How the poet Sri Aurobindo had grown along with his symbols

Srikant J. replied to kalpana's discussion 'What does your soul rejoice in?'

Dear Gopal, Birds of same feathers flock together, - the boatman(Kevat) reminded Lord Rama too ! I myself am in the same business as you - an engineer; only I am a civil engineer passed out of our Centre of Education. Our ishta-devata according to b… from ASPIRATION - Aspiration is a call to the Divine. — The Mother

Aurora Mirabilis: Sri Aurobindo's life in the form of a novel by ...
Based on the life of Sri Aurobindo, the book extracts richly from books, letters, reports, records, biographies, archival photographs and unpublished manuscripts while maintaining the independence and fictionary taut element of a novel ...

Savitri Era Open Forum: We need a "critical edition" of Savitri ...
So I as much as anyone care about the edition I use being exactly correct according to SriAurobindo's latest corrections and wishes. But the only way we can get to that goal is through a thoroughly annotated critical edition, ...

PROPHET666: SRI AUROBINDO'S NON-DUAL EXPERIENCES by prophet666
 What has really made an impression on my mind, are the experiences in NON-DUALITY, experienced by Sri Aurobindo, when he was an under trial, for actively participating in the Indian independence movement. While in jail he was visited by Swami Vivekananda, who instructed him on the working of the super-consciousness. The under mentioned experts are taken from Sri Aurobindo’s Uttarpara Speech 30 May 1909…

What becomes clear from studying the experiences of Sri Aurobindo is that one can experience the enlightened state and remember, feel, see and live it. The soul does not cease to have an individual existence. True enough in the state of Non-Duality, one becomes one with everything, one is everything and everything becomes one.

These experiences of Sri Aurobindo, in his own words contradict the view held by some, that in the Non-Dual state as the ego is annihilated, it ceases to exist and hence enlightenment cannot be experienced.

Sri Aurobindo Quotes
Evolution is not finished; reason is not the last word nor the reasoning animal the supreme figure of Nature. As man emerged out of the animal, ...

from Jitendra Sharma aurofrance@gmail.com to "Tusar N. Mohapatra" tusarnmohapatra@gmail.com date 29 March 2010 11:29 subject Re: [Savitri Era Open Forum: We need a "critical edition" of Savitri]

Sri Aurobindo allows us to "taste with knowledge His ambrosia and His nectar" from the pure stream of ’Savitri’. This great book plays a miraculous role in uplifting and divinising the consciousness of a Sadhak of the Integral Yoga.  I have in my possession a copy of the first limited edition of the 'Savitri' signed by the Mother.  - Jitendra Sharma

Symbolism In The Poetry Of Sri Aurobindo by Syamala Kallury

This book will be an interesting and useful guide to the students of Indo-Anglian poetry. It identifies some recurring symbols in the poetry of Ari Aurobindo, traces their development and their final culmination into Savitri. It also shows how the poet Sri Aurobindo had grown along with his symbols and evolved himself finally into a Yogi. Sri Aurobindo is in the long line of the seer-poets of India and his message has an all-time relevance to society

About The Author: Dr. Syamala Kallury (b. 1949) served for over a decade as lecturer in English in the Colleges run by the Govt. of Andhra Pradesh. She also taught for three years as lecturer in Sri Venkateswara College, University of Delhi. In June 1983 she was awarded the Defree of Doctor of Philosophy by the Andhra University for her work "Symbolism in the Poetry of Sri Aurobindo".

The work of scholars like Dipesh Chakraborty has influenced me a lot

'One nation isn't enough. We live in many nations' - Interviews ...

The history of Bengal Renaissance is couched in nationalist fervour. In recent times, there have been attempts to enlarge the scope of the understanding of nationalism by studying the role of artists. The Alternate Nation of Abanindranath Tagore is a study of the painter by his great grandson and art historian Debshish Banerjee. Banerjee spoke to Krishnan Unni P about the need to understand the history of Bengal paintings and the changing patterns of nationalism:

Can you explain the notion of alternative nation that goes as a main thread in your work? 

Well, as you know Bengal school of painting is always considered an important step in the understanding of nationalism. But what is nationalism? For me, this question has always been very problematic. There were different methodologies in understanding Bengal school and the works of Abanindranath, Nandalal Bose, Jamini Roy and others. Since all attempts to study these great masters were done in a similar way, they only aimed to produce one element of the history of Bengal painting. I attempt to look at Abanindranath's works from the contemporary discourses of subaltern historiography. Ideas of nationalism have changed phenomenally in the past two decades. I have located my study in the post-colonial context where new voices of subalterns figure. The work of scholars like Dipesh Chakraborty has influenced me a lot. My work is an extension of his ideas of the subaltern subject and it tries to locate Abanindranath at a theoretical perspective of Bengal regionalism and the evolving ideas of nationalism.

Do you imply that Abanindranath's paintings situated subaltern subjects consciously? 

I do believe that Abanindranath was aware of these subjects. He never portrayed them as stereotypes. But there was hardly any awareness of subaltern subjects at that point of time.

You mention that Bengal bhadralok was very rigid and consistent in their view of themes and situations.

Sisir Ghosh, a representative voice of the bhadralok, attacked the Krishna Lila series of paintings of Abanindranath. He published articles against him in leading Bengali journals. For Ghosh, Vaishnavism was very pure and Radha, particularly, should be portrayed in a traditional way. Abanindranath broke the rules and traditions. Krishna Lila paintings portray heterodoxy. His depiction of body was the product of several performances that were popular during those periods. Performances like Jatras and other festivals influenced him. But i don't think Abanindranath worked with any fixed notion of body in mind. It is interesting to note that in his later works body is transformed into many beliefs and discourses.

You often refer to Nandalal Bose. Do you think he carried Abanindranath's legacy? 

To some extent yes. But legacy is a problematic usage. The Tagore family faced acute questions of partition. Things were divided among the descendents and there was no unity among them. Nandalal's works are like a seamless river. But he never could think about the alternate nation.

Will you always have the idea of the alternate nation as a solution? 

A nation is a compendium of identities and differences. Regions are alive. They are not represented. Their voices are not heard. In my work, i am aware of the growing questions of the region. One nation is not enough. We live in many nations. Hence, the importance of Abanindranath and his works.

Home » Panorama » Abanindranath's work is one of alternate nationalism

Debashish Banerji, the great grandson of Abanindranath Tagore, has worn many hats.

He is not only a Doctorate in Art History from the University of California, but also a Professor of Asian Art History at the University of Philosophical Research, Los Angeles, and author of ‘The Alternate Nation of Abanindranath Tagore’.

He speaks to Shruba Mukherjee of Deccan Herald on the different shades and colours of Abanindranath’s works.

Given the eclectic nature of Abanindranath’s work how ‘Indian’ were his paintings?

I have argued in my book that more than any narrowly understood notion of ‘Indian-ness’ pertaining to definable identities, Abanindranath’s art constructed a subjectivity which was that of an ‘alternate nation’. The turn of the 19th/20th century in India saw the development of a number of social identities which may be thought of, using Benedict Anderson’s phrase, as ‘imagined communities’.

Bengal as a region, India as a nation, Asia as a continental identity, plus an incipient globalism were all in the process of being constructed by a number of contested cultural narratives. The ‘lived community’ of the national subject becomes the confluence of these diverse narratives, many of which are erased or subjugated in the emergence of a mainstream or authorised national history.

Abanindranath has been seen in terms of the authorisation of such a national history but I have argued that his work is much more properly seen as an ‘alternate nationalism’ which enables the domain of communitarian dialog of diverse cultures.

When it comes to issues like theme, metaphor and style how did Abanindranath create a new genre and what relevance it has today?

In terms of theme, metaphor or style, it is impossible to stereotype Abanindranath as an artist. There is, of course, a national stereotype of the wash painting, themes of Indian mythology or typical landscapes and a neo-Kangra or neo-Ajanta style through which he is identified with the Bengal school of art and dismissed. But, as I have tried to show, Abanindranath’s art can hardly be fixed in terms of any single set of themes, metaphors or styles. It is much more proper to see his work as performative, critical and dialogic in its response to various aspects of modernity and colonialism.

Abanindranath’s art conjoined text and image at several levels of multivocal and multicultural dialog. In this, life is read or interpreted through texts, but texts are themselves seen as interpreted through varied living cultures. From the beginning of his point of departure as an artist, Abanindranath gave utterance to this dialog between art, text and culture through the fashioning of a quasi-Persian calligraphic script as a vehicle for Bengali writing, which in turn voiced Sanskrit or Urdu speech. He also repeatedly referenced modes of popular performance such as ‘jatra’, ‘alpona’ (traditional floor decoration) and ‘kirtan’.

Why do you think the art of Abanindranath should not be interpreted as ‘elitist’?
Elite and subaltern are constructed frames which serve certain ideological interests of class struggle. If we impose these frames, we miss out on the grey scale in which bhadralok lives often struggled, on the one hand to respond to modernity in the language of the coloniser and on the other, strove to find a place within modernity for the communitarian practices of rural culture.

There is another way of conceptualising this dynamic which allows the fuzzy dialogic boundaries between modernity and pre-modernity to be visible. If we are to rethink Indian nationalism in terms of its cultural adaptations, this is absolutely necessary. This is what I have attempted in my work, which is one of its theoretical innovations.

The idea of an alternate nationalism in Abanindranath’s work, as I have developed it, rests on a continuous revision of what becomes co-opted as national convention.

Abanindranath’s art was involved only marginally with the construction of a national identity. I have argued that it was much more importantly engaged in resisting the stereotypes of identity formation in favour of the fluidity of communitarian interchange.

Would you interpret his last artistic production, the found-wood toys or ‘relatives-in-wood’, katum-kutum, as a social commentary?

Yes, I have seen this both as social commentary and performance art. This last production of Abanindranath has usually been dismissed as playful whimsy or worse, a product of senility. But seen in the light of his utterances and living practices of the time, these productions assume significance both in terms of the theory of art practice and in terms of social critique.

Increasingly, in this post-war period, Abanindranath recognised the change of an age and the relegation to refuse of whatever resisted the strictly determined circuits of world capital. In this milieu, he tried to explore an alternate world of magical life brought into existence from refuse through the power of creativity. This is a world where social refuse can assume lived meaning through creative acts of relational inter-subjectivity but be returned to their status as rubbish upon the cessation of such performance.

Front Page > Opinion > Paperback Pickings Friday , March 19 , 2010

Follow the haunted trail

Essays and Letters: Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (Rupa, Rs 295) edited by Brajendra Nath Banerji and Sajani Kanta Das is an important book as it brings together Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s miscellaneous writings in English that have been published before but largely forgotten over time. Apart from letters and articles on religion and philosophy, there is a translation of a few chapters of Chatterjee’s novel, Devi Chaudhurani. His views as expressed in his articles — for instance, on the origin of Hindu festivals or on popular literature in Bengal — are instructive because they reveal the workings of an immensely intelligent mind bent upon proving the superiority of certain values and principles. In “A Popular Literature for Bengal” he writes, “And it would be difficult to conceive a poem more typical than the Gitagovinda of the Bengali character…. From the beginning to the end it does not contain a single expression of manly feeling — of womanly feeling there is a great deal — or a single elevated sentiment.” Chatterjee’s English is terse, devoid of the sentimental flourishes that often marked Victorian prose.

Kiran Desai's talk on the necessity of loneliness for writers

Kiran Desai from Object-Oriented Philosophy by doctorzamalek (Graham Harman)

That was an uplifting lecture by novelist KIRAN DESAI. I missed her Saturday talk, absentmindedly thinking it was on Sunday instead.

Tonight she was present for the reading of the two AUC student short stories that were awarded prizes for the year.

She then gave a humane and wise talk on the necessity of loneliness for writers. There was an autobiographical component to it that one could call “frank” if not that I can’t imagine using as crude a word as “frank” to describe Kiran Desai. Her persona is quietly aristocratic and ethereal. She’s one of those people who seems to float into a room without touching carpet or wood.

She also has a unique ability, as you sit there listening to her, to make you feel liked as a person. Her demeanor is too private to make you feel like a friend, exactly, but you certainly feel afterward as though you could walk right up, introduce yourself, and get a hearing about pretty much any topic.

I’m not far enough into either of her novels yet to form a definite opinion about them, but I’ve certainly become a fan of Kiran Desai as a person. One is overwhelmed by a sense of kindness and goodness. 

India’s (Jewish) Mother

How Mirra Alfassa went from being a French bohemian to an Indian goddess
BY MICHELLE GOLDBERG Tablet Magazine

In 1914, Mirra was 36, “a handsome woman, striking in her heavy makeup and high fashion,” in the words of Jeffery Paine, author of Father India: Westerners Under the Spell of an Ancient Culture. Soon, she and Aurobindo were working together intimately, pursuing a kind of East-West spiritual fusion, and under her organization, the Aurobindo ashram grew larger and more organized. As Mirra and Aurobindo became closer, they began to deify each other. “What Sri Aurobindo represents in the world’s history is not a teaching, not even a revelation, it is a decisive action direct from the Supreme,” she said at one point. Aurobindo, meanwhile, declared that Mirra was an incarnation of divine energy, the universal mother made flesh. In 1926, he gave her spiritual authority over all his disciples. Until he died in 1950, he communicated almost entirely through her.

Her teaching is almost indecipherable unless you’re willing to enter fully into her mental and symbolic world. One key event in her cosmology, for example, is “The Descent of the Supermind,” which is said to have happened on February 29, 1956. This involves a vision in which Mirra, in a “form of living gold, bigger than the universe,” shattered a massive golden door separating the worldly from the divine.

Yet as ethereal as all this sounds, Mirra, who died in 1973, succeeded in making some of her visions strikingly concrete.

Pencraft New Orientation Series

Girish Karnad's Plays : Performance and Critical Perspectives, Edited by Tutun Mukherjee

Contributors : Vijaykumar M. Boratti & Nikhila Haritsa, B. Yadava Raju, Basavaraj S. Naikar, Veena Noble Dass, Aparna Dharwadkar, C.R. Simha, M.K. Naik, Erin B. Mee,P. Dhanavel, N.P. Ashley, Moutushi Chakravartee, B.T. Seetha,V. Rangan, Jose George, Sharmila Sreekumar and K.C. Bindu, Kavalam Narayana Panikkar, Arundhati Banerjee, H.S. Krishnamurthy, Ananda Lal, Rama Nair, P. Jayalakshmi, Mala Renganathan, Mamta G. sagar, Arjun Sajnani, Sumita Roy, S.Subhash Chandran, Krishnamurthy Hanur, Grace Sudhir, Maya Pandit, Prasanna,Tutun Mukherjee, Jasbir Jain ISBN 81-85753-71-7 2006 380pp plus 20
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Forster's A Passage To India: An Anthology of Recent Criticism, Edited by G.K. Das and Christel R. Devadawson

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Writing Difference : The Novels of Shashi Deshpande, Edited by Chanchala K. Naik

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U.R. Anantha Murthy's SAMSKARA A Critical Reader, Edited by Kailash C. Baral, D. Venkat Rao and Sura P. Rath

Contributors : Kailash C. Baral,D. Venkat Rao,Sura P.Rath, U.R. Anantha Murthy,S. Jayasrinivasa Rao,K.V. Tirumalesh,Meenakshi Mukherjee, Suresh Raval,TRS Sharma,R. Radhakrishnan,nalini Natarajan, Dunkin Jalki,Vanamala Viswanatha,Julian Crandall Hollick and Sebana Coelho ISBN 81-85753-70-9 2005 256pp Rs. 480(hb)

Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy: An Anthology of Recent Criticism, Edited by Murari prasad

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Chinua Achebe: An Anthology of Recent Criticism, Edited by Mala Pandurang ISBN 81-85753-73-3 2005 256pp Rs. 495(hb)

Amitav Ghosh: Critical Perspectives, Edited by Brinda Bose

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R.K. Narayan: An Anthology of Recent Criticism, Edited by C.N. Srinath

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Jane Austen : An Anthology of Recent Criticism, Edited by Harish Trivedi

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D.H. Lawrence : An Anthology of Recent Criticism, Edited by Aruna Sitesh

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W.B. Yeats : An Anthology of Recent Criticism, Edited by G.R. Taneja

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Vikram Seth : An Anthology of Recent Criticism, Edited by GJV Prasad

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V.S. Naipaul : An Anthology of Recent Criticism, Edited by Purabi Panwar

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Rushdie's Midnight's Children : A Book of Readings, Edited by Meenakshi Mukherjee

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Robert Frost : An Anthology of Recent Criticism, Edited by Manorama Trikha

Contributors : Helen H. Bacon, Nina Baym, Reginald L. Cook, Phillip Gerber, Dorothy J. Hall, Vivian C. Hopkins, V.Y. Kantak, Frank Lentricchia, J.F. Lynen, William Mulder, George W. Nitchie, John Oliver Perry, Richard Poirier ISBN 81-85433-01-1 2003 216pp. Rs. 400(hb)

T.S. Eliot : An Anthology of Recent Criticism, Edited by Tapan Kumar Basu

Contributors : Tapan Kumar Basu, Jonathan Bishop, Jewel Spears Brooker, Ronald Bush, Denis Donoghue, Sonjoy Dutta-Roy, Melissa A. Eiles, Armin Paul Frank, Linda Leavell, Marc Manganaro, RamaNair, Rajnath, Audrey T. Rodgers, Virendra K. Roy, Vinod Sena, Stanley Sultan ISBN 81-85753-01-6 2001 240pp. Rs. 400(hb)

Raja Rao : An Anthology of Recent Criticism, Edited by Ragini Ramachandra

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Ernest Hemingway : Centennial Essays, Edited by E. Nageswara Rao

Contributors : P.G. Rama Rao, N. Ramachandran Nair, Tutun Mukherjee, Somdatta Mandal, M. Sridhar, Uma Tuli, Rahul, Pratima Agnihotri, Soma Banerjee, T. Bharathi, Linda Dittmar, S. Josh, Kalidas Misra, E. Nageswara Rao, Aviram Singh, Alladi Uma ISBN 81-85753-36-9 2000 152pp. Rs. 320(hb)

P.B. Shelley : An Anthology of Recent Criticism, Edited by N.P. Singh

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ISBN-81-85753-03-2 1999 248pp. Rs. 400(hb)

John Keats : An Anthology of Recent Criticism, Edited by E. Nageswara Rao

Contributors : A.A. Ansari, Cynthia Chase, Donald C. Goellnicht, Michael E. Holstein, Brooke Hopkins, Greg Kucich, Deborah Pope, Tilottama Rajan, E. Nageswara Rao, R.K. Raval, Marlon B. Ross, A.B. Sharma, Helen Vendler, Leon Waldoff, Daniel P. Watkins ISBN 81-85753-02-4 1998 232pp. Rs. 350(hb)

Mark Twain : An Anthology of Recent Criticism, Edited by Prafulla C. Kar

Contributors : John E. Bassett, Pascal Covici, Jr., Dilip Kumar Das, Jane Gardiner, Prafulla C. Kar, James L. Kastely, Louis A. Renza, Forrest G. Robinson, Joseph Sawicki, George E. Toles, Biyot K. Tripathy ISBN 81-85753-00-8 1998 224pp. Rs. 350(hb)

William Shakespeare : An Anthology of Recent Criticism, Edited by Leela Gandhi

Contributors : Sukanta Chaudhuri, R.W. Desai, Udayan Mitra, Ruth Vanita, Supriya Chaudhuri, Janet Adelman, Ann Blake, Suroopa Mukherjee, A.D. Nuttall, Josheph Pequigney, Valerie Traub, Leela Gandhi ISBN 81-85753-24-5 1998 232pp. Rs. 350(hb)

Joseph Conrad : An Anthology of Recent Criticism, Edited by Lalitha Ramamurthi & C.T. Indra

Contributors : Jennifer Margulis, Dieter Reimenschneider, Sophie Jose Tharakan, Bridget Dohnallan, Heliena M. Krenn, P. Radhika, Addison Bross, Jorge Sacido-Romero, Prahlad Kulkarni, Lalitha Ramamurthi, C.T. Indra ISBN 81-85753-26-1 1998 184pp. Rs. 350(hb)

Feminist Theory and Modern Drama: An Anthology of Recent Criticism, Edited by Taisha Abraham.

Contributors : Kamal Bhasin, Elizabeth Brown-Guillory, Shari Benstock, Gloria Cahill, Elin Diamond, Jill Dolan, J. Ellen Gainor, Katherine Hanson, Naresh K. Jain, Zakia Pathak, Janelle Reinelt, Taisha Abraham ISBN 81-85753-19-7 1998 232pp. Rs. 350(hb)

Critical Theory/Translation Studies

In Translation  Reflections,Refractions, Transformations Edited by: Paul Si-Pierre and Prafulla C. Kar

Critical Theory Western and Indian Edited by: Prafulla C. Kar

Postmodernism and Feminism Canadian Context Edited by: Shirin Kudchedkar

Rethinking Modernity Edited by: Santosh Gupta, Prafulla C. Kar
and Parul Dave Mukherji

Critical Spectrum Essays in Literary Culture
In honour of Professor C.D. Narasimhaiah Edited by: Satish C. Aikant

Feminism Theory, Criticism, Analysis Sushila Singh

Identities Local and Global Edited by: Kailash C. Baral & Prafulla C. Kar

Interpretation of Texts Text, Meaning and Interpretation Edited by: Kailash C. Baral

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Literary Theory (Re)Reading Culture and Aesthetics Edited by: Jameela Begum and B. Hariharan

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Classical Literary Theory and Criticism Edited by: A.P. Dani and V.M. Madge

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Remapping Culture  Nobel Laureates In Literature (1986-97) Edited by: C. Vijayasree, et al

Humanities and Pedagogy Teaching of Humanities Today Edited by: Kailash C. Baral

Feminist Theory and Modern Drama An Anthology of Recent Criticism Edited by: Taisha Abraham

Sex becomes industrialised, cleansed of seduction

imaginations of postfascist italy from & where do all these highways go now that we are free by anirban

In a famous essay published in 1975, Susan Sontag asked why fascism was becoming increasingly attractive to people

Barthes analyses Sade’s libertines as having little interest in boys since they offer only one “site of intromission.” The woman is more interesting to the libertine because she offers two.[23] Salò of course, reworks this logic totally. Pasolini’s fascists pick young boys for their subjects. There are women in the château but they either have no role whatsoever or they emerge in the form of older femme fatales who narrate pornographic tales which stimulate the masters. Baudrillard’s reading of the near total elimination of the woman from Salò seems to me convincing. He argues that in Salò everything is “masculine and dead.” Here sex becomes industrialised, cleansed of seduction. This project of masculinisation is achieved by cleansing the screen of any significant women characters. The ranconteuses are an exception. Old and distinctly un-beautiful, these women narrate- accompanied by piano- pornographic stories to sexually stimulate the masters. As Ravetto argues however, they are not symbolic of womanhood in any feminist sense. Rather, they are depicted by Pasolini as accomplices to the system of masculine domination.[24] Pasolini is working against certain readings of fascism where the identity of woman and man are stabilised through enactment of oedipal fantasies. A case in point is Martin Von Essenbeck in Visconti’s The Damned, where Sophie (his mother) indicates she is aware of her son’s sexual desire, and in the process allows him to “break the oedipal taboo” and satisfy this oedipal desire; following which Martin is ‘reborn’ as a feminised yet misogynist Nazi.[25]

On the other hand Cavani’s film is a complicated feminist response that seems to be in dialogue with representations like Visconti’s. It is also interesting at the same time, to think of Night Porter alongside Salò the ways in which is foregrounds questions of sexuality. Ravetto argues that Cavani’s destabilisation of identity is a challenge not only to male filmmakers but also to feminist critiques of cinematic apparatus like Laura Mulvey who seek always to stabilise both identity and the gaze.[26] Cavani uses the language of cinema to expose the problematic in cinematic representations of Nazism. In Night Porter, all the scenes involving Max, Lucia and/or Bert are depicted in flashback, generally with a greatly heightened sense of drama. Ravetto argues that the figure of Bert dancing brings to mind neoclassical aesthetics of the male body. The Nazi officers listen to classical music, thus underscoring their learned nature. Through editing techniques like flashbacks and the musical score Cavani tries to expose the way in which representations of the holocaust are themselves constructed in cinema. Cavani, Ravetto argues, uses aesthetics to manipulate and in the process reveals film language as just that: a language that is used to construct and produce representations. 

Chaturvedi Badrinath, Badri-La, Auroville

Chaturvedi Badrinath (1933-2010)

from The Middle Stage by Chandrahas

I was saddened to hear of the demise, on the 17th of February, of Chaturvedi Badrinath, a writer and philosopher I admired greatly. Badrinath was the author of several notable books, including The Mahabharata: An Inquiry Into The Human Condition (2006), Swami Vivekananda: The Living Vedanta (2006), Introduction to the Kamasutra(1999), and The Women of the Mahabharata (2008).

Badrinath's literary career began, by today's standards, fairly late in life, when he was in his forties. (He was a member of the Indian Administrative Service from 1957 to 1989, and this consumed his energies in his youth). Unusually, the last decade of his life, with the world of action exchanged for one of reflection, was the most prolific of his literary career. Indeed, it was through his last published book, The Women of the Mahabharata, that I first became acquainted with his work. Merely to read the introduction of this book was to realise that one was in the company of a first-rate reader.

Great literary works by their very nature condense thought, pressure language, revel in ambiguities, and make meaning through symbols, patterns, motifs and repetition rather than than through explicit statement. They replicate life's mystery and complexity through their own patterns of speech, suggestion, and silence.

It follows then that one of the primary tasks of literary criticism is exegesis: the explication, often at a length several times that of the text being scrutinised, of a text's net of meanings and complexity of structure. Sometimes criticism itself becomes epigrammatic, vivid in imagery, rich in the play of ideas. This is the signal quality of Badrinath's work in his two great books on the Mahabharata, books which qualify both as literary criticism and as philosophy. A short excerpt from one of them is here.

Last summer I happened to be in Pondicherry, and took the opportunity extended by Badrinath's daughter, the novelist Tulsi Badrinath, to see him at his residence in Auroville, where he had been living in relative solitude for several years. The bungalow was called Badri-La, and inside I found the writer, physically infirm but mentally spry, chortling over a joke with a friend. His spacious living-room was full of fine books on religion and philosophy, many of them of interest to me. We chatted for two or three hours about the writing life, about problems with publishing, about the value of concision and density in writing, and (since he was at work on his autobiography) about the place of the "I" and of self-observation in literature.

Badrinath asked as many questions as he answered, and sucked gleefully on his pipe as he spoke – a pursuit gave him even more pleasure now that the doctor had forbidden it. I noticed too how involved he was with the lives of his staff, and their children. Despite his age and his remote location, he still ran a house very competently. I remember how, when at lunch I asked for some ghee to go with my rice and dal, he was enormously annoyed that the kitchen had run out of ghee the day before, and spoke with some astringency on the necessity of anticipating problems instead of finding oneself embarrassed by them later.

The last honour of Badrinath's distinguished career was the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2009 for his literary criticism, which pleased him greatly. Confined to his hospital bed, he sent his daughter on to receive it, but did not live to see her return. The last interview he gave is here. On hearing of his death, I regretted enormously my failure to take up his invitation to return to Badri-La to stay for a few days. But every writer of distinction lives on in his or her books, and Badrinath's magisterial mind and voice suffuse his written work. I look forward to returning to his books – those which I have read, and those that I haven't – and to getting to know Chaturvedi Badrinath better. One of Badrinath's essays, "The Karma Conundrum", is here. Insights Dharma, India & the World Order, Finding Jesus in Dharma: Christianity in India, Swami Vivekananda, the Living Vedanta, Women of the Mahabharata: TLE Question of Truth