The recent issue of the Swedish literary magazine Ord och Bild (no 3/2009) focuses on the city of Gothenburg, on Sweden’s west coast. Great reading, especially the humorous adaptations of well-known literature into a Gothenburg setting. The Swedish writer Zac O’Yeah living with his Indian poet wife Anjum Hassan in Bangalore, has chosen R K Narayan’s famous short story ”Vendor of Sweets” and transferred the story into modern-day Gothenburg, Sweden. The story is now entitled ”Kioskägarens son”. Be sure to buy a copy of Ord and Bild in order to read Zac’s text. http://www.tidskriftenordobild.se/

By the way, Zac was supposed to come to Lund on September 10th to participate in SASNET’s seminar on Mahatma Gandhi (along with the British researcher David Arnold). More information about the seminar is found on our web page, http://www.sasnet.lu.se/gandhiseminar.html

It is holiday time in Sweden. Still I am working at SASNET’s office at Ideon in Lund, but only for a week to update the information on our extensive website. Also planning for a journey to Stockholm in the beginning of August to meet the Ambassadors of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, as part of our efforts to secure a continuation of SASNET after 31 December 2009 when our current funding from Sida dries up.

A few weeks ago I was also in Stockholm along with my wife Bubu to participate in a grand Indian wedding ceremony. Patrick Saha from Västerås (with a Bangladeshi father and Polish mother) married to Piali Basu from Huskvarna (from an Indian Bengali family). It was a nice reminder of my own fantastic wedding 26 years ago in Kolkata, the greatest and nicest experience of my life with the Hindu wedding procedures that lasted for a full three days. 

Well, totally different, tomorrow I will set out for a week-long cycle tour in Germany, along the rivers Oder and Neisse (border rivers between Germany and Poland) down to Dresden, along with my close friend Reinhard from Bielefeld. Naturally I will not bring my laptop on such an expedition, so there will be no blog postings during the coming week.

Welcome to SASNET Today, my new blog that may focus on my day-to-day activities as deputy director/webmaster with the Swedish South Asian Studies Network, but probably deal more with my extramural South Asia/India related activities in Sweden and elsewhere.

Actually I was persuaded to start this blog by Dr. Jan Magnusson, researcher at the School of Social Work, Lund University. He was one of the founding fathers of SASNET, working closely with Staffan Lindberg in the initial phase of the network building in 2000-2001. Your input is of course most welcome.

The accompanying portrait was shot at the reception that the Embassy of India organised (with my active assistance) at Hipp in Malmö on May 14th 2009. A wonderful event to which a large section of the Indian community in Malmö and Lund had been invited along with people from academia, business, politics and culture.