Raghu Rai

‘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’.


Reviewed by: Malavika Karlekar
Leela Venkataraman

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.


Reviewed by: Krishna Menon
Sheila Dhar

1995

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.


Reviewed by: Partho Datta
Jim Shepard

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.


Reviewed by: Baradwaj Rangan

I must, of course, begin by congratulating The Book Review on her 40th birthday. For survival and growth with integrity, and for what it is doing to encourage discussion and debate, without which, as Romila Thapar and TBR have recently reminded us, we cannot have democracy. There are increasing signs that this is indeed the case. I was scared when I gave a talk on socalled Love Jihad recently. After Professor Kalburgi’s assassination, my mother called me to say I should install a spy-hole in my door, if I didn’t have one. Do not open the door to strangers, she said.


Reviewed by: Mohan Rao

In T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, Merlyn asks his owl Archimedes, ‘What is your favourite bird?’ ‘Archimedes thought this over for some time, and then said, “Well, it is a large question. It is rather like asking you what is your favourite book.”’I’ve been reading for six-and-a-half decades. Learnt reading at mum’s knee through a wonderful Lucy Mabel Atwell book. Obviously one cannot talk about all the books one has read.


Reviewed by: Shobhana Bhattacharji