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"Listening to the Loom" contains a largely unknown and unavailable corpus of eminent Indian Dalil scholar Nagaraj s ideas and essays, amplifying and supplementing those in "The Flaming Feet," and presents his most important writings on literature, politics and violence. Some of the 13 pieces here are translated from Kannada into English for the first time, while others long unavailable have been hunted out from scattered sources.
The title of this book, "Listening to the Loom," derives from a story recounted by the novelist U. R. Ananthamurthy. Once, walking in Kathmandu with Nagaraj, his companion asked him to stop and listen to the sound of a weaver s loom that only he had heard. Ananthamurthy recalls saying to Nagaraj that so long as he, Nagaraj, retained this ability to hear the sound of a loom, he would never become a Non-Resident Indian intellectual. In the present volume, Nagaraj s ear for the sound and sense of things quintessentially Indian is everywhere apparent.
Part I comprises essays on Kannada s cultural experiences, Part II contains essays on politics and violence. All of them were mostly written between 1993 and 1998, the period when Nagaraj emerged as a mature thinker and produced some of his most important insights."
About the author
D. R. Nagaraj (1954-98), recognized as a profound commentator and cultural critic, was the director of the Centre for Translation at the National Academy of Letters, Bangalore. He is the author of
The Flaming Feet and Other Essays.
