Word: delhi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...seek the face of India - or perhaps a nice shirt, sari, necklace, stuffed paratha, air conditioner, television set or water pump - look no farther than Chandni Chowk. That centuries-old market near old Delhi's famed Red Fort is a crumbling warren of shops, food stalls, shrines, temples and mosques. Indians of varying ethnic and religious hues work and worship alongside each other in grudging harmony, sharing a common language: money...
...perhaps not surprising that Sujit Saraf chose Chandni Chowk as the main setting for his ambitious 750-page novel of politics, commerce and manners in modern India. The Peacock Throne does for Delhi and democracy what Vikram Chandra's recent 900-page Sacred Games does for Mumbai (formerly Bombay) and organized crime. Or what 19th century European novelists did when economic and intellectual winds howled: produce teeming, sprawling, barn-burning novels that try to describe everything in sight. The surprise is that Saraf is not, strictly speaking, a novelist. He works full-time as a space scientist...
Saraf should know. Born in Bihar of a successful merchant family, he was the very embodiment of India's technology-fueled future, studying and later teaching science at Delhi's prestigious Indian Institute of Technology. He also spent time at Berkeley, where he met the American who is now his wife and the mother of their infant daughter. "I have an uncle who owns shops in Chandni Chowk," says Saraf, 37, from his home in San Jose, California. "When I was in high school, I lived above one of them. I actually saw some of the incidents in the book...
...must reopen the national debate, must think with our heads and not our hearts. We need a Zionism of quality, not of acreage.'' Harkabi's voice now comes out of near darkness. ''People ask me how large an Israel I want. I tell them, 'From Paris to New Delhi!' They say, 'But that's too big!' I say, 'Ah, well. Then let's talk realistically. How big is enough...
...withheld this survey until after the exhibition closed, I'll tell you. One reason is that the New York-New Jersey show was far from iddeal. The L.A. museums were a car-drive away, and everyone drives out there. Back here in Manhattan, Newark might as well be New Delhi. As Spiegelman wrote to the show's producers: "While swell for New Jersey residents, placing the first half of the 20th century's comic strip artists into the Newark Museum is, from the perspective of this provincial New Yorker, the equivalent of hiding them in a Federal Witness Protection program...