By Rohit Saran

While doughnut pie charts laying out ownership patterns of NSE-listed companies can be illuminating, the average person does not get meaningfully informed about the implications of categories such as ‘promoter’ and ‘non-promoter’, or about the shifts in equity ownership. Are large-cap stocks being preferred by retail investors? What income bracket are these urban investors coming from? Are Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPIs) investing differently over the last decade, and what sectors are they concentrating on? For more probing questions,


Reviewed by: Yusra Khan
By Anoushka Jain

The book would be a remarkable tool-book for those walkers or others (whether in Delhi or distant from it) keen on knowing Delhi, especially the monuments in Old Delhi, and the general ambience around them—street food, transport facilities, the people. A valuable aspect of the book is that it ‘creates a roadmap for a feminist lens of reading the city’, and focuses on ten powerful, influential women of the historical past, particularly the Mughal past, who contributed to the cityscape and architecture of Delhi. These women, erased from the patriarchy-driven contemporary popular accounts, perhaps because of their non-conformism and daring emboldened spirit, are retrieved by Jain from behind the purdah, the walled harem.


Reviewed by: Meena Bhargava
By Namrata Chaturvedi

An ordained sister in a nun’s habit, she was seen going for lessons in Hindustani music to Ustad Latafat Husain Khan, who was from the Agra Gharana of Hindustani classical music. Her Ustad had composed many poetic pieces (bandishes) under the pseudonym ‘Premdas’. In her own words, it was music that became her main means of entering into meditation. Vandana Mataji also wore saffron robes and maintained that she was a Christian. Through Vandana Mataji’s story, Chaturvedi notes that one can be born Zoroastrian, become Christian and practice Hindu sannyasa and nama japa.


Reviewed by: Juanita Kakoty
Translated by Maria Heim

As such, Milindapanho is historically significant as evidence of vibrant inter-civilizational exchange in the ancient world, albeit historians are still uncertain as to the historicity of this particular event. For Buddhists, of course, the conversion of an initially sceptical Menander/Milinda into a committed Buddhist by the end of the dialogue serves as an example of the rigour and refinement of the Buddhist philosophical understanding of the nature of reality.


Reviewed by: Maya Joshi
A Retelling by Meena Arora Nayak

Nayak rightly says that ‘Those of us who grew up listening to or reading Vikram and Vetal stories have a mental image of the Vetal. For some of us, that image derives from the popular television series, Vikram aur Betaal that aired on Doordarshan in 1985-86. In this series the Vetal is shown as an old man with scraggly white hair and an evil grin under a long witchy nose, riding on Vikram’s muscular back.’ (Not to mention the orange-red lipstick that the Betaal wore!) Nayak calls the Vetal a shapeshifter and so could be defined in many ways, however, she draws a close association between the Vetal and the ‘shadowy ghoulish creatures such as bhutas, pretas and pishachas. The former two are spectral remains of people who have died….


Reviewed by: Sudhamahi Regunathan
By Anamika

The opening section sets the tone for this method as, through Saroj, the novel returns to the domestic and emotional underside of literary reputation. Nirala appears not as a monument but as a man caught in affection, loss, poverty, and eccentricity. The section on Miraben and Kasturba Gandhi complicates the familiar Gandhian moral grammar. Anamika highlights the complex relationship between the two women, shaped in part by Gandhi’s controversial experiments with celibacy and the public scrutiny surrounding his closeness to Miraben. Without reducing the relationship to scandal or sentiment, the novel quietly raises questions about how public perception may have influenced the emotional dynamic between the two women. Anamika approaches these relationships with restraint and psychological nuance.


Reviewed by: Tarika