Aakaasa Veeduhal, (Homes in Heaven) is the latest novel by Vasanthi, one of the leading women writers in Tamil today. Translated into English by Dr Gomathi Narayanan, it has been selected by the UNESCO for inclusion in their collec¬tion of representative works.
Is there such a thing as a woman reader? Is it possible to say that women read differently from men? Or, for that matter, that women write differently from men? Or even that men write differently about women than they do about men? And if any, or all of these is/are the case, who is different, and how, and, as impor¬tant, why?
The Indian woman perhaps more than her sisters in other parts of the world is a fascinating creature. In spite of all the amazing odds against her, she emerges undefeated in spirit though often humbled in circumstance. Time and again we come across typical personalities—‘the eternal mother, the young urban working woman, the desperate survivor—a fraction of some we see when we look into each other’s eyes.
We have good novels and great ones. We have poetry that is good and poetry that is great. Vikram Seth’s The Golden Gate is a masterpiece both as fiction and as verse, This simultaneous triumph will not come as a surprise to those who have read Seth’s engaging travelogue which appeared in 1983. From Heaven Lake marked the com-mencement of a creative journey, a journey of immense promise.
Krishna Chaitanya’s extenuation for adding yet another to the two thousand odd editions of the Gita in seventy five languages that he has himself counted is indicated in the title of the book itself. His is the Gita for the modern man. It is of some importance to note that the visualized reader is modern not in the condescending sense of someone who has little or no Sanskrit, which, alas, is only too true of most potential readers of this book
After centuries of hostility between Christendom and the Islamic world, a most heartening phenomenon has appear¬ed in the field of scholarship—the Christian missionary writing on Islam, not with a view to denigrate, but, to convey his understanding of the faith borne out of study and empathy. Wilfred Cantwell Smith is one such scholar, another is the Rev: Christian W. Troll, Professor of Islamics and Christian-Muslim Relations at Vidyajyoti Institute of Religious Studies in Delhi. He is also a regular Visiting Professor at Jnana Deepa Vidyapeeth in Pune.