nine pilgrims who meet at an inn on their way to Canterbury Cathedral which became a site of pilgrimage after the brutal murder of Thomas Becket there, an

Jantar Mantar

After being in Delhi for what’s hardly a short length of time, I finally went to the Jantar Mantar. It’s full of people during the day. And not one of them knows how exactly it works. Although the Jantar Mantar was built only a few centuries ago, no records survive from the period when it was built which tell contemporary scientists how to use it. The only documents which are in existence are records of observations which are not especially useful in terms of understanding how the observations were conducted. What’s surprising is that in addition to none of the original blueprints being available, the records of subsequent restorations are not easily available either. This doesn’t mean that just the records of 19th century restorations are unavailable but also that records of just how the structure was reinforced with concrete sometime in the 1980s are (I'm told) unavailable. What this effectively presumably means is that astrophysicists have no easy way of knowing what was a part

Purana Qila

The Entrance to Purana Qila I went for a walk in Purana Qila (the Old Fort next to Delhi’s High Court) the other day. It’s surprisingly well-maintained inside. There are lawns and it isn’t very dirty. One can walk around the ‘perimeter’ of the fort – or at least those who have a head for heights can. On one side there’s nothing but a wall which is a few feet in breath and has a drop of about three feet on one side and at least fifty on the other – or what seemed like fifty to me. I could be wrong but I doubt it. There are a few buildings which survive inside the compound of the fort. One of them apparently once housed a library whose stairs the Mughal Emperor Humayun fell down and died. What struck me as a bit strange though is that there were notice boards all over the place which said that the buildings were protected monuments but there were surprisingly few boards which said what in God’s name the buildings actually were. That’s one thing which I find strange about Delhi – the plac

Terminology: Victim v Survivor

The Curvature has a post up which questions why 'victim' is a dirty word , why survivor isn't. It made more sense to me than anything I've read in a long time. (Do read it.) What is it about popular culture which makes it an offence to feel hurt? Why the hell does anyone have the right to tell another not to dwell on something that went wrong? Why is it necessary to pretend to be strong even when you're falling apart? To tell someone not to live in the past and to pull themselves together when they may clearly be unable to do so is to tell them that they are inadequate. To say that they should not 'play the victim' is effectively to say that they should take responsibility for something they may have had no control over. To tell them to simply forget the past is to ask that they reject what is in all probability an inalienable part of their experience, of themselves. Everyone uses their experiences as a benchmark by which they assess new events in their live