This book gives in brief the planning events of the last 35 years in India. Yet, as the author himself has pointed out, ‘whatever progress achieved has been largely neutralised by sharp rise in popu¬lation’, which has made the so-called ‘self-sufficiency’ in foodgrains a mirage for the very poor. He points out that the development of agriculture has not been as intensive as needed with yields per acre still very poor while at the same time terms of trade have consistently moved against agriculture.
There is a persistent campaign in the corridors of the capital that voluntary social groups working in rural areas are ‘destabilizing’ India. Anil Bhatt provides proof that indeed they are destabilizing India—but the India they are destabilizing is India of the capitalwallahs. Bhatt reports:
For the very poor any increase in production, though not enough to pull them out of subsistence, has been sufficient to give them enough food, a little better clothing and some addi¬tional necessities of life.
For all its traditions of revering its sages and savants, this country is sadly deficient in the gift of honouring those who do it distinguished service. This has, let it be said right away, nothing to do with rewards. The truly great servants of a nation do not give a damn about re¬wards for services rendered. But surely there is such a thing as recognition. And, it, alas, is in short supply in India today.
One Rotten Apple and Other Stories by Vandana Kumari Jena, author of Dance of Death and The Incubation Chamber, is an anthology of twenty-six stories which adroitly weaves a tapestry of life’s reality by shedding light on a gamut of human emotions, the psychological upheavals of the characters and some seriously menacing social scourges.
2018
That’s the denouement of one of the characters of Mridula Garg’s new novel—she dances and dies. Ratnabai begins as a minor character, a household help in an upmarket middle class neighbourhood in New Delhi, in the novel Vasu ka Kutum, and ends up with one of the most powerful scenes in the novel—performing the dance of death, more vigorous than Nataraj himself, as the author puts it.
What is a city, but the people; true the people are the city Cities can be huge or small, bustling or tranquil, charming or squalid, but the only question worth asking is: is it yours ? Madras on my Mind, a collection of twenty odd short stories that takes us through tree-lined streets and mounds of garbage of Madras/Chennai as we wander through the patchwork of communities that piece the city together.
Two novels, one short story collection. Different themes. With one joining thread, West Bengal, the State which is the setting for all three works. While Amit Dasgupta’s The House and Other Stories and Arnab Nandy’s On the Road to Tarascon are set in Kolkata, a familiar locale in many stories and novels, Indra Bahadur Rai’s novel, (translated by Manjushree Thapa) There’s a Carnival Today, considered a classic of Nepali literature, is set in Darjeeling, with its mystical mountains and tea gardens.
Here was a pinkish-red staircase, and a small piece of sky and the white fairies of delirium and the handsome prince who would visit me and tease me. I have peeled away the skin of my life and served it up to you. Some may say this fruit is inedible but that doesn’t matter .
Gangadhar Gadgil is eminently readable. If you have been a big time reader of all time great storytellers like Anton Chekov, Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, O. Henry, or even Somerset Maugham or Arthur Conan Doyle, you would do well not to apply the same scale here.
EV Ramakrishnan’s collection of essays Indigenous Imaginaries: Literature, Region, Modernity has several entry points. In continuation of his earlier work Locating Indian Literature: Texts, Traditions, Translations, he is revisiting questions of tradition, transformation and modernity by taking a deeper look into the different cultural contexts embedded in the notion of ‘region’ or ‘kshetra’ and their shaping of the literary field in India.
Selected and translated from the original Urdu by Muhammad Umar Memon/Edited and translated from the original Urdu by Muhammad Umar Memon
If Urdu literature today has a presence outside the boundaries of the South Asian subcontinent, a part of the credit may safely be attributed to Professor Muhammad Umar Memon, who along with Professor CM Naim, has transformed the way the western, in particular the American, academia regards Urdu literature today. An academic, a scholar, a translator, a short-story writer and an astute critic, Professor Memon, has donned many hats.