Krishnagopal Mallick (1936-2003) was born and brought up in Kolkata, and the limit of his territorial domain is essentially College Square and its surrounding area in the city. In his depictions of the mundane and the ebb and flow of daily life
The genesis of the vernacular turn in Indian historical studies can be attributed to a crucial inquiry: ‘Was there history writing in India before the British colonial intervention?’ As Partha Chatterjee puts it in his Introduction to the volume History in the Vernacular
Dimitrova declares in the Introduction of the book, she understands ‘“Indian cultural identity” in a non-essentializing sense, as a pluralistic, open-ended, and dynamic concept that is inclusive of all religious, cultural, and socio-political traditions and currents in South Asia and beyond’
Social as well as political movements have a long and sustained history in India. In post-Independence India, the decade of the 1980s saw a wave of new social movements focused on identity, culture and lifestyle instead of just political or economic issues.
I remember my father, a doctor, having stacks of jasoosi naavil (detective novels) on his bedside table. Printed on flimsy paper, often with lurid covers, they were dog eared and clearly well read.
Firdous Azmat Siddiqui’s novel Zindaan, written in Urdu, brilliantly takes us through the gloomy days of 2020, when we were imprisoned in our own homes at once after the outbreak of the Corona virus. It explores human emotions and psychology in times of turmoil. The book highlights the helplessness of human beings before the might of a virus.