Hira Mandi, the traditional red light quarter of Lahore, lives in the popular mindscape through its stories of longing, loss and 'mujras' after the Pakistan government clamped down on prostitution in the 1970s, says noted French writer Claudine Le Tourneur d'lson.
The Jaipur Literature Festival cancelled a video-link speech by Salman Rushdie minutes before it was scheduled to begin on Tuesday, amid death threats to the organisers and fears of violent riots at the event by Muslim groups.
Salman Rushdie's interaction with the audience via video link, scheduled for Tuesday, may be cancelled citing law and order concerns, a source in the police said. The organisers who had earlier announced the time and venue of the video interaction, -- 3.30 p.m. Tuesday at the front lawns of the festival venue Diggi Palace -- changed tack suddenly, and said Monday evening that they were yet to finalise the schedule.
On New Year's day, children in Colarodo woke up to celebrate the new year with an animation series made by Denver-based Indian American Manick Sorcar. The programme, which was aired for two hours on the PBS channel, has been running every year since 1992, making it a record of sorts.
– NEW YORK he Asian-American Legal Defense and Education Fund will honor journalist and TV host Fareed Zakaria with its 2012 Justice in Action Award at its annual Lunar New Year Gala on Feb. 8 at Pier Sixty at Chelsea Piers here. According to the AALDEF website, the awards recognize exceptional individuals for their outstanding achievements and contributions in advancing justice and equality.
For more than 40 years actor Martin Sheen has inhabited complex characters from the troubled Capt. Willard in the Vietnam film "Apocalypse Now" to U.S. President Josiah Bartlet on the hit TV drama "The West Wing." But for one of his latest projects, Sheen, 71, did not have to reach far. The devout Catholic narrated the audiobook of "Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World," a new book by the Dalai Lama.
Novelist Vikram Seth, who is writing a sequel to "A Suitable Boy", may not name his new book "A Suitable Girl" as everyone was led to believe. It could even be named "An Unsuitable Boy". "I wrote 'A Suitable Boy' many years ago and it was set in India in the early 1950s when the British had just left.
