By Ratnakar Tripathy Democracy: at a cold moment! I feel very blessed for where I live in Patna. No, it’s not a posh colony or a gated limbo of a  software community. The reason I feel lucky is on my right flank as I write, is a gynecological hospital, where babies keep getting born all the time. I get woken up by the forceful and healthy cries of hours-old babies demanding attention dictatorially at 2 AM. They sound like someone appealing urgently through my ever open window. The scolding cry of the helpless! There is human future on the right. On the left is the big wide lane that leads... 

  Ratnakar Tripathy The way I grew up and the kind of people I have come to know through choice or inheritance, the very word ‘rape’ was avoidable. As for the act, one thought rapes happen in some kind of netherworld that never dare come into contact with my universe. Way back in my teens, there was some hushed up gossip about a distant family member inflicting himself on a pretty worker in the village, I knew quite well. The matter was suppressed. But I do remember the woman wilting away with indignity after the incident and her stuttering husband’s face too, who lost all affection... 

By Dev N Pathak Life options: double-edged choices! The former Vice-President of India Dr. Shankar Dayal Sharma was stunned to hear the speech of a class six boy named Mukund Mani Pandey, at Mawlankar Hall in New Delhi (India). The boy was taken to Dr. Sahrma after the ovation thinned. Dr. Sharma exclaimed, ‘well done my boy! Where are you from?’ The boy said, ‘ I am from Vatayan school’. A perplexed Dr. Sharma asked, ‘I have never heard of this school! Where is it?’ The boy answered with a swelling chest, ‘it is as small a school as me in a small town called Siwan in a big state... 

By Dev N Pathak JNU: a classroom! The irony of our times is not that we do not know; it is that we refuse to reckon with all we know! Following the norm of institutional narcissism, for which the sociologists of education have critiqued elite schools aplenty, the Center for the Study of Social Systems (CSSS) celebrated fortieth year of its existence. And it was done through a three day long conference titled ‘Sociology Matters (predicate is not important). A conference, though, with only panel discussions and symposia! Yes, some sprinkling of art and culture here and there which either seemed... 

Ratnakar Tripathy By Ratnakar Tripathy I am not a well-travelled man. Certainly not, compared to some globe-trotting friends and relatives who post impossible landscapes and objects on their facebook, kind of GPS footprints, as they gallop around the globe. But I have learnt one simple lesson during my travels – if you want to communicate with people, just treat their hearths as the ultimate centre of the earth. It helps you escape your own mental and material confines but more important, turns you into a joiner rather than a whishing meteorite from outer space. That’s why when I make the half-yearly... 

  By Dev N Pathak   Anura, ‘Invasion’ (Photo by Dev Pathak) ‘The State had us believe that it was celestial violence, it was divine providence; and we feel sick that we believed in state-sponsored ideas; now we are patients with disease’, says Jagath Weerasinghe, the eminent artist and archeologist from Sri Lanka, while he takes the viewers on a tour of his work at Espace Gallery, in New Delhi on 10 December 2012.The exhibition of the contemporary visual art from Sri Lanka titled ‘Narratives of Resistance’ is literal as well as metaphorical. Jagath’s work titled ‘Soldier’... 

  Ratnakar-Tripathy By Ratnakar Tripathy Ghagha Ghat is no boondocks! It is just 200 meters away from Gandhi Ghat, the most glamorized ghat of Patna, meant to be a showpiece for the new shining Bihar.  It is also where I live. I believe I am well-placed in life, musically, if not otherwise. Everyday as I sit down to work and at times when in deep slumber, I get reminded of human mortality. For Ghagha is just a 2-minute walk from Gulabi Ghat, the cremation hub for my part of the city. As the funeral processions move hurriedly along the lane, they chant ‘Ram Naam Satya Hai [Ram’s name is... 

  The great Strife: choreographed! By Ratnakar Tripathy Recently a friend of mine sent me a mail which was all attachments – not a word in the mail but altogether 11 attachments in a multi-storeyed arrangement. These were news reports, pictures, photographs of posters hung in the Jawaharlal Nehru University by students who decided to organize a Mahishasur martyrdom Day on 29th October. Yes, Mahishasur, the famed character slain by the goddess Durga all over the pooja pandals in North and often South India being the man-buffalo in focus! Then there was a photo of the posters destroyed by... 

Batras  [बतरस] Ratnakar Tripathy By Ratnakar Tripathy Gaya: even as Nitish, the CM of Bihar is trying to mobilize the masses to assert Bihar’s right [adhikar] to special status, the Bihari populace or at least a large number of them seem more interested in their rights [adhikar] vis a vis the state government led by Nitish. This irony is becoming clearer by the day as after many years, politics in Bihar is stirring up and new and old voices are finding ready platform and eager audience. This even includes the stale jokes of a Laloo Yadav who is suddenly able to muster large crowds wherever... 

Dev N Pathak By Dev Nath Pathak  Artists, Art Historians, Archeologists and such creatures with self-centered behavior are rarely inclined to talk to sociologists and anthropologists. Certainly not if the latter ask unsettling questions and raise doubts over the fixed categories! For, nobody except the social scientists seem to wish to leave their comfort zone. Even the majority of social scientists would only choose to be rocked in a comfortable armchair rather than a dialogue with other disciplines. But then, Sri Lanka is a tropical land with immense fertility even if the low population presence...