Mridula Garg

With our destinies, We all have a pact, It is the memories, That can choose their act M iljul Mann is not a ‘slice of life’ novel, but a ‘slice of mind’ novel.


Reviewed by: Amit Ranjan
Saswati Sengupta

It is in the kitchen of the Chattopadhyay household that Khema, the daughter of a low caste Bagdi household retainer, Bamundi,


Reviewed by: Pradip Kumar Datta
Savia Viegas

Savia Viegas, the author of two previous novels Tales from the Attic (2007, Saxtti) and Let Me Tell You about Quinta (2011, Penguin) has recently self published two graphic novels, Eddi & Diddi and Abha Nama.


Reviewed by: Dale Luis Menezes
Julie E. Hughes

Today India is home to about 1,500 tigers. A century ago, sportsmen killed that many every year. One Rajput, Fateh Singh, bagged 375 himself, not to mention 991 leopards, over his hunting career. The populations, conditions, and cultural meanings of wildlife in India have changed fundamentally since the heyday of the Raj.


Reviewed by: J.R. McNeill
M. Krishnan. Edited by Santhi and Ashish Chandola

Of Birds and Birdsong serves the purpose of a reference book, text book and field guide without being one. It is lay person-friendly. And it is useful for the nature specialist.


Reviewed by: N. Kalyani
Navina Jafa

Navina Jafa wears many hats. Classical dancer, academician, ‘heritage consultant’, are terms associated with her many roles, but perhaps she is best known for ‘Jafa Heritage Walks’, an exercise in what she describes as ‘academic cultural tourism’.


Reviewed by: Swapna Liddell
Jaya Jaitly

I always have two open books on the round antique table in my hallway, chosen for their illustrations and subjects.


Reviewed by: Laila Tyabji
Sasanka Perera

There has been a raging debate on the nature and scope of doing anthropology in contemporary times. The debate is more precisely about the politics and poetics inherent in the practice of ethnography contributed by the likes of Clifford Geertz, James Clifford, George Marcus among others. It has posed an imperative for anthropologists in the contemporary world to explore new methods and new sights with a fair sensibility toward the politics of writing culture.


Reviewed by: Dev N. Pathak
Bhimeshwar Challa

It is difficult to pigeonhole this book as a ‘philosophical tract’, a ‘prophetic discourse’, a ‘journey into the human mind’, a ‘guide for human survival’, a ‘spiritual treatise’. It is an amalgam of all these and more. Embellished with profuse quotations from various sources, modern and traditional, spiritual and scientific, the volume reaches out to those who are already uneasy about the way we on this earth are progressing. C.B. Rao as he is fondly called, an Indian Administrative Service Officer, has not allowed the iron of long years in the bureaucracy to enter his soul or stifle creative thinking. If this sounds like high praise from a fellow bureaucrat, let the discerning reader decide if he is correct in the use of such adjectives!


Reviewed by: R. Rajamani
Saurabh Dube

In 1997 Partha Chatterjee stated eloquently that ‘there is no promised land of modernity outside the network of power. Hence one cannot be for or against modernity; one can only devise strategies for coping with it.’


Reviewed by: Malvika Maheshwari
S. Teki & R.K. Mishra

To argue that banking cannot be done with the poor because they do not have collateral is the same as arguing that men cannot fly because they do not have wings.* – – Muhammad Yunus


Reviewed by: Indrani Roy Chowdhury
William H. Thornton and Songok Han Thornton

At first glance, one cannot help but overlook the idiom ‘never judge a book by its cover’, and, quite rightly so. If the title of Toward a Geopolitics of Hope intrigues, the provocative stance and ideas presented throughout the tome do not fail to deliver either.


Reviewed by: Nayantara Shaunik
Rubina Saigol

The feminist perspective of Pakistan is one that recognizes and explains how a nation is created through the intersection of ideologies and structures of patriarchy and how these mould the identities as well as relations between genders, between people and communities.


Reviewed by: Anuradha Chenoy
Mohammed Badrul Alam

Apart from the nuclear strategies of the two erstwhile superpowers during the acme of the Cold War, the only other nuclear strategy that seems to have attracted the attention of the analysts of the security and strategic affairs may arguably be the nuclear strategy of India and Pakistan.


Reviewed by: Rajendra Kumar Pandey
Filipa Lowndes Vicente. Translated from the Portuguese by Stewart Lloyd-Jones

This fascinating book is a detailed study of the Indian ‘career’ of the Italian Orientalist, Angelo de Gubernatis (1840-1913). It is based on a systematic exploration of archival material on this subject available in Florence.


Reviewed by: Amar Farooqui
Prakash Kumar

Indigo Plantations and Science in Colonial India for the most part appears as a straight-forward account of Bengal indigo (indigofera tinctorium)—the natural dye that could colour cloth in intense blue.


Reviewed by: Rohan D'Souza