Monthly Archives: June 2017

It is indeed ironical that I was reading to review this absolutely brilliant book by Sylvia Federici around Halloween, which narrates the dark saga of Witch Hunts in Europe during the 15th-17th century. In fact Witch Hunts had consumed Europe for more than 200 years, a practice that coincided with the rise of capitalism in Europe.

Feminist scholars have over the last two decades focused upon the involvements of white women in the British Empire, and on their location and agency in the construction of ‘a gendered colonialism’.

Upon being asked why she chose to marry following a very short period of courtship, a friend reasons that had she known the man too well, marriage, the one goal not open to compromise, would have been impossible.

Contemporary globalization characterized by the restructuring of the economy through deregulated markets, international networks, multi-nationalization of production and transformation of production technique has led to systemic changes with serious implications for labour.

Sreeram Chaulia brings out a new survival guide to the global economic crisis that goes beyond the economics of crisis and suggests political mechanisms for social survival and recovery from the crisis.

This review of the above mentioned title must begin on an unusual confessional note. It must be declared that I read this book as a student of social science in general, neither with the focus nor with acumen of a student of economics or development studies, to whom this book is broadly addressed.

In Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice, Nussbaum argues that societies aspiring to justice must not only frame their policies according to reasonable principles of justice, but that such societies must also cultivate political and public emotions, like that of patriotism, in their members.

The book under review examines intel- lectual property overlaps in the legal contexts of the UK, the US and, where necessary, the EU. The editors have brought together a formidable scale of collective experience and expertise ‘from those primarily engaged in academic scholarship to those who combine scholarly publishing with practice of intellectual property.’

Women Architects and Modernism in India by Routledge India is perhaps to date the most comprehensive compilation of notable female architects of the 20th century in India. Madhavi Desai is an experienced writer on contemporary Indian architecture, and herself a woman architect of note in the country.

Bengali Cooking: Seasons and Festivals is a reprint of Chitrita Banerji’s original work, Life and Food in Bengal, published in 1991, abridged and republished with the current title in 1997. Given that the book was written and published decades before food writing became en vogue in India, it was clearly way ahead of its times. It is only fitting that this gem of a book be resurrected for current and future generations of readers and food enthusiasts.

Books on cricket generally fall into one of two categories: those that focus on the field of play and those that set the sport in its wider social and political context.

Murray Laurence’s Subcontinental Drift begins with wide-eyed observations on his first journeys in India as a callow backpacker in the 1970s, enthralled and baffled by the incomprehensibility of the country and its people. Forty years later, in the twenty-first century, he is still trying to make sense of the sub-continent’s diverse histories and cultures, but in a more pensive and introspective mood.

Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry’, wrote W.H. Auden in memorial for W.B. Yeats. The sentence herds the reader straight into the heart of the matter. It implies that there is a relationship between the poet, or rather poetry, and the social order that condition all literature. In Auden’s overall view, however, this does not amount to much: ‘For Poetry makes nothing happen.’

Ipsita Roy Chakraverti (b. 1950) created a sensation when she declared that she was a witch in 1986. She started administering Wiccan ways of healing to the people. She went to the aid of women in rural Bengal, where it was (and still is) common for a poor widow to be labelled a witch. ‘If I had come from a different rung of society, or was illiterate, the reaction wouldn’t be the same,’ she observes, and uses her position to help others.

What is the place of grief in the pursuit of greatness? George Saunders explores this theme in his new book Lincoln in the Bardo. The year in the book is 1862 and the American Civil War is a year old and no one knows yet what changes it will bring. President Lincoln and his wife Mary are organizing an annual reception, an event which would later be variously described in the memoirs and diaries of their contemporaries.

Ksemendra was a classical Sanskrit poet who flourished in the reign of Ananta ( 1028–63 CE) and his son Kalasa. He belonged to Kashmir, home to such great poets like Anandavardhana and Abhinavagupta.

In a general, widespread opinion, the Rama story is old and ageless and its narration in Valmiki’s adi-kavya both original and authoritative.

Sometimes in the mid-1980s, the India Trade Promotion Organization (ITPO) had organized a street theatre festival at Pragati Maidan. I was an undergraduate those days, perennially short of money, and Pragati Maidan was a haven. One could watch world cinema for almost nothing at Shakuntalam Theatre, and, for a few years in the 1980s, ITPO invited leading theatre companies and directors to perform in one of its exhibition halls, refashioned into a theatre hall called Manzar.

This book, on one of the most formidable musical talents of this century, shatters one’s reverie. Those of us who live, breathe, and draw our sustenance from Hindi film music (HFM), would prefer to be enveloped by its versatility, complexity and the sheer richness of its musical variety, and not have to think about the behind-the-scenes machinations, the power play, personal rivalries, technological changes…

The two books under review showcase the legacy of two music families in different ways. Quraishi’s book is rich in illustrations—it has drawn on the photo albums of the Dagar clan. Raghavendra Joshi’s book has some family photographs as well, but the text is central—a tribute to Bhimsen Joshi by his eldest son, it is a story of family hurt and neglect.