The Literary City
Explocity Podcasts
EXPLOCITY PODCASTS presents THE LITERARY CITY With Ramjee Chandran. This literary podcast is devoted to books and authors. It features interviews with a stellar line up of authors, both world famous and also authors who are being discovered—the only criterion being the quality of the prose. Topics are generally literary and include history, biographies, literature and literary fiction. The Literary City podcasts celebrates authors, poets, playwrights, grammar police, literary lounge lizards...and, oh yes, a cunning linguist or ten.
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Top 10 The Literary City Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best The Literary City episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to The Literary City for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite The Literary City episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
The Insatiable Feminism Of The Fabulous Shobhaa De
The Literary City
04/11/23 • 39 min
That was my guest today, the incomparable Shobhaa De.
Shobhaa is one of the most famous writers in India and her reputation has travelled everywhere, but it behooves me to talk about the realpolitik of Shobhaa De’s literature.
Let me tell you why Shobhaa De is so significant to English writing in India. Not only was her great success as an author inspiring, but to my mind, the most significant thing I can say about Shobhaa is that she kicked down the doors for generations of women writers who followed her.
Uniquely, she gave women a voice. At the risk of reduction, I’ll venture that her novels explore the lives and loves of Indian women who embrace their sensuality without apology.
Despite, simply living their lives is often a patriarchy-fostered challenge, her protagonists are never sad victims. They follow their dreams rather than fit into society's expectations. At the fount of their sentience, they will not be marginalised.
I imagine that such a narrative is even possible only because Shobhaa’s prose is an honest prose, without artifice.
And funny. But the lightness she brings to this prose often belies the dark realities that she is addressing. While most literature of this genre tends to be disconsolate... even self-pitying— the humour I speak of, in Shobhaa’s narratives, is a testament to her skill as a writer.
For this reason, I am sure, her writing has been the subject of almost one hundred academic dissertations—of researchers and scholars in universities around the world—studying feminist literature—and I imagine this number is only growing.
Recently, Shobhaa launched her latest book titled “Insatiable”, and it is a memoir filled with anecdotes and personal experiences—told interestingly from the perspective of food. Artfully, Shobhaa De crafts a narrative using food as the conduit for descriptions of events in her life that happened around it.
In literature, eating and not-eating are always symbolic, and food always means something other than mere food. Food is a fun metaphor in literature. Ernest Hemingway used it as did Shobhaa’s favourites, Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald.
And now, here she is, joining me from her home in Bombay to talk about her life and literature.
ABOUT SHOBHAA DE
Shobhaa Dé, voted by Reader's Digest as one of 'India's Most Trusted People' and by Daily News and Analysis as one of the '50 Most Powerful Women in India', is a bestselling author and a popular social commentator. Her works, both fiction and non-fiction, have been featured in comparative literature courses at universities in India and abroad. Her writing has been translated into many languages including Hindi, Marathi, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish, among others. Shobhaa lives in Mumbai with her family.
Buy Insatiable: https://amzn.to/3KKJ2mZ
WHAT'S THAT WORD?!
Co-host Pranati "Pea" Madhav joins Ramjee Chandran in "What's That Word?!", where they discuss the origin of the phrase, "SHIT HIT THE FAN".
WANT TO BE ON THE SHOW?
Reach us by mail: [email protected] or simply, [email protected].
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Greetings and salutations book lovers. Welcome to Wellness Thru Reading. A podcast...
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07/18/23 • 36 min
A few weeks ago, I was reading LitHub, one of the many literary magazines I enjoy greatly, and I found an essay that caught my immediate fancy. It is titled, “Literature in the Bardo: Tenzin Dickie on the Past, Present, and Future of the Tibetan Essay”.
Not only was I captivated by her prose but importantly, it opened a window to the world of Tibetan literature.
Growing up in India, Tibet exists by default, if nothing else. We know a smattering of things about that country and its culture. There’s the Dalai Lama, there are the Tibetan settlements in Dharamsala in the north and Bylakuppe, south of Bangalore and we know that the Tibetans come here to run away from the Chinese occupation of their country. Inevitably there’s someone who tells us to go to that Tibetan doctor—and that their system of medicine is the best.
Things like this make us believe we know Tibet more than we really do. Gives us a sense of familiarity but not any knowledge. You don’t think much about it—other than maybe feeling happy to have been a shelter for someone in need, especially when that someone is the Dalai Lama—but the LitHub piece set me running down a delightful rabbit hole.
My guest today is the author of that essay, Tenzin Dickie and you heard her reading an extract from it. I would describe Tenzin as an exceptionally gifted writer. Her latest book is titled The Penguin Book Of Modern Tibetan Essays and the stories in it present a wonderful window into the Tibetan soul—these stories are both touching and strong and you begin to appreciate not just the mind of the minority but also the mind of a minority in exile, possibly forever.
Tenzin edited this book and with this and whatever I read about her in my research, I’ll venture that she is the new custodian of the Tibetan tale.
I have spent the last week happily immersed in Tibetan literature and I have a ton of questions for her. And so here she is, joining me from her home in Boston.
ABOUT TENZIN DICKIE
Tenzin Dickie is the editor of the English language anthologies of modern Tibetan fiction and nonfiction: Old Demons, New Deities: Twenty One Short Stories from Tibet & The Penguin Book of Modern Tibetan Essays. A graduate of Harvard and Columbia Universities, she also studied at the Tibetan Children's Village School in Dharamsala, India.
Buy The Penguin Book Of Modern Tibetan Essays here: https://amzn.to/3NVcEOW
WHAT'S THAT WORD?!
Co-host Pranati "Pea" Madhav joins Ramjee Chandran in "What's That Word?!", where they discuss the etymology of "PROVERB"
CONTACT US
Reach us by mail: [email protected] or simply, [email protected]
Or here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theliterarycity
Or here: https://www.instagram.com/explocityblr/
Greetings and salutations book lovers. Welcome to Wellness Thru Reading. A podcast...
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
The Literature Of The Middle Finger With Saikat Majumdar
The Literary City
08/23/22 • 40 min
Indians live in many skins.
We deal with an extraordinarily diverse and multi-layered thing that we call “Indian culture”.
There have been various attempts to reduce its complexities to something simple that represents the sum of its parts. Often, a fool’s errand, not easily expressed by say, a fondness for Bollywood and spicy food.
Such cultural differences are stark when we travel; not the differences with other cultures of the world—we always knew that—but but the cultural differences between Indians that we don’t notice so much at home.
Finding out that you have more in common with a western colleague than from an Indian from a different part of India with a different language, a different religion and different tastes in pop culture can be hard to articulate.
My guest today is Saikat Majumdar. His novel, The Middle Finger explores this dynamic with the insight and sensitivity of a perpetual student of the world.
At the story telling level, the novel is entertaining. But like any competent literary work, the storytelling plays second violin to the complexity of the composition.
I had heard of Saikat Majumdar in stray reviews but I first encountered Saikat’s writing in a review of a novel he had written in a newspaper.
There’s always something about class and competence that jumps out at you. When I googled him I was delighted to find he was a much published author and an English language academician.
And today I am delighted to invite Saikat Majumdar as my guest onThe Literary City.
ABOUT SAIKAT MAJUMDAR
Saikat Majumdar has taught at Stanford University, was a Fellow at Wellesley College, and is currently Professor of English & Creative Writing at Ashoka University. He writes regularly on higher education and literature in different venues, including the Hindu, Hindustan Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, and the Times Higher Education. His other novels include The Scent of God and The Firebird/Play House, which narrates a young boy’s destructive obsession with his mother’s life as a theatre actress. His works of nonfiction and criticism include Prose of the World, The Critic as Amateur, and College: Pathways of Possibility.
Buy The Middle Finger: https://amzn.to/3T5lifm
WHAT'S THAT WORD?!
Co-host Pranati "Pea" Madhav joins Ramjee Chandran in "What's That Word?!", where they discuss the phrases "flipping the bird" and "having a jones".
WANT TO BE ON THE SHOW?
Reach us by mail: [email protected] or simply, [email protected].
Or here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theliterarycity
Or here: https://www.instagram.com/explocityblr/
Narration music from Uppbeat License code: KODPRRUVGWXXYGWS
Greetings and salutations book lovers. Welcome to Wellness Thru Reading. A podcast...
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The Conspiracy To Love Cubbon Park Bangalore With Roopa Pai
The Literary City
10/04/22 • 37 min
Different cities have different things they buy into.
In Paris there’s style—you never want to look sloppy in Paris. In New York it’s the energy of movement—try walking slowly on the sidewalk and you’ll have Fran Leibowitz come up and say "Hey! Pretend it’s a city."
In Bangalore, there is a buy-in to preserve trees.
You can ride a motorcycle on a crowded sidewalk, drive up the wrong way on a one-way street and only mildly annoy others. But try cutting a tree and the passing Bangalorean will give you a sharp look and probably make a quick call to the authorities. Indeed most homes have trees and apartment buildings are sometimes built around an existing tree. So Bangaloreans would not be surprised to see a new apartment building with a tree growing right through its floors.
This isn’t new though. Something about trees has found its way into the DNA of the city and indeed in all of us—after all in our DNA, we are part human, part city.
And the sense of greenery has expressed itself in the city having two major, botanically rich parks—Cubbon Park and Lal Bagh—each as large and as old as some of the greatest city parks in the world. Hyde Park in London, Gorky Park in Moscow, Central Park, New York, and there are others.
My guest Roopa Pai is author of the book, Cubbon Park—The Green Heart Of Bangalore.
When Roopa was researching she called and asked to interview me. I said yes of course, immediately. More than anything, this appealed to my sense of duty. Indeed, I was personally involved in an investigative story about Cubbon Park titled, The Conspiracy To Kill Cubbon Park. The story was based on some builders and politicians who were spoiling to parcel off this historic lung space to developers.
I grew up in Bangalore. The Park has been a part of my life. Roopa made me realize that I share a connection with people I will probably never meet.
Because each of us has been alone with our deepest introspection when we experience the solitude of Cubbon Park. A bliss of birds and dogs—and oddly, the company of a hundred other humans who exist and at the same time, don’t.
Roopa Pai is a widely published author having written several children’s book ranging from Indian mythology to Economics.
She is an engineer—of computer science—a restaurant reviewer and a sometimes travel writer.
Her ability to deal with such diverse subjects comes from Roopa being a fascinating subject for an urban petri dish. And beneath a charming and unassuming front, an incisive and perceptive mind.
Let’s find out all about her and about Cubbon Park.
ABOUT ROOPA PAI
Roopa Pai is one of India’s best-known writers for children. She is Bangalore-based and has written over 25 books, ranging from picture books to chapter books and fiction to non-fiction, on themes as varied as sci-fi fantasy, popular science, math, history, economics, Indian philosophy, life skills, and medicine. When she is not writing, Roopa leads groups of children and young people on history and heritage walks across Bangalore and Karnataka, as part of her job as director of a company she co-founded, BangaloreWalks.
Buy Cubbon Park: The Green Heart Of Bengaluru: https://amzn.to/3V0cJ6o
Greetings and salutations book lovers. Welcome to Wellness Thru Reading. A podcast...
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08/09/22 • 39 min
No matter how many times you have heard it, the story of Jallianwala Bagh is terrifying. But when most of us first heard the story of the massacre, we weren’t mature enough to absorb the significance of what we were reading.
As schoolboys we were only allowed a casual and dinky relationship with our history text books. Jallianwala Bagh could pass as another tale of woe in chapter after chapter of bloody wars.
And it wasn’t until we were older and for many—let’s tell the truth here—watching the movie Gandhi—did the horror of it all come home.
My guest today is Navtej Sarna, author of Crimson Spring—in essence a book about the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh, but one that is more history than novel. It is a literary work that describes a historical tragedy through the emotions of its protagonists.
While reading his book, it struck me that we don’t preserve and portray the horrors of history in any tangible form, say, like the holocaust museums; Auschwitz and other locations.
And then it occurred to me that the broad dissemination of Indian history is principally among school children. And that includes mythology. Even ones that include mature themes, such as the Mahabharata.
No wonder then that the authors who have given us history—whether as history or as novels of historical fiction—have become bestsellers. Think William Dalrymple with over a million Twitter followers, Ram Guha, Chitra Divakaruni, Navtej Sarna, and so many others.
There is a hunger for history. And no better time than the 75th year of Indian independence to tell these tales.
Crimson Spring is but another in an impressive list of books authored by Sarna. And among them the most compelling for me is his book on his literary travels: Second Thoughts subtitled, On Books, Authors and The Writerly Life.
Through trying to find the origins and the final resting places of the great writers, Sarna introduces us to that wonderful world. And packages the most important works of literature in an easily digestible form.
He is a diplomat—former Ambassador to the United States, Israel and former High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. And he joins us today from his home in New Delhi.
I am privileged to welcome Navtej Sarna to The Literary City.
ABOUT NAVTEJ SARNA
Navtej Sarna was India’s Ambassador to the United States, High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, and Ambassador to Israel. He has also served as Secretary to the Government of India and as the Foreign Office Spokesperson. His earlier diplomatic assignments were in Moscow, Warsaw, Thimphu, Tehran, Geneva, and Washington DC. His literary work includes the novels The Exile and We Weren’t Lovers Like That, the short story collection Winter Evenings, non-fiction works The Book of Nanak, Second Thoughts, and Indians at Herod’s Gate, as well as two translations, Zafarnama and Savage Harvest. He is a prolific columnist and commentator on foreign policy and literary matters, contributing regularly to media platforms in India and abroad. His latest book is Crimson Spring, on the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
Buy Crimson Spring: https://amzn.to/3BUjMqt
Buy Second Thoughts: On Books, Authors and the Writerly Life: https://amzn.to/3JBqTpo
WHAT'S THAT WORD?!
Co-host Pranati "Pea" Madhav joins Ramjee Ch
Greetings and salutations book lovers. Welcome to Wellness Thru Reading. A podcast...
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The World–A Family History With Simon Sebag Montefiore
The Literary City
02/07/23 • 47 min
This interview was recorded live at Blossom Book House, Bangalore.
Many years ago I saw a TV commercial that stuck with me. It showed a montage—sepia tinted portraits of older couples, with rather interesting last names:
Alois and Klara Hitler
Beso Jughashvili and Ekaterine Geladze (Josef Stalin’s parents)
Andruta and Marie Ceausescu (parents of Nikolai Ceausescu, the genocidal leader of Romania.)
And a few similar others. And then the punchline “If only these people had heard of Trojan condoms.”
This commercial spoke a truth—that families are involved and responsible for the good ones and the monsters alike.
We have heard much of the campaigns and conquests and cruelties of world leaders and we have read stories of incidents that might have influenced their growing years. But history is rather quiet on the roles their mothers played. Yes, what about Mom? How did Mom mess with their heads?
The most definitive record of this truth—that is the family’s role in history—is written by Simon Seabag Montefiore in his book, "The World—A Family History". Simon’s book opens with the discovery of footprints. In 2013, a storm lashed the coast of eastern England in Norfolk at a village called Happisburg and uncovered these footprints. They found out that these footprints were left behind at least 850,000 years ago by a small group of humans and children— and that is the first evidence of a family.
A blurb in Simon’s book says that from the beginning of history through the present, the one thing that humanity has in common is family. The World—A Family History reveals how the family unit has driven history—from the prehistoric homo antecessors of Happisburg to the modern days—the Trump family included.
The book has such a huge span. In about 1300 pages it takes us through recorded history as we know it and in a never done before narrative, presents the history of the world through the families that have caused and created history in every corner of the world.
This book is nothing short of a modern day epic. To those who have not had the pleasure of reading Simon Sebag Montefiore, let me say that his narrative is not only deep but gripping. And don't let the size of the book fool you. It is unputdownable and call me if it doesn’t go faster than binge-watching Game of Thrones with as much guts, gore and sex.
I have been given the honour of bringing to you this prolific and hugely entertaining historian.
ABOUT SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE
Montefiore is the internationally bestselling author of prize-winning books that have been published in 48 languages. Catherine the Great & Potemkin, The Court of the Red Tsar, Young Stalin, Jerusalem: The Biography, and The Romanovs: 1613-1918. He is the author of the Moscow Trilogy of novels: Sashenka, Red Sky at Noon and One Night in Winter. He also wrote Written in History: Letters that Changed the World and Voices of History: Speeches that Changed the World.
You can get a special 20% discount at Blossom Book House on Church St in Bangalore. Or you can it order it from them here: The World: A Family History: https://explo.in/3Yy2UxN or better, here: https://explo.in/3XcUP0r.
WHAT'S THAT WORD?!
Co-host Pranati
Greetings and salutations book lovers. Welcome to Wellness Thru Reading. A podcast...
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Churchill And India Fighting Retreat With Historian Walter Reid
The Literary City
12/12/23 • 44 min
You know how some people just seem to have that star quality? Winston Churchill, he was one of those. No matter how many books, documentaries you may have imbibed—or, speaking of imbibed, tales you may have heard of his brandy-infused mornings, there's always an insatiable appetite for more and more Churchill.
His wit, his wisdom, and yes, even his lack of a filter in his shock-jock pronouncements—all adds up to a mystique, often a respect, that even the former colonies do not deny. Maybe the respect comes from his sense of personal conviction and his uncompromising dedication as a patriot. And not the least because he is credited with defeating Adolf Hitler.
Churchill's desire not to let India go seemingly bordered on obsession. Even when he wasn't steering the ship in India he was always with one eye on the country that made the Empire, well, the empire.
Today, to guide me through understanding Churchill and India, I have the privilege of talking to my guest—renowned historian and author, Walter Reid—whose new book, Fighting Retreat, unravels the layers of Churchill's impact on the Indian subcontinent.
From Churchill’s privileged though unconventional background, through the many accusations against him for being a racist and being cold-hearted, there’s also his apparent compassion for the underdog. As an example, his support for the Dalit cause.
In 1917, The Montagu Declaration marked a turning point in British ownership of India. The Irwin Declaration of 1929 tried to paper over its deficiencies. And then as one thing led to another in the 30 eventful years between 1917-1947, between Montagu-Chelmsford and independence, Churchill stoutly opposed any countenance of an India independent of the Empire.
He once spoke of the three factions—of Hindus, princely states, and Muslims—being the metaphorical "three-legged stool" upon which Britain sat indefinitely.
Was this divide and rule? Or was this good administrative strategy? How did it all pan out? I cannot wait to ask Walter Reid and to delve into the intricate relationship between the icon Winston Churchill and the complex tapestry of India.
Buy Fighting Retreat: https://amzn.to/3Rb1mHF
ABOUT WALTER REID
Walter Reid is a historian educated at the universities of Oxford and Edinburgh, a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and the author of a number of acclaimed books on British politics and history, including Keeping the Jewel in the Crown: the British Betrayal of India and most recently Neville Chamberlain: The Passionate Radical. He raises sheep and cattle in Scotland and grows olives in France. He is married to Janet Reid, a journalist, and has two adult daughters.
WHAT'S THAT WORD?!
Co-host Pranati "Pea" Madhav joins Ramjee Chandran in the fun etymology segment, "WHAT'S THAT WORD?!" where they discuss the word “QUISLING” and Churchill’s wit.
CONTACT US
Reach us by mail: [email protected] or simply, [email protected]m
Or here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theliterarycity
Or here: https://www.instagram.com/explocityblr/
Wellness Thru ReadingGreetings and salutations book lovers. Welcome to Wellness Thru Reading. A podcast...
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
02/01/22 • 31 min
Most, if not all of us, who studied English in school will recognize the opening passage in the podcast...which are the opening lines from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Ol' JC was in the curriculum.
That passage is a favourite of my guest on this latest episode of my podcast , journalist and author, Amrita Shah.
She says she picked that one to read, for its humour.
When I was in my late 20s I was burning to write for a national publication. My target was... let’s call it “the Gentleman’s magazine”... Debonair.
Debonair was India’s Playboy. You read it for the articles. No seriously. You did.
Debonair—by design—had some of the most literary writing in the country. I figured that if I was published by Debonair, it would improve my street cred.
But what could be more WOKE back then than the fact that Debonair had a woman as editor. And that was Amrita Shah.
I wrote goofy sexual humor pieces for her that I thought were witty. Happily, so did she. I'm assuming...because we’re still friends.
Among other things, Amrita Shah is known for her groundbreaking investigative pieces on the Bombay underworld. She interviewed the infamous Varadarajan Mudaliar in an exclusive cover story scoop for Imprint. And in her noteworthy career, she has authored three books to considerable acclaim. By the illuminati.
MORE ABOUT AMRITA SHAH
Best-known for her pioneering series of articles on the Mumbai underworld Amrita Shah has edited features magazines Debonair and Elle and been a Contributing Editor with the Indian Express. She is the author of three non-fiction books: the award-winning Ahmedabad: A City in the World (Bloomsbury, 2015), Vikram Sarabhai: A Life (Penguin, 2007) and Telly- Guillotined: How Television Changed India (Sage-Yoda, 2019). She has also been a fellow with the Fulbright, New India and Homi Bhabha foundations, Institutes for Advanced Study in Nantes and Johannesburg and the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. She is currently writing a book on an ancestral journey across the Indian Ocean.
WHAT'S THAT WORD?! - "LOO" and "COBBLER"
Co-host Pranati "Pea" Madhav joins Ramjee Chandran in the segment titled "What's That Word?", or titled in whichever way Ramjee mauls the title, to peel back the meanings of the word COBBLER that Shakespeare used as a pun in the opening of Julius Caesar.
And joining us on the phone from Texas, caller and fellow word geek, Shashwat Sirsi. We discuss the nether side of the word, LOO.
If you have a word or phrase you would like to explore, join us live on the show. Reach us by mail: [email protected] or simply, [email protected].
Or, you can visit: https://www.facebook.com/groups/bangaloreliterarysociety.
Or you can go to our Instagram page https://www.instagram.com/explocityblr/.
If your word or phrase is selected, we will call you.
Join our Facebook group, Bangalore Literary Society. It does not matter if you are not in Bangalore. This group is for anyone interested in language and words.
HELP EDUCATE A NEEDY CHILD
The Literary City encourages you to give to those children who struggle to get an education. We ask you to contribute whatever you can to The Association of People with Disability. The link to donate is: https://www.apd-india.org/donations. Visit their site and take a look at the wonderful work they do and find it in your heart to, well, teach a child to fish.
Arm Wrestling Women At Koshy's. And What's A "Duffer"?
The Literary City
01/04/22 • 22 min
As everybody knows, the principal measure of gender equality is arm wrestling. Our guest on the show today is well-known actor and TV boss, Darius "Tuffy" Taraporvala. Tuffy handles his roles easily, whether he's playing a petulant Mozart, a clueless spy Bernard Boursicot, caught in his honey trap with Shi Pei Pu, a Peking opera singer or one of the Marx Brothers. Ramjee Chandran peels the layers off Tuffy in a fun, freewheeling interview.
THE WORD - "DUFFER"
Co-host Pranati "Pea" Madhav joins Ramjee Chandran in the segment, titled "What Was That Word?" or titled whatever the host wants it to be titled. They dive into the usage and etymology of "duffer". Heaven knows there are so many of those who plague us every day.
If you have a word, expression or phrase you would like to know more about, we would love to have you join us live on the show.
You can reach out to us by mail: [email protected] or simply, [email protected]. Or, you can visit our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/bangaloreliterarysociety. Better join the group. It does not matter if you are not in Bangalore. This group is for anyone interested in language and words.
EDUCATE A CHILD
The Literary City encourages you to give to those children who struggle to get an education. A shoutout to all institutions who help needy children get this education. We ask you to contribute whatever you can to The Association of People with Disability. The link to donate is: https://www.apd-india.org/donations. Visit their site and take a look at the wonderful work they do and find it in your heart to teach a kid to fish.
The Fabulous Rajas—Last Shakespeareans Of Bangalore
The Literary City
04/05/22 • 39 min
In old Bangalore, when you drove past the airport on the largely deserted road towards the suburb of Whitefield, was a farm, with trees and chickens and stuff that farms have.
It was owned by a couple whose voices were instantly recognizable as the principal voices of the English language stage in Bangalore—Arundhati and Jagdish Raja. Their farm was called Jagriti.
Today, the road is far from deserted and in the place of the farm, stands a theatre. A beautiful auditorium, in what should be described as a centre for all things cultural and literary.
The theatre retains the name of the old farm, Jagriti, but if there are any chickens there, I dare say, they aren’t running free on the range.
I call Arundhati and Jagdish Raja the Last Shakespeareans of Bangalore.
But now, who is a Shakespearean? Some people ask.
I mean who among us doesn’t know what ‘Platonic’ and ‘Aristotelian’ and ‘Einsteinean’ mean, but what's Shakespearean?
To me, anyone who has read a few plays of Shakespeare, has acted in a play even in school, bristles at the mention of Francis Bacon, and never finds the need to refer to him as the Bard of Avon, is a Shakespearean.
One wag described being Shakespearean as, "A modern sonnet with three quatrains and a punchy couplet."
Well, replace "punchy couplet" with "punchy couple" and it makes me proud to be able to present on my show, Bangalore’s last Shakespeareans.
ABOUT THE RAJAS
Arundhati Raja
Arundhati Raja, co-founded the Artistes’ Repertory Theatre in 1982. The company and its productions are now an integral part of Bangalore’s cultural history. While directing and acting, she also taught French, Biology and Drama for several years and considers her life as a teacher to be instrumental to her deep desire to encourage and support new talent. Arundhati Raja has now directed over 30 productions and continues to perform, teach and motivate a new generation of theatre makers.
Jagdish Raja
Jagdish was Principal of Pan Communications in London, England with clients in the UK, USA and Europe before returning to India with Arundhati, his wife, in 1972. He was an advertising consultant to companies and agencies and Advisor Communications at ActionAid.
Jagdish is a Graduate Member of the Communications Advertising & Marketing Society (M.CAM) London and an Associate of Trinity College London (ATCL). He is Founder Trustee of The ART Foundation, a registered Charitable Trust, which administers JAGRITI.
TO CONTRIBUTE TO OR GET IN TOUCH WITH JAGRITI
Start at their website jagrititheatre.com. Questions: [email protected]. Social: Facebook and Instagram — [@jagrititheatre].
WHAT'S THAT WORD?! - "AMATEUR".
Co-host Pranati "Pea" Madhav joins Ramjee Chandran in the segment "What's That Word?", where they discuss the origins of the word, "amateur" and a limerick on love.
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FAQ
How many episodes does The Literary City have?
The Literary City currently has 75 episodes available.
What topics does The Literary City cover?
The podcast is about Literature, Society & Culture, Publishing, History, Podcasts, Books, Arts, Politics and Creative Writing.
What is the most popular episode on The Literary City?
The episode title 'The Insatiable Feminism Of The Fabulous Shobhaa De' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on The Literary City?
The average episode length on The Literary City is 38 minutes.
How often are episodes of The Literary City released?
Episodes of The Literary City are typically released every 7 days.
When was the first episode of The Literary City?
The first episode of The Literary City was released on Dec 8, 2021.
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