Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

Contemporary regional drama in translation, one of the ‘not so exploited/explored sub-genres’ in literature(s) comes as a very easily enactable text for performance for theatre lovers who want to try something new with Rupalee Burke’s and Darshana Trivedi’s translation of the well known Gujarati playwright Satish Vyas’s Jal Ne Parde (Mist of Tears), Angulimal and Kamroo, a trilogy of two act plays.

Today children are distracted. Distracted by video games, television, computers, you name it! Everything seems to be an enemy of reading.

Rigmarole and Other Plays is a collection of three satirical plays that depict contemporary situations, people and events. The genre drama has been used dexterously by Sai Paranjpye to engage with the creativity, imagination and inventiveness of children. The book is a pointer to the fact that dramatic situations abound in the environment around us.

The word ‘home’, Geetanjali Singh Chanda reminds us, invokes a series of associations. We may describe our place of residence in physical terms, offering details of actual space demarcations.

The poems, short stories, extracts from magazines, statements in courts, and novels in The Other Side of Terror (‘What does it mean?’ an exasperated reader asked about the title) are grouped under ‘Freedom and Terror’, ‘Revolution and Terror’, and ‘Identity and Terror’.

Return to the village—they advise We aren’t far from the countryside not to be able to return you don’t see the ebony flowers you see the flesh of trees. (Flesh of Trees)

What does Hungarian poetry translated into Hindi signify? Is it just a random selection of a language and a bunch of poets—finding a way through the translator into another language? Or is it much more than a simple language transaction?

This is an elegantly written book about life in upper-crust Adyar, (Chennai) where the jasmine flowers flourish, and ritual, dance and music go hand-in-hand with the routine chores of bringing up children, and running a house.

Halting of voice and limb, flattering the mighty, I have been made an actor in a farce. I know not what new comedy old age will have me dance with these white hairs for grease paint. Murâri (From Anargharâghava, trans. DHH Ingalls)

The fact that some sixty years after Independence the dalits continue to be marginalized in our country cannot be disputed.