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A pure flame,
sincere and human
| Mulk Raj Anand,
in his nearly 100 years, lived life on his own terms. He, perhaps,
came very close to Rabindranath Tagore’s concept of the Universal
Man, writes Ashwini Bhatnagar
FOR
nearly three quarters of a century, Mulk Raj Anand blew like an
energetic breeze across the literary and cultural landscape of the
subcontinent. He invariably inspired and created, provoked and
startled and tugged at the heartstrings and the other parts of our
being like a breeze trying to get under our skin. Anand
took the literary and cultural world by storm when he arrived on
the scene in the 1930s. For several decades thereafter he was
the presiding deity at many a height.
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"I
hope I learn enough English to join The Tribune one day...."
As a young student, Mulk Raj Anand visited Kalinath Ray, Editor, The Tribune,
in 1923. Reproduced here is the conversation. Anand wrote of his encounter for the centenary souvenir of
The Tribune in 1981.
IN
the year 1923, with the euphoria of youthful enthusiasm, I visited a
student of the D.A.V. College, Lahore, who was a self-avowed terrorist
and believed in the overthrow of British rule by starting acts of
violence.
Frames
of wonder
In the Indian collective
consciousness, the Himalayas stand supreme as a symbol of our national
identity. These lofty mountains have stirred poets, painters and
musicians, and of late, nature lovers and photographers. Usha
Bande on the art of mountain photography
THE
Indian Constitution contains some illustrated plates of the paintings of
Nandlal Bose ascertaining the visual identity of the nation and that one
of the paintings depicts the Himalayas, which is a manifestation of our
national, cultural and geographical identity.
Courting
controversy
Award-winning director Anand
Patwardhan’s hard-hitting films on issues of importance have time and
again pitched him headlong into bitter battles with the establishment,
writes Saibal Chatterjee.
Awards
and accolades come easy to Anand Patwardhan. His latest film, War and
Peace, a trenchant anti-nuclear statement that survived a protracted
war of attrition with the censors, has won the Swarna Kamal for the Best
Non-Feature Film of 2003.
Dhoom
of the season
Rama Sharma
LEAN
bodies and mean bikes have made Dhoom the surprise hit of the
year. Three hours of rollicking fun with no emotional drama, Dhoom offers
much more, including hunks John Abraham and Abhishek Bachchan, to
sustain interest.
Benigni in Iraq
AFTER the Oscar-winning Life
Is Beautiful, Italian director Roberto Benigni is set to begin work
on a comedy set against the backdrop of war-torn Iraq. Scripted
by Benigni himself, the film called La Tigre E La Neve will be
set in the Iraq of last March when the US launched an attack on the
Saddam-Hussein regime.
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