It is perhaps a cliché to argue that South Asia is a potpourri of different influencing societies, nationalities, ethnic traditions and cultural heritages. South Asian culture is rich and varied underlining the complex relationship between its myriad common traditional cultures. The nations share an ethnic background and most of the territorial divisions have come up only in the recent past.
I have just read the 40 years of the Book Review. Wonderful, if you have not read it, well need I say you should! One of the editors is close to me, in many ways. I think she wanted to render homage to the words and books which, nurtured us, accompanied us. We grew up in a home, I say home not house for therein lies the difference, for words meant a lot to us, in a home I was saying, where the walls were lined with books which murmured wherever we moved, whatever we did. This constant presence never did quieten, throughout our lives the ‘emanating words, words from the walls words from the air’
To review a classic is always difficult. How much could one praise and fawn over a book which reads so delightfully that you tend to forget that it is a nonfiction piece of work? Malcom Mcdonald was the UK High Commissioner to India in the 1950s and lived in the heart of Delhi, the Lutyen’s zone. Being a bird watching enthusiast he spent a lot of time observing the feathered ones in his garden.
For many people living in rural and suburban areas, coming across wild animals is a part of life. Be it that friendly squirrel or the (ever-dwindling) flock of sparrows, or the sinister snake that lives at the end of the garden. However, as urban sprawls expand to swallow up green spaces, these relationships are becoming ever scarcer.
In her first book of poetry Indu Mallah has chosen as her epigraph an exquisite poem by Ralph Nazareth. The glassblower’s art becomes a metaphor for the art of writing: ‘I’ve seen / Glassblowers/ stretch little / Into much. / Such is my hope / For words—/ Blowing syllables up / To hold a world / Close to breaking.The first part of the poems in this collection deals with her family, husband, sons, daughter. The feelings of intense love, pain and loss pervade this section. In the first poem, ‘Meeting Points’, is to her husband, whom death snatched away.
As a curious reader scans the titles of the poems listed on the contents page of the poetry collection of Jayant Parmar’s Pencil aur Doosri Nazmein translated by Nishat Zaidi as Pencil and Other Poems, an unsurprising summation ensues: poems related to nature with images from the flora and fauna; ghazals and nazms, predictably expected from an Urdu poet; then poems that are dedications to persons; poems about persons and poems related to places and travel. The reader is reassured of the obvious terrain to traverse. Comforted, the process of reading the poems begins.