#TSOTA (The Stories Of The Anonymous) --- SynTalk

Who are you? Would you like to have a new name? Were there many Kalidasas? Have you ever been with a mountain? Does your family have recorded history? Why are authors often anonymous in ancient Indian texts? Is the desire to be known akin to the desire for immortality? What is the name for India in Sanskrit? When do names of specific individuals begin to emerge in archaeological artefacts? Did the devadasis lead creative lives? Do (only) dominant elites name and judge the anonymous non-elites? Which communities are anonymous in the history books? Does language constrain our inner lives? Did the British hunt differently from the indigenous people? Can material fragments or memory be tangible sources for history? Are all collectives eventually a part of Nature or the Divine? Is there something beyond the Self and the Other? When do anthropology and history intersect? Why do we sometimes surrender to become anonymous? Is the contemporary idea of fame temporally short sighted? Is Bangalore Nagarathnamma here now? Is it time to de-anonymize animals and other non-humans? &, can there be an archaeology of life where both ordinary and the extraordinary meet? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using ideas and concepts from anthropology & philosophy (Prof. Ananta Kumar Giri, MIDS, Chennai), & history (Prof. Aloka Parasher-Sen, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad). Listen in...