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keerthik śaśidharan Profile picture
keerthik śaśidharan
@KS1729
2 subscribers
Jan 17, 2023 • 59 tweets • 28 min read
For 2023, a new thread of sentences.

1. “I walked past the brothel as if past the house of a beloved.”

— The Diaries of Franz Kafka, translated by Ross Benjamin #KafkaDiaries 2. From 'Confessions of an English Opium-Eater' by Thomas De Quincey Image
Dec 30, 2022 • 125 tweets • 29 min read
A thread of Indian paintings, from 1900 to 2022, arranged according to year of creation. One painting per year.

Many works & artists missing. 🙏

My hope was to *see* the changes in Indian aesthetics—from Colonialism to Covid. 1900 -- Traveller and Lotus -- Abanindranath Tagore Image
Mar 21, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Like, An Experiment

***

Call me,
like a grasshopper in a May meadow
like silent sentinels all around the town
like leaves upon this shepherd’s head
like a snow hill in the air.
like a candle moving about in a tomb.
like a Czar in an ice palace made of frozen sighs, like the segment made in the new-mown grass by a long-armed mower
like a corkscrew,
like a restless needle sojourning in the body of a man
like another cursed Jonah,
like a bench on the Battery
like a coffer-dam
like an ape
like a string of inions
Mar 2, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Narendra Pachkhede on G. N. Devy's new book abt the relationship b/w India & Mahabharata: "He does not dwell on what is the relationship of this greatest literary work with our people, but rather he delves into how this relationship functions."
thewire.in/books/gn-devy-… "The allure of the Mahabharata and how it provides insight into its cultural memory in India could be best explained through the idea of a controlling text – a reference point for all thinkers and a recourse to fall back on for the nation."
Feb 10, 2022 • 57 tweets • 14 min read
For 2022, a new thread of sentences.
Read freely, quote happily, attribute with caution. For a similar threads from 2021 and 2018-20, see 👇🏼:

1. “The verb “to lose” has its taproot sunk in sorrow; it is related to the “lorn” in “forlorn.” It comes from an Old English 1/3 word meaning to perish, which comes from an even older word meaning to separate or cut apart. The modern sense of misplacing an object only appeared later, in the thirteenth century; a hundred years after that, “to lose” acquired the meaning of failing to win. 2/3
Jul 19, 2021 • 12 tweets • 6 min read
A story about the Gibraltar skull, involving Darwin, always reminds me of how difficult it is to truly speak about the world as we see it. This incident, involving the skull, in a world-historic life such as Darwin's often reminds me of a line by V. S. Naipaul.

A short thread. In 1864, Charles Darwin had been very sick for weeks. (He suffered various ailments for much of his adult life.)

To "see how I stand change", he and his wife, Emma Darwin arrived at 4 Chester Place in London where his sister-in-law Sarah Wedgewood lived.

[Charles & Emma]
May 2, 2021 • 21 tweets • 12 min read
12. Who was Jacques Derrida?

A great conversation with Peter Salmon (who talks admirably fast!) on his wonderful biography of Derrida's works & public persona that has metastasized & fragmented, often disallowing for any meaningful coherence to emerge. traffic.libsyn.com/secure/philoso… Image 13. On Daya Krishna, who per Daniel Raveh was one of the most interesting philosophers (not just Indian philosophers) of the 2nd half of 20thC. A book that distills DK's last decade & his efforts to read through Indian texts imaginatively and critically. traffic.megaphone.fm/NBN5587148690.… Image
Feb 28, 2021 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Kind of surreal to take a photo of the singularly inspiring Bhagat Singh -- a revolutionary voice in 1920s India, who was hung by the British in 1931, at the age of 24 -- run it through the Heritage AI algorithm, and see him reanimated. Swami Vivekananda probably would have laughed at such algorithmic efforts to reanimate photos, but as a great believer in the powers of science to improve material aspects of human lives, he would have probably wanted to understand the details of how it all works.
Feb 6, 2021 • 20 tweets • 12 min read
9. If you are an American or a friend of America -- this conversation with the former head of Operations at MI6 is as explicit in threat assessment as it is fascinating on how the Chinese CCP went about becoming a technology hegemon from a backwater. sphinx.acast.com/intelligencesq… Image 10. What is the nature of trauma that amid conscripts of a colonizing force? An illuminating talk with Raphaëlle Branche [what a great interviewer Adam Shatz is!] occasioned by her book, Papa, qu’as-tu fait en Algérie? (Daddy, What Did You Do in Algeria?) sphinx.acast.com/londonreviewpo… Image
Jan 13, 2021 • 21 tweets • 12 min read
Podcasts for 2021 -- a running thread:

[For a similar thread on 2020 -- see here: ] 1. If you love cricket or have admired the writings of C. L. R. James -- a wonderful first of a three part series abt his life.

Derek Walcott on CLR James: "sentences of a great prose writer contain light, natural light...the feeling of approaching dusk." cbc.mc.tritondigital.com/CBC_IDEAS_P/me… Image
Jan 3, 2021 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
For 2021, a new thread of sentences, I have found of interest/provocative/moving
Read freely, quote happily, attribute with caution. For a similar thread from 2018-20, see below:

“I’d never say this in public – I still love beautiful books and believe in them.” -Jacques Derrida “I have sometimes been troubled by a doubt whether what is true in one case may not be true in all. Then, when I have reached that point, I am driven to retreat, for fear of tumbling into a bottomless pit of nonsense.”

– Socrates (Plato, Parmenides)
Dec 13, 2020 • 20 tweets • 7 min read
Farewell John le Carre, thank you for all the extraordinary books and the immortal George Smiley. It was no doubt very hard work, but you made it look so effortless, made it all so human.

[proofs of 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy']
Dec 4, 2020 • 24 tweets • 14 min read
9. Richard Lloyd Parry narrates his deep & perceptive essay on Japan, Japanese royal family, & the greatly admirable previous Emperor Akihito & his efforts to make the monarchy & Japanese society more sensitive to harm done in his father's name. [mp3] sphinx.acast.com/londonreviewpo… Image 10. An excellent long conversation with Stephen Kotkin on the occasion of the 100th birth anniversary of the great Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, conservative, anti-Communist, and a terrifying moral presence. files.libertyfund.org/econtalk/y2019… ImageImage
Oct 22, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
if you know Malappuram in Kerala & the dynamics of its Islamist politics, 'Halal Love Story' on Amazon Prime is very interesting & good -- about two guys (from Jama'at e Islami) who set out to make a film. Image it speaks to a deep truth: even the orthodox enjoy cinema.

how then can they go about participating in a modern art that has its own grammar of presentation & aesthetic which doesn't efface the moral ambitions of their self-consciously fashioned antimodern views?
Oct 8, 2020 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Louise Gluck, an American original. @NobelPrize Louise Gluck: on the myths of originality versus, that ‘lesser thing’, uniqueness....
Oct 8, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
wonderful use of, what sounds like, Brindabani Sarang. such joyous sketches... In a different valence, another kind of Brindabani Sarang by Aarti Anklikar | द२स् बिना...
vimeo.com/m/26470626
Aug 30, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
88. How is it to be living in a world where the old Gods are yet to recede and the new God is yet to fully emerge and take form? Chaos, violence, fundamentalism, tradition -- a great Gore Vidal novel about an age when Christianity froths from the margin & becomes state religion. Image 89. To see man for who he truly is--a monster, a moron, & a miracle-- requires courage. But life is also love, betrayal, & unsteady virtues. Machiavelli's life was filled w/ all even if his diagnosis of man was called evil. He was a good husband, a doting father, & a kind friend. Image
Aug 27, 2020 • 20 tweets • 5 min read
I was thinking about this play yesterday, and thought I'll make small thread for those interested.

1. This play ('Urubhangam', 'The Shattered Thighs') -- for which I've made a cover -- is a one-act [vyayoga] play by Bhasa, inspired from the Mahabharata, that ocean-sized epic. 2. First things first, this was the original Penguin cover -- of the plays in case any of you want to buy a recent translation of 6 plays.
Jul 18, 2020 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Vedic Names of Powers of Ten

VS = Vajasaneyi Samhita (SMH)
TS = Taittiriya SMH
KS1 = Kaathaka SMH 17.10
KS2 = Kaathaka SMH 39.6
MaitS = Maitraayanii SMH
PB = Panchavimsa Brahmana
JUB = Jaiminiya Upanishad Brahmana
SSS = Saankhyaana Srauta Sutra Names of Decimal Places by Hindu mathematicians

AB = Aaryabhatiya
LP = Later Paulisiddhanta
PG = Patiganita
Tr = Trisatika
GT = Ganitatilaka
L = Lilavati
GK = Ganitakaumudi
Jul 1, 2020 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
over the past few days I have been reading the great Colin Thubron's travels in China of 1985-86, just as it was opening up. It is a largely forgotten book about a lost in-between time -- a melancholic period after Mao's insanities but before McDonalds arrived.

Some excerpts. 1. A city of cycles
Jun 12, 2020 • 29 tweets • 11 min read
over the last few days, I’ve been thinking about covers of books that i have enjoyed/admire/learnt from. and so i asked, what do i take from the text, how did it make me see the world, and how can it be represented? so, i did some experiments.

a running thread. hopefully fun. 1. English, August by Upamanyu Chatterjee

the sly ennui that Agastya Sen experiences is overwhelming, but it slowly it seemed tome that beneath all that urban Indian cynicism is a slow recognition that India is a strange, strange place.

[photo from a Satyajit Ray film] Image