Murty Library aims to publish new editions of great Indian literature from 20 languages

Listen to this woman speak: “The hairs on my head were once curly,/ black like the colour of bees./ Now because of old age/ they are like jute.” Feature by feature, she itemises a once-gorgeous but now-dilapidated body, “like an old house, the plaster falling down”. She even drags wry humour from this litany of decline: “Once, my breasts were beautiful,/ full, round, close together, high./ Now, they sag down/ like empty water bags made of leather.” But no complaints, and no regrets, since “it’s just as the Buddha, the speaker of truth, said”.