If ever there was a book that captured every nuance that might appeal to a child, then this is probably it. Not for nothing is Anushka Ravishankar dubbed India’s Dr Seuss; her words are bright, appealing, and flavoured with such spirit and energy that even a word like Papayaaaaaaaa! is transformed into a long-drawn out horrified scream—uttered by Falguni Fruitseller, who stumbles upon a crocodile in a ditch—and reduces you to excited giggles.
Professor Carstairs is best known in India for his study of personality formation in a traditional Hindu society—The Twice Born. That study dealt with the social determinants of a ‘normal’ personality and relied mostly on an imaginative use of the clinical method.
‘Are you Woodward or Bernstein?’
‘Neither, they are both in America’, replied John, thus killing, once and for all, an altogether inappropriate comparison between the Watergate reporters and the authors of Delhi Under Emergency.
As a little child my mother told me the story of the founding of Panja Saheb: Guru Nanak once came into wilderness with his disciple. It was hot. The disciple thirsted for water. But water was nowhere except on top of a hill where a dervish lived.
The political appropriation of Mahatma Gandhi’s legacy has been going on for decades. Now the trend has spread to unlikely quarters. Gandhi peersat us from posters, sharing space with his ideological opponents. Even artifacts associated with him, like his spectacles, have been used as logo in government propaganda. Commercialization has been a parallel process, initially for marketing products purportedly of cottage industries, and then for a whole range ofother things. The powers that be appreciate the brand value of the
name Gandhi.
According to Elizabeth Cook, ‘myths are about gods, legends are about heroes, and fairy tales are about woodcutters and princesses.’
Here is a collection of sixteen short stories including one by Ka Naa Subramanyam himself. Not all are short stories—at least one is an epic in a terse form: Ramapada Choudhury’s Festal.
The Magadha King Dhana Nanda had become unpopular because of his vile tongue, bad temper and greedy ways.
This collection of essays by Indian academics on American literature ranges in quality from the solitary brilliance of V.Y. Kantak’s essay on Faulkner’s Technique, through the competent and interesting (Neila Seshadri’s Leslie A. Fiedler: Critic as Mythographer, Isaac Sequeira’s Essay on Sylvia Plath), to the (alas!) majority that is mediocre, or, at best, stolid and painstaking.
From the raising of Mohenjodaro to the meeting of Chanakya and Thiruvalluvar, Pavithra Srinivasan’s Back to the BCs can be as engaging for a child as an adult.
Hiranyakashipu and his nemesis, Narasimha, an Avatar of Vishnu, are the central characters of eight short stories that are included in this book.
People often ask me whether there is something special about our times in terms of an apparent resurgence in the tellings of our ancient tales, myths and the epics.