Search
You searched for articles ...
I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china.
Oscar Wilde, 1874
As an aesthete Wilde surrounded himself with beautiful objects. This epigram from his Oxford days paid tribute to and satirised the Victorian craze for the exotic. At Oxford University Wilde was introduced to the culture of aesthetes by art critic and philanthropist John Ruskin whose writings on craft also influenced William Morris.
Wardlipari is the homeriver in the Milky Way.
Purlirna kardlarna ngadluku miyurnaku yaintya tikkiarna.
The stars are the fires of people living there. Yurarlu yurakauwi trruku-ana padninthi Wardlipari.
Yurakauwi the rainbow serpent goes into the dark spots in the Milky Way.
Ngaiyirda karralika kawingka tikainga yara kumarninthi.
When the outer world and the sky connect with the water the two become one.
Sanjay Kak Tell me about that first cup of nun chai in Kashmir, that first conversation. Were you prepared for what you were to encounter?
Alana Hunt My first cup of nun chai was actually in Delhi in the home of a Kashmiri artist friend. I initially came to Delhi, with the support of the Australia Council, as an artist in residence with the Sarai Programme, after which I pursued studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University. During my first few weeks in the city I came across a small flyer for a screening of a film about the Safar-i-Azadi (Journey to Freedom) campaign led by the pro-independence leader and former armed fighter Yasin Malik. SAR Geelani was also there, and I learnt that he had already spent several years on death row in connection with the attack on the Indian Parliament, for which he was eventually acquitted. At the same time, protesting in the streets outside were the Hindu group Roots in Kashmir, wholly opposed to the idea of Kashmiri self-determination. I was new to Delhi, but from that point confronted with the multilayered tensions surrounding India’s occupation of Kashmir. It led me to the book The Strange Case of the Attack on the Indian Parliament, and your film Jashn-e-Azadi (How we Celebrate Freedom).
As people walk down that little wharf towards the canoe, I hope they remember how it was back in the day and how our old ancestors used to live and survive. And I want them to think back and imagine if they can, the women out in the canoes, and what it would have looked like and how beautiful it would have looked like with the fires going and we must not forget them, our ancestors. They were some special people. Because all the thousands of years they lived here says it all. It just says it all, how powerful and strong they were. And survivors… still survivors today.
Phyllis Stewart
