Sunday Long Reads: Pandit Bhimsen Joshi’s life story, Christopher Alexander’s timeless architecture, Saeed Naqvi’s The Muslim Vanishes, and more

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What makes Christopher Alexander’s vision of architecture timeless?

If the scientist in Alexander was deeply concerned about the state of this planet, the artist in him wanted to make the world beautiful for living

Christopher Alexander, architect-writer, mathematician, and scientist, who passed away on March 17, at the age of 85, at his Sussex home, symbolised a life of conviction that architecture was not obsessive, indulgent form-making but could bring wholeness of life, full of beauty, through its act.

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And Then There Were None: Veteran journalist Saeed Naqvi’s The Muslim Vanishes imagines India without its Muslim population

Half a world: Muslims offering namaz at the Fatehpuri mosque in Chandni Chowk, Old Delhi (Source: Express Archive)

Imagine what will happen if one fine morning India wakes up to its 200 million Muslims having vanished. Not only Muslim people, but their sculptures, their literature, their culture, their language — all gone — poof, into thin air!

Saeed Naqvi’s new play, The Muslim Vanishes, explores just that.

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Dr Saroja Balan’s It’s Your Baby is essential reading for every new parent

It’s Your Baby: The Indian Parent’s Guide to the First Two Years; By Dr Saroja Balan; HarperCollins; 428 pages; Rs 499 (Photo: Amazon.in)

Disclaimers first: Like many south Delhi parents, I shored up at Dr Saroja Balan’s chamber 10 days after giving birth, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep and panicky at the rapid weight loss that my nearly-4-kg-at-birth baby seemed to be undergoing. The clutter of information on the internet and from older parents were adding to our bewilderment — a little bit of weight loss was par for the course it seemed, but how much was just enough and not too much? And, more worryingly, was a “big” baby actually a sign of neonatal diabetes, as some had pointed out?

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In his book JNU: Nationalism and India’s Uncivil War, professor Makarand R Paranjape fails to understand the essential irreverence that characterises the premier university

The Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. (File)

Jawaharlal Nehru University is an idea which is dreamy and irreverent, challenges the stereotypes, breaks traditional moorings, is Leninist in its thought process but Gandhian in ethos and that makes it mystical and intriguing, and, in certain ways, spiritual. For an outsider, JNU is intimidating but for someone who has lived on the campus as a student, not as a teacher, JNU is endearing. I know this because I spent eight glorious years on campus as a student and I was not a communist. And, of course, neither was I an anti-national.

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Rebuilding Lives: In their book Muzaffarnagar Diaries, Sandeep Virmani and Tanvi Choudhari outline how those displaced in the 2013 riots were rehabilitated through a multi-institutional project

Muzaffarnagar Diaries: Post-riot Resettlement Story; By Sandeep Virmani and Tanvi Choudhari; Hunnarshala Foundation for Building Technology and Innovations; 159 pages; Rs 900 (Source: Amazon.in)

Muzaffarnagar Diaries outlines its aim to foreground ways in which responsive rehabilitation could be served, with Muzaffarnagar as a template. In 2013, a riot in the area displaced several individuals and they were struck with a choice to return to their devastated homes with memories of violence or resettle elsewhere.

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Who can horrify with its giggle or make you nervous with its howl?

Pied Starlings (Mynas) deep in conversation (Credit: Ranjit Lal)

How far do the sounds animals make – their calls, growls, screams, shrieks et al reflect their characters and personalities? Here we’ll take a wide-spectrum sampling of animals and see if their vocalizations match their looks and characters; happy listening!

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