Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

The richly textured sections on semi-urban and rural Bangladesh are remarkable for visual details. Imagine this: A ‘gora’ missionary holding a bundle of dirty clothes is lowering himself gingerly into a scum-covered pukur to wash himself and his garments. The steps are broken and slippery and a large, cheering audience of locals is shouting instructions! Here is another

Yaar Mera… besides being the tale of Partition pathos and the lost world of syncretic culture is also an account of a father-son relationship. We get to see an entirely other side to this relationship through the depicted voyage and the numerous conversations between the duo that go into the construction of the memory which wasn’t easy to recollect and be given shape to in the textual form.

Readers who feel that they are missing something here in this almost comically polarized, existentialist formulation between dying and tea-drinking have every right to feel puzzled.For there is a hidden allusion here to Albert Camus,

Most of these stories are those of survival and not lofty heroism. Put in vulnerable and helpless situations, where solutions lie beyond their control, the courage and maturity of the characters come across in their resilience, tolerance and acceptance, despite their flaws. As readers, we witness a growth in our own empathy and understanding of the conditions of being a refugee.

The mouse offers the following response: ‘My Dear Lady, you will have to carry out a lot of research to write about them.’ This feels like an evasion to me. After all, the equally Ashraf Rahi Masoom Raza didn’t need to do a lot of research to write Aadha Gaon and the Hindu Khatri Krishna Sobti—whose Zindaginama, while centring her own caste, didn’t exclude anyone—explicitly rejected the need for research, arguing, much like Proust himself, that the writer just needed to notice and internalize what was around them. In a recent article on the Pasmanda experience, Khalid Anis Ansari says that he is ‘…attempt[ing] to capture the experience of the Muslim caste, not by unearthing the hidden secrets of everyday routines, but by shedding light on what is right in front of us and for which nothing more is required but “to take notice”.’

The book is a repository of information of the numerous varieties that are cultivated in the country. Thanks to poor shelf-life most varieties do not make it beyond their area of cultivation. There are varieties restricted to specific orchards and trees. Melodious names like Kohitoor, Mankurad, Imam Pasand and Neelum are still common, but Ratna and Sindhu are niche varieties of specific areas of Maharashtra. Rani Pasand in Murshidabad, Bengal and Champa in Champaran Bihar rarely make it beyond their territory.

The intimate style of Jalil-Burney’s writing is like walking through the several rooms of her house from within which one can hear Ruqaiyya Khala’s hearty laughs in one corner to Abba’s serious recitation of Urdu poems in another, as each chapter narrates a life story about a family member, seamlessly tied to a culinary memory or a dietary choice peculiar to that incident.

Needless to say, Modian Consensus: The Rediscovery of Bharat remains an appropriate intervention in the growing plethora of relevant analyses of current politics in India. The recently concluded general elections and the results thereof, however, appear to have put a spanner in the works of the developing Modian Consensus! Not only has the BJP suffered quite a noteworthy electoral setback, the role of coalition partners—and therefore, coalition politics in general—has emerged stronger and more robust

Ruby Lal, immersed in the themes of oblivion and erasure to understand the past, and particularly to investigate why certain persons, including women, could not take centre stage in Mughal history, dwells on the practice of erasure of the extraordinary literary prose work of Gulbadan, the only woman Mughal memoirist.

However, one feature that is common in both diaries is that both Ananda Ranga Pillai and Viranaicker considered themselves loyal subjects of the French. In spite of articulating his criticism of the French so clearly, Pillai did not ever exhibit any nationalist consciousness or preference for being under indigenous rule.

Those lured (or even blackmailed or kidnapped) to join, faced a tough journey which was under inhumane conditions, and often led to death, which of course was not expected. However, the author points out that for the westerners, the offer of indenture was considered as a relief, offering a better life for the famine-stricken poor in the country.

The zamindars mercilessly squeezed the peasants leaving them no incentive to produce more. The development of infrastructure, including railways and irrigation facilities led to the commercialization of agriculture and monetization of the rural economy with uneven effects on different areas and sections of the people.

Though the book makes an important contribution, there are a few areas which the author could have fleshed out more. There is an over-emphasis on Hindu women and mothers and very little mention of Muslim women. Likewise, during the colonial period

The book is indeed a detailed micro-history of the city, looking at the lives of individuals, communities and localities and their interactions with each other and their transformations from the 1930s to the mid-1950s, and the impact of the transition from a colony to a state to a nation on the city.

Anindyo Roy’s account of Lear’s visit to India stands out as the kind of travel book that Lear hoped to write from his journal jottings: ‘A travel book that that was akin to a kind of music: it was not a trophy, not a mirror held up to nature. Like a kaleidoscope

The book expands on existing research that examines the historical sociology of middle-class Indians, focusing on how they defined themselves and their role as agents of modernity during the 1920s and 1930s. It primarily explores western India, specifically Bombay and Pune, and deliberates on various Indian groups such as Marathi Brahmins, Gujarati upper castes

Manipur’s hosting of the Indian Science Congress in December 2017 had stirred up a few hornets’ nest in the University. The Vice-Chancellor AP Pandey now began to be targeted as a non-local person. The academic community was up in arms against him

This Eden is fragile, and the trees and bushes stand mute witness to the daily tragedies of the short lived and ultimately temporary liaisons, none of which can ever fill the void in a life empty of companionship. When we are introduced to Rupert,

From watching experts at work among snakes in the Agumbe Rainforest Research Centre, absorbing myths of the fearsome serpent Kaliya in Mathura-Vrindavan and witnessing the performance of an oracle propitiating Naga Devatha, to visiting sacred groves in various topographies

What is a reader to make of these stories set (innocently) side-by-side? Is the Vedic/Puranic Aditi, who birthed Indra and thirty-three other gods, like Trishala, the mother of the Jain Tirthankara Mahavira? Is Lal Dedh like Surdas? How do we think about Amir Khusro’s devotion to his human pir in comparison to these bhaktas and their obsession with God? Myths