Humanities Underground

Nerves are at Ease, Nerves are Tense

Prasanta Chakravarty On August 4, 1943, a few days before her death and amidst war, Simone Weil began to describe to her parents, Selma (Mime) and Bernard Weil (Biri), from her little room in London...

Restlessness, Structural Degeneration and Dialogic Possibilities in Contemporary Hindi Poetry:

HumanitiesUnderground had, in March of 2016, initiated a discussion on contemporary Hindi poetry in Benaras, with a group of poets who are composing and thinking right now about the intricacies of the...

Transformation, Like Salt: The Artistry of Mahesh Verma

    Mahesh Verma __________________   A consummate artist is a rare creature. And if such a sense of art is able to amalgamate fever and vehemence with restraint and formal experimentation...

I Believe In The Good Fairy Of Your Native Land:

__________________________ There developed a curious and lasting friendship between two supremely talented people: Gabriela Mistral/ Lucila Godoy Alcayaga (1889-1957) of Chile and Victoria Ocampo...

Expenditure, Insolvency and Recovery in Manmohan’s ‘The Morsels of Ignominy”

_____________________ Prasanta Chakravarty The poems that make the collection ज़िल्लत की रोटी—The Morsels of Ignominy (Rajkamal Prakashan: 2006) must count as one of the finest that has come from the...

Free Me From The Poet’s Prison

  This is the translated version of an exchange between poet Rana Roychowdhury and Surajit Sen, published in Desher Agamikaal magazine in March, 2016.  Rana Roychowdhury is one of the most...

Fists That Turn Like Keys

Aishwarya Iyer __________________   Splitting Seed   How often must we arise from this seed Yellow, nutted, moon-spent, tree-withered, The seed splits and leaves climb out, thus flow tears...

Discrimination No Representation: Modernity & Plato

Rahul Govind ________________ Plato is one among the many unfortunate philosophers who are referred to more and more, read less and less. To this atrophied forgetting, Abrogast Scmitt’s Modernity and...

Avinash Mishra: A Governing Tone of Stoic Regression

HUG ______   जो अकेला है उसे और डर दीजिए जो प्रतिबद्ध है उसे और उदासीनता दीजिए जो भूखा है उसे और नारे दीजिए जो सताया हुआ है उसे और अवसाद दीजिए जो हत्यारा है उसे और समर्थन दीजिए जो छीन सकता है उसे...

‘Your Life Is Writing. So, Write.’

Andre Gorz ______________   Here is a short section from the open letter of love and despair written by renowned French philosopher André Gorz to his British-born wife, Doreen. (later published...

Luminous, A Fleck O’ Caress

Dipanwita Sarkar _________________   One yellow, tri-cornered fruit. and contaminated all evenings. your garland-chandan on my palm, cherished melodies, eddies dragging like ma’s breastsover the...