Perumal Murugan

The articulations of caste and its deployment in India are grey areas that have been swept under the carpet and often rendered invisible in our quotidian lives. Many believe that it is a thing of the past that need not be talked about so vehemently today. But the agony of its experiential terrains, as recorded and performed by the millions who continue to be oppressed by its multipronged techniques of naming and shaming, both covert and overt, is profoundly revelatory.


Reviewed by: Meena T Pillai
Gulzar in Conversation

Nasreen Munni Kabir’s book Jiya Jale is a fascinating account of trying to understand Gulzar’s poetry in order to translate it. The conversation tries to unravel the meaning of the poet’s lyrics and in the process we get a ringside view of not only the complicated art of translating songs but also insights into the craft of lyric writing. Gulzar lays a lot of stress on the craft of writing; according to him ‘one should master the profession one practices.’


Reviewed by: Asad ur Rahman Kidwai
Ankur Bhardwaj

A ficionados of Hindi film music (present reviewer included) seriously believe that the output of songs from the Golden Era (1940-1970) is so rich and diverse that there is a song to describe every single emotion, feeling that we are aware of, as well as those that might be subconscious and subterranean. There is a eureka moment each time one encounters a song that manages to guess one’s exact feelings and puts it just right.


Reviewed by: Ashwini Deshpande
Malvika Maheshwari

Malvika Maheshwari’s book on the extra-constitutional attacks on artists and artworks in post-Emergency India, adds productively to the literature on free speech and censorship. Emerging out of her PhD dissertation and research conducted between 2008 and 2016, the book maps a history of `hurt sentiments’ and violent attacks through studying a selection of controversial events.


Reviewed by: Shohini Ghosh
Katia Legeret Manochhaya

Reading through Dance Theatre of India: Crossing New Aesthetics and Cultures, there are two questions that arise from the preface itself: 1. Who is the intended audience for this book? And by extension, who then should the reviewer be? 2. What are the basic assumptions and attitudes that seem to underlie the lens of research and the form of writing?


Reviewed by: Vikram Iyengar
Ritwik Ghatak

A sequence in Komal Gandhar (1961) is where the camera dollies towards the dead end of a railway track. The tracks end at the banks of the Padma. On the other side of the Padma is Eastern Bengal or East Pakistan. As they stare into the vast expanse of the Padma with itinerant vessels plying along the waters, Anusya shares with Bhrigu that her ‘desh’ is on the other side and that the sight of the other Bengal has saddened her.


Reviewed by: Arjun Ghosh