LIFE AND LITERATURE

  THE LAST LABYRINTH                                                           -ARUN JOSHI             Indian English Fiction is now being studied and discussed in the entire English speaking world by those interested in the Indian sub-continent or in non-native Englishes, and by linguists for its thematic and stylist Indianness, At least half a dozen Indian English novelists have created a small but slowly increasing international reading public for themselves, e.g. Mulk Raj Anand, Anita Desai, Manohar Malgonkar, Kamla Markandaya, R.K.Narayan, Raja Rao, Khushwant Singh and Nayantara Sahgal. The writers express themselves through various themes, culture, tradition, myths, images, symbols and indigenous language.             Arun Joshi is one of the most distinguished Indian English novelists. His novel The Last Labyrinth is unrivaled in the treatment of Indian ethos based on Hindu philosophy as told in the pious scriptures of the Upnishads and the Gita. The novel deals with a man

  THE HARP OF INDIA                                                                                                             -HENRY DEROZIO Introduction: “ The Harp of India ” is a  well-known patriotic poem by Derozio  who is known as the first  Indian poet in English . It is in the form of a  Shakespearean sonnet  which has three quatrains and a couplet at the end of the poem. It deals with the pathetic plight of the people of India who were under the clutches of the cruel and callous administration of the British rule. It is a poem written at the time when the poets never expressed their  patriotic views  in a direct way. Perhaps this is why the poem, right from the beginning, up to the end, tacitly airs the views of  patriotism  through the medium of some beautiful metaphors and connotations. Metaphor: The  poem begins with the  metaphor  of a withered flower on a withered bough. The poet imagines the wretched and miserable condition of India to a withered bough. The