Literature transcends time. Here’s looking at old writing in new contexts

Literature transcends time. Amitava Kumar looks at old writing in new contexts.

The poet Arun Kolatkar, author of a stunning book, Jejuri, also wrote poems in the language of Mumbai’s streets, the rough mix of Marathi and Hindi that would later find a flowering in Bollywood films.

Play on words: In his poetry, Arun Kolatkar (below) turned Bombay patois into American English. I learned his experiment from the poet Arvind Krishna Mehrotra (above), who infused Kabir’s verses with American slang. (Photo: Pradeep Gaur/Mint)

Words and pictures: I watched a performance of Antigone with Juliette Binoche in the title role. The play is two millennia old but on stage everything was modern. (Julieta Cervantes/The New York Times) (NYT)

The king with a dream: In his play Tughlaq, Girish Karnad used the fourteenth-century sultan as a device to comment on the disillusionment of his generation.