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Volume 48 Number 9 September 2024
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By Swadesh Singh

Needless to say, Modian Consensus: The Rediscovery of Bharat remains an appropriate intervention in the growing plethora of relevant analyses of current politics in India. The recently concluded general elections and the results thereof, however, appear to have put a spanner in the works of the developing Modian Consensus! Not only has the BJP suffered quite a noteworthy electoral setback, the role of coalition partners—and therefore, coalition politics in general—has emerged stronger and more robust


Reviewed by: Roshni Sengupta

By Ruby Lal

Ruby Lal, immersed in the themes of oblivion and erasure to understand the past, and particularly to investigate why certain persons, including women, could not take centre stage in Mughal history, dwells on the practice of erasure of the extraordinary literary prose work of Gulbadan, the only woman Mughal memoirist.


Reviewed by: Meena Bhargava

Edited by M. Gobalakichenane

However, one feature that is common in both diaries is that both Ananda Ranga Pillai and Viranaicker considered themselves loyal subjects of the French. In spite of articulating his criticism of the French so clearly, Pillai did not ever exhibit any nationalist consciousness or preference for being under indigenous rule.


Reviewed by: Kanakalatha Mukund

By Bhaswati Mukherjee

Those lured (or even blackmailed or kidnapped) to join, faced a tough journey which was under inhumane conditions, and often led to death, which of course was not expected. However, the author points out that for the westerners, the offer of indenture was considered as a relief, offering a better life for the famine-stricken poor in the country.


Reviewed by: Sunanda Sen

By Bidyut Mohanty

The zamindars mercilessly squeezed the peasants leaving them no incentive to produce more. The development of infrastructure, including railways and irrigation facilities led to the commercialization of agriculture and monetization of the rural economy with uneven effects on different areas and sections of the people.


Reviewed by: Vasanth Kannabiran

By Rotem Geva

The book is indeed a detailed micro-history of the city, looking at the lives of individuals, communities and localities and their interactions with each other and their transformations from the 1930s to the mid-1950s, and the impact of the transition from a colony to a state to a nation on the city.


Reviewed by: Sudipto Basu

By Anindyo Roy

Anindyo Roy’s account of Lear’s visit to India stands out as the kind of travel book that Lear hoped to write from his journal jottings: ‘A travel book that that was akin to a kind of music: it was not a trophy, not a mirror held up to nature. Like a kaleidoscope


Reviewed by: Anjana Neira Dev

By Douglas E. Haynes

The book expands on existing research that examines the historical sociology of middle-class Indians, focusing on how they defined themselves and their role as agents of modernity during the 1920s and 1930s. It primarily explores western India, specifically Bombay and Pune, and deliberates on various Indian groups such as Marathi Brahmins, Gujarati upper castes


Reviewed by: Vijaya Ramadas Mandala

By Jarnail Singh

Manipur’s hosting of the Indian Science Congress in December 2017 had stirred up a few hornets’ nest in the University. The Vice-Chancellor AP Pandey now began to be targeted as a non-local person. The academic community was up in arms against him


Reviewed by: Chhanda Chatterjee

By Robin Gupta

This Eden is fragile, and the trees and bushes stand mute witness to the daily tragedies of the short lived and ultimately temporary liaisons, none of which can ever fill the void in a life empty of companionship. When we are introduced to Rupert,


Reviewed by: Anjana Neira Dev

By Stephen Alter

From watching experts at work among snakes in the Agumbe Rainforest Research Centre, absorbing myths of the fearsome serpent Kaliya in Mathura-Vrindavan and witnessing the performance of an oracle propitiating Naga Devatha, to visiting sacred groves in various topographies


Reviewed by: Govindan Nair

Retold by Lopamudra Maitra

What is a reader to make of these stories set (innocently) side-by-side? Is the Vedic/Puranic Aditi, who birthed Indra and thirty-three other gods, like Trishala, the mother of the Jain Tirthankara Mahavira? Is Lal Dedh like Surdas? How do we think about Amir Khusro’s devotion to his human pir in comparison to these bhaktas and their obsession with God? Myths


Reviewed by: Arshia Sattar

By Kala Krishnan

The storytelling is expansive and both the parts of the trilogy are replete with stories, not just popular tales of Murugan’s birth, his leaving Kailash to Pazhani in anger after losing the competition for the Fruit of Wisdom, the war with Surapadman and his victory and his marriage to Theivanai, but stories of how everything emerged from a dark, endless Vast to begin with;


Reviewed by: Divya Shankar

By Julia Hauser and Sarnath Banerjee

Hauser also provides fascinating accounts of the various remedial methods adopted by people across centuries: from devout prayers to throwing out of earthenware, inhalation of aromatics to wearing beak-shaped masks and more.


Reviewed by: Ann Susan Aleyas

By Hamraaz

A head-on collision with injustice, oppression, inequity, discrimination, etc., do not a good poem make. The language may be rousing, the rhythm may be seducing, yet, in the ultimate analysis, whereas the poem may delineate an injustice of history, it may not be an imaginative tour de force like Sylvia Plath’s ‘Daddy’ or Mona Zote’s ‘What Poetry means to Ernestina in Peril’.


Reviewed by: Smita Agarwal

By Rajorshi Patranabis

This verse reflects on the endless passage of time and the gradual wearing away of moments. In solitude, a chance encounter symbolizes a sudden, unexpected connection or escape from the ordinary. Amidst the turmoil, love remains patient and hopeful, waiting to embrace the boundless, timeless essence of the beloved.


Reviewed by: Bhavna Jaisingh

By Anuradha Kumar

If the book has a flaw, it is the almost anticlimactic dénouement, where everything falls into place tamely and Twain sails away without making any major waves or being touched by this fascinating palimpsest of a city teeming with stories.


Reviewed by: Anjana Neira Dev

By Bibhas Roy Chowdhury. Translated from the original Bengali by Kiriti Sengupta. Edited & Foreword by Don Martin (U.S.A.)

In moments of solitary quietness, Chowdhury strikes intimate relations with insects and other non-human beings. Interestingly, a slow-moving caterpillar, or a dancing butterfly enhances his craving for self-consuming privacy all the more.


Reviewed by: Akshaya Kumar

By Mrinalini Harchandrai

In between the tidy frame is a story well worth telling—of the unique socio-political situation of Goa that made possible a wide variety of relationships between people of different communities—Hindu Indians, Catholic Indians, Portuguese whose ties were with Europe, and descendants of Portuguese extraction who were as much sons and daughters of Goan soil as the Indians.


Reviewed by: Bharati Jagannathan

By Feryal Ali-Gauhar

Among the protagonists of the novel are dwellers of Zamin Par, occupants of Zamin Andar and spirits of Zamin Upar, all of whose comings and goings have been inextricably woven together into the narrative. Intertwining the humdrum of daily human existence are stories of the superior knowledge or comprehension of prophesies, extrapolations, curses, and spells cast by supra-terrestrial peris


Reviewed by: Fatima Rizvi

By Divrina Dhingra

It is in these moments in the book that Dhingra’s extraordinary writing skills manage to transfer the olfactory effects experienced by her, for the readers to vicariously savour through her descriptive details about the fragrances.


Reviewed by: Suman Bhagchandani

By Smriti Ravindra

Set in Nepal and its borderlands before the arrival of the internet, the novel begins by describing the marriage of a fourteen-year-old Meena with Manmohan, a twenty-one-year-old Nepali boy she has never met. The narrative documents Meena’s problematic marital journey and her diasporic life.


Reviewed by: Umesh Kumar

By Yiyun Li

Death, the time and manner of its arrival, how it transforms people and their lives, and the ways in which each person deals with his/her loss, grappling with guilt, regret, questioning—is almost a character as it moves through the pages, forcing the reader to confront those very feelings of loss


Reviewed by: Malati Mathur

By Rupleena Bose

The book also gives hindsight into the shrinking spaces in academic institutions and the rise of Right-Wing politics in India. This is demonstrated when the narrator’s student Salman is killed for his love affair with a Hindu woman. Pat, who runs a signature campaign for his justice, has been charged by the police for doing so.


Reviewed by: Aman Nawaz

By Devibharathi. Translated from the original Tamil by N. Kalyan Raman

Incidentally, the novel is one long narration, with no chapter divisions. It is also significant that there are very few dialogues. We see and hear everything through the stream of the narrator’s own consciousness, though he repeatedly complains that his story is controlled by others.


Reviewed by: T. Sriraman

By Mrinal Kalita. Translated from the original Assamese by Partha Pratim Goswami

Under the Bakul Tree is a heartwarming coming-of-age tale. It celebrates friendship, hope and determination as it unravels the devastating effects of poverty and of an education system that has failed the students who are at the lowest rung of the social order.


Reviewed by: Somdatta Mandal

Written by Satoshi Yagisawa. Translated from the Japanese by Eric Ozawa

he Saveur coffee shop becomes another milestone in this bildungsroman novella, as Takako makes new friends and literally wakes up to smell the coffee and is soon ready to face the world again. Her days at the Morisaki Bookshop become what Satoru had hoped


Reviewed by: Books-in-Brief – Books-in-Brief – Books-in-Brief

By Hans Sande. Translated from the original Norwegian by Marietta Taralrud Maddrell. Series Editor: Teji Grover. Illustrations by Per Dylovig

The email communication begins with the calf escaping from the farm and declaring:‘Sinister things are happening here on the farm, but nobody talks about them. I dare not stay here any longer. Dare not wait and see what is going to happen to me. I don’t want to disappear suddenly. Love from me


Reviewed by: Anita Singh

By Mallika Ravikumar

Does the M4 remind us of the Five Found-Outers and others of the kind inspired by Enid Blyton? The additional nuance here is that of the social angle. As mentioned, Shimplya is a fisherman’s son. Mirchi is the local scrap-collecting boy, and it is he who leads to the exposure of the kingpin of the wildlife mafia in Maulsari and the release of 1280 endangered turtles (minus the 110 which had suffocated in captivity)(p. 224).


Reviewed by: Dipavali Debroy