Notes of life extraordinary
 Nonika Singh
Ae Mohabbat... Reminiscing Begum Akhtar
by Rita Ganguly. Stellar. Pages 357. Rs 695.
BEHIND every success story, lies the tale of trial and tribulations, of joys and sorrows, of pain and passion. The legendary singer Begum Akhtar’s meteoric rise as Mallika-e-Ghazal, a voice that cast a grip on the nation then and now, has been so too. Only, as Kaifi Azmi wrote: Bas ek jhizhak hai yeh hale-e-dil sunane mein, ke tera zikr bhi aayega is fasane mein... when her afsaana is retold obviously many names and tales crop up.

Books received: HINDI

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Scarred lives
Rajesh Kumar Aggarwal
Prostitution and Beyond — An Analysis of Sex Work in India
Eds Rohini Sahni, V. Kalyan Shankar and Hemant Apte. Sage Publications. Pages 369. Rs 395.
 THIS volume voices the concern of sex workers which is a non-homogenous community in terms of their ethnic or religious backgrounds, marital status and age among other factors. It contains 23 papers classified under four different sections. The first section discusses different theoretical positions on sex work, and the way they have developed independent voices in the Indian context.

Sacred quest
Rubinder Gill
Dharamsala Diaries
by Swati Chopra. Penguin. Pages 277. Rs 295.
 SEEKERS and the faithful both have trodden the religious, spiritual and the transcendental path since time immemorial. In a country where religion, rituals and spiritual are used interchangeably, unsnarling the maze of webs in pursuit of personal consciousness and spirituality can be a Herculean task.

INA’s unsung Heroines
Nirmala George
Women Against The Raj: The Rani of Jhansi Regiment.
by Joyce Chapman Lebra. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore. Pages 132. $ 29.90.
 THEY were young women, many in their teens, who had never seen India but were ready to give up their lives to fight for the freedom of a ‘motherland’ far away. Women against the Raj: The Rani of Jhansi Regiment, by American historian Joyce Chapman Lebra highlights the contribution made by hundreds of women of Indian descent, the daughters of poor rubber plantation workers in Malaya, who responded to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s call and volunteered to form the women’s wing of the Indian National Army.

Angst in alien lands
Shubha Singh
The Immigrant
by Manju Kapur. Random House India. Rs 395
 THE story is set in the mid-1970s. It is about Nina, a lecturer in Delhi University’s Miranda College (like the author) who lives with her mother in strained circumstances, slowly growing older and watching the faint wrinkles appear on her face while her body clock ticks louder.

Indra Sinha’s book listed for Australian award
CLOSE on the heels of an Indian writer Arvind Adiga bagging the prestigious Booker prize, another Indian Indra Sinha is in reckoning for the richest literary award in Australia. India-born writer and activist Indra Sinha’s book Anima’s People is in the long list for the Australia-Asia Literary Award worth $ 76,244 along with Nobel laureate J.M Coetzee and Japan’s Haruki Murakami.

Taking cues from history
B. S. Thaur

  • Wardanan da Wardan
    by Tripat Singh Bhatti. Pages 104. Rs 100.

  • Antar Naad
    by Prabjot Kaur. Assi Publishers. Pages 142. Rs 150.

  • Roshanian da Baagbaan
    by Santosh Singh Aujla. Aesthetic Publications, Ludhiana. Pages 195. Rs 200.

back of the book

  • Enslaved — The New Slavery
    by Rahila Gupta. Harpercollins. Pages 314. Rs 350.

  • Confluences II: Indian Men, Indian Gods
    by Nishi Chawla. Indialog Publications. Pages 107. Rs 195

  • Sketches of Saints — Known and Unknown
    by J.P. Vaswani. Sterling Paperbacks. Pages 250. Rs 200.

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