Present Tense: Living on the Edge

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Present Tense: Living on the Edge is the culmination of the second annual Writers' Retreat organized in Mussoorie and Landour by Roli books and Namita Gokhale. The participants were from a cross-section of society-two politicians, a Bollywood lady-director and scriptwriter, a dream analyst, a famous general, a war-reporter, a respected administrator, an emotive painter, a cartoonist, a historian, a sociologist, and several media persons.

An anthology of essays, musings, fictional speculation, and visual art, Present Tense attempts to understand, discuss, sometimes define the difficult times we inhabit. Present Tense takes issues of ethnic identity, divisiveness, riots, hamara-tumhara, the insidious cycle of marginalization, alienation, anger and reprisal, beyond the sanitized constraints of media discourse into voices of real and visceral fears, of outrage, protest, and of hope.

From the Back of the Book

Do books, movies, philosophers really change the world? Do they alter human behaviour, which hasn't seemed to improve despite centuries of great literature and art…. No other species on this planet-except the proverbial ant-behaves so horribly. In the face of such lust for war, how can I Pontificate to others, or even convince myself that stories of love, justice, peace and heroism will actually transform the world into a better place? Yet, it's our eternal hope that someday these dreams will come true….

Tanuja Chandra