Seated on a park bench in the Mexican city of San Miguel de Allende, Bonita, a young language student from India, savours the scene: children playing around the bandstand, a wandering balloon seller, and the pigeons strutting and bowing to...
Here is a book which, as the author has rightly said, “pieces together fragments of history to bring the present into focus”. The intensity of intellectual labour that has made a work of this kind possible is simply amazing. In...
Little known in the history of Indian Independence and the subsequent integration of territories into the Union is the chapter on the liberation of Dadra and Nagar Haveli that lies on the western coast. What makes the episode remarkable is...
‘Hum Dono’ brings out the creative relationship between brothers Dev Anand and Vijay Anand
The protagonists in ‘Aunties of Vasant Kunj’ are united in their struggle to define their identities
Geetanjali Shree’s 'Our City, That Year', translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell, is her “most political book”
An excerpt from ‘A Wonderland of Words’ by Shashi Tharoor
In his new book, Shashi Tharoor takes readers on a tour of the words, concepts and particularities that constitute the wonderland of the English language. He demystifies punctuation, guides through the arcane rules of spelling and grammar, and explains a...
The wonderful new book by violin maestro L Subramaniam may be titled ‘Raga Harmony: Harmonic Structures and Tonalities in Indian Classical Music’, but it is as much about the differences between western and Indian classical music. The most prominent difference...
Reading Avinash Shrestha’s poetry is a mixed experience. The poet clamours to express the ineffable, yet he falters to redeem poetry from the black hole of metaphysics or theology. The inordinate desire to speak without making sounds is inherently impossible....
Three years at Aligarh Muslim University and addressing a senior as Aapa (elder sister) becomes a cultivated habit. One that continued when I shifted to Jamia Millia Islamia. So, the suffix even with a Jewish name like Gerda would not...
AT the reading of his play ‘Sabse Udaas Kavita’, organised by the Sahitya Akademi in New Delhi in 2002, Swadesh Deepak asked his audience, “If a play doesn’t relate to society, what use is it?” Only a few weeks earlier,...
Ravichandran Ashwin, intelligent and articulate, has produced an honest, deeply engaging book. The story of how a cricketer becomes a club cricketer — then a state and an India cricketer, a great match-winner — is never less than fascinating, and...
Even before you start reading the book, Sunitha Krishnan’s credentials and her work, listed on the backflap of her memoir, ‘I Am What I Am’, are quite impressive. Diminutive but fearless, Sunitha, a relentless crusader against sex trafficking, is the...
Life’s but a play of contrasts. Evil lurks around the good, apathy sours the taste of empathy and concern, trust is shattered by deceit and a bustling, glittering city can hide hideous secrets in its underbelly. It is around these...
Puran Devi was 19 years old and pregnant with her first child when her husband Lala Wasoo Mal was killed at the Jallianwala Bagh. In order that her pregnancy did not become a scandal, the fact that she was carrying...
Love the Dark Days by Ira Mathur. Speaking Tiger. Pages 246. Rs 599 Growing up in Bangalore, Poppet unconsciously imbibes the prejudices of class and race of her maternal grandmother. When the family migrates to the multicultural Trinidad, she encounters...
The Silk Route Spy: The True Story of an Indian Double Agent by Enakshi Sengupta. HarperCollins. Pages 209. ~299 ‘The Silk Route Spy’ is the true story of a pre-Independence era double agent. Throughout his life, Nandlal Kapur was weighed...
Sarabjeet Garcha’s translation of Marathi playwright Mahesh Elkunchwar’s genre-dissolving triptych ‘Tribandha’ as ‘The Necropolis Trilogy’ sparkles and flows like wine. It is a memoir, an essay in three parts, a reverie, a fable, a desire, and a melancholic erotic fulfilment....
Reading another book on Kabir, offering a fresh experience, is always a delight. Kabir, a poet and philosopher of early modern India, has long been explored through various academic and popular lenses across India’s diverse traditions. As a saint and...
With war come endless tales of gallantry and grit and instances of performance above and beyond the call of duty. Many are preserved for posterity, while some fade into eternity and heroes die unsung. Also, in the wake of military...
Katyal’s book on Safdar Hashmi is a reminder that no form of freedom is achieved without the consistent rigour of struggle and collective aspirations
Harvinder Khetal In ‘Round and Round the Persian Wheel’, Maninder Singh crafts a moving narrative set against the tumultuous backdrop of Partition, a period that forever altered the lives of millions. The book delves into the profound struggles of a...
Bindu Menon In George Orwell’s dystopian novel ‘1984’, the all-powerful Party designs a language “to diminish the range of thought” in the totalitarian state of Oceania. Newspeak, the language which replaces Oldspeak, is invented to stifle all modes of thought...
Mangifera Indica: A Biography of the Mango by Sopan Joshi. Aleph. Pages 408. Rs 799 Beyond the often told stories of obsessions of nawabs and rajas with mango and the breathless annual debates about the best mangoes in the world,...
Debashish Mukerji By now, it is manifestly clear that the Bhima Koregaon case, unfolding since 2018, is an indelible blot on India’s democratic record. Thirteen men and three women — most of them activists who had devoted their lives to...
Karan Mujoo There are cities of concrete and asphalt, intersections and landmarks, traffic signals and roundabouts, main roads and small alleys, posh neighbourhoods and cramped slums; and then there are cities of the mind — personal cities that are shape-shifting...
Using unconventional sources, Ira Mukhoty demonstrates that Awadh was not a land of poverty and decadence, as portrayed in British records