{"podcast":{"title":"New Books in South Asian Studies","slug":"new-books-in-south-asian-studies-313341","podcast_index_feed_id":313341,"rss_url":"https://feeds.megaphone.fm/LIT2660294853","website_url":"https://newbooksnetwork.com","image_url":"https://megaphone.imgix.net/podcasts/ce63f172-ee9f-11e8-9c82-9fa3a8de8305/image/27e3068860a1d01d7bc195aa869ebc16.png?ixlib=rails-4.3.1&max-w=3000&max-h=3000&fit=crop&auto=format,compress","author":"New Books Network","episode_count":1412,"summary":"This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies","last_synced_at":"2026-07-01T18:21:58.994390+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-south-asian-studies-313341"},"episode":{"title":"Amrita Chowdhury and Ujaan Ghosh trans., \"Baidehisha Bilasa: The Amorous Plays of Sita’s Husband\" (Wide Open Window Books, 2025)","slug":"amrita-chowdhury-and-ujaan-ghosh-trans-baidehisha-bilasa-the-amorous-plays-of-sita-s-husband-wide-open-window-books-2025","published_at":"2026-06-04T08:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-south-asian-studies-313341/amrita-chowdhury-and-ujaan-ghosh-trans-baidehisha-bilasa-the-amorous-plays-of-sita-s-husband-wide-open-window-books-2025","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-south-asian-studies-313341","url":"https://traffic.megaphone.fm/NBNK2382093859.mp3","audio_url":"https://traffic.megaphone.fm/NBNK2382093859.mp3","summary":"Amrita Chowdhury and Ujaan Ghosh bring into English for the first time a long-inaccessible masterpiece of South Asian literature Baidehisha Bilasa: The Amorous Plays of Sita’s Husband (2025). Composed in the late seventeenth century by Upendra Bhanja — the Odia prince-poet hailed as Kavi Samrat, the Emperor of Poets — the work is a Ramayana that privileges shringara, the erotic sentiment, over martial heroism. Rama-the-lover overshadows Rama-the-warrior, and his conjugal life with Sita takes center stage in a poem dense with puns, classical ragas, and chitrapadya — word-arrangements that resolve into wheels, chariots, and arrows on the page. Famously, every verse begins with the letter ba, and the text has long been considered untranslatable. With a preface by Wendy Doniger, Chowdhury and Ghosh's decade-long translation preserves the strangeness and sensuality of the original while opening it to a new readership. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies","meta_description":"Amrita Chowdhury and Ujaan Ghosh bring into English for the first time a long-inaccessible masterpiece of South Asian literature Baidehisha Bilasa: The A…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":3275,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/new-books-in-south-asian-studies-313341/episodes/amrita-chowdhury-and-ujaan-ghosh-trans-baidehisha-bilasa-the-amorous-plays-of-sita-s-husband-wide-open-window-books-2025/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-south-asian-studies-313341/amrita-chowdhury-and-ujaan-ghosh-trans-baidehisha-bilasa-the-amorous-plays-of-sita-s-husband-wide-open-window-books-2025.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}