Looking Back The past, it is said, is a strange land, but it is also one in which serendipity has a role. Looking back at our first four (then quarterly) issues, we found to our delight that all our founders had contributed. In this section, ‘TBR@40: Looking Back’, we carry excerpts of reviews from these issues; the only exception is the review of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj, which was the first review of the Millennium issue.
I loved Deepa Balsavar’s The Seed the sec- ond I saw it. This little book about a girl who finds a seed and plants it, is so full of warmth and colour that it is impossible not to go back to it again and again. The words are simple—the sentences no more than three or four words long. Its protagonist, a small girl who looks about four years old, appears in a skirt and top with a curly mop of hair. She is immediately relatable and full of animation, buzzing through the pages with energy.
‘I went from one platform to another looking for my picture before I came across these three men calmly sitting and reading their newspapers’ commented Raghu Rai in his explanation to an amazing image that juxta poses frenetic motion with an absolute indifference to the chaos around. Motion is represented by a flurry of blurred figures while the readers are clearly in view, the sharp image picking up the furrowed brow of the perhaps myopic man who holds his paper at a distance. It is Churchgate Station, Mumbai in the nineties and Rai waits for his moment to record a calm focus amidst the ‘human deluge’.
Indian classical dance is rather a favourite subject of coffee table books for obvious reasons. The visual appeal and allure of the images lend itself to glossy books on the theme, of which there are many. Hastily put together primers also abound in the market. Of late, serious academic scholarship has had much to offer on the subject. Davesh Soneji, Avanti Meduri, Priya Srinivasan, and many others have contributed a great deal through their academic writing in the form of books and scholarly papers.
TBR completes four decades of publication. Which were the most significant books on Hindustani classical music published in these years? Four titles immediately come to mind, one symbolically for each decade. Right on top is Sheila Dhar’s brilliantly funny memoir Here’s Someone I’d Like You to Meet (1995) now available in the omnibus edition Raga ’N Josh (Permanent Black, 2005, 2015). The book is an anecdotal classic about the earthy world of Hindustani vocalists, a perennial favourite among music lovers.
Ever since the movies were invented, people have been writing about them. There was WG Faulkner, who, in 1912, became the first regular critic in a British newspaper (The London Evening News). ‘The picture theatre has taken a firm place in the social enjoyment of the people,’ he declared. ‘It is no longer a matter of wonder; it has become an everyday part of the national life.’ Americans like Otis Ferguson and James Agee followed.