Venkat Rajan's Books

The Mud Elephant

By: Venkat Rajan

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Veeran, a ten-year-old boy, is caught in the vicious cycle of poverty and prejudice. He lives in Varambiam, an obscure village in southern Tamil Nadu, India, subjected to caste distinctions and tending to the everyday chores of the village Zamindar. The village chief however, has now lost all his wealth and faded into oblivion. Bala, the ten-year-old grandson of the patriarch, visits the village house to escape the squalid ghetto and travails of daily living faced by his family in the big city, Chennai. Bala finds a friend in Veeran, in Sevapan the family steer who is deaf, in Tiger – the dog who is the stolid guardian of the family, and in Joseph – the railway gatekeeper with his utopian socialist leanings. Bala silently witnesses the consequences of his family’s hubristic past and the state of ignominy the village head is pushed into. The boys of Varambiam share important life lessons and make a secret wish. Bala, now a grown man, has moved to Mumbai with his wife. Will he ever meet with Veeran again? Will their secret wish come true? “Venkat Rajan paints a colorful vignette in ‘The Mud Elephant’. A distinct Indian coloring at it. The tone is humorous, detached and ironic. Rajan as a raconteur, actually unfolds a Dickensian narrative, providing a social context and an amazing feel for his characters.” Joy Augustine, Filmmaker

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Page Count

386

Publisher

Notion Press

ISBN 10

9384391409

ISBN 13

9789384391409

At the Limits of Cure

By: Bharat Jayram Venkat

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At the Limits of Cure

By: Bharat Jayram Venkat

Drawing on historical and ethnographic research on tuberculosis in India, Bharat Jayram Venkat explores what it means to be cured and what it means for a cure to be partial, temporary, or selectively effective.

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305

Publisher

Duke University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1478014725

ISBN 13

9781478014720

Finding Vishnugupta

By: VENKAT SUBRAMANIAN

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Finding Vishnugupta

By: VENKAT SUBRAMANIAN

An insecure and domineering boss, suspected of abetting his colleague’s attempted suicide, is surprised by the meaningful lessons he receives on managing people from a police constable while waiting to be interrogated. The man who attempted suicide, while recuperating in the hospital, listens to some insightful advice on dealing with situations in life, responsibility for one’s actions and leadership from a young doctor, a medical intern. Impetus Software loses five deals in a row and many of its employees to Greyspace Technologies and this does not seem normal. Was there any sabotage involved? The Human Resource Head of Greyspace, smarting under the insult of the proprietor of a recruitment firm, is angry and resentful until a chance encounter with a management consultant leaves him wiser. The constable, doctor and management consultant all have two things in common. All of them sport a tuft at the back of their heads and go by the name ‘Vishnugupta.’ Who is Vishnugupta? What happens in the lives of the men and women working in the two software companies?

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Page Count

177

Publisher

Notion Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1647835690

ISBN 13

9781647835699

Cultures of Memory in South Asia

Orality, Literacy and the Problem of Inheritance

By: D. Venkat Rao

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Cultures of Memory in South Asia

Orality, Literacy and the Problem of Inheritance

By: D. Venkat Rao

Culture of Memory in South Asia reconfigures European representations of India as a paradigmatic extension of a classical reading, which posits the relation between text and context in a determined way. It explores the South Asian cultural response to European “textual” inheritances. The main argument of this work is that the reflective and generative nodes of Indian cultural formations are located in the configurations of memory, the body and idiom (verbal and visual), where the body or the body complex becomes the performative effect and medium of articulated memories. This work advances its arguments by engaging with mnemocultures-cultures of memory that survive and proliferate in speech and gesture. Drawing on Sanskrit and Telugu reflective sources, this work emphasizes the need to engage with cultural memory and the compositional modes of Indian reflective traditions. This important and original work focuses on the ruptured and stigmatised resources of heterogeneous Indian traditions and calls for critical humanities that move beyond the colonially configured received traditions. Cultures of Memory suggests the possibilities of transcultural critical humanities research and teaching initiatives from the Indian context in today’s academy.

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346

Publisher

Springer Science & Business

Published Date

ISBN 10

8132216989

ISBN 13

9788132216988

Performative Reflections of Indian Traditions

Towards a Liveable Learning

By: D. Venkat Rao

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Performative Reflections of Indian Traditions

Towards a Liveable Learning

By: D. Venkat Rao

This book focuses on the cohering elements across various texts and traditions of India. It engages with several significant works from the Sanskrit tradition and emphasizes the need to move beyond colonial and postcolonial engagements with the enduring cultural pasts of India. The chapters are grouped in three main parts: accented rhythms, dispersed mnemoscapes and inventive iterations. It addresses questions such as: what enabled cultural communication across very divergent geographical, temporal, locational contexts and among different cultural formations of India over millennia? What is this shareable impulse that pulsates across the domains of dance, sculpture, painting, poetry, dharma, music, medicine, the lore of rivers and the epics? It explains how modern Indian languages and especially their creative and reflective nodes are unthinkable without the intricately woven textures of these interfaces and their responsive receptions. This book is of interest to philosophers, humanities students, researchers and professors as well as people interested in exploring alternatives to European traditions of thought without an alibi.

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Page Count

273

Publisher

Springer Nature

Published Date

ISBN 10

9811623910

ISBN 13

9789811623912

India, Europe and the Question of Cultural Difference

The Apeiron of Relations

By: D. Venkat Rao

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India, Europe and the Question of Cultural Difference

The Apeiron of Relations

By: D. Venkat Rao

This volume critically engages with the question of cultural difference and the idea of living with diversity in the context of India and Europe. It looks at certain essential European categories of learning such as art, nature, the human, literature, relation, philosophy, and the humanities and analyses texts from Sanskrit language (through Telugu resources) to argue that categories like prakriti, loka, jati, dharma, karma, sahitya, kala,etc. cannot be conflated with conceptual formations such as nature, world, caste, religion, (sanctioned) action, literature and art respectively. The book questions and unravels the efficacy of European concepts, theories and interpretive frames in understanding Indian reflective traditions and cultural forms. It also lays the groundwork for reorienting teaching and research in universities in the humanities on the basis of key cultural differences. By focusing on major themes in the humanities discourse and their limitations, the work engages with the writings of Heidegger, Derrida and Agamben, among others, from radically new vantage points of Sanskrit-Indian reflective traditions, and challenges prevailing ideas about Indian art, literature and culture. Part of the Critical Humanities Across Cultures series, this book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of Indian languages and literature, comparative literature, art and aesthetics, postcolonial studies, cultural and heritage studies, philosophy, political philosophy, comparative philosophy, Sanskrit studies, India studies, South Asian studies, Global South studies, and for those working on education in the humanities/human sciences.

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Page Count

189

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Published Date

ISBN 10

1000422372

ISBN 13

9781000422375

Book's by Venkat Rajan

The Mud Elephant

The Mud Elephant

At the Limits of Cure

At the Limits of Cure

Finding Vishnugupta

Finding Vishnugupta

Cultures of Memory in South Asia

Cultures of Memory in South Asia

Performative Reflections of Indian Traditions

Performative Reflections of Indian Traditions

India, Europe and the Question of Cultural Difference

India, Europe and the Question of Cultural Difference

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