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Volume 49 Number 3 March 2025
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Edited by Harish Trivedi

The first section presents A Passage to India through translations in various languages, and film and stage adaptations, thereby building a memorable montage that the novel inspires. The opening essay is by a novelist, Anjum Hasan, and begins delightfully with Forsterian language that a child heard from a Forster-devotee father and didn’t know what it meant! The personal and the political merge over time and the book gains complex meaning for Anjum even as the heavily marked pages are, by then, being carried around the parental home in a plastic bag (p.
12). From that, we move swiftly to a bilingual essay by Rupert Snell ‘On Translating A Passage into Hindi’ based on an experiment with six Indian translators that yielded an astonishing variety of ‘equivalent terminology’ even with the title of the book.


Reviewed by: Malashri Lal

Edited by Usha Akella

As Adil Jussawalla points out, Keki Daruwalla’s works are ‘as relevant today as when they were first published (in 1970)’ (p. 59). Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca relays, ‘Mature poetic talent…literary stamina, intellectual strength and social awareness’ (p. 72), even in the poet’s debut collection, left an impression on Nissim Ezekiel. The ‘caustic’ and ‘incisive’ writing (p. 105) that shapes much of the poet’s oeuvre,


Reviewed by: Shamayita Sen

Edited by Amit Chaudhuri

I was eventually drawn to novels through exceptional paragraphs cited in essays. By my late teens, I was probably more likely to read a piece of criticism about a work rather than the work itself. His insight about novels is something which hard working teachers in their classes do not want their students to develop. Gratified with his epiphany, Chaudhuri looked for standalone paragraph(s) in novels which ‘belongs to a story but is also independent of it, in that it seems equally located in an irreducible life and textuality outside that novel as it is in the life narrated and contained within it’.


Reviewed by: Mohammad Asim Siddiqui

Edited and translated from the original Kannada into Sanskrit and English by Mangesh Venkatesh Nadkarni

A noteworthy section in the Introduction is: ‘Vacana Dharma and Hinduism’. Nadkarni shows here how the basic beliefs and practices of Vīraśaiva-Lingāyats are to be traced to Hinduism. For example, the idea of One God is very much there in the Rigveda (Ekam Sad viprāhbahudhāvadanti, etc.). The practice of chanting the holy mantra of ‘Om Namah Śivāya’ is from Hinduism.


Reviewed by: Sangamesh Savadattimath

By Deborah Sutton

From a diminutive rock smeared with vermillion, to logic-defying edifices cut out of sheer rock, to large complexes spread over hundreds of acres with the most spectacular architecture humans could ever envision, the Hindu temple can indeed be a bewildering space for the uninitiated and un-socialized.


Reviewed by: Lokesh Ohri

By Sanjay Subrahmanyan with Krupa Ge

The professional Carnatic musician’s path is highly templatized; countless have been through the grind. Start young, attend junior competitions, perform at AIR, and ensure that you make your way to the Music Academy performance slot. Subrahmanyan too traversed this well-trodden path, and spectacularly well at that, to join only a select few to receive the prestigious Sangeeta Kalanidhi (Oscar of Carnatic classical music) in 2015 when he was just 47 years!


Reviewed by: Bharat Kidambi

By Venki Ramakrishnan

Why are we born? Why do we die? Most people look for explanations in religion, but the author looks for answers in the world of science. What, then, is the difference? Simply that scientific theories can be disproven, while religious ones cannot. This is not to say that religion is not important. It indeed is and offers succor during trying periods of our lives, but in explaining the natural world, that is where superstition comes in.


Reviewed by: Mohan Rao

By Ravi Nandan Singh

The succeeding chapter ‘The City Multiple: Place-Names Play Dead’ describes the city of Banaras delineating the varied histories, cultures, traditions and legends of the place; analyses the idea of city and the meaning it holds for various people. Kashi, Banaras and Varanasi, the different names of the city, the author argues, underline the differences within the society.


Reviewed by: Amol Saghar

By Nita Berry. Cover design and illustrations by Mohit Suneja

‘The Third City: Tughlakabad is Built’ (1320-25 CE) tells children about Ghiyasuddin Tughlak’s ‘dream city’, built 8 km away from the Qutab Minar but abandoned due to lack of water. Perhaps it was also due to the curse of the Sufi Saint Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya. When insulted by the Sultan, the Saint had cursed it to be reduced to the habitat of nomadic shepherds. However, children are also told about modern developments around it, such as the Tughlakabad Insitutional Area, the Inland Container Depot and the Dr Karni Singh Shooting Range.


Reviewed by: Dipavali Sen

By Malavika Rajkotia

The family narrative is woven into an exposition of Sikh history. The radicalism of the Khalistani movement, the conflict between Sikh and Hindu nationalist fanaticism, and the all-too-familiar twists of politics and politicians help the reader identify with the world and setting that the story delineates in such great detail.


Reviewed by: Malati Mathur

Edited by Deborah Anna Logan

The chapter dedicated to poetry has seventy-three poems that touch upon the themes of identity of Indian women, questions of society and culture, religion, mythology and folklore. Some philosophical questions expressed in poems like ‘Nature’s Message’ and ‘The Rocketand the Stars’ and questions related to nationalism in ‘The Bharat Mata’s Awakening’ speak about the myriad themes and concerns close to these women writers.


Reviewed by: Shazia Salam

By Angellica Aribam & Akash Satyawali

Gilchrist Gardens, Ammu’s residence in Madras, was the site for her social life and later a hub for Congress political activities. She was a founding member of the Women’s India Association (WIA) along with Annie Besant, Malathi Patwardhan and others. The WIA addressed the many ills of child marriage, Devadasi system, widow remarriage, divorce, inheritance, and advocated for female suffrage. Ammu introduced Lakshmi to politics, was a votary of the Sarada Bill and in time stood for elections and won a seat in the Madras Corporation. Ammu was vocal about her critique of caste, not sparing Jawaharlal Nehru for adopting the title ‘Pandit’.


Reviewed by: Malavika Menon

Edited by Dr. Indira Nityanandam, Dr. Kshipra Purani, Dr. Minnie Mattheew, Dr. Namita Sharma

Pranav Joshipura and Swati Vyas (Kapadia) portray the pain of Indo-Fijian communities in their essays, ‘Issue of Land and Indo-Fijian Reality’ and ‘The Displaced Migrants of Fiji’. Here, the ghosts of colonial exploitation are palpable. In these essays, land is more than soil—it is life, home, and memory, torn away under the weight of foreign rule. Their work offers a haunting reminder that colonization’s scars do not fade with time, binding generations to loss and dislocation.


Reviewed by: Intaj Malek

By Manzu Islam

Nationalism, a recurring motif in the novel, is presented as both a unifying ideology and a vehicle for violence and marginalization. Through the lived experiences of his characters, Islam interrogates how nationalist discourses justify systemic exclusion, displacement, and cultural erasure. It also reflects how even such a unifying force could not cut across social boundaries like caste.


Reviewed by: Parvin Sultana

By Kuvempu. Translated from the original Kannada by Vanamala Viswanatha

Translating 760 pages or more of intricate detailing of human lives and the vicissitudes of Malnad natural environs that enfold these lives is no mean task. Kuvempu is first and foremost a poet, therefore he and his work have to emerge poetic, vibrant, and buoyant in another language. The immediacy with which Kuvempu engages with Malnad life and the multiple patterns that he weaves, while straddling the caste, class, gender differences of a region have to be sustained in the translation and that again is not an easy task.


Reviewed by: Chitra Panikkar

By K.K. Kochu. Translated from the original Malayalam by Radhika P. Menon

Dalithan traces the socio-cultural history of the State of Kerala from a subaltern perspective. Sidelining himself, Kochu lays emphasis on the lost Dalit history and tries to reclaim it. Deliberating on the causes for fragmentation in Dalit memory, Kochu wonders whether the early nomadic lifestyle, and the constant displacements due to slavery and oppression, are the reasons behind the lost narratives. He recalls a poem of the Dalit emancipator Porkayil Appachan, which mourns the vanished history of the Dalits:


Reviewed by: Aazhi Arasi A

By Himani Bannerji

According to Bannerji, Tagore’s prose writings, including correspondence, are being read through new critical lenses to meet the need of our times. Three aspects of his socio-political thought become especially relevant from this point of view: his critique of nationalism and imperialism, including his assessment of various modes used and proposed for eradicating these; his universalist and humanist understanding of the politics of freedom and civilization; and lastly, the connection between the previous two issues and his modernism, as expressed by his philosophy and his projects of social reform.


Reviewed by: Somdatta Mandal

By Trailokyanath Mukhopadhyay. Translated from the original Bengali by Sucheta Dasgupta

Well-known magic realists like Marquez, Borges, Kundera and Rushdie are known to have resorted to the mode because the world they lived in was beleaguered by political upheavals that aroused profound personal turmoil, and the totality of the experience could not be rendered entirely through realistic narrative. Marquez had recounted how his mother told him tales set in real surroundings that get permeated by something incredible, but with the blandest of expressions, as though to say nothing beyond the real had been superimposed on the real story, and that the unbelievable and absurd are also part of everyday reality.


Reviewed by: Nivedita Sen

By Mashiul Alam. Translated from the Bengali by Shabnam Nadiya

This gutsy collection’s outstanding short story is ‘Field Report from Roop Nagar’, a supernatural and grisly account of mysterious developments and utter anarchy in Roop Nagar, where the narrator’s parents are trapped. The narrator’s journalist friend, Shaagar Sengupta, sends him a gruesome video of a girl being hacked to pieces and then cooked to be eaten. The perpetrators commit this heinous crime as part of a plan to eliminate all loose-character girls from the town. All the denizens of Roop Nagar are in a metaphorical slumber and state of unresponsiveness. The story gets a supernatural twist when the narrator realizes that Shaagar died in Roop Nagar and it was his ghost who had sent him the video and was making regular phone calls.


Reviewed by: Shuby Abidi

By Geetanjali Shree. Translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell

Overwhelmed by the impulse to record everything; to emphasize the inability to say what exactly happened at the moment of violence, Shree’s narrator deliberately interrupts comprehension. Why it happened is one prominent re-appearing question; several times, the narrative drives home the fatiguing logic that none ‘of this is sudden; it happened before too. Only now it’s coming out into the open.’ How to make sense of what happened is yet another, perhaps even harder, question: Shruti, the novel’s female protagonist, struggles to write about it. Shruti’s inability to write this affects her ability at being; she is, after all, a writer by profession.


Reviewed by: Aakriti Mandhwani

By Ruthvika Rao

This debut novel veers on a fairy tale, sinuously curving at times into the half-real, half-surreal feel of a folk story, allowing the extravagant to hover around the real. The description of the medieval gadi (a fort-like mansion, in which live members of the Deshmukh family) and its expansive grounds that merge into endless undulating emerald fields stretching in all directions is spectacular. As is the detailing of the opulent grandeur of the mansion within: the carved wooden furniture, colours of the textile furnishings, the clothes that this Zamindar family wears and the lavish food that it is served at every meal.


Reviewed by: Rohini Mokashi-Punekar

By Prayaag Akbar

Before I commence on the merits of this novel, I must commend the cover design by Bonita Vaz-Shimray which visualizes and encapsulates the plot brilliantly. Then, try as I might, I cannot ignore being struck by the name of the author, Prayaag Akbar. Being born and brought up under the ramparts of Akbar’s Fort in…


Reviewed by: Smita Agarwal

By Ruth Vanita

It is set in the 1920s, a time when young people began to question the social structures that sought to confine them. Their rebellion, subtle though it may be, is a significant aspect of the story. Today, many of the issues they faced might seem trivial, but in their time, these were revolutionary ideas. The merging of the inner and outer worlds, of personal desires versus societal norms, has been beautifully depicted. But the struggle to forge an authentic identity, one that grows and evolves with time, is never easy. The tension between what one wants and what is expected of them is portrayed with remarkable sensitivity.


Reviewed by: Semeen Ali

By Anuradha Marwah

The addition of a character like Nilima Gandhi also enriches the narrative because the frustrations of a housewife are also expressed. Even though Nilima comes from a middle-class family and has domestic help, the urge within her to be seen and validated for all she does for her family is strong and the author is empathetic to that need. She is also portrayed as a woman with patriarchal principles but that doesn’t hinder her capacity to bond with other women. The third protagonist is Dinitia (Dini), who is a social worker and a single mother.


Reviewed by: Jubi C. John

By Payal Kapadia

The human protagonists of the story are a pair of iconoclastic fifteen-year-olds, Asha and Zeb, who protest against the stifling system through illegal graffiti (the author mentions the British artist Banksy as an inspiration in the Afterword). Things escalate when the young rebels witness the callous murder of a word mid-transport by security forces during one of their furtive getaways and are eventually scapegoated as criminals.


Reviewed by: Satabhisa Nayak

Jonaki Ray

Constrained by the chicken-pox and trying to deal with it during the summer holidays, Paromita and her fellow chicken-pox afflicted neighbouring teens—Sunidhi, Agastya, Darius, and Nihal—decide to solve the mystery that has scarred all of the denizens of The Orchard.


Reviewed by: By Shabnam Minwalla

By Vardhini Amin

The story circles around a hidden sandalwood grove near the Sahyadri Range. The sandalwood trees are in the middle of a change of guard with the young Siah taking over from her mentor Bhuja when they come under the shadow of traffickers. To rescue her clan, Siah is willing to go to great lengths and even follow the forbidden paths. The story carries an element of speculative fiction at its core. Who set the fire that left Samr half burnt? What happened to the little girl who died mysteriously? Several parallel narratives seem to be unfolding simultaneously, making the plot pleasantly challenging and complex. All the threads converge in the climactic chapters and the ends are tied up neatly.


Reviewed by: Pooja Sharma

By Sanjeev Sethi

Memory is the well from which poets draw inspiration, but poetry is the ‘zazen’ that brings acceptance for loss. Thus in ‘Recognition’ the poet poignantly recalls:
The taste of twin Genoise sponge
baked and partly burnt
for my fourth birthday bash…
…the agency of


Reviewed by: Deepa Agarwal