Chit-chat-lit

On Killing a Tree: Summary - JS. N (04/12/2022) Gieve Patel the author of the poem On Killing a Tree is a Poet, Playwright and Painter by passion and a Doctor by profession. He had published three books of poetry as Poems (1966), How do you withstand, Body (1976) and Mirrored Mirroring (1991). The poem ‘On Killing a Tree’ is one of the poems from his poetry collection named ‘Poems’. This collection was launched by Nissim Ezekiel. Being a part of “Green Movement”, he entitled himself to protect the environment. As a result of this he had exhibited his concern through poetry. Most of Patel’s poems centre on exposing man’s cruelty towards nature and his concern towards it. ‘On Killing a Tree,’ too, is one such poem. The poem is set on a visual plane. The descriptions are vivid, and the mood is sad, expressing the pain felt by the trees, as imagined by Patel. The poem tries to convey the fact that trees have life and cutting down a tree is an actual process of killing it. The poet makes s

Grading down Plastics - JS.N (04/12/2022) The article “Grading down Plastics'' brings out the necessary information about plastics which every individual should be aware of. The day to day usage of plastics has turned out to be indispensable. Right from the mobile phone to a small tag in a dress are made out of plastics. The basic requirements for a human being to survive are food, shelter and clothes, meanwhile the use of plastics is gradually becoming a need in this modern era.      Apart from the problem of decomposition and health hazards caused due to the use of plastics, there are certain challenges and complications involved in the process of down-cycling and in the mixing of different types of plastics together, also. Every time plastic is down-cycled, it delivers a lower grade and the chemical synthetics used will makes the whole process toxic and hazardous. The article presents four important concepts to manage plastics as:  Identifying the resin code to sort out and

The Urban-Rural Divide - JS.N (04/12/2022) Sudhish Kamath, a resident of Chennai had written this newspaper article, describing the urban and rural division between the interior city of Chennai and the outskirts of Chennai. The vast difference which he had experienced within a half an hour travel outside the city limits, made him come up with such an article. He eventually distincts his views about being in a rural area as The bad stuff and The good stuff. He enlists the good and bad stuffs as follows: The bad stuff: Power cuts - 12-16 hour  The power crisis, Sudhish mocks the working reality of the government. He tries to bring out the helplessness of the government in resolving the issue with electricity by stating “We've now invested in an inverter and might need help from a generator or solar power if the situation continued”.  Traffic - Two hours less a day  No matter what mode of transport people use, everybody will be spending two hours in traffic to work and back from work.

Beware the loss of biodiversity - Prof. P. J. Sanjeeva Raj Beware the loss of biodiversity - JS.N  (04/12/2022) Beware the loss of biodiversity, a newspaper article published in The Hindu by Prof. P. J. Sanjeeva Raj in 2012. It is about the declining biodiversity and the non-commitment of human’s actions in preserving it. Biodiversity is a term used to describe all the species in one region or ecosystem. Biodiversity refers to every living thing, including plants, bacteria, animals, and humans. It provides all basic needs for healthy survival including oxygen, food, medicines, fibre, fuel, energy, fertilisers, fodder and waste-disposal, etc.  Prof. P. J. Sanjeeva Raj in his article had pointed out the importance of preserving biodiversity. He tries to make people aware of the greater threat which mankind will face due to the loss of biodiversity by quoting Professor Edward O. Wilson's views on biodiversity. According to Professor Edward O. Wilson, this continuing loss of biodiversi

Digging by Seamus Heaney: Poem Summary JS.N  (2/09/2019) Digging Digging by Seamus Heaney was first published in 1966 in his poetry collection, Death of a Naturalist. He deals with the themes of root consciousness and respect to the ancestors in this poem. At the beginning of the poem, the speaker is sitting at his desk with a pen that is resting in his hand. He compares the pen to the gun with the use of simile.  “Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests as snug as gun." The speaker implies that he has been digging with the pen which is as powerful as the gun. Suddenly he is diverted by the continuous sound of digging outside by his father. His father is digging potato field with the help of spades. He travels back to his past, as he digs into his memories, he finds the tradition of digging in both his father and grandfather. Ultimately, the speaker comes back to the present being ready for the writing. He proudly declares that his father was the d

Difference between Literature and History: A short view on What a Literature can be -JS.N (10/03/2019) Literature is creative and history is merely a factual. Most of historical writing thus tend to be half history. Either conscious neglect will be there or exageration. So creativity comes in. Justifying foregrounding needs creative portrayal. Lot of selection goes in to writing history. What data to include, what to foreground, what is the motto behind writing that history are all the factors that rest with the author. Both the subjects are inter-related in the sense that literature deals with the past, as in stream of consiousness, counter factual imaginations, memoires, travelogues, biography...  And any day we will prefer reading an interesting history book than a collection of facts. So writing style and diction does play a role. For that matter, any written script can be literature. Your grocery bill can tell me your culinary preferance, your financial status, y

The Looking Glass -Kamala Das  A review by JS N. (31/01/2019)  The Looking Glass is a poem from Kamala Das’s collections of poem entitled “The Descendants”. It is her second volume of poetry which deals with the Nihilism or Pessimism: “We are not going to be ever redeemed or made new ”. The Looking Glass is also included under the term nihilism. For she produced the poem in a sarcastic tone, mocking the cruelty of man towards his counterpart . The Looking Glass is a short lyrical poem of twenty four lines. It is spontaneously produced, that it contains no break in lines and there is no specified rhyme scheme or rhythm in these linked lines. However she introduced some simile and metaphor to draw the attention of her readers especially females .                          On getting into the title of the poem, “The Looking Glass” literally means “mirror”. But an analytical view of the title would recognize the word “glass” in itself means “mirror”, coming from its root