English Cosmos by Dr Mukesh Pareek

Tradition and the Individual Talent BY  T. S. ELIOT Introduction Often hailed as the successor to poet-critics such as John Dryden, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Matthew Arnold, T.S. Eliot’s literary criticism informs his poetry just as his experiences as a poet shape his critical work. Though famous for insisting on “objectivity” in art, Eliot’s essays actually map a highly personal set of preoccupations, responses and ideas about specific authors and works of art, as well as formulate more general theories on the connections between poetry, culture and society. Perhaps his best-known essay, “Tradition and the Individual Talent” was first published in 1919 and soon after included in  The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism  (1920). Eliot attempts to do two things in this essay: he first redefines “tradition” by emphasizing the importance of history to writing and understanding poetry, and he then argues that poetry should be essentially “impersonal,” that is separate and di

Study of Reading Habits When getting my nose in a book Cured most things short of school, It was worth ruining my eyes To know I could still keep cool, And deal out the old right hook To dirty dogs twice my size. Later, with inch-thick specs, Evil was just my lark: Me and my coat and fangs Had ripping times in the dark. The women I clubbed with sex! I broke them up like meringues. Don't read much now: the dude Who lets the girl down before The hero arrives, the chap Who's yellow and keeps the store Seem far too familiar. Get stewed: Books are a load of crap. Analysis This poem links well to others about the difference between reality and presentation, such as ‘Sunny Prestatyn’ and ‘Essential Beauties’, and also, through the personal, to ‘Self’s the Man’. As Larkin worked as a librarian his life, he clearly didn’t believe that “Books are a load of crap” that the persona states at the end…at least not to such an extent. At the beginning of the poem, the pe

Coolie Woman  (full title:  Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture ) is a book written by  Gaiutra Bahadur  and co-published in 2013 by  Hurst and Company  of London in Europe and the  University of Chicago Press  in the US.Editions from  Hachette  in India in 2013 and Jacana in South Africa in 2014 followed. The book is a  biography  of Sujaria, the great-grandmother of the author and simultaneously an exploration of the  indentured labor  system, which was practiced in the  Caribbean .Tracing Sujaria's 1903 journey as a  Brahmin  caste woman from  Bihar , India's poorest state, to the  sugarcane plantations of  British Guiana ,Bahadur wove both archival and published records,as well as folk and oral sources, [ citation needed ]  to tell the broader story of "the exodus and settlement of Indian women to the Caribbean".She critically examined the  Hindu caste system , Indian family structure, and the indenture system itself in an attempt to understand how each of the

Girmitiya  or  Jahajis  are  indentured Indian labourers  that were brought to  Fiji ,  Mauritius ,  South Africa ,  East Africa , and the  Caribbean (mostly  Trinidad and Tobago ,  Guyana ,  Suriname , and  Jamaica ) to work on  sugarcane  plantations for the prosperity of the  European  settlers and save the Fijians from having to work on these plantations and thus to preserve their culture. "Agreement" is the term that has been coined into "Girmit", referring to the "Agreement" of the  British Government with the  Indian  labourers as to the length of stay in Fiji and the  Caribbean , and when they would be allowed to go back to India.

Mostly Used Words diabolical showing cunning or ingenuity or wickedness debacle a sudden and complete disaster dragnet a conical fishnet dragged through the water at great depths accomplice a person who joins with another in carrying out some plan abduct take away to an undisclosed location against their will masticate bite and grind with the teeth oar an implement used to propel or steer a boat ewe female sheep manifest clearly revealed to the mind or the senses or judgment motley consisting of a haphazard assortment of different kinds taxonomy a classification of organisms based on similarities entail have as a logical consequence empathise be understanding of ostentation pretentious or showy or vulgar display grubby thickly covered with ingrained dirt disingenuous not straightforward or candid iffy subject to accident or chance or change winch a lifting device consisting of a cylinder turned by a crank backtrack retrace one's course

The strange case of Arun Joshi His themes are contemporary and still relevant and the quality of his writing first-rate. Then why is Arun Joshi so little known? Is the greatest Indian English novelist all but out of print? This much is certain: Arun Joshi deserves better. The author of five novels, written mainly during the 1970s, who won the Sahitya Akademi award for his penultimate book, The Last Labyrinth, barely registers as a name today. At least two of his books are out of print, none is easily available. Yet his themes are the most vitally contemporary of all our early English novelists, his characters vividly like us — English-speaking, urban, wracked with confusion — and the quality of his art and thought are both first-rate and arguably far superior to (say) Rushdie (to whom Indian English writing is said to owe a great debt). But if all this is so, what explains his obscurity? Part of the answer may be the man’s personality. According to some accounts, Joshi was reclusive

Remembering P Lal and Writers Workshop: The original publishing house for the new author Purushottama Lal, popularly known as P. Lal, was a poet, translator and essayist, but most significantly, the publisher-owner of Writers Workshop in Calcutta.     Purushottama Lal, popularly known as P. Lal, was a poet, translator and essayist. (Photo: Writers Workshop, Kolkata) “Somebody should go to Calcutta and write a history of Writers Workshop,” said Adil Jussawalla during a conversation. His first book of poems,  Land’s End , was published by Writers Workshop. His author bio read: “Am 22. Left for England in 1957 to study Architecture. Left architecture to write a play. Wrote a second play — a verse drama— before going up to Oxford to study English. This is my first collection of poems. Have also written several short stories. And paint whenever I can.” Jussawalla will soon turn 80. He has, so far, not published the short stories or the plays. He won the Sahitya Akademi Award for lite

The Bhagavad Gita was first translated into English by which of the following Europeans? [A] Warren Hastings [B] Charles Wilkins [C] James Princep [D] Lord Wellesley

Highway Stripper A. K. Ramanujan Once as I was travelling on a highway  to Mexico behind a battered once-blue  Mustang with a dusty rear window, the wind really sang  for me  when suddenly out of the side  of the speeding car  in front of me  a woman’s hand  with a wrist watch on it threw away  a series of whirling objects on to the hurtling road: a straw hat, a white shoe fit to be a fetish, then another, a heavy pleated skirt and a fluttery  slip, faded pink,  frayed lace- edge  and all (I even heard it swish), a leg-of-mutton blouse Just as fluttery. And as I stepped  on the gas and my car lunged  into the fifty feet  between me  and them,  a rather ordinary,  used, and off-white bra  for smallish  breasts whirled off  the window  and struck  a farmer’s barbed wire with yellow-green wheat grass  beyond and spread-eagled on it, pinned by the blowing wind. Then before I knew, bright red panties laced with white hit my windshield an

1. The  New Aesthetic  is a term, coined by  James Bridle , used to refer to the increasing appearance of the visual language of digital technology and the Internet in the physical world, and the blending of virtual and physical. The phenomenon has been around for a long time but James Bridle articulated the notion through a series of talks and observations. The most controversial book by James Bridle is The Iraq War: A Historiography of Wikipedia Changelogs  .It is a 12-volume set of printed books that shows every change made to the  English Wikipedia  article on the  Iraq War  from December 2004 to November 2009 and represents 12,000 changes in 7,000 printed pages. 2. X Reality  ( XR  or  Cross Reality ) is defined as: a form of “mixed reality environment that comes from the fusion (union) of ... ubiquitous sensor/actuator networks and shared online virtual worlds....”. It encompasses a wide spectrum of hardware and software, including sensory interfaces, applications, and infrast

Hunger  is one of the best known poems by the internationally acclaimed Indian English poet  Jayanta Mahapatra . The poem is widely anthologised in most important modern Indian poetry collections and is the most widely analysed piece among his works. The poem explores the informal child sex trade lurking in the social fabric, and is unique in its bold treatment of sexuality unlike a typical poem by him. Origin The poem was originally a part of the poet's collection "A Rain of Rites". In the poet's own words, the poem is based on a direct real life experience. But it is not clear whether the poet as the protagonist was the visitor to the fisherman's daughter. The poem is an expression of the poet's loneliness as a youth, as Mahapatra had a disturbed childhood. Structure and criticism The poem is notable for its directness in approaching the taboo topic of the sexual trade involving a father and his daughter. In the very second line, the fisherman asks casu

Omprakash Valmiki: Born in Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh, Valmiki’s autobiography “Joothan” is one of his most popular books. He is also the author of poetry collections such as “Sadiyon ka Santap” and “Bas Bahut ho Chuka” and short story collections such as “Salam” and “Ghuspaithiye”. Bama Born in a family of agricultural labourers, Bama Faustina Soosairaj donned many hats before she finally became a writer. She used to write poetry in college, but  became  a schoolteacher and a nun later to educate Dalit girls. It was after leaving the seminary in 1992 that she went back to serious writing. The semi-fictional autobiographical novel “Karukku” (1992) is her most famous work, although she has written more novels and short story collections since then. Originally written in the Tamil dialect she used to speak as a child, the novel created quite a stir, with Bama  being prohibited  from entering her village for seven months. When the novel was finally translated into English in 1998,

I don't know politics but I know the names  Of those in power, and can repeat them like  Days of week, or names of months, beginning with Nehru.  I amIndian, very brown, born inMalabar,  I speak three languages, write in  Two, dream in one.  Don't write in English, they said, English is  Not your mother-tongue. Why not leave  Me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins,  Every one of you? Why not let me speak in  Any language I like? The language I speak,  Becomes mine, its distortions, its queernesses  All mine, mine alone.  It is half English, halfIndian, funny perhaps, but it is honest,  It is as human as I am human, don't  You see? It voices my joys, my longings, my  Hopes, and it is useful to me as cawing  Is to crows or roaring to the lions, it  Is human speech, the speech of the mind that is  Here and not there, a mind that sees and hears and  Is aware. Not the deaf, blind speech  Of trees in storm or of monsoon clouds or of rain or the  Incohe

10 BEAUTIFUL AND FAMOUS POETRY BY NISSIM EZEKIEL Nissim Ezekiel ( December 16, 1924 – January 9, 2004) was an Indian Jewish poet, actor, playwright, editor and art-critic. He was a foundational figure in postcolonial India’s literary history, specifically for Indian writing in English. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1983 for his Poetry collection, “Latter-Day Psalms”, by the Sahitya Akademi, India’s National Academy of Letters. Ezekiel has been applauded for his subtle, restrained and well crafted diction, dealing with common and mundane themes in a manner that manifests both cognitive profundity, as well as an unsentimental, realistic sensibility, that has been influential on the course of succeeding Indian English poetry. Ezekiel enriched and established Indian English language poetry through his modernist innovations and techniques, which enlarged Indian English literature, moving it beyond purely spiritual and orientalist themes, to include a wider range of concerns

35 Prepositions that every English Learner must know how to use We all use prepositions many times during each day.  Prepositions can be confusing to learn but need to be learnt.  The prepositions of, in and to are in the top ten of the most frequently words used in the English language.  A preposition connects a noun with a different word in the sentence.  Most prepositions contain six letters or less.  Many of these prepositions can have more than one meaning and here are 35 prepositions that every English learner must know how to use:   About   I read a book about the new president whilst I was on holiday. Have you heard about the take-over of our firm? The journey will take about three hours. I am excited about going on holiday.   Across   We drove across the country from the east coast to the west coast. There is a footbridge across the railway line. The child ran across the road.   After   We went out to dinner after the meeting finished. Let us talk again the