The book’s title intrigues. The author early on in the book explains it thus, ‘I began to see the pattern of a Shakespearean play, consisting of early successes, some complications, a climax, the emergence of a major event or character which changes.
New York University Professor Arvind Rajagopal has observed that television is an important avenue through which new modes of exercising power are being practiced. The two books under review provide insights into the Indian version of this phenomenon.
In this fascinating account of the history of humans on planet earth, Angela Saini pushes the story of evolution back to 200,000 years, (instead of the more frequent ‘45,000 years ago’), and presses for a diffused history of mankind, rather than a linear evolutionary model.
The book Dark Fear, Eerie Cities analyses a particular strand of Hindi films from the past two decades and through them leads us through a fascinating enquiry into the sources and manifestation of desire, anxiety, fear and neurosis in the new Indian.
We inhabit an era in which we take for granted both nations and national histories that are very recent creations in the large swathes of time. Not to speak of postcolonial states like India that became independent as late as the mid-twentieth century.
Suralakshmi Villa, titled after the eponymous heroine of this novel, is a remarkable witness to an inter-generational story that speaks to urban India. A drive around the older neighbourhoods of New Delhi or Kolkata would bring us in view of stately.