Literature

Neutralising the press

Like the god Vishnu, my press will have a hundred arms, and these arms will stretch out their hands throughout the country delicately giving form to all manner of opinion. Everyone will belong to my party without knowing it. Those who think they are speaking the language of their party will be acting for mine. Those who think they are marching under their own banner will be marching under mine.

Hala's knot

He was embarrassed
But I laughed and gave him a hug
When he groped for the knot
Of my skirt and found it
Already undone.

Indira's monkey army

When 12-year-old Indira Gandhi was denied membership by the Congress party in 1930, she formed a children's brigade named the Vanar Sena ("monkey army") to participate in India's freedom struggle. She was their general.

Cow-killer Devo Bhava

According to Panini, the Sanskrit word goghna means guest and also "one for whom a cow is killed".

Hala's Holi

Young girl,
On this day of Holī
—Your breasts dusted with flour,
Your eyes red from too much liquor,
A lotus stuck in your hair
And mango shoots behind your ears—
You are a credit to our village.

Goethe on Kalidasa's Shankutala

Wouldst thou the young year's blossoms and the fruits of its decline
And all by which the soul is charmed, enraptured, feasted, fed?
Wouldst thou the earth and heaven itself in one sole name combine?
I name thee, O Śakoontalá! and all at once is said.

Whitman's Gita and the Herald

When the first edition of the American poet, Walt Whitman’s, Leaves of Grass was published in 1855, Ralph Waldo Emerson commented that it read like “a mixture of the Bhagavat Ghita [sic] and the New York Herald”.

100 cow man-price

In Vedic times, if you killed a man, you had to offer 100 cows as restitution.

Literature