India Today – 9 March 2026 – India Today

It is, alongside, a perspective on literary and cultural circles in India and especially New Delhi in the 1960s as seen through the eyes of a percep- tive foreign observer. The Tree Within also has the great merit of providing a wide-angle perspective on the relationship between India and the Hispanic world—not something easily encountered in our Anglo-Saxon-domi- nated discourse. Finally, the book will be of special interest to many in India because Paz occupies an unusual, perhaps even unique, perch. Indranil Chakravarty points out: “It is difficult to find similar cases in our history when a major cre- ative figure from abroad drew inspiration from Indian culture for one’s own works over such an extended time.”

Paz would come to refer to India as the land where he had his ‘second birth’. But in his first interface with the coun- try, he disliked it intensely. In Mexico’s diplomatic service and with a growing reputa- tion as a poet he was posted to New Delhi in 1951 after a very creative and productive six years in Paris. He saw Delhi as a punishment, which it was.

Being a junior diplomat in Delhi in its set hierarchies at that time could be difficult. Paz was to write to a friend: “Here nobody is interested in art, nobody seems to have heard of Baudelaire and the word poetry means only Tagore.” Fortu- nately for him, the ordeal was brief as Paz was posted out in six months. A decade later, Paz was back and was to spend about six years as ambassador of Mexico.

His life here was im- mensely creative and some of his best-known works (The Monkey Grammarian, for CULTURAL MILIEU OF DELHI IN THE 1960s Chakravarty is not an uncritical admirer of Paz. For instance, he notes that on occasion Paz’s gaze would be somewhat ‘Orientalist in the Saidian sense’ instance) are the outcome of this pe- riod. Chakravarty sensitively brings out the personal and not so personal reasons for the change in Paz’s views about India and just how he grew so engaged with this country of posting.

His literary reputation en- hanced his political and diplomatic access in many ways. His friends circle in New Delhi is like a listing of the who’s who of Indian culture and art of the time: the painters Gulam Sheikh, Satish Gujral, Vivan Sundaram, J. Swaminathan; the writers Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand; editors like Romesh Thapar and By Indranil Chakravarty `699; 543 pages Sham Lal and many others.

rom the tip of Great Nicobar, Indonesia is only 140 km away. The Indian mainland, by contrast, lies at the end of a 1,600 km voyage. North of the Andaman, Myanmar is within 140 km; Thailand is 650 km due east. This play of distance and proximity has shaped the fate of this slim, boomerang- shaped archipelago. For millennia, secured against any disturbance, a unique ecological niche developed here. Evolution unfolded in a pristinely insular setting, yielding a bequest of flora and fauna found nowhere else on the planet.

This geographical setting is now also proving to be its bane. On February 16, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) cleared the Rs 81,000 crore Great Nicobar Island Project, a massive port-airport-township complex that could change the face of the island for good—or bad. The NGT cited “national importance” to rationalise its verdict. The seed idea, conceived by NITI Aayog in 2020, has am- bitious naval-strategic and commercial stakes built into it. India hopes to anchor itself astride what is often described as “the world’s busiest maritime highway”.

The environmental stakes, however, resist monetary valuation. The sanction is a qualified one, with a sieve of safegu ards. But even if the legal bat- tle fought by environmentalists like Ashish Kothari has not entirely been in vain, it does not quell their deep unease, shared in these days of violent climate change by ever-larger sections of the public. Both sides have strik- ing arguments. The project’s centrepiece is a Rs 44,000 crore international transhipment port in Galathea Bay.

The idea is seductive. Outside of Vizhinjam on the west coast, India doesn’t have deepwater ports and shells out over $200 million (Rs 1,800 crore) annually to Colombo and Singapore. Nicobar creates, literally out of the blue, a stra- tegic linchpin overlooking the Strait of Malacca. Besides servicing India, it eyes a vital maritime axis that conducts up to one-third of all global sea-borne trade by value.

Galathea’s 20-metre depth can handle the largest ‘mother ships’; they need to make near-zero deviation from their existing routes.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 107c6308ef9df5b4
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 58,680,244 bytes (55.962 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 131
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 194.37 minutes
• Total Words: 38,873
• Total Characters: 250,417
• Average Words per Page: 296.74
• Average Characters per Page: 1911.58

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