This issue of Civil Lines appeared a decade after the previous issue, and this review a year after that. If, as the editorial claims, the issue contains ‘work that has been written for ever’, the two delays matter little. A little creative re-reading of the editorial claim would let us think that there is nothing new about what exists between the covers of this issue but thankfully such an interpretation is belied almost immediately.
Civil Lines is an urbane journal, one that calls for lazy evenings and long drinks—it is a miscellany for the gentle folks who think reading is a worthy pastime, one that takes them to different worlds and to a heightened sense of awareness, and also one that is a game of language, where you wait for a few pages to utter ‘Well said’. It is akin to watching a game of cricket played by the rules by well-spoken fellows who politely applaud each other. It has no settled batting order though, you turn pages till you find something that seems interesting and the innings begins.