By Ghee Bowman

The soldiers were part of the 2.5 million-strong Indian Army. They were taken prisoners, as the war progressed, in theatres in east and north Africa, the Mediterranean, Europe and on the high seas. They endured five years of incarceration. Included in them were the Viceroy Commissioned Officers (VCO), a category so peculiar to the Indian Army that the confused Germans had to enquire from the British whether they were to be treated as soldiers or officers! Another oddity was that the earliest, and often the longest-serving POWs were not even soldiers.


Reviewed by: TCA Rangachari
By Caleb Simmons

Mysore’s association with a buffalo myth dates back to the latter half of the first millennium. The Wodeyar kings reinvented this myth in the seventeenth century by associating the local female deity with the Pauranic legend of the Goddess slaying Mahisha, the buffalo demon. This foundational myth concerning the Goddess and the city has remained in the popular psyche ever since (pp. 29-30).


Reviewed by: Manu V Devadevan
Edited by E.V. Ramakrishnan and K.C. Muraleedharan

The compilation addresses different aspects of Vijayan’s oeuvre, including his literary works, his contributions to political thought, his engagements as a cartoonist, and his role as a translator. In this introductory chapter, EV Ramakrishnan delves into the multi-dimensional persona of Vijayan, analysing how the writer is defined as a ‘critical insider’ within the socio-political and cultural contexts of postcolonial India.


Reviewed by: TT Sreekumar
By Zehra Nigah. Translated from the original Urdu by Rakhshanda Jalil

On the whole, this anthology offers a good sampling of Nigah’s poetry insofar as it touches upon many significant aspects of her poetic vision. A good number of poems also dwell on the theme of aging and its attendant issues of neglect and loneliness. While the inevitability of the ageing process is acknowledged and its losses and gains accepted (‘Ab to Lagta hai Kuch Aise’), Nigah also calls out the hypocrisy of ‘cultured people’ who mouth the Islamic belief that Heaven exists beneath the feet of their mothers but in fact are indifferent to them (‘Ek Sacchi Ma ki Kahani’).


Reviewed by: Deeba Zafir
By Manoranjan Byapari. Translated from the original Bengali by V. Ramaswamy Eka

Certain geographical and location settings, such as the city of Calcutta, Jadavpur, a railway station amongst other surrounding areas, give life to the narrative, and the divisions within these spaces reveal how a person’s identity is shaped by the environment they inhabit. Translated by V Ramaswamy, the book flows effortlessly, with the language leaping off the pages, drawing readers into the underbelly of what it means to be displaced and without a firm foothold in an ever-changing world.


Reviewed by: Semeen Ali