Yamunaparyatan, deemed to be the first Marathi novel, was published in 1857. It was written by Baba Padmanji Mulay, a formidable activist-intellectual and public persona of his times (1831-1906). It has now been translated into English as Yamuna’s Journey by Deepra Dandekar, a keen chronicler-critic of Padmanji’s times and texts.
Women’s role and contribution to Urdu literature and journalism in the eighteenth and nineteenth century remains a relatively under-examined area. CM Naim’s A Most Noble Life: The Biography of Ashrafunnisa Begum (1840-1903), makes an important intervention as it tells the tale of an extraordinary woman who was deeply devoted to the cause of women’s education, and enriches the reader with a wealth of material that highlights the social, cultural, and literary context that shaped the contours of ordinary Muslim women’s lives in the nineteenth century.
Sarala boarded the train from Ahmedabad. Her body seemed to burn. As if she was in the grips of a fever. She craned her neck to the sills of the window, to breath in a little fresher air. She perhaps went to sleep without intending to. When her eyes opened, her neck was stiff. Half of her face blackened by fine particles of coal flying from the rail engine looked at her from her hand held mirror. She shrank to the core. What if someone saw her like this, what would they make of it?’
Sara Rai, a renowned contemporary author in Hindi who is at home with its literary and sociocultural landscape, notes that she has chosen to write about writing, as well as the journeys of her family and their times, in English. Perhaps it is to reach a wider reading public. Or perhaps, it is a language which allows emotional and intellectual distance. For Raw Umber is a literary memoir fashioned with circumspection in some ways, and with an evocative lyricism in others.
The translator Vishes Kothari’s note that prefaces Vijaydan Detha’s collection of folk tales reminds us that what we are going to read is an act of literary and cultural translation as well as a feat of literary magic where the intangible is made visible and accessible to the readers who do not have access to the original Rajasthani stories and perhaps even the milieu in which these stories are set and from which they emerged.
Today, Artificial Intelligence is the dominant topic of discussion with questions about its expected rate of growth and its impact on various aspects of human life. The outcry over ChatGPT is just one of the many examples in our midst. People want to understand how AI is going to affect their lives and Toby Walsh’s book is an outstanding read which deals with this topic comprehensively, in a very easy to understand manner.