keerthik śaśidharan

deleted the old pinned tweet by mistake!! but wanted to share & savor this most generous review of my book 'The Dharma Forest' by Pratap Bhanu Mehta here. indianexpress.com/article/books-…

@Ram_Guha Thank you for sharing. Reading about Tagore’s visit to China in Hay’s book (and disappointments) — thought you might find of interest a chapter in ‘A New Literary History of Modern China’.

Stephen Hay’s book “Asian Ideas of East and West” is an all-time classic. It is accessible here: archive.org/details/dli.be…

~Day 20~ "Putting in the Seed" by Robert Frost #PoemADay2026_AM

~Day 19~ "The poem that took the place of a mountain" by Wallace Stevens #PoemADay2026_AM

'Raskolnikov in his room' Illustration (1985) by Mikhail Shemyakin for Dostoevsky's ''Crime and Punishment''

~Day 18~ "The Dead in Frock Coats" by Carlos Drummond de Andrade [translated from the Portuguese by Mark Strand] #PoemADay2026_AM

~Day 17~ "Christmas" by Robert Lowell #PoemADay2026_AM

...the Work continues its journey toward Solitude. - Bolaño

~Day 15~ "A Short, Slow Life" by Elizabeth Bishop #PoemADay2026_AM

@SamDalrymple123 Perhaps of interest:

The Mughal Princess of Mexico In the central Mexican city of Puebla, a short drive from the largest pyramid ever built, stands the world’s most unexpected Mughal tomb.

In his 'Transcritique' Join Karatani stresses need to switch from thinking about Nation-State to Capital-Nation-State. A triple helical structure that births the present wherein each strand constrains, binds, & struggles against the other two. A society that arrives into this trembling equilibrium of triples, he argues, has entered 'the end of history'. Last of the great totalizing system building theorists...

Pour moi la plus belle incarnation du printemps

Five books come to mind… The Secret War — Artyom Borovik [a haunting meditation on USSR’s catastrophic invasion in Afghanistan…] Hiroshima — John Hersey [I kept thinking about this essay/book recently when I visited the Atomic Museum in Vegas — see here instagram.com/p/DVr8wrKkeQD/…] With the Old Breed — E.B. Sledge [Pelelieu, Okinawa… a soldier’s memoir of the bone-soaking wetness and everyday inhumanities of WW2 in the Pacific] Stalingrad — Antony Beevor [Descriptions of a meat grinder that went by the name Operation Barbarossa] x.com/ks1729/status/… Black Hawk Down — Mark Bowden [On the unrelenting chaos of urban warfare, told with a narrative energy that masks an extraordinary narrative skill]

A large elephant herd of about 100 was seen swimming across the Brahmaputra River in Assam, India, navigating the waters at Nimati Ghat, a major river port

~Day 13~ "The Distance of a Shout" by Michael Ondaatje #PoemADay2026_AM

Rohit's second recommendation is new to me. Philip Knightley’s The First Casualty, which Rohit says is a history of war correspondents! RB said it was his favourite, and that is enough prompt for me to order my copy. BTW, if you guys know of books that deserve shelf space alongside these, do ping.

Since it is the weekend, and folks will have the time to read: There are two types of writing (books, and longform) I constantly revisit, to learn what I can about the art and craft of constructing a narrative: boxing (particularly the reportage during heavyweight boxing's heyday) and war reporting. Since war is very much top of mind now, a few recommendations follow:

Hunting for fish leads to muddy face for this Bengal tiger. An amazing capture. I have seen similar picture with leopard. Credit to Tania Cholwich (@taniacholwich)

@artisuch thank you. abhidhammah@gmail.com look forward.

@KS1729 Hi Keerthik, please share your email? I'll put you in touch with the festival organisers. Thanks.

Here is modern Tamil literature speaking to the world via its serious practitioners: writers, translators, and readers. April 3rd & 4th 2026, New York City. The Living Tamil LitFest: livingtamillitfest.org

Hi Divya, excellent initiative/visuals. One minor correction— Perhaps you can tag ‘The Legends of Khasak’ or ‘Khasakkinte Itihasam’ under Palakkad, to which belongs the village of Thasarak. [There is no place called Khasak] Also, if you want to add: * Kottayam/Alapuzha — Children, Women, Men: Sundara Ramaswamy [tr: Lakshmi Holmström]

4/ A quick note: many of the book titles and their details have been crowdsourced. We haven’t read every book listed. If you spot an error or missing information, please let us know — we’ll happily correct it. This is live and ongoing project.

1/ #CitiesInFiction now has a literary map. Every book in our list is pinned to the place it is set in. You can explore South Asian fiction as a geography — which cities have been written about, and which are still waiting. 👉 citiesinfiction.com/maps

Laxma Goud, from the looks of it. Perhaps somebody knows.