It is with such a sense of gratitude that one picks up A.N.D. Haksar’s latest translation titled Subhashitavali. Haksar has offered such treats before, with the last one being the enjoyable rendering of the popular tale of Madhav and Kama.
Whom to Tell My Tale is K.S. Duggal’sautobiography. When in 1985, Duggal published this autobio- graphy in Punjabi (Kis Peh Kholon Ganthdi) it was appreciated in a comparative way, because Amrita Pritam’s, Sant Singh Sekhon’s and Ajit Kaur’s autobiographies had already created a discussion about the genric developments.
Evocative, esoteric and enchanting. Amrita Imroz—A Love Story is more than what the title suggests—is a love story with a difference. A slim volume, the book is reminiscent of Erich Segal’s one-time best-seller The Love Story both in terms of the name and size. But the similarity ends there.
2007
The enigmatic title of this book is taken from a beautiful verse that best reflects the spiritual and humanist vision of the Adi Granth, the holy book of the Sikhs. Na ko bairi nahi bigana, sagal sangh ham ko ban ayee.
The question of identity of different religions, minorities, regions are becoming more and more complex and contentious in the contemporary world. Political, social, economic relations of mino-rities and religious groups vis-á-vis the majority is always strenuous specially if the grievances are nurtured over time and have varied hues.
Friends and admirers of Indu Banga have come together to offer her a ‘bouquet’ of scholarly articles as a homage for her contribution to the history of India and the history of Punjab. Reeta Grewal and Sheena Pall in 2005 published these articles in two volumes.
History has morphed enormously from a mere reconstruction of battles and icons into a social science with multi-dimensional tropes, so historians are in the pursuit of a specific trope which eventually becomes their area of expertise.
I bring from the East what is practically an unknown religion’. This is what Max Arthur Macauliffe wrote in his Preface to The Sikh Religion: Its Gurus, Sacred Writings and Authors, first published in 1909. While the Sikhs and their religion are no longer unknown as a result of worldwide dispersal of the Sikh community and the distinct markers of identity that they carry with them,
Dhadhi parampara, according to Nijhawan, is ‘a tradition or genre of bardic performance that constitutes one of the extant forms of oral epic performance in South Asia. The contents of dhadhi song and narrative are mostly heroic tales of legendary and historical figures’.
In the last twenty-five years, interest in the birdlife of the Indian subcontinent has grown manifold, and justifiably so considering the richness of India’s avifauna. With this interest, have come a string of books for both popular and more specialist consumption. Anand Prasad’s book should appeal to both—to anyone seriously interested in the birds of the region.
Time was when we thought Abol Tabol represented the beginning and the end of Indian nonsense. For those unsanctified by a bhadralok pedigree, this also meant that until Sukanta Chaudhuri’s wonderful English translation of Sukumar Ray came to be published in 1987, almost nothing nonsensical was remotely Indian and vice versa.
You must learn to stop being yourself. That’s where it begins, and everything else follows from that.’ Raj Kamal Jha uses this most apposite quotation from Paul Auster’s Mr Vertigo to preface his second novel. I call it apposite because the entire book follows from that.
Sociology has not gone to Indian movies very often, and that needs to be corrected. Consider that in India today we breathe movies as a key element of the national atmosphere, second only to oxygen, ozone, bottled mineral water, satellite TV and the internet.
Reviewing an interesting, somewhat idiosyncratic compilation of articles, poses a challenge, as it escapes the usual taxonomic classification for writings on the subject. It is clearly not a scholarly work in the formal sense. As is the case with most compilations, the various topics it encompasses form too broad a spectrum and though some footnotes and other references have been provided, they are sparse and infrequent.
One of my earliest aural memories is of listening to the mesmerizing sounds of traditional north Indian music, from an old phonograph in the vast Baithaki in my grandmother’s house. Next to this magical instrument sat a black leather box containing a prized collection of His Master’s Voice records.
We Allahabadis grew up carrying our own mythology in which fact, innocence and provincial arrogance mingled in equal proportions. But let me get to the facts. The city of Allahabad, a dot on the map like a mustard seed placed exactly where the spidery, hairline-blue veins of two big rivers meet, was not just another nondescript settlement in the great Indian outback. It was a prominent administrative hub during the Raj, with a high-profile cultural identity all its own.
For a hedonistic reader who reads purely for pleasure, it is galling to constantly be told what to look for in a book—that its worldview is coloured by certain political views or a childhood trauma or an agenda.
The book under review is one of twelve short stories in this fine and elegant collection by M.G. Vassanji, the well-regarded writer of Indian origin, African upbringing and Canadian domicile. Before actually reviewing the book,
Robert Clive is said to have ‘gone native’ in India, sitting on a charpoy, puffing a hookah, dusky ‘bibi’ by his side, watch-ing the fascinating, multifarious world of the subcontinent go by, so much more vivid and intense than the cold, drear monochromatic little island that he came from. Clive was, of course,
‘How does the writer of Indian origin living abroad negotiate longing and belonging ?’ asks the editor in his highly readable and insightful Introduction to the anthology, and for a while I was persuaded that the thirty-three pieces that comprise the volume are meant to provide a range of answers to that question.