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Hindustan Times
14 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Word on the street: A delightful collection of poems celebrates Indian cities across 2,000 years
It began with a bout of homesickness. While studying for a degree in economics at Yale in late-2020, Bilal Moin began to feel a yearning for Mumbai. He sought refuge in poems about the city, initially turning to classics by Arun Kolatkar, Adil Jussawalla and Dom Moraes. After a while, he cast his net wider. Entering keywords into the university library archive, he discovered poets he had never heard of, their verses on Bombay preserved in journals and magazines long-since defunct. In 2023, he mentioned his 'Word document of homesick scribbles' to Shawkat Toorawa, a professor of comparative literature at Yale. 'He pointed out that, pretty much by accident, I had put together an anthology,' says Moin, speaking from Oxford, where he is now pursuing a Master's degree. Last month, that collection was released as a 1,072-page hardcover anthology: The Penguin Book of Poems on the Indian City. It holds 375 poems by 264 poets, translated from 20 languages. Readers can explore the very different Mumbais of the Jewish playwright and art critic Nissim Ezekiel and the Dalit activist Namdeo Dhasal. They can lament the loss of Shahjahanabad with the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar. Revisit the colonial-era Delhi of Sarojini Naidu, the Haridwar of Manjul Bajaj, or discover a tiny microcosm of India in Thangjam Ibopishak's Imphal. 'My hope is that as you travel through these poems,' writes Moin in the introduction, 'you will discover that within the magic, malice and masala of urban India, every city-dweller becomes, in their own way, a poet.' Centuries of verse 'on a scrap of dried out / soil under a dried up tree / a deer stands in the very centre of New Delhi…' the Polish poet Katarzyna Zechenter writes, in A Nilgai Deer in the City of Delhi. As his homesick search took him all over, picking what to include in the book, and deciding where to stop, was a huge challenge, Moin says. 'Penguin,' he adds, laughing, 'neglected to give me an upper limit for the number of poems I could include, and I took advantage of that and trawled as far and wide — geographically, linguistically and temporally — as possible.' The oldest poem in the collection is Pataliputra, an ode to that ancient Mauryan capital (and ancestor to modern-day Patna), written by Tamil Sangam poet Mosi Keeranar, sometime between the 1st and 3rd centuries CE. 'May all of Pataliputra, swimming in gold, / where white-tusked elephants splash about / in the Sona River, be yours…' he writes. One of the most recent is Imphal as a Pond, by the 22-year-old queer activist Mesak Takhelmayum: 'My family is like the archipelago at Loktak, / if not the chains of islands in the great ocean far beyond these mountains, / in our separation, we yearn for one another / we yearn for water to connect us.' Jungle of people... Once he had a longlist ready, Moin spent weeks sending out hundreds of emails to poets and publishers, trying to work out how to get permission to feature each piece. 'I've featured writers who maybe had one or two poems published 15 years ago, and then seemingly never published again,' he says. 'So I had to send a lot of Facebook messages to people with similar names, saying 'Hi you don't know me, but are you this poet?'' He was determined that each poem be presented at its best, so he dug through multiple translations, and consulted with linguists, scholars or simply friends and acquaintances, to identify the best or most accurate recreations in English. There was a lot of debate over which translation of Tagore's two poems, Song of the City and The Flute, to choose. For the former, he chose the translation by William Radice: 'O city, city, jungle of people, / Road after road, buildings innumerable, / Everything buyable, everything saleable, / Uproar, hubbub, noise.' In loving memory As he read his way through centuries of verse, Moin says, he noticed something that thrilled him: over and over, certain cities inspired the same sentiment. Whether this was an effect of culture, literary mirroring or an idea that took root and spread, tracing these threads through time felt extraordinary, he says. Kolkata's poets tend to look at the city as a harsh mistress, their unrequited love for her both romantic and torturous. Mumbai poets struggle to come to terms with their city's glaring inequalities, and write of the difficulties of surviving in this maximal metropolis. As for Delhi, 'it doesn't matter if you're reading poetry from the 14th century or the 21st,' Moin says. 'The theme is always that this was once a great city, but it no longer is. And that one loves Delhi for its past.' 'A lot of fantastic gay poets, such as Hoshang Merchant and R Raj Rao, are featured in this collection,' Moin adds. 'It's interesting to see, through their eyes, how the city enables the marginalised to express themselves, while on the other hand still stifling them.' There are poets in these pages who are also activists and fighters, soldiers and sages, memory-keepers looking to record a city's present, its culture and its people, its quirks and flaws, before it is all erased and redrawn. But most poets in the anthology, Moin points out, are none of these things. They are simply the 'loafers' of Arvind Krishna Mehrotra's imagination, drifting carefree through gardens, temples and lanes, finding ways to turn the minutiae of the everyday into art. As Nirupama Dutt puts it, in Laughing Sorrow: 'I will go to the poet of the city, / looking for life without restraint. / He will have half a bottle of rum / in one pocket and a freshly / written poem in the other.' Get 360° coverage—from daily headlines to 100 year archives.
Time of India
01-06-2025
- Time of India
Youth stabbed to death in Ujjain
Ujjain: A young man was stabbed to death on Saturday night in the Lohapul area under the Mahakal police station due to a conflict over setting up a shop during Ramadan. The victim, Moin, son of Nadeem Khan, aged 32, resident of Kasaiwada, was attacked with a knife by the accused, Furqan alias Adda, a resident of Chandkua. Moin succumbed to his injuries while being taken to the hospital. A video of the attack also went viral. The police registered a case and arrested the accused on the same night. He was presented in court on Sunday, where he was remanded to police custody for two days. Mahakal police station in-charge Gagan Badal said that during the Ramadan festival, a dispute arose between Mohsin, a resident of Kasaiwada, and Furqan alias Adda, a resident of Chandkua, over setting up a shop. On Saturday night, Mohsin was returning home with his brother Moin from their shoe shop in the Lohapul area when they encountered Furqan. During a discussion aimed at resolving the dispute, an argument broke out, escalating the situation. In the ensuing fight, Furqan pulled out a knife and stabbed Moin four to five times. Moin died on the spot due to a stab wound to the chest. The accused Furqan fled after committing the murder. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Trading CFD dengan Teknologi dan Kecepatan Lebih Baik IC Markets Pelajari Undo Upon receiving the information, the police arrived at the scene and took Moin to the hospital, where doctors declared him dead. The victim's family also arrived upon hearing the news. The police apprehended Furqan alias Adda late at night from Chintaman Road. According to station in-charge Badal, only one accused is visible in the video, so currently, only one person has been charged. If further investigation during the remand reveals the involvement of others, they will also be charged.
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Germany updates: Climate change doubled extreme heat days
Climate change doubled extreme heat days in Germany in the past year, according to a new report Inflation in May expected to remain around 2% Volkswagen has offered to invest in the US, in direct negotiations with the US government Here are the latest news stories from Germany on May 30, 2025: Moin, thank you for joining us today as we bring you the latest news and outlooks from Germany. Coming up, we are expecting positive news on the German inflation rate which the German central bank, the Bundesbank, has predicted will fluctuate around the 2% mark in the next few months. A climate protest is also planned to take place in Berlin. Following the dissolution of the Letzte Generation ("last generation") protest group, a new climate activist movement — the Neue Generation ("new generation") — is kicking off a week of protest in the German capital. Follow along for all this and more.
New Indian Express
27-04-2025
- New Indian Express
Bapatla cops conduct cordon and search operations, destroy illicit liquor units
GUNTUR: Bapatla district police, under the orders of Superintendent of Police (SP) Tushar Dudi, conducted a large-scale Cordon and Search operation across Repalle and Chirala subdivisions on Saturday morning. The operation, involving 244 police personnel, targeted illegal activities and suspicious movements. Police seized 72 vehicles, including 65 two-wheelers and seven autos, all lacking proper documentation. They also unearthed and destroyed 5,000 litres of fermented jaggery wash used in illicit liquor production. In Chirala, Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSO) Moin supervised the operation at Ramnagar and New Colony with the participation of 150 officers. In Repalle, Deputy Superintendent of Police Srinivas Rao led operations in the SC Colony of Vellaturu village with 72 officers. The SP stated that the objective was to identify and monitor individuals involved in antisocial and criminal activities, seize stolen vehicles, and eliminate illicit liquor production. He warned that police would take strict legal action against those engaged in illegal activities, including narcotics possession and the sale of country-made liquor. He said vehicle owners must carry documents, cautioning that vehicles without papers would be seized. He urged the public to report illegal activities to the nearest police station or via Dial 112/100, assuring that informants' identities would remain confidential.
The Guardian
18-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Quade: The Foel Tower review – twisted Bristol band tap into the tensions between industry and nature
Listening to The Foel Tower feels like tuning a weathered old radio – you'll be rewarded for applying patience and concentration. On this second album, experimental Bristol four-piece Quade make a virtue of the slow build; Barney Matthews' bassy, cryptic vocals are buried beneath shivering cymbals, gut-rumbling bass and blasts of static, with most of the lyricism left to multi-instrumentalist Tom Connolly's twisting, agonised, beatific violin. Like their label mates Moin who describe themselves as 'post-whatever', Quade discard the classic band format for a more organic, intuitive approach. Canada Geese starts with a simple, strummed acoustic guitar and close-quarters detail: distant birdsong, the soft rattle of what could be a washing machine. This intimacy dissolves into grand, threatening post-rock when Matt Griffith's electronics and Leo Fini's echoing, distant drums build muscle. 'Kill them all,' Matthews mumbles, barely discernible, as Connolly's strings writhe. Drawing from folk, jazz, ambient and doom, and inspired by tensions between industry and nature, the album was made in Wales' Elan Valley (mid-album instrumental highlight Nannerth Ganol judders like a low-flying helicopter) and titled after a building on the Garreg Ddu reservoir, which sends its water on a long journey to Birmingham. There are literary references (Le Guin, Yeats, Thomas) buried in the murk, and mystifying media samples (possibly from meditation app Headspace, and an unnamed actor) to pick apart – but The Foel Tower is no concept album. Its six tracks are searching and emotional, led by heart rather than head. Satisfyingly indecipherable, Quade make music that speaks first to your body, then to your imagination.
