Madras Chennai And The Self Conversations With The City

In a metropolis where customs are paramount, humility essential, the evil-eye feared and showing-off considered distasteful, how do people navigate the streams of tradition and modernity? How does the self form a lasting equation with the city? Some do it with ease, some with effort, but they all have a special love for the city - for a tradition they find organic and lived; for the co-existence of various religions; for the distinct sense of community and neighbourhoods; for the spacious inner life. In Madras, Chennai and the Self: Conversations with the City, Tulsi Badrinath creates a layered image of Chennai by sifting through her memories, and by narrating the stories of those who call it home - the current Prince of Arcot, Dalit writer and activist P Sivakami, superstar Vikram and karate-expert K Seshadri, among others. In their words come alive key aspects of the city - the fine beaches along the Bay of Bengal, Fort St. George, coconut and mango trees, jasmine stalls, cricket fever, classical music and dance, the twin temptations of idli and dosai, temple crowds and radical political movements.

Chaturvedi Badrinath (1933‒2010), a recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award, 2009, for his work The Mahābhārata: An Inquiry in the Human Condition, was a passionate scholar of Indian philosophy, strikingly original in his approach. An Indian Administrative Service officer for 31 years, he delivered lectures on the concept of dharma and its application in modern times for which he drew extensively from the Mahabharata. In 1995, he was invited by The Times of India to contribute essays on Indian philosophy and thought. In the form of lucid discourses for the layperson, these dealt with dharma as the foundation of civilization. Ranging over perceptions of the self and the other; different ways of ordering society in Jainism, Islam, and Christianity; the paradox of sex; the roots of violence; and the quest for truth and peace, these essays gained wide acclaim and popularity. Badrinath’s daughter, Tulsi Badrinath, brings these essays together to present the reader with a book that explains the complex ideas of Indian philosophy in simple and accessible language.

Drawing from the work of academics and practitioners from ten states across the country, this edited volume showcases and synthesises the diversity and richness of efforts to understand and act on the social determinants of health in India, the conditions in which we are born, grow, live work and age. Such an effort is salient in the current era of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), which have foregrounded the issue of equity and the need for a comprehensive, multi-sectoral agenda for health and development. In India, particularly in the last decade, there have been myriad efforts to more critically theorise and intervene in areas with bearing on health, like conflict, nutrition or urbanisation, or to address the concerns of vulnerable groups like women, children and the elderly. From these efforts emerge lessons of convergence for academic and policymaking institutions in India who are looking to operationalise and bring life to the SDG agenda in India and other Low and Middle Income Country settings. The book comprises eleven chapters and six short commentaries that appear in conversation with each other, as well as an annexure of validated, ready-to-use indicators for monitoring of social determinants of health.

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Contributed article; published for the Chennai Chapter of Association of British Scholars.