India Uncut
This blog has moved to its own domain. Please visit IndiaUncut.com for the all-new India
Uncut and bookmark it. The new site has much more content and some new sections, and you can read about them here and here. You can subscribe to full RSS feeds of all the sections from here.
This blogspot site will no longer be updated, except in case of emergencies, if the main site suffers a prolonged outage. Thanks - Amit.
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
More such lunatics
Bemoaning the state of Hampi, one described as "earth’s finest city," and today "a gigantic grafitti wall," and our apathy towards our heritage, Ashok Malik writes about the people who still care:
In Hampi, T.M. Keshava has spent a career tending to the ruins, so much so that his children in Bangalore tease him about his ‘‘other family’’. In Fathepur Sikri, the city Akbar built, works Munazzar Ali, a scrawny man with no personality till you see the electric eyes. Not yet 30, from a small town in Uttar Pradesh, he has spent the past year excavating a market and the equivalent of a civil hospital.Read the full piece.
In a time when people his age dream of answering other people’s queries in gleaming, air-conditioned towers, what compels Munazzar Ali to labour day after day under the baking sun, seeking his destiny in nameless rocks and stones, each with a story to tell. A colleagues calls it dewangee, lunatic passion.
The future of India’s past needs more such lunatics.
