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Well-crafted
images
Ramesh Luthra
Terms of Seeing
by E.V. Ramakrishnan.
Konark Publishers, Delhi.
Pages 80. Rs 200.
Unique in
thought and style, E.V. Ramakrishnan’s poems have earned a special
niche for him in the realms of modern Indian English poetry. His recent
collection, Terms of Seeing, displays different perspectives of
seeing socio-economic and environmental problems. Quite an expert, he
describes things in understatements and self-reflexive comments, winning
over the reader’s heart through his well-crafted images.
Moving narratives
Belu Maheshwari
And the World Changed:
Contemporary Stories by Pakistani Women
Ed. Muneeza Shamsie. Women Unlimited.
Pages 288. Rs 350.
English
literary writings have found their niche in India and have also
gained international recognition. It comes as a pleasant surprise that
women writers from Pakistan have also developed strong narratives,
permeated by a consciousness of herself as an educated Muslim woman and
as a feminist.
Stories
of you and me
Priyanka Singh
The Old Man and His God
by Sudha Murty. Penguin.
Pages 131. Rs 150.
Life’s
many ways are bestrewed with experiences. Some let the moment of
that experience pass, some let it linger for a while but some others
with heightened awareness savour it for life, recalling the moment to
live in it anew.
History in the Press
Parshotam Mehra
Reporting the
Partition of the Punjab 1947: Press, Public and other Opinions
by Raghuvendra Tanwar
Manohar. Rs 1,195. Pages 622
To
get a fair assessment of
this large, and impressive, tome it is important to remind oneself that
it offers only ‘a limited’ chronicle of the Partition of the Panjab,
focusing , only on 1947.
Women on the move
Shalini Rawat
Poverty, Gender and Migration
Ed. Sadhna Arya and Anupama Roy.
Sage Publications. Pages 261. Rs 320.
Immigration
by women, like marriage, is
largely undertaken with the positive hope of a better life in an unseen
world. The issues that it throws up comprise the body of these research
papers. The trials and travails of arranging for a passage to utopia,
the journey that may or may not lead to the destination aimed at, the
identity crisis in a new scenario and the search for that elusive pot of
gold are all discussed in the Asian context with just the right amount
of graphs and data thrown in. The book, second of a five-volume series,
turns upside down, whatever notions you may have held about women
migrating independently, intra-nationally or trans-nationally, in search
for betterment.
The unspoken codes
Gaurav Kanthwal
The Space Between Us
by Thrity Umrigar.
Harper Collins.
Pages 321. Rs 350.
The
novel poignantly narrates
the somber life stories of Bhima and Sera. Though distanced from each
other by social dynamics, class and religion, they share a long-standing
intimacy fostered by betrayal, loss, grief and agony. Thrity Umrigar’s
aptly chosen title, The Space Between Us, points towards the
unspoken codes of society. The ‘space’ connotes a wide rift of class
and gender of an individuals and particularly women in our society.
Back
of the book
Region, Culture, and
Politics in India
Ed Rajendra Vora & Anne Feldhaus. Rs 795.
In
recent decades the South Asian subcontinent has seen an
often-contentious nationalistic and regionalistic splintering which
sometimes leads to bloody consequences. In India the process of
transforming conceptual and cultural regions into administrative and
political units continues to this day, with ever-more-refined regional
identities becoming the basis for carving up larger states into smaller
ones. For centuries, there have also been many regions in India that
provide a framework for people’s cultural lives without attaining
political salience.
PUNJABI REVIEW
For the Gurus
Surinder Singh Tej
Gurmat Sangeet Darpan
by Prof Kartar Singh
Dharam Prachar Committee, SGPC, Amritsar
Pages 423. Rs 90
PRofessor
Kartar Singh’s is an
illustrious name in Gurmat Sangeet. Despite his early grounding from
traditional ragis, he developed a passion for classical Indian
music. This helped him to evolve a distinct style of singing with
traditional string instruments, especially the tanpura, and rendering shabads
purely in the ragas prescribed by the Gurus. Humble and
reticent to a fault, but principled to the core, Kartar Singh avoided
crass commercialism despite being solely dependent on the kirtan for
subsistence during his days of struggle. Financial constraints and a
lack of recognition did not deter him.
Mera Bachpan Meriyan
Yadan
by Sukhdev Singh Grewal
Unistar Books, Chandigarh
Pages 48. Rs 50
The fading thrill of
Chase
This year is the 100th
birth anniversary of James Hadley Chase and it is very unfortunate that
the writer, at one time hailed as ‘the thriller maestro of the
generation’, is now almost forgotten,
writes
Dhiraj Sharma
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