Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

There are significant departures from the Mahabharata. Rajuna has two wives: Draupadi and Serikandi (Shikhandi) who fights for the Pandavas. Rajuna becomes an inveterate philanderer. On Duryudana’s command Sangkuni (Shakuni) transforms into dice and Arya Manggala becomes the gambling table.

In ‘Summers of Waiting’, Sita visits her ailing Tatha, her grandfather, who has raised her. Even before she arrives, she understands she must leave: ‘Twelve days was all she had.

But there is a third level which, as the book shows, comes via writing stories about people, mostly women—men too—who have experienced loss and grief. Thus, we have the canvas of the ten searing stories in this book filled with sisters grieving for sisters/brothers, mothers grieving for daughters/sons, and wives grieving for their partners.

Described as stories of love in the blurb of the book, When Jaya Met Jaggu and Other Stories explores various facets of love from romantic, platonic, familial, to even eternal love. The strength and weakness of a short story are both in the aspect of brevity—the currency of words

The retelling of myth serves as an effective device for simultaneously critiquing the present and locating its continuities with the past, to indicate how orthodoxies and systems of exclusion replicate themselves through the ages, across changing contexts.

The poetry book opens with six provocative haikus. They are tight, precise and fecund with suggestions. Although the essence of a haiku lies in the neat execution of its syllabic structure and restrained release of its deep meaning, each haiku in the book is paradoxically supplemented by a corresponding colorful sketch. At times, the precision of a haiku is invaded by the visual excess of the sketch and the pleasure of delaying interpretation of the form is suddenly interrupted by the diverted attention.

Vaishali Shroff’s Taatung Tatung and Other Amazing Stories of India’s Diverse Languages is an impassioned plea for linguistic diversity, emphasizing the social, historical and cultural value of preserving languages even as she chronicles the impact of languages defeated and lost due to the hegemonic march of dominant tongues across the Indian subcontinent.

Aditi Anand uses simple illustrations to beautifully uplift this sombre subject. Her illustrations are bound to invoke curiosity in a child’s mind. I spent a considerable amount of time fixating on the minute details in her drawings. The figures in the book are etched in a carefree manner, almost from the gaze of a child. The grandfather’s expressions are tinged with a little sadness

In the interconnected web of global politics, the dynamics of International Relations wield significant influence in shaping the trajectory of nations and regions. However, in today’s global landscape, disorder prevails as established rules and norms of International Relations are frequently disregarded.

Western views are not universally valid, and this liberal way of thinking divides countries in an imperialist manner into ‘good’ democratic and ‘bad’ autocratic ones and thus creates defensive reactions, says Carlo Masala, Professor, International Politics at the Bundeswehr University, Munich

As a young man, Raja Ram Mohun Roy saw his bewildered and wailing 17-year-old, widowed sister-in-law pushed into her husband’s funeral pyre, which made him a lifelong campaigner against the practice of sati, idolatry, and obscurantist rituals.

The section highlights the fact that instead of searching for causes of Asia’s descent into poverty in the acquisition of wealth by European powers, we should try to understand the manner in which the colonial powers manipulated the ‘intra-Asian connections’

The titles of the works included in this compilation are in themselves revealing of the LeT, its mindset and equally of its priorities: ‘Why are We Waging Jihad’; ‘In Defence of Jihad’; ‘The Mujahid’s Call’; ‘We the Mothers of the Lashkar’

Former Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan (2017-20), Ajay Bisaria has written an engaging book, an easy read, despite 500+ pages of text.

Policing in postcolonial South Asian countries has been a complex mix of legacies from the colonial era, local traditions and the freedom struggle. Post Independence, they had to deal with the mammoth task of reforming and transforming their policing institutions.

The book explores the dynamics of Indo-US relationship in the post-Cold War context. In this endeavour, it has a detailed discussion of the core issues, the major challenges and the mutual perceptions the two countries possess towards each another.

Mukarji gives a lot of space to the role of Commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, a man of Tajik descent, a minority group in a country of Pashtun majority, who led the Northern Alliance consisting of other minority groups in fighting the Soviet occupation. As he claims: ‘If you want to know the best part of Afghanistan’s recent history

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, Salgado and Anand have attempted to craft a digitalized and green route for resilient growth by identifying the potential demographic dividend in South Asia and pushing for more significant trade and financial openness.

‘Developing states, and particularly those in Africa, Southeast Asia, and parts of Eastern Europe, are some of the most vulnerable to the growing influence of Xinhua, since they have few restrictions on content-sharing deals,

Despite being at the helm of affairs in China for more than 12 years now, Xi Jinping is still somewhat of an enigma for the world and may be even for a large number of people within China.