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Young and
restless
Rumina Sethi
Fireflies in the Mist
by Qurratulain Hyder.
Women Unlimited, New Delhi. Pages 378. Rs 350.
My
only interaction with Qurratulain Hyder was in Chandigarh in the
late 1980s when as a young student I was writing my Ph.D in Cambridge,
paradoxically on Indian literature. Starved as I had been for contact
with experts in this area in an all-white academic environment, this
particular visit to India was fruitful in putting me face-to-face with
Hyder at the auditorium of the Fine Arts Museum, where she was
introduced to me by Mulk Raj Anand.
Helpful manual
Roopinder Singh
Indian Garden Flowers:
Home Gardener’s Guide
by Amarjeet Singh Batth.
Prakash Book. Pages 212. Rs 495.
A
former Army officer, Amarjeet Singh Batth’s offering is
"an amateur gardener’s handbook for identification, propagation
and care of garden flowers". This subtitle sums up the book quite
well. The author’s academic grounding in biology obviously lends the
book a scientific gravitas, and his keen photographic eye is evident in
the colour pictures that are extensively used.
Emigres’ world
Aradhika Sharma
The Last Dragon Dance:
Chinatown Stories
by Kwai-Yun Li.
Penguin. Pages 122. Rs 199.
The
book has special meaning for those who have lived in the city of
Calcutta. And I say Calcutta deliberately as opposed to Kolkata because
that’s what the spirit of the book demands. The Last Dragon
dance is about the emigre community of Chinese who settled down in
Calcutta and who lived and worked there, making the city their own and
giving it their own flavour.
Dark side of capitalism
Shalini Rawat
Decolonisation and
Empire: Contesting the Rhetoric and
Reality of Resubordination in Southern Africa and Beyond
by John S. Saul. Three Essays Collective.
Pages 201. Rs 200.
‘ON
s’engage, puis on voit’—We engage, then (only do) we see. It is no
coincidence that the line from the conclusion of the book should be the
opening line of the review. It is only those who engage themselves in
the fundamentals that affect our lives notice that the forces which
fashion the world around us wear mere masks of benevolence.
Hindi
review
Modern verses
Harbans Singh
Angaron Par Nange Paon
by Madhav Kaushik.
Penguin .Pages 93. Rs 75.
Angaron
Par Nange Paon is a landmark
publication since this is one of the first books of Hindi poetry to be
published by Penguin Books and has understandably aroused considerable
curiosity. The author, Madhav Kaushik, versatile as he is, is by his own
confession, primarily a ghazal writer. This puts him at the risk of
constantly being judged in comparison with such consummate artists as
Jigar, Asghar, Faiz, Fani or Firaq.
Broad field of policy
issues
S. S. Johl
Glimpses of Indian
Agriculture: Macro and Micro Aspects
Ed: S M Jharwal, R S Deshpande, Vijay Paul Sharma, R P S Malik, Brajesh
Jha.
Academic Foundation, Pages 1608. $149.95
Problems
of the agriculture sector in India are too varied, vast and vexed
and are ever changing. Any policy prescription becomes, if not
completely, then at least partially obsolete and irrelevant within a
couple of years and often earlier. Glimpses of Indian Agriculture...
is a collection of write-ups, published and unpublished, by economists
from agro-economic research centers in India.
Adult Brits love Enid
Blyton’s kid stuff
Dipankar De Sarkar
In
a poll outcome set to delight children worldwide, British adults
have voted Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl and J.K. Rowling as their three
favourite writers, putting them well ahead of authors of the critically
acclaimed "serious stuff".
Lid off White House
secrets
U.S. journalist Bob
Woodward's fourth book on President George W. Bush is titled The War
Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008 and will be released
on September 8. Woodward is well known for
his investigative work with fellow reporter Carl Bernstein that played a
key role in forcing President Richard Nixon to resign in 1974 in the
Watergate scandal.
SHORT TAKES
Architect as artist
Randeep Wadehra
Architecture, Life And
Me
By Sangeet Sharma. Rupa & Co.
Pages: xviii+164. Rs 195.
According
to Christopher Wren, architecture "has its political use;
public buildings being the ornament of a country; it establishes a
nation, draws people and commerce; makes the people love their native
country`85" However, this architect’s
musings-cum-autobiographical account portrays the concept's more
individualistic dimensions.
Al Deen remembered
Some prominent writers
from West Bengal joined their counterparts in Dhaka to pay tributes and
evaluate the work of Bangladesh’s legendary dramatist-theoretician-organiser,
Selim Al Deen.
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