Monthly Archives: November 2017

Bula Comes to Montreal was created as it celebrates the 375th anniversary of the city of Montreal founded on 17 May 2017. Kala Bharati, a nongovernmental organization is a centre for Indian culture, dance and music in Montreal. This child friendly Bharata Natyam repertoire has a book on learning dance called Shishu Sadhana, the cover of which was designed by Premola Ghose.

Vasantha Surya’s Mridu in Madras is an illustrated chapter book that is delightfully entrenched in Tamil culture and society. However, the book is not set in contemporary times and harks back to an era where large joint families were the norm, cycle rickshaws were common, and the price of commodities was way lower than what it is now.

Juggernaut Books could not have published Tales from the Quran and Hadith at a better time. India in 2016–17 is perpetually grappling with misconceptions about Islam. From ill-informed journalists to self-proclaimed defenders of the faith, it is an open season which has left the ordinary citizens of the country confused, and in some cases angry.

Amma, Take Me to the Golden Temple by Bhakti Mathur is aninnovative way of teaching and imparting knowledge by re-flecting on various tenets of one of the youngest and modern religions of the world with more than 30 million followers.

Three major deities of Puranic Hinduism, three tales about each of them. Well, not exactly. Three tales each about Vishnu and Shiva, but the collection titled Devi has a story each on Parvati, Durga, and Saraswati. These are tales that have been told and retold over countless generations, and Subhadra Sen Gupta, skilled storyteller that she is, recreates the old magic in language that the internet generation can quickly relate to.

I began reading this book expecting the usual compilation of events and dates. But the book offers a range—biographies, sports, the arts (especially classical music) and information on governments and political events. What emerges is a compendium that is much more fun to read than a bland chronological account of post-Independent India.

In conjunction with a travelling exhibition from its collection, the San Diego Museum of Art has compiled a lavish volume of medieval Indian paintings. Most of these are from what we call the Mughal period but not necessarily from the Mughal court.

Indian puppetry is unique for it has 17 or 18 distinct traditional forms. The most well known are Katputlis or the traditional string puppets of Rajasthan. Thus the word for ‘puppet’ in Hindi, namely ‘Katputli’ is synonymous with these traditional puppets from Rajasthan.

India has been aptly recognized as a melting pot, displaying a large degree of cultural diversity. This diversity has also manifested in tolerance and sensitivity towards nature. The omnipresence of birds, their distribution across vast zoogeographic zones, their dazzling hues and acoustic skills make them special.

The author often uses the term ‘brown’ interchangeably with ‘Indian’. Roy seems to be blissfully unaware of the racial connotations behind the casual usage of ‘brown’ to describe Indian officers and men.

This is a part of the series, ‘New perspectives in South Asian History’, a path-breaking work on the history of Indian Railways during the colonial period, with a comprehensive ‘Introduction’ by the editor.

Ramin Jahanbegloo is unusual in more ways than one. He is an Indologist in the best sense of the word. But he is not a scholar in the pay of sinister imperialists. He is an Iranian intellectual who studies India, writes about India and unabashedly loves India.

As independent India, under the leadership of Nehru, embarked on the ‘slippery path of progress’, it soon became clear that the path was not just slippery, but was also hampered by multiple roadblocks, u-turns, crossroads and obstructions ahead.

Alas if this was actually so! Border regions in India are like dead ends; they are terminal points and lead nowhere. They do not connect regions and they do not allow passage. Absence of contact and connectivity creates a feeling of isolation and leads often to hostility rather than friendliness with neighbours.

This book is unique in that it looks at Delhi as a site of play of power, cooption and contestation between authoritarian governance of colonial power—its utopian imagery at odds with the material practice by the native Indians.

Much ink has flowed in the academic debates about Indian writing in English and translations from Indian languages into English, the respective merits and demerits of each, their importance or lack of it,

Premchand occupies a unique position in Indian literature. He shaped the genre of fiction in two language literatures, i.e., Urdu and Hindi, by giving it a realistic base, diverting it of its preoccupation with the world of fantasy and romance.

Bama’s Vanmam is in many ways a marked departure from her earlier works Karukku and Sangati. Moving away from her earlier autobiographical mode Vanmam steers clear of the familiar confessional, conversational tone and adopts a linear, descriptive,

During the December 2007 music festival in Chennai, I attended a dance performance by Alarmel Valli. The programme included a short piece, based on a verse from Madurai Meenakshiammai Pillaittamil.

Three miraculous events have happened on this earth: the birth of three men of great purity of soul (mahashuddhatma), many years apart in time—and in countries far away from each other. They taught the world a mantra of immense significance.