Reflections in the River: Kālidāsa’s Letters to Dignāga
Reflections in the River: A Clash of Knowing and the Crisis of Recognition – Shaily Mudgal In Reflections in the River (Kālidāsa’s Letters to Dignāga), Rajiv Mudgal crafts an imagined dialogue between two titans of Indian thought: Kālidāsa, the poet of luminous immediacy, and Dignāga, the logician of meticulous analysis. Through a series of fictional letters, Mudgal explores a timeless tension—between poetic sight, which grasps meaning as an indivisible whole, and logical dissection, which constructs it piece by piece. This philosophical struggle, set against the metaphorical river dividing their shores, is not merely an intellectual exercise but an urgent warning for our modern world, where fragmentation threatens to sever us from true recognition. The book opens with a haunting poem that establishes its emotional tone: Like a cloud torn from the sky, Drifting lone with a muted cry, So my heart in silence breaks, Severed from the love it wakes. Scorn not this frail and anguished...