The undivided Bengal with its Muslim majority had a Muslim problem which was not exactly the same as the Muslim problem of another Muslim majority province of the pre-Partition days, the Punjab; in fact, the Punjab’s was more a problem of the sense of insecurity felt by its Hindus.
In the twenties and thirties, and up to 1942, the South, and for a time the Central Assembly under British rule, reverberated with the voice of Satyamurti, patriot, orator, parliamentarian par excellence.
A mother-daughter relationship has always been a complex one to decode given its subjectivity. But Vrinda Nabar’s Family Fables & Hidden Heresies: A Memoir of Mothers and More manages to strike that right balance between myopic proximity and clinical objectivity…
I must admit, I received my copy of this book on the same day as the Guwahati molestation case, and I was riling with anger towards men as sexual predators and women as victims of abuse at the hands of men who can’t control their sexual urges and also society. The act of sex that day at least wore a pall of oppression…
The popular adage ‘appearances are deceptive’ applies aptly to these first two volumes of the proposed ten volumes of the off-beat autobiographical writings of Ashk, the Hindi novelist, playwright, critic, poet and publisher.
The book opens up a gamut of emotions that rules human psychology. The inner pages carry cartoons of how people are attracted to each other through various mental mappings. Vikram Doctor’s foreword and the editors’ introduction entice the mind leading to such sexual urges…