Desicritics Comments on Red Earth and Pouring Rain

Comment by Aaman

Tue, 21 Feb 2006 15:05:22 EST

Everyone who can, should buy books from the Amazon links above (hint;) )

Comment by Anil Menon

Tue, 21 Feb 2006 13:49:32 EST

Thanks Deepti. See if you can get a hold of Ramanujan's book. Those Sangam poets really rock. The grandaddy of translated works is Daniel Ingalls' "Sansrit poetry from Vidyakara's treasury."

Comment by deepti lamba

Tue, 21 Feb 2006 13:40:27 EST

Anil, this was a refreshingly informative post. I will probably be buying one of the books you mentioned above from Amazon.

Comment by Anil Menon

Tue, 21 Feb 2006 12:12:22 EST

Mcguffin? Not intentionally. Thanks for the comments. I wonder if the fact that these texts were meant to be heard rather than read made a huge difference. The late Kannadasan -- he's a Tamil lyricist -- was enormously popular, but his words were set to music and *sung*.

Comment by temporal

Tue, 21 Feb 2006 11:29:51 EST

Anil: For unclear reasons, ritualized activity calms the mind (in obsessive-compulsives, this link seems to break down). Ritualizing an activity enables a person to perform without worrying about it. When you ritualize worship, you stop worrying about pleasing God. When you ritualize the drinking of tea, you stop wondering whether you'd prefer coffee. When you ritualize warfare, it becomes a sport. And when you ritualize arousal, you can stop being Narcissus and start dating other people. when i read above i thought...hmmm....love on auto pilot ...but then had to make a forced landing when i came to this: We cannot really appreciate Indian erotica the way it was appreciated in the past, because for better or for worse the context has disappeared. a well crafted piece...thanks rgds t ps: the 'sari' and the 'stalks' ...hitchcockian mcguffin?