Monthly Archives: October 2018

India, Videos

Bhakra Nangal Dam

Leave a comment

Located in Bilaspur, Himachal Pradesh, Bhakra Dam is one of the largest dams in India. Construction of the dam started soon after independence in 1948 and it was opened in 1963. Agreement for the project had been signed before independence in 1944 by the Punjab Revenue Minister, Sir Chhotu Ram and the Raja of Bilaspur. However, the idea behind the project was suggested around 1910 by the British. My father worked on the dam during its construction and lived in Nangal for ten years. The dam is unequivocally the dream of modern India that Jawaharlal Nehru had imagined.

This 20 minute documentary is made by Films Division which was a production house for the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. Established in 1948, it regularly made documentary films.

Misc

City Monument – Dilli Gate, Central Delhi — The Delhi Walla

Quote Leave a comment

The ignored one. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Dilli Gate is one of those great monuments that are taken for granted and seldom gushed over by guidebook junkies. Instagrammers too give it a royal ignore. Built more than 400 years ago, it’s one of the few intact gateways still standing sentry at the…

via City Monument – Dilli Gate, Central Delhi — The Delhi Walla

Misc

“When you enter the Kabuliwalas’ homes in Kolkata you feel like you’re back in Afghanistan” – Moska Najib — South Asia @ LSE

Quote Leave a comment

Inspired by Rabindranath Tagore’s 1892 short story, the Kabuliwala, photographers Moska Najib and Nazes Afroz spent three years capturing the lives of the Kabuliwalas of Kolkata. Chris Finnigan talks to Moska about how their new exhibition in London reveals how generations of Afghan migrants have preserved their Pashtun identities in their new homeland. How did Tagore’s story…

via “When you enter the Kabuliwalas’ homes in Kolkata you feel like you’re back in Afghanistan” – Moska Najib — South Asia @ LSE

Poetry Corner

Poetry Corner: The Garden of the Prophet

Leave a comment
Trees
© 2017 Pippa Virdee

Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.

Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave, eats a bread it does not harvest, and drinks a wine that flows not from its own wine-press.

Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero, and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.

Pity the nation that despises a passion in its dream, yet submits in its awakening.

Pity the nation that raises not its voice save when it walks in a funeral, boasts not except among its ruins, and will rebel not save when its neck is laid between the sword and the block.

Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox, whose philosopher is a juggler, and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking.

Pity the nation that welcomes it new ruler with trumpetings, and farewells with him with hootings, only to welcome another with trumpetings again.

Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years and whose strong men are yet in the cradle.

Pity the nation divided into fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation.

Kahlil Gibran
The Garden of the Prophet
(London, Heinemann, 1934)