It’s a busy day, but there’s time for a few quick links:

India Today might have knocked the Godfather off their list of the 50 most powerful people in India, but he’s making a bit of a splash over in Canada. Way down at the end of this report is the most interesting line: speculation that David Davidar’s just passing through Toronto en route to taking over Penguin USA. Yeah, yeah, there’s a denial on the record.

From the New Deals section at Publisher’s Lunch:

Indian filmmaker Mira Nair’s (Salaam Bombay, Monsoon Wedding) memoir, exploring the relationship between her

art and her life through the prism of her rather multi-faceted identity–as film director; as Indian, as wife,

mother, daughter and sister–and as a woman who has defied certain traditions to pursue her dreams, to Jane

Lawson at Transworld/Doubleday in the UK (world English), with Nan Talese to publish in the US…

More on Tagore’s medal:

Amartya Sen says remember the man’s ideals and gently explains why the theft does not qualify as a “national crisis”.

And the 1913 presentation speech makes for interesting, if disturbing, reading:

“The true inwardness of this work is

most clearly and purely revealed in the efforts exerted in the Christian

mission-field throughout the world. In times to come, historical inquirers

will know better how to appraise its importance and influence, even

in what is at present hidden from our gaze and where no or only

grudging recognition is accorded. They will undoubtedly form a higher

estimate of it than the one now deemed fitting in many quarters.

Thanks to this movement, fresh, bubbling springs of living water have been

tapped, from which poetry in particular may draw inspiration, even though

those springs are perhaps intermingled with alien streams, and whether

or not they be traced to their right source or their origin be attributed to

the depths of the dreamworld. More especially, the preaching of the Christian

religion has provided in many places the first definite impulse toward a

revival and regeneration of the vernacular language, i.e., its liberation

from the bondage of an artificial tradition, and consequently also toward

a development of its capacity for nurturing and sustaining a

vein of living and natural poetry.” (N.B.)

India’s on the Borders menu.

In which it is proved that The Believers are just like the rest of us, only miles better at networking.

“To point out these connections, as well as noting in passing some of the multifarious examples of in-breeding and insouciant log-rolling (Heidi Julavits, Vendela Vida’s co-editor at the Believer, is married to Ben Marcus; Ben Marcus interviews George Saunders in the current issue; George Saunders nominates Ben Marcus as one of his favourite writers in a recent interview and puffs a new Julavits book – ‘a terrific and important addition to our literature’; Hornby puffs a new collection of stories by Vendela Vida’s good friend and recently -anointed true Believer, Julie Orringer, as well as talking up the latest novel by friend-of-the-magazine, Jonathan Lethem …) is to risk being branded a ‘snark’.” No, actually, to point out these connections is taken as evidence that you don’t have a coterie of your own. Or a big book contract. Or that you’re just envious. Take your pick; that crew has no trouble explaining away anything they don’t like.