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Tag Archives: Memoir

Memoir


Compiled by Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca.
NISSIM EZEKIEL, POET & FATHER: A CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION (1924-2024)
2024

Mendonca’s memoir unfolds the joys of having an eminent poet as one’s father, and at the same time, the unhappiness of growing up in a broken family. She remarks that he was overjoyed at her birth and called her his ‘best poem’. He named her ‘Kavita’, which means ‘poem’ in Hindi. According to Mendonca, he was a loving father to his three children, two daughters and a son—Kavita, Kalpana and Elkana.


Reviewed by: Shyamasri Maji

Edited and translated by Tridip Suhrud
THE DIARY OF MANU GANDHI: 1946-1948
2024

Though short, her observations are penetrating and, at the same time, insightful. A case in point is an entry from 3 January 1947, in which she describes her visit (along with Gandhi and others) to a Harijan locality, named Namasudra. She describes this visit thus: ‘In the forenoon we went to visit the Harijan locality—they are called Namasudra—here. The inhumanity perpetrated on them makes one quiver’ (emphasis mine).


Reviewed by: Amol Saghar

By Zara Chowdhary
THE LUCKY ONES
2024

The memoir is spread in five sections, namely ‘Fire’, ‘Threads’, ‘Flowers’, ‘Air’ and ‘Water’, which are indicative of violence’s contamination of the most basic elements of the everyday. The section titled ‘Fire’ tells us about her association with fire in the train burning, and the burning of the Gulbarg society, which saw the killing of Ahsan Jafri and Bilkis Bano’s gang rape. The chapter discusses violence that is personalized through its effect on the hearing body and writing body, in this case, the narrator, and her attempts to formalize an affective intimate public sphere to form an affective community. She writes, ‘When I hear the story of the night Bano spent in the forest, I will think often about Bano’s body


Reviewed by: Aman Nawaz

By Rudolf C. Heredia
A CLOWN FOR GOD, A CLOWN FOR OTHERS: RECOLLECTIONS OF AN INDIAN JESUIT
2022

Despite securing prestigious opportunities to study abroad, Heredia was confronted with personal sacrifice, as he was unable to attend his father’s funeral while in Chicago. He pays tribute to the influential Jesuits who shaped his journey, including Fr. Joseph Neuner, Fr.
George Soares, Fr. Jose Ugarte and Fr.


Reviewed by: Amala Valarmathy A

By Noorjahan Bose. Translated by Rebecca Whittington Edited by Monica Jahan Bose
DAUGHTER OF THE AGUNMUKHA
2023

The memoir is set out in eight parts and begins with life on the family’s remote island home on Katakhali. A lack of infrastructure—safe drinking water, electricity, sanitation, roads, schools, housing, etc.—compounded by natural calamities made life hard for the people living here. Moreover, accessing basic amenities such as education beyond primary school or even medical assistance required crossing the turbulent Agunmukha which regularly claimed lives.


Reviewed by: Asma Rasheed

By Mujibur Rehman
SHIKWA-E-HIND: THE POLITICAL FUTURE OF INDIAN MUSLIMS
2024

In its broad strokes of probing modern Indian history, the book, however, is wanting in rigorous scrutiny of the ideal of secularism in the Republic. The writer has spent more time on making the case of how the politics of India—as it has unfolded over the years—has excluded the Muslim community, and with the Hindu Right controlling the reigns


Reviewed by: Moggallan Bharti

By M.K. Raina
BEFORE I FORGET: A MEMOIR
2024

Not only were Raina and Safdar friends, and feature in each other’s life stories as significant characters, they were part of a post-Independence generation of Indian theatre makers and other artists who were deeply inspired by anti-imperialist movements such as the war in Vietnam


Reviewed by: Sudhanva Deshpande

By Kunal Sen
BONDHU: MY FATHER, MY FRIEND
2023

Again, the naming word’s evocative powers are affirmed: Mrinal Sen’s city was Calcutta of a certain taste and flavour. The third sign is the opening sentence of the first chapter: ‘My earliest memories do not prominently feature my father.’ A memoirist’s truth comes twinkling on tiny steps; the sentence lets you know, and overruns convention.


Reviewed by: Rajesh Sharma

By Rajinder Arora
YAAR MERA HAJJ KARA DE
2023

Yaar Mera… besides being the tale of Partition pathos and the lost world of syncretic culture is also an account of a father-son relationship. We get to see an entirely other side to this relationship through the depicted voyage and the numerous conversations between the duo that go into the construction of the memory which wasn’t easy to recollect and be given shape to in the textual form.


Reviewed by: Moggallan Bharti

By Sopan Joshi
MANGIFERA INDICA: A BIOGRAPHY OF THE MANGO
2024

The book is a repository of information of the numerous varieties that are cultivated in the country. Thanks to poor shelf-life most varieties do not make it beyond their area of cultivation. There are varieties restricted to specific orchards and trees. Melodious names like Kohitoor, Mankurad, Imam Pasand and Neelum are still common, but Ratna and Sindhu are niche varieties of specific areas of Maharashtra. Rani Pasand in Murshidabad, Bengal and Champa in Champaran Bihar rarely make it beyond their territory.


Reviewed by: Sohail Akbar

By Tabinda Jalil-Burney
Vanished World of an Aligarh Family in the Sixties and Seventies
2023

The intimate style of Jalil-Burney’s writing is like walking through the several rooms of her house from within which one can hear Ruqaiyya Khala’s hearty laughs in one corner to Abba’s serious recitation of Urdu poems in another, as each chapter narrates a life story about a family member, seamlessly tied to a culinary memory or a dietary choice peculiar to that incident.


Reviewed by: Suman Bhagchandani

By Jarnail Singh
MANIPUR UNIVERSITY: RESTORING NORMALCY
2022

Manipur’s hosting of the Indian Science Congress in December 2017 had stirred up a few hornets’ nest in the University. The Vice-Chancellor AP Pandey now began to be targeted as a non-local person. The academic community was up in arms against him


Reviewed by: Chhanda Chatterjee

Wasim Akram with Gideon Haigh
SULTAN: A MEMOIR

My first memories of watching the ‘Sultan of Swing’ Wasim Akram bowl to his opponents are from back in the day: Akram with his accurate and brutal left-arm swing pairing up with the toe-crushing yorkers coming out of the fast, pacy hands of his bowling partner Waqar Younis. Whether in Test whites or in Pakistani olive greens, the two gentlemen terrorized many a batsman in their heyday of glory.


Reviewed by: Roshni Sengupta

Mridula Garg
VE NAYAB AURATEIN

Ve Nayab Auratein is remarkable in its expansive scope and commitment. As the title suggests, this memoir is an honest, frank and committed portrayal of ‘nayab’/inimitable women and men who have enriched Garg’s life and career as a writer.  She often uses the word äfsana to describe this work, highlighting how literary imagination is deeply entwined with civic imagination. ‘I am a writer after all, and thus driven to enmeshing the real and the imaginary to create new worlds’ (Preface)


Reviewed by: Bharti Arora

Natasha Lance Rogoff
MUPPETS IN MOSCOW: THE UNEXPECTED CRAZY TRUE STORY OF MAKING SESAME STREET IN RUSSIA
2022

In the year of the historic moon-landing, American children were gifted with the educational programme on television named Sesame Street. It revolutionized children’s television in the US and soon became one of the brands of ‘American Values’ in the polarized world. The affectionate muppets in the show were symbols of love, tolerance and cooperation; but above all, they were believed to have inculcated the spirit of individuals’ freedom and dignity amongst school children.


Reviewed by: Parimal Maya Sudhakar

Savita Ambedkar
BABASAHEB: MY LIFE WITH DR AMBEDKAR
2022

Dr Sharda Kabir, better known as Savita Ambedkar, was Dr. BR Ambedkar’s second wife. There exist conflicting narratives among various circles of the Dalit public sphere, which is deeply suspicious of Mai Saheb’s (as she was fondly addressed) role in Babasheb’s life and more so in his death. I remembered an anecdote while reading this extremely engaging book under review.


Reviewed by: Arvind Kumar
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ISSN No. 0970-4175 (Print)