Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

Dictionaries define half-blood in various ways: to denote degrees of separation in consanguineous relationships, as well as to describe social hierarchies pertaining to the pejorative epithet used for someone who is marginalized for not being racially ‘pure’.

Everything the Light Touches is a quiet book. Very quiet. It has time-travelled from another world into the twenty-first century, where fiction often tries to match the breathless pace of action cinema in order to stay in the ring, as it were. Quiet is not the same as slow, though the narrative is not fast-paced. Quiet is restful, quiet is calm, and there is something deeply assured and assuring about the place of things that the light touches

While the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall moved some of the stereotypical goalposts and challengedbinarieswhich were intrinsic to the genre, the spy continued to be what has been called ‘one of our favourite mythical heroes’ in an increasingly complex and conflicted world.

Udayan Mukherjee’s successive works of fiction have a wider and wider canvas. His first novel, Dark Circles (2018) had a focus on a dysfunctional family: the mother goes away to live in an ashram, leaving behind her two sons, a twelve-year-old and a six-year-old. Mukherjee’s second novel, A Death in the Himalayas (2019), is a well-plotted murder mystery

Journalism is an ever-evolving chaos because its umbilical cord is attached to the socio-cultural-political movements of a society that needn’t necessarily have any design, formulae or pattern. It is an institution of discourses that are formed on shared beliefs, anomalies, conflicts, power dynamics and confluences. In India, the global and local practices of journalism merge to create a unique communication system that underlines her contemporary socio-cultural-political spectrum.

It is not every day that one comes across a revolutionary’s biography. Even though Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Nelson Mandela, Joe Slovo, Ahmed Kathrada and Walter Sisulu, all have a memoir to their name, the majority of revolutionaries are, nevertheless, reticent when it comes to sharing their experiences and anecdotes of their adventurous life.

Devy covers an extensive expanse from genetics (David Reich’s Who We are and How We Got Here) to linguistics (David Anthony’s The Horse, The Wheel, and Language, Maheswar Neog’s Essays on Assamese Literatures) to literary theory. For him, Indo-Iranians entered the subcontinent with the horse-and-chariot and mingled with Out-of-Africa southerners producing the Mahabharata culture, shifting from pastoral to agrarian, urban and feudal society.

Gandhi is possibly the greatest Indian to have lived since the Buddha. His greatness, however, lies not in his invulnerability—but rather, in his struggle to overcome his many frailties. Gandhi’s story is an alluring, yet rare, tale of the triumph of human will over seemingly insurmountable odds. One is reminded of Albert Einstein’s famous phrase describing Gandhi, ‘Generations to come, it may well be, will scarce believe that such a man as this one ever in flesh and blood walked upon this Earth.’

Syed Mahmood could have become a public figure as eminent as his father Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, the educationist and social reformer who founded the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental (MAO) College (later the Aligarh Muslim University).

It is this project of othering of the Assamese that is the central theme in Moushumi Kandali’s Black Magic Women. A collection of ten fiercely feminist short stories translated from Assamese, the tales are tied together with the threads of marginalization, vulnerability and racism. The book blurb announces that Kandali situates most of her characters out of Assam and in the mainstream, exploring their struggles of assimilation.

Prejudice promulgates differences, and stereotypes contribute to defining individual identities in a society that caters to judgments and bias. Damodar Mauzo’s The Wait and Other Stories set in the heart of Goa deals with the conundrums of reality in a chaotic human world using subtle humour and nuanced narratives.

It is interesting to note the conflicting perspectives of the egalitarian ideals of Communist Indian supporters with the likes of the feudal class stakeholders like Umma and other privileged ones.

The story revolves around the ordeal of Lal Kaka’s family to find a suitable match for their daughter Buchia, and the anglicized bridegroom CC Mishra’s unrealistic expectations of finding a modern companion wife. The racy climax sequence dramatizes a farcical and ill-matched marriage with disastrous consequences.

Tears of the Begums is the first-ever English translation by Rana Safvi of Begumat ke Aansoo, originally written in Urdu by Khwaja Hasan Nizami, a follower of the Sufi order Chishti-Nizamiya and a descendant of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya.

Keertigan the novel asks several difficult vertiginous questions—what makes an entire group of people spontaneously come together to murder someone? It asks questions of journalism—what does it mean to report on such heinous crimes, which voices get represented and which inevitably get lost or left behind.

Lappujhanna doesn’t actually shy away from juxtaposing the past with the ongoing larger political stirring, even though this happens from an early teen’s perspective. Readers will definitely find themselves searching for their own childhood while meandering through the writer’s recollections of his own in the small town Ramnagar—also known for Jim Corbett National Parkin Uttarakhand

‘Stories are not just mere entertainment; the essence of stories is integral to our existence. If they were to vanish from our lives, we would transform into lifeless puppets, devoid of guidance on our roles and purpose.’ In PalliPaar, Rohekar weaves a complex web of narratives from various perspectives, each laden with themes of male chauvinism, violence, death, and jealousy.

The rise of the neo-colonial matrix of power along with a regressive turn towards cultural nationalism also unfold as significant themes of the narrative.

The unassuming bicycle, mocked and dismissed as a poor person’s vehicle, becomes a symbol of the relentless pace of life that is driven by sheer will but punctuated by the vicissitudes of life. It is ironic that this vehicle is later co-opted by capitalism. It undergoes quite a journey from being the target of derision and a fossil from a bygone era to a fashionable symbol of fitness, though now woefully out of the reach of the common people.

The book under review, Bharat Ki Ghadi: Badalte Bharat Ka Lekha Jokha is a collection of articles written by renowned journalist Priyadarshan. Apart from one lucid introduction, the book consists of forty-two articles, written by the author at different points in time in the last few years (though the author has not mentioned the exact time period covered through these articles).