|
Security
for the Superbowl
Reviewed by Shelley Walia
Border Patrol Nation:
Dispatches from the Front lines of Homeland Security
by Todd Miller
San Francisco: City Lights. Pages 355, $16.95.
Todd Miller's book is evocative
of the fascist and inhuman role of the US border patrol, the abrasive
predators behind the dehumanising of victims who face hunger, death
and torture daily on the southern border as a consequence of a
malicious deportation policy that breaks up families, leaving young
children isolated from their parents.
A Ray that never shone
Reviewed by Suresh
Kohli
Satyajit Ray's Ravi Shankar: An Unfilmed Visual Script
Edited by Sandip Ray
Collins, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers India. Pages 108. Rs
399.
As in life, so also in death. The
mystery persists. When exactly Satyajit Ray worked on a visual script,
A Sitar Recital by Ravi Shankar, for a possible film on sitar
maestro, Ravi Shankar — before Pather Panchali, their first
of the four collaborations, the other three being Aparajito, Paras
Pathar and Apur Sansar after which the filmmaker also took
over the mantle of the music director for his own films. His
biographer, Marie Seton’s claim that the storyboard for the film had
been done in 1951 has been disputed by other scholars, and not
necessarily for wrong reasons.
Lost Beckett story found
Echo's Bones has seen the
light after rejection in 1934. A previously unpublished short story by
Samuel Beckett, rejected as a "nightmare" by his editor,
will go on sale for the first time next month, 80 years after it was
written. Echo's Bones, a 13,500-word work, was commissioned as
the final piece for his early collection More Pricks Than Kicks, but
in 1934 was rejected by editor Charles Prentice, who said it gave him
"the jim-jams". It features Belacqua Shuah, the protagonist
of the collection of interrelated stories, returning from the grave,
and remained hidden in archives since it was rejected. In a blunt
rejection letter to the young Beckett, published in the introduction
of the new version, Prentice wrote: "It is a nightmare… It
gives me the jim-jams… There are chunks with it I don't connect
with. I am so sorry to feel like this."
Borrowed blue blood
Reviewed by Aditi Garg
Live Like a Maharaja- How to Turn Your Home Into a Palace
by Amrita Gandhi
Penguin Books. Pages 198.
Rs 699
Whether you envy them or admire
them, you just cannot ignore Royalty. A visit to even a dilapidated
palace is enough to get an idea of the grandeur that kings and queens
think of as normal. The scale of everything from size to luxury is
beyond large. But it is not just the amount of riches that go into
making the majestic statements of style and opulence but also taste,
which is an acquired trait. While we would love to replicate the rich
look of palaces and the attire of royals, it is something that stumps
most of us.
|
