My first experience of Bombay was that of cognitive dissonance. This was partly due to the fact that my imagination of Bombay as a city was shaped, in substantial measure, by the newly emerging body of English literature based on the city and partly because the first place I was acquainted with, back in 2006,
In 2008, Nalin Mehta1 wrote about satellite television being not only a marker of the progress of the idea of India, but also being a fundamental contributor to it. Earlier in 2001, Robin Jeffrey2 had written about regional language newspapers being vital hinges on which the nation as a whole was supported.
Kalighat paintings…and brush drawings are monumental in their presentation on an otherwise mostly blank page. Preceding the work of Matisse, some of the brush drawings prefigure it. Out of Indian tradition and impressions of Western painting, the ‘bazaar’ painters, descendants of low-caste and hereditary craftsmen created forms as valid as, and akin to, some of the later work by leading artists in the West.
Tantalizingly titled, this endearing coffee table volume showcases through stunning imagery—albeit in black and white—the sharply contrasting and majestic landscape of Balochistan; the book serves as a bird’s eye view on the region’s complex problems and convulsions of civil military conflict through the eyes of British reporter Willem Marx, along with his French photojournalist friend Marc Wattrelot.
Asok Kumar Das’s passion for Mughal art never fails to awe us and his ventures in this arena never ceases to enrich our understanding of Mughal art and inevitably our perception of our own history and culture.
The volume under review is a delightfully knowledgeable anthology of nine well researched articles, the fallout of a conference held at Hyderabad, marvellously printed with enchanting pictures. It takes us beyond essentialist notions of Islamic and Timurid gardens that have dominated the discussion of gardens in South Asia, and to overcome the seeming evidentiary impasse…