Diptakirti Chaudhuri

Trifles makes perfection, and perfection is no trifle’ goes a famous saying, often ascribed to Michelangelo. Bollywood films are far from perfect, but a ‘crazy trivia guide to Bollywood’ can be as mesmerizing as a blockbuster is to the countless addicts of Hindi commercial cinema.The pan-India appeal of films made in Bombay (should Bollywood be now renamed Mullywood in view of its changed name to Mumbai!) continues unabated despite challenges from the South.


Reviewed by: Amitabha Bhattacharya
Samir Kumar Das & Bishnupriya Basak

One of the festivities that is held in great reverence is the Durga Puja. Though it is a five-day journey, Bengal, and Bengalis (across the globe) prepare for the festival throughout the year.The Making of Goddess Durga in Bengal: Art, Heritage and the Public is a collection of articles authored by various scholars is an ethnographic study, divided into four parts, of its colonial past and the artists involved. 


Reviewed by: Oly Roy
Suresh Menon

Suresh Menon’s collection of essays, Why don’t You Write Something I Might Read? is that rare book that leaps up at first glance with multiple hooks. To begin, is the poignant pull of Westland’s Context logo—from what used to be India’s oldest independent book house, felled for closure earlier this year, after its buyout by Amazon.


Reviewed by: Rina Ramdev
Ananta Kumar Giri

The book under review is indeed a very carefully curated anthology of essays that brings together the lesser known side of thinker, scholar and activist Chitta Ranjan Das. The volume is a collection of Das’s writings on a wide variety of subjects related to culture, politics, literature and life and thereby holds up the spectacular canvas of his extremely creative and life-affirming personality.


Reviewed by: Ananya Pathak
Kolakaluri Enoch

Where do stories come from? Where and how do they reach? How does the reader respond to the stories unknown, unheard and unwritten earlier? How do stories of the other become instrumental in understanding the interface between the self and the other? The twelve stories in Asprishya Ganga and Other Stories articulate the experience specific to identities such as community, class, occupation, region and language.


Reviewed by: K Suneetha Rani
Manindra Gupta.

Pebble Monkey! What an enchanting title, you think. You open the novella to a quaint world–at 12,000 feet, on a snowy mountainous terrain, live ibexes. One ibex dislodges a pebble. The pebble is thrown up in the air, and when it falls it bounces into the tunnel. Soon afterwards, someone can be heard swimming in the water.


Reviewed by: Meenakshi Shivram