BALBIR MADHOPURI. KORE KĀĠAZ KĪ GAHRĪ LIKHAT / INSCRIPTIONS ON A TENDER MIND (A CHAPTER FROM CHĀNGIĀ RUKH / AGAINST THE NIGHT)

Author(s):  
A. V. Bochkovskaya ◽  

The commented translation from Hindi of a chapter from the Chāṅgiā rukh (Against the Night) autobiography (2002) by Balbir Madhopuri, a renowned Indian writer, poet, translator, journalist and social activist, brings forward episodes from the life of low-caste inhabitants of a Punjab village in the 1960–1970s. Following the school of hard knocks of his childhood in the chamar quarter of Madhopur, a village in Jalandhar district, Balbir Madhopuri managed to receive a good education and take to literature. In 2014 he was awarded the Translation Prize from India’s Sahitya Academy for contribution to the development and promotion of Punjabi, his mother language. Narrating the story, Balbir Madhopuri shares memories, thoughts and emotions from early days that determined his motivations to struggle against poverty, deprivation and injustice. The chapter Kore kāġaz kī gahrī likhat (Inscriptions on a Tender Mind [Madhopuri, 2010]) tells readers about joys and sorrows, hopes and fears, delights and regrets that were part of his childhood in Madhopur. Scenes from everyday life in the home village, episodes highlighting complex relations between its inhabitants — predominantly Sikhs and Hindus — intertwine with Balbir Madhopuri’s reflections on social oppression and caste inequality that still remain in contemporary India’s society. This commented translation is the third in a series of four chapters from Balbir Madhopuri’s autobiography scheduled for publication in this journal in 2020.

2021 ◽  
pp. 180
Author(s):  
Balbir Madhopuri

The commented translation of a chapter from the Chāṅgiā rukh (Against the Night) autobiography (2002) by Balbir Madhopuri, a renowned Indian writer, poet, translator, journalist, and social activist, brings forward episodes from the life of Dalit inhabitants of a Punjab village in the 1960–1970s. Following the school of hard knocks of his childhood in the chamar quarter of Madhopur, a village in Jalandhar district, Balbir Madhopuri managed to receive a good education and take to literature. He has authored 14 books, including three volumes of poetry, translated 36 pieces of world literary classics into Punjabi, his mother language, and edited 44 books in Punjabi. In 2014, he was awarded the Translation Prize from India’s Sahitya Academy for his contribution to the development and promotion of Punjabi. His new fiction novel Miṭṭī bol paī (Earth Has Spoken, 2020) focuses on the struggle of downtrodden Punjabis for their human rights and the ad-dharam movement in the North of India in the 1920–1940s. Narrating his autobiography, Balbir Madhopuri shares memories, thoughts, and emotions from childhood and youth days that determined his motivations to struggle against poverty, deprivation, and injustice. The chapter Tikḍe šīše kī vyathā (The Tale of the Cracked Mirror [Madhopuri, 2010]) tells readers about the everyday life of Madhopur, complicated relationships between the village inhabitants, as well as about the destinies of low-caste Punjabis. Memories of joys and sorrows, hopes and fears of the childhood years go side by side with Balbir Madhopuri’s reflections on social oppression and caste inequality that remain in contemporary India’s society.


Author(s):  
Anna V. Bochkovskaya ◽  

The commented translation of a chapter from the Chāṅgiā rukh (Against the Night) autobiography (2002) by Balbir Madhopuri, a renowned Indian writer, poet, translator, journalist and social activist, brings forward episodes from the life of Dalit inhabitants of a Punjab village in the 1960–1970s. Following the school of hard knocks of his childhood in the chamar quarter of Madhopur, a village in Jalandhar district, Balbir Madhopuri managed to receive a good education and take to literature. He has authored 14 books including three volumes of poetry, translated 35 pieces of world literary classics into Punjabi, his mother language, and edited 42 books in Punjabi. In 2014, he was awarded the Translation Prize from India’s Sahitya Academy for contribution to the development and promotion of Punjabi. Narrating the story, Balbir Madhopuri shares memories, thoughts and emotions from early days that determined his motivations to struggle against poverty, deprivation and injustice. The chapter Kãṭīlī rāhõ ke rāhī (The Thorny Path [Madhopuri, 2010]) tells readers about the destiny of low-caste Punjabis as well as about village traditions and rituals featuring Hindu, Sikh and Muslim beliefs deeply intertwined in the Land of Five Rivers. Memories of childhood joys and sorrows go side by side with Balbir Madhopuri’s reflections on social oppression and caste inequality that still remain in contemporary India’s society. This commented translation is the final one in a series of four chapters from Balbir Madhopuri’s autobiography scheduled for publication in this journal in 2020.


Author(s):  
A. V. Bochkovskaya ◽  

This commented translation from Hindi of a chapter from the Chāṅgiā rukh (Against the Night) autobiography (2002) by Balbir Madhopuri, a renowned Indian writer, poet, translator, journalist and social activist, brings forward episodes from the life of low-caste inhabitants of a Punjab village in the 1960s — early 1970s. After two decades after independence, destinies of those stuck in the lowest part of the social ladder remained unenviable — despite the fact that according to India’s constitution, untouchability was abolished and its practice in any form was forbidden. The main social conflict in Punjab’s villages between high-caste landowners, Jats, and low-caste chamars, chuhras and other village servants is still underway — with only minor modifications. Following the school of hard knocks of his childhood in the chamar quarter of Madhopur, a village in Jalandhar district, Balbir Madhopuri managed to receive a good education and take to literature. Narrating his story, Balbir Madhopuri shares childhood memories and emotions that determined his motivations to struggle against poverty, deprivation and injustice. The metaphor of a hardy bargad — a strong and powerful tree that used to be heart and soul of chamars’ area in Madhopur, but was slashed and distorted at a whim of the high and mighty villagers — holds a special place in the book.


1993 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 589-607 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Silvia Barbieri

In everyday life people produce and accept behaviours that deviate to some extent from a rule, but are nevertheless recognised as examples of the rule. This study analyses the effects of three variables, i.e. type of substitution, centrality of the element involved in the transgression, and linguistic formulation of rules, on judgements of acceptability and seriousness of such deviations. Three groups of 60 subjects each (4-year-olds, 9-year-olds, and adults) were randomly assigned to receive one of three linguistic formulations of a prudential rule. In the first, the rule was stated without justification; in the second, the goal of the rule was stated; in the third, a description of the actions and the items necessary to obey the rule was given. All subjects had to judge a variety of rule transgressions based on elimination, unsuitable substitution or suitable substitution of a central or a peripheral element of the rule. Linguistic formulation had, at best, a modest effect on judgements. However, there were strong effects of type of substitution and centrality. Moreover, the effects of these variables differed with age and the subjects showed an increasing capacity to take into account all the elements involved.


Author(s):  
Paula J Dalley

Despite the ubiquity of agents in the modern world, agency law does not have a coherent explanation or unified theory. The Restatement (Third) of Agency updates and attempts to explain the law, but its explanations are limited in scope and at times unpersuasive. Like other contemporary commentary on agency law, the Third Restatement draws from contract and tort theory, an approach which ignores the unique features of agency law. Agency law enables principals to act through agents; it also ensures that principals using agents do not thereby escape liability or other consequences of their choices. This paper develops a theory to fit agency law. The "costbenefit internalization theory" is based on the simple premise that the principal, who has chosen to conduct her business through an agent, must bear the foreseeable consequences of that choice. Conversely, as the bearer of the risks, the principal is entitled to receive the benefits created by the agency relationship. The cost-benefit internalization theory explains and illuminates virtually all agency law doctrine.


Author(s):  
Richard Rechtman

Veena Das has introduced a major shift in our contemporary conception of ethnography. While she brings forward a new way of looking at everyday life, which is already a major achievement, she also offers a conceptual resolution to a classical unresolved opposition between the individual and the collective, and between idiosyncratic psychology (subjectivity) and collective modes of thinking, through a challenging debate on what makes one a member of a group and yet radically distinct from all others. The ethnography in her book Affliction stands on three major pillars: The first is the ethnographer’s subjective position in the field regarding the issues of lives, testimony, and research. The second is the neighborhood as the site of fieldwork, with all of its heterogeneity, rather than the group, such as an ethnic or racial group or one cohering around another criterion of belonging. The third and final pillar is the focus on the ordinary through ethnography of the everyday. I then illustrate Veena Das’s perspective on subjectivity with my own fieldwork with survivors of the Cambodian genocide.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-92
Author(s):  
José Edilson Amorim

ResumoA partir de uma crônica de Bráulio Tavares, este artigo reflete sobre cenas da precariedade de ontem e de hoje. A primeira cena está em Lima Barreto, em Recordações do escrivão Isaías Caminha, ao referir a Revolta da Vacina no Rio de Janeiro do século XX, comparada às manifestações de 2013 e 2014 no país; a segunda é a espetacularização da mídia sobre as manifestações de rua em 2013 e 2014, e sobre o processo de impedimento do mandato presidencial de Dilma Rousseff em 2015; a terceira é uma cena da vida cotidiana de uma moça de Brasília em outubro de 2014. As três situações revelam o mundo da classe trabalhadora e seu desamparo em meio ao espetáculo midiático.Palavras-chave: Trabalho. Mídia. Política. Espetáculo. AbstractFrom a chronicle by Bráulio Tavares, this paper reflects about scenes of the precariousness of yesterday and today. The first scene is in Lima Barreto’s novel Recordações do escrivão Isaías Caminha (Memories of the scrivener Isaías Caminha), when referring to the Vaccine Revolt in the Rio de Janeiro of the 20th century, compared to the manifestations of 2013 and 2014 in Brazil; the second is about the media spectacularization of the street manifestations between 2013 e 2014 in Brazil, and also on Dilma Rousseff's impeachment process in 2015; the third one is from the everyday life of a girl from Brasília in October of 2014. All those three situations reveal the world of the working class and its helplessness in the face of the media spectacularization.Keywords: Work. Media. Politics. Spectacle.


Author(s):  
Michael P. Roller

The conclusion revisits the three major inquiries addressed in the text, drawing together the evidence and contexts provided in the previous seven chapters. The first investigates the role of objective settings, such as the systemic and symbolic violence of landscapes and semiotic systems of racialization in justifying or triggering moments of explicit subjective violence such as the Lattimer Massacre. The second inquiry, traces the trajectory of immigrant groups into contemporary patriotic neoliberal subjects. In other terms, it asks how an oppressed group can become complicit with oppression later in history. The third inquiry traces the development of soft forms of social control and coercion across the longue durée of the twentieth century. Specifically, it asks how vertically integrated economic and governmental structures such as neoliberalism and governmentality which serve to stabilize the social antagonisms of the past are enunciated in everyday life.


Author(s):  
John Emsley

Mercury is not a particularly promising homicidal poison, but it is possible to dispose of someone by feeding them mercury(II) chloride provided you disguise its metallic taste. In the 1800s solutions of corrosive sublimate, as it was then called, were used as an antiseptic and as an insecticide against bedbugs, and its very availability resulted in thousands of poisonings being reported to the health authorities, although these were mainly accidents or as a result of its being taken deliberately in order to procure an abortion. Mercury was not a poison to feature in many murder cases because it was so easily detectable by the intended victims, especially if they started to vomit, which they almost always did. Then the metallic taste became particularly noticeable, and the presence of mercury could easily be confirmed by simple analytical tests. The poisoners who chose mercury had to use a large dose and this would kill within a day or two. Despite these inherent drawbacks, a few poisoners made use of it. Two of the murderers whose cases we are about to analyse opted for the large single dose approach, but the third murderer achieved her ends by targeting her victim with multiple doses. That murder became famous because of whom she killed and the political repercussions it caused. It was also notorious for the manner in which the final fatal dose of poison was administered. Mary Bateman was known as the Yorkshire Witch and she had a plan that she thought would lead her victims into taking a fatal single dose of mercury. Instead it led her to the gallows. At the time of her crime, Bateman lived in Leeds, Yorkshire, where she earned her living telling fortunes and swindling gullible clients out of their cash and possessions. She claimed to receive her supernatural information from a spirit medium, a Miss Blythe, into whose mouth she put the advice that always seemed to result in her clients handing over their money and saleable goods, with the promise that if they did as Miss Blythe said, then good luck would soon come their way, and they would be more than compensated.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document