As documented by Lewis Carroll, the journey of Alice down the rabbit hole became ‘curiouser and curiouser’, with Cheshire Cat, Jabberwock, Mad Hatter, Queen of Hearts and the other characters gradually entering the narrative. Carroll’s fascinating account led to a rich genre of fictions, which document one’s magical journey in the realm of fantasy. The science fiction stories in the recent past have matured into a similar genre of documenting journey to the future. Futuristic science fiction can give the reader an unexpected and enjoyable jolt, if at the last moment it is revealed to be a frame story (i.e., a story within a story), as classically seen in the ‘Planet of the Apes’.
2016
The charmingly titled Dhanak follows a time honoured tradition of a journey story. What is different about it is that it is also travelling through different media like a hot knife shot through butter. I haven’t seen the film, but after Anushka Ravishankar’s seamless novelization (a fine new coinage), I feel like I have. Anushka introduces the two lovable heroes, Pari and Chotu with swift ease. The piece of jaggery that a sightless Chotu catches unerringly, their walk to school that is the very first journey, reveals the family situation and their bond with an efficient economy of words. Shahrukh Khan also makes an entry in this early and we know that he is going to drive the action in some unexpected way.
Train journeys are always fascinating, especially in India. The Indian railways are the arteries of the country—they traverse the length and breadth of the nation carrying passengers and goods, all the connecting distant places past myriad drastically different landscapes—no two stations are the same, no two routes look similar. A journey in a train teaches you not just about the people, it also teaches you about geography, culture and heritage when you look out of its windows.
In this day and age of computers, the ability to write and under-stand programming is an invaluable skill. Computers now surround us—everything from our high-tech smartphones and laptops, to our microwaves and cars use programmes written in lines and lines of code (specialized languages that computers can understand). Marc Scott and Mick Marston do a wonderful job introducing this world—while aimed at young children, the book serves as an equally good guide for an older novice.
Dad, did you know, Kalpana Chawla was the first woman of Indian origin to go to space?’ my eight year old daughter, who is in class 3, mentioned with excitement. I was helping her with her school project on the solar system. During the course of the project, we discovered together, the truly inspiring personal journey of Kalpana Chawla from Karnal, a small town in Haryana to her joining the NASA programme in the US as an astronaut. Kalpana’s fascination for space and flying was sparked off at a very early age. On a recent trip to the US, I had the opportunity to take my daughter to the world famous Morehead Planetarium and Science Centre in North Carolina.
When I saw the title of the book I had been asked to review Death on Earth: Adventures in Evolution and Mortality I was apprehensive. I assumed that the book would be another treatise on the much flogged concept of Darwinian adaptive evolution: the superior importance of population and species survival over the death of any individual of a species. But what really got my interest was the introduction and the first chapter that discussed the concept of death as envisioned as a cessation of Life; and the rational of defining life and the misunderstanding that till now exist in our definition of ‘What is Life??’
Dear Aburva, I appreciate your reasons for writing this book. As a young person who reflects on a lot of things, you want to connect with others like yourself and like your parents so that they may understand each other. In this instance, you have focused on your passion for dance, bharatanatyam in particular, how you were briefly distracted from it owing mainly to peer pressure, and how you returned to it and performed the arangetram, your first solo public performance of bharatanatyam. Along the way you have shared your impressions of Oman, where you live; you have provided information about Chidambaram, the town your father hails from and also important for the temple dedicated to Nataraja and Govindaraja, and in Hindu thinking believed to be the venue of Shiva’s cosmic dance.
We all know of the legendary Khwaja Ahmad Abbas who was the scriptwriter of Raj Kapoor’s classic films like Awara, Shri 420, Mera Naam Joker and Bobby. He also directed award winning films like Saat Hindustani and Do Boond Paani and introduced an actor called Amitabh Bachchan. As Abbas’s niece Syeda Hameed writes ruefully in her introduction, he wrote hits for Raj Kapoor but his own films would flop at the box office. Few of us remember that Abbas was also an acclaimed writer, author of 74 books and wrote a column in the Blitz magazine for 45 years. One should thank Hameed for reviving this gem of a book where Abbas profiles five women who exemplify the Bharat Mata of his dreams. These are real women and that makes them resonate in the reader’s mind.
Imagine a time when people could ask the question, ‘What is a film?’ In 1913 a man stood yelling about a new show outside a Bombay theatre, ‘Fifty seven thousand photographs… two miles long… only three annas!’ Dadasaheb Phalke was selling a visual magic that no one had ever seen before. His film would instantly mesmerize people and within a generation lay the foundation of the film industry in Bombay. And today, within a century, we carry films in our pockets and watch them on the tiny screens of smart phones. This is the unforgettable legerdemain of moving and talking pictures. I still remember sitting in the dark at a puja pandal in Daryagunj in the 1970s, the audience around me whizzing with excitement.
For several years now, I have found it far more delightful to go through literature for children and young adults that is being published in our country, that is, in comparison with books targeted at adult audiences, especially those that are written in English. The prime reason is the far superior quality of writing, illustration and production. If books published for children and teenagers can enthral an adult so much, how much more pleasing must they be for the kids. Amid this encouraging and vibrant scenario, there is one aspect that appears to have either gone missing, or has declined in significance or visibility. This is the segment on monthly magazines for children.
How did the lion become the King of the Forest? Why does the elephant have such a l-o-n-g nose? How did the camel get its big hump? Why do rabbits have such long ears? And why on earth do tortoises carry shells on their backs? Enquiring young minds are full of such never ending questions! In Secrets of the Animal Kingdom—an attractive and amusing read aloud book by Ratna Manucha, every curious question becomes a delightful tale! Young kids are always fascinated by animal stories and will enjoy reading about how the lion defeated the elephant in a wrestling bout to become the King of the Forest. A real fitness freak, the lion exercises hard while the elephant is convinced that the more banana trees he eats the stronger he will become! As one can imagine, the wrestling bout eventually turns into a rather one-sided affair! The meddlesome elephant is always poking his nose into other animals’ affairs, and lands up with a long nose or trunk.
The Tyrannosaur Chronicles is a comprehensive account of the largest and most famous dinosaurs to walk the earth, the Tyrannosaurus Rex. David Hone takes you on a journey dating back several million years to an era when these mystical creatures presumably lived. The book is accompanied by evidences and calculated assumptions. It doesn’t totally dispel all the images you might have after watching Jurassic Park, but provides thorough explanations as to what the real deal was. The book presents published scientific studies to present an exhaustive and highly informative overview beginning from where dinosaurs came from, evolutionary characteristics, metabolism, morphology, anatomy, ecology and physiology.
The White Tiger And Other Stories is a completely different book. It is a collection of spooky, scary tales compiled by Ruskin Bond. If you are a coward, it’s best to read them in daylight or else… ‘The Men Tigers’, by Lt. Col. W.H. Sleeman is a curious tale on a belief in India that men are turned into tigers by eating a root and then how does one distinguish a real one from a mantiger? ‘The only difference between the two…is that the metamorphosed tiger has no tail, while the bora, or ordinary tiger, has a very long one.’ However, there is an antidote, another root, which can turn the tiger back into a man! And all this is said to have happened in Central India.
1975
Watership Down is an incredible book. It is the story of an epic journey of a small band of wild rabbits. Fiver, the prophet, predicts imminent destruction and, under the leadership of his brother Hazel, the rabbits leave the familiar security of their warren and brave the unknown countryside in search of a new home. Unconsciously, the reader slides into a completely new dimension, joins Hazel and his friends, sees the world through their eyes, smells the dangers, suffers the hardships and terrors till they reach the perfect home— Watership Down.
1975
Once again in her latest novel, as in most of her earlier work, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala explores the situation of foreigners in India and what India does to them. But unlike her earlier work (seven novels and three collections of short stories), here for the first time she adds an extra dimension of time, going back to the past for the confirmation of a pattern that she had so far traced only in terms of contemporary India.
Bertrand Russell was born in 1872 and died in 1970 at the ripe old age of ninety-seven. Mathematician, philosopher, pacifist during World War I, advocate of war on Russia soon after World War II, campaigner for nuclear disarmament towards the end of his life, and prolific writer on a variety of topics, Russell was a prominent figure among the intellectual elite of England for well over three quarters of a century. An intimate and detailed account of Russell’s multifaceted personality and his achievements is now available in the book by Ronald Clark, biographer of Einstein, J.B.S.Haldane, the Huxleys and Tizard.
The survey induces sadness at what appears to be a near total lack of (a) research into the more fundamental issues of public administration, (b) depth and penetration in such studies as have been made or come to notice. The presentations are competent but do not appear to have escaped the temptation to highlight the fashion to berate the bureaucracy for its alleged ‘dysfunctional’ nature.
Technological progress has taken very diverse forms in different environmental conditions and periods of history, so diverse that it has sometimes not even been recognized as such when viewed through unfamiliar eyes. ‘No Chinese peasant’, commented Victor Hugo, ‘goes to the city without carrying back, at the end of his bamboo, two buckets of what we call filth.’ Europeans naturally found it an abhorrent practice.
Come, screaming with all your fourteen mouths, You speechless hysteria hurting in each limb of my nation, Come to me in the loneliness of your rage Come out foaming You the ‘Satvik’ blood of the centuries, I, a small poet Stand hankering for your language, Include me in your speech.With the untimely death of Dhoomil in February 1975, modern Hindi literature lost one of its most promising young poets. … .Dhoomil had managed to attract attention with his clear and refreshingly new imagery and his adroit use of the Hindi language as it is spoken on the streets.
Many of us have on occasion been dubious about the obsession in some circles to explain Indian culture entirely in terms of mysticism. This analysis by Staal of how to approach the study of mysticism is most valuable in that it not only puts the matter into a new perspective, but also because it suggests…