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The book cannot be categorized as belonging to a particular genre as far as its story line is concerned. Undoubtedly a fiction, the reader is left wondering if the protagonist was actually a ‘real person’ who did not wish to reveal her identity, and yet wanted the world to know about her life and the people linked with her—their experiences, their mindsets, and their thinking that most of the time directed their actions. What comes across is a level of honesty that existed in the primary players and an acceptance of human failings—if one may call it that—of their loved ones.

Qayenaat, the heroine of The Cosmopolitans, has been married once, doesn’t like to cook, has a friend called Sathi who’s actually her ex-boyfriend, but hasn’t quite gotten over her, and is fiftythree years old.The novel opens with the arrival of Baban Reddy on the Bangalore art scene. On display at ‘Navya’, the new art gallery is Baban’s gigantic piece of art Nostalgia. So big is Nostalgia that you have to climb up a ladder to inspect it closely! The art lovers of Bangalore are agog with the news and vying with each other to catch the attention of the artist Baban, who has a lady-friend accompanying him called Tanya.

I must admit to having agreed to review this book by the celebrated Barkha Dutt after a spectacular launch spearheaded by Dutt herself through her pivotal position in NDTV, with a degree of trepidation. Yet the opening chapters and my discovery of Barkha being the daughter of that Amazon among free India’s young journalists of the time, Prabha Dutt, much admired by her contemporaries, who, like her, quested to break new ground in a brave new world, allayed these apprehensions. Through her own words Dutt comes across as a demonstrable example of what free India has made of the new woman: emancipated, independent, free thinking, not only ready but keen to challenge accepted wisdom and go where few Indian women have gone before.

Autism: Book of Revelations is a unique take on the subject of autism in terms of the spiritual insight experienced by professionals involved in autism care. In fact it would be an oversimplification to state that the book deals with the ‘spiritual’ considering the vast array of ways that people with autism and professionals involved in caring for them experience autism as a state of being beyond what is humanly possible, a state of ‘soul consciousness’ as Tasleem Farzana and Pekka Kontiainen summarize in the foreword to the book.

This is a memoir of a part of the political life, of sixteen years to be precise, of the President of India Pranab Mukherjee. It is clearly not an autobiography, though obviously Mukherjee is the narrator of his story and a commentator of goings-on around him, which he does in a lucid narrative. It follows his earlier publication The Dramatic Decade: The Indira Gandhi Years (2014). It must be stated at the outset, critiquing a political memoir is not an easy task for any reviewer, I would therefore critically look at the events he has described and commented upon.

Displacement and migration constitute what might be called a traumatic experience for many as they lead to uprooting one from one’s base. But if this happens due to some large scale violence, which has a communal and a caste overtone, it doubly marginalizes the victims. Till recently, it was the violence in Muzzaffarnagar that had become such a distressing story. According to a conservative estimate, more than 41,000 Muslims were rendered homeless, with most of them never being able to return to their villages and having to live the lives of destitutes. Gujarat (2002) was another example of communal violence which led to the displacement of a large number of people, as more than 2 lakhs were displaced within the first two years itself.