Body as an instrument of power
Rumina Sethi
Imperial Bodies: The Physical Experience of the Raj, c. 1800-1947.
by E. M. Collingham. Polity, Cambridge. Pages 273. £ 15.99.
The British experience of India was replete with "heat, dust, dirt, noise and smells" along with disease and death. The body's physical deterioration was therefore complemented by the attire of loose trousers, khaki shorts, the bush shirt and white waistcoats, which were finally replaced in the latter imperial era by the smart white flannels of the sahib.

Discontent & response: making the connection
Santosh K. Singh
Civil Society and Social Movements: Essays in Political Sociology
by T. K. Oommen. Sage, New Delhi. Pages 267. Rs 495.
Prof T. K. Oommen has been writing and commenting consistently on these highly vexatious themes namely nation, civil society and social movements for the past over a decade as discontents of modernity and its developmental (read hegemonic) agenda came under sharp criticism towards the end of the last century.

King of hearts
Prakarsh Singh
Down Memory Lane: A Memoir
by M. Y. Ghorpade. Penguin Books India. Pages 224. Rs 250.
This is a book written with passion, honesty and humility by M. Y. Ghorpade, a former Parliamentarian and Cabinet minister of Karnataka. This autobiography describes his life as a politician with a difference. Although Ghorpade was born in 1931 as the son of the ruler of Sandur, a princely state in British India, his lifestyle was marked with a unique simplicity.

Between the crest and the fall
Magical middle mountains
Manmant Singh
Touching Upon the Himalaya: Excursions and Enquiries
by Bill Aitken. Indus Paperback. Pages 168. Rs 150.
There is macho and there is masochist, but the lexicographer forgot the third singular: "the mountaineer". A free climber or a base jumper could be called an adrenaline junkie for the quick rush, but what do you make of a man (or woman) who skirts danger for weeks at end burning brain cells above 8,000 metres and is too afraid and tired at the top of the peak he has climbed not knowing if he will make it back alive or not.

INTERVIEW
Jubilee jaunts and taunts

Signs and signatures
He portrayed Vedantic India
Darshan Singh Maini
THE Indian novel in English owes its development to the trinity of R.K. Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao, each working in his own defined terrain. While Narayan emerged as a regional novelist dramatising the small-time world of the South, ranging from vendors, sweet-makers, guides, fakes and fakirs to dissemblers and their ilk, Anand described a journey from the Gandhian philosophy to the Marxian socialist world-view with the British Raj as the target of his satire.

What the rest can teach the West
Meeta Rajivlochan
Can Asians think?
Understanding the divide between East and West by Kishore Mahbubani. Delhi: Penguin, pp. 263, Rs. 295.
THE provocative title of this book refers to one of the 17 essays in this book. The answer and subsequent explanation is just as provocative. No, yes and maybe are the three answers that Mahbubani provides, leaving the reader to take her pick.

hindi review
Song of life
Harbans Singh
Pehle Tumhara Khilna 
by Vijendra Bharatiya, Jnanpith, New Delhi. Rs 90. Pages 120.
Among the contemporary Hindi poets, the distinctive style of Vijendra has often compelled people to take notice of not only his poetry but of the world that is around us.

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