The Book Review

R100

VOLUME XLIV NUMBER 10 OCTOBER 2020

2 The Book Review / October 2020

Contents

HINDI NON-FICTION Atha Shree Prayag Katha by Lalit Mohan Rayal 06
Harish Trivedi

Editors Ira Pande Tumhari Jay by Ashutosh Shukla 08
Pramod Joshi Bahut Door, Kitana Door Hota Hai by Manav Kaul 09
Chandra Chari Uma Iyengar Aditi Maheshwari-Goyal Gyan Ka Gyan by Hriday Narayan Dikshit 10
Rashmi Bhardwaj Coolie Lines by Praveen Kumar Jha 12
Consultant Editor Adnan Farooqui
CREATIVE WRITING IN ENGLISH 13
Editorial Advisory Board Vasundhara Sirnate Drennan I Have Become the Tide by Githa Hariharan 15
Romila Thapar
Ritu Menon Madhumita Chakraborty Synapse: Ratan Oak Stories by Kalpish Ratna
Chitra Narayanan
T.C.A. Srinivasa Raghavan
Mini Krishnan

Subscription Rates Ravi Menon The Radiance of a Thousand Suns by Manreet Sodhi Someshwar 16
Single Issue: R100 Semeen Ali
Annual Subscription (12 Issues) Malati Mukherjee A People’s History of Heaven: A Novel by Mathangi Subramanian 17
Individual: R1500 / $75 / £50
Institutional: R2500 / $100 / £60 These, Our Bodies, Possessed by Light by Dharini Bhaskar 19
(inclusive of bank charges and postage)
CREATIVE WRITING IN HINDI–FICTION & POETRY
Life Donors: R10,000 and above
Ranu Uniyal Paani Ko Sab Yaad Tha by Anamika 21

Advertisement Manager Kamal Nayan Choubey Agnileek by Hrishikesh Sulabh 22
Nishat Haider Jas Ka Phool by Bhalchandra Joshi 23
Satya Prakash
[email protected]

Website MANAGEMENT Bharti Arora Jinhe Jurm-e-Ishq Pe Naaz Tha by Pankaj Subeer 25
Digital Empowerment Foundation Kashish Dua Keelein by S.R. Harnot 27
[email protected]

Computer inputs, VoW @ Savoy 2020 Schedule 00
design and layout 00
Ravi Kumar Yadav PFC-VoW Book Awards 2021 Submission Guidelines
Digital Empowerment Foundation
ENGLISH NON-FICTION Tawaifnama by Saba Dewan 33
Please Address All Mail To: Meena Bhargava
The Book Review Literary Trust Amar Farooqui The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, 34
239, Vasant Enclave and the Pillage of an Empire by William Dalrymple
New Delhi 110 057 Raza Kazmi
Asma Rasheed The Wild Heart of India by T.R. Shankar Raman 36
Telephone: Rafia Kazim
91-11-41034635 Coming Out as Dalit: A Memoir by Yashica Dutt 37
9278089024 / 9811702695
Wasted: The Messy Story of Sanitation in India, a Manifesto 39
Website: for Change by Ankur Bisen
www.thebookreviewindia.org
TRANSLATION FROM REGIONAL LANGUAGES INTO ENGLISH
email:
[email protected] M Asaduddin Ship of Sorrows: A Novel by Qurratulain Hyder. 41
[email protected] Translated from the original Urdu by Saleem Kidwai 42

Advisory Board Founder Members Rakhshanda Jalil Khooni Vaisakhi: A Poem from the Jallianwala Bagh 44
K.R. Narayanan Massacre, 1919 by Nanak Singh. Translated from the
S. Gopal original Punjabi by Navdeep Suri
Nikhil Chakravartty
Raja Ramanna
Meenakshi Mukherjee
K.N. Raj

N Kamala The Bells are Ringing in Haridwar: Three Novellas by
M Mukundan. Translated from the original Malayalam
by Prema Jayakumar

The Book Review is a non-political, ideologically non-partisan journal which tries to reflect all shades of intellectual opinions and ideas. The views of the
reviewers and authors writing for the journal are their own. All reviews and articles published in The Book Review are exclusive to the journal and may not be
reprinted without the prior permission of the editors.

Published by Chandra Chari for The Book Review Literary Trust, 239 Vasant Enclave, New Delhi 110057. Printed at National Printers, B-56, Naraina Industrial Area Phase-II, New Delhi 110028

Maya Pandit-Narkar the story of being useless + three contexts of a writer by Avadhoot Dongare. Translated from 45
Nabanipa Bhattacharjee the original Marathi by Nadeem Khan

Tiger Woman by Sirsho Bandopadhyay. Translated from the original Bengali by Arunava Sinha 47

TRANSLATION FROM REGIONAL LANGUAGES INTO HINDI

Sudhanva Deshpande Ghashiram Kotwal by Vijay Tendulkar. Translated from the original Marathi by 49
Dr Damodar Khadse
51
Anubhav Pradhan Bhu-Devta (Hindi) by Keshav Reddy. Translated from the original Telugu by J.L. Reddy 52
53
Aakriti Mandhwani Basheer: Teen Laghu Upanyas. Translated from the original Malayalam by Dr. Santosh Alex
55
Sukrita Paul Kumar Khali Kuon Ki Katha: A Novel by Avtar Singh Billing. Translated from the original Punjabi
by Subhash Neerav

Alka Lakhera Besharam: ‘Lajja’ Upanyaas Ki Uttar-Katha by Taslima Nasrin. Translated from the original Bengali
by Utpal Banerjee

WRITINGS FOR YOUNG ADULTS

Sucharita Sengupta Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir by 57
Kai Cheng Thom

Savita Singh Galion Ke Shahzade by Nasera Sharma 58

Ruchi Nagpal Khidkiyon Se Jhaankti Aankhein by Sudha Om Dhingra 59

Gauri Sharma A Cloud Called Bhura: Climate Champions to the Rescue by Bijal Vachharajani 60

Padma Baliga The Daughter from a Wishing Tree: Unusual Tales about Women in Mythology by Sudha Murty 61

Andaleeb Wajid A Tigress Called Machhli and Other True Animal Stories from India by Supriya Sehgal 62

4 The Book Review / October 2020

‘The Virtual is Eternal’

This edition of The Book Review (TBR) marks the second year of a wonderful collaboration between two institutions
devoted to celebrating the ‘word’ in all its myriad manifestations. With this we bring to you incisive reviews of the
thirty-six titles shortlisted for the 4th PFC-VoW Book Awards, curated from over five hundred nominations of books
published through the last calendar year in seven categories: English and Hindi fiction, non-fiction, and translations
from regional languages; and bilingual writings for Young Adults. The quality of books received has been truly
exceptional, making it a difficult job for the Jury and Advisers to decide on this shortlist—it will be even tougher to
choose the final and best!

Valley of Words has been grappling with COVID-19 in the same way as most other literature and arts festivals, but
as a young and nimble organization we have been able to largely take it in our stride. Indeed, to some degree, we have leveraged technology
to our advantage. I would like to share here some of my aphorisms on these pandemic times. Some of them are counter-intuitive. For
example, I believe that social interactions have increased for many of us, albeit on virtual platforms. Going online is so natural these days
that ‘offline’ has also been added to our lexicon to demarcate those interactions which are still face-to-face! I must mention that I have
always preferred the term ‘physical distancing’ as opposed to the ‘social’. If anything, there has been more time to socialize with family and
friends in the last few months than before. Cutting down on travel, commutes, and office meetings in favour of work-from-home has meant
more time for books, music, yoga and catching up on old friendships.

In the context of our festival, distance and time are no longer salient factors in deciding schedules for sessions, resource persons and
participants. True, one has to factor in time differences for meetings in which the speakers are trans-Atlantic, but it is certainly easier and far
more affordable to get them online.

Our debates have now become pan-Indian. The Kendriya Vidyalaya debate was limited to schools in the Dehradun region, but now
is joining with the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas to bring together students from across the breadth of the country who will question how
online classes are impacting personal relationships between the teacher and the taught. Likewise, VoW’s annual college debate organized
with DAV’s Mantrana Society has become more expansive; the four finalists will be drawn from distinct zones across the country to engage
on whether India should recognize Tibet and Taiwan. This will certainly get young participants to avidly follow our conversations in the
Military History and Strategy vertical sessions, search the net for relevant updates, as well as perhaps visit digital libraries to check their facts
on this fascinating subject. Very excitingly, we have added an inter-college Sanskrit debate to our portfolio this year, which is being curated
by the Rishi Valmiki Sanskrit University in Haryana. We also pay our tributes to a keen supporter of VoW, the late DP Tripathi, in the
Parliamentary Vox Populi debate forum where MPs from across the political spectrum will debate on the asymmetries that exist in India
our nation in terms of both its size and population.

The RS Tolia Forum on sustainable governance and ecology issues will be addressing COVID and its impact on migration, public
health, and regional economies. Simultaneously, there will be music and mushaira, mantras chanted by Buddhist monks of the Mindrolling
Monastery in Dehradun, various book launches, a workshop on translating Hindi and Urdu to French and vice versa, plus much more.

Given the nature of the virtual platform, all our discussions and conversations are for eternity. Up until the last edition, paucity of
funds meant that we could record only some sessions and there were many queries about the ones that were not recorded. Now all sessions
will be preserved for posterity, available for all times on various social media channels as well as our website. Our visual archives will also
be enhanced through shifting online our photography competition, which now requires entries in the form of portfolios rather than single
images on the theme of nature healing.

It is undeniable that we have been able to engage with many more individuals, and organizations as varied as the pan-Indian youth
debating forum Voice of India to the Centre for Study of Human Security Systems in Hyderabad, colleges in the Arabian Sea’s Minicoy
Islands and a presentation of the higher Himalayas by the Looms of Ladakh... What a connect! And of course that brings me to VoW
Connect, the bi-weekly podcast that we began earlier this year, which has pushed us beyond our comfort zones in pursuit of ensuring a
continued relationship with our diverse patrons.

The exhibitions of Iti Kriti and Iti Smriti, which focus beautifully on sustainable crafts and creative artistry, are also moving to a virtual
experience which aims to retain their distinctive carnivalesque flavour even as they are digitized. We continue to focus on those smaller units
and livelihood SHGs, especially in the Himalayan states, which have not significantly established their online presence yet. Thereby we will
be able to open up a global supply for really local products, which had lost the market on account of the closure of the haats and bazaars
upon which they have traditionally depended. Although travel restrictions and advisories continue to be in place, one can still explore and
browse through a variety of ethically-sourced products in this transformed iteration of our VoW Bazaar. Do drop in to pick up a copy of
any of our shortlisted books, or an intricately embroidered leaf bookmark to mark your place!

Collaborating with our event presentation partners at Wizcraft is making all of us, volunteers and Logistics Team especially, work
more effectively with technology. We are learning to understand basic IT systems, integration across platforms, onboarding of content,
pre-recording of sessions and their seamless interface with live engagement on the days of the festival. The physical space will be closely
replicated in the virtual, to create an experience not easily forgotten. It is for us a learning curve—one that is often difficult and discomfiting
—but also, equally, rewarding. This has been an unprecedented year in the history of humanity, and our festival too reflects this shift in the
pace of life and time. We hope it will serve as reflection, distraction, provocation, conversation... the very best of our Indian literature and
arts, brought to you in your homes by VoW @ Savoy 2020.

Sanjeev Chopra, Director, Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie is Honorary Curator, Valley of Words International Literature
and Arts Festival.

The Book Review / October 2020 5

From Allahabad to “The huge chasm between HINDI NON-FICTION
IAS–Or Bust the aspirants and what
are addressed as ‘Sir’ by the juniors, and
Harish Trivedi they aspire to is writ large confidently give tips which obviously haven’t
worked in their own cases for if they had,
ATHA SHREE PRAYAG KATHA all over the book, even they wouldn’t still be there.
By Lalit Mohan Rayal
Gyan Ganga, Delhi, 2019, pp. 175, `350.00 in the language used. The huge chasm between the aspirants
and what they aspire to is writ large all
The title of this novelistic The narratorial voice uses over the book, even in the language used.
memoir written in Hindi The narratorial voice uses standard Hindi,
is a variation on a formulaic standard Hindi, sometimes sometimes elevated to a higher literary
puranic phrase which was register to produce a mock-heroic effect.
used to start stories and elevated to a higher literary This works very well partly because the
legends; it means, ‘Here protagonists themselves, the cast of hundreds
begins the tale of Prayag’. This little Sanskrit register to produce a mock- which populates the book, speak amongst
flourish is apt for a story set in a hallowed themselves not in formal Hindi but in a
city long celebrated in the epics and popular heroic effect. This works dialect. This lingua franca is not the local
belief as a place of holy pilgrimage and Awadhi but instead Bhojpuri, which extends
known from the beginning as Prayag, i.e., very well partly because the from Banaras eastwards to the rest of eastern
the place where many great yajnas were U.P. and deep into Bihar, the hinterland
performed. As we know, Akbar renamed it protagonists themselves, these aspirants come from. Thus, one of
in 1580 as Ilahabad, the British spelt it as them says that the question-papers should
Allahabad and pronounced it as Aller-bad, the cast of hundreds which not delve too deep into ‘fact-wa’, such as
and the wheel of history was brought full when they ask who was poisoned by Ibrahim
circle when the city was renamed or re- populates the book, speak Lodi’s mother, or who was the elder brother,
named—in 2018 as Prayag or Prayagraj. Faizi or Abul Fazal, but should stick more to
But the title of this book is cheerfully amongst themselves not in ‘concept-wa’ instead.
ironic and it tells a modern story set in the
twenty-first century. It is about a whole host ”formal Hindi but in a dialect. This absurd pursuit of factual
of aspirants for government jobs who are trivia, which is increasingly deployed
appearing in ‘Competition’ or competitive Or just to cite two extreme examples in examinations in our reductive age of
examinations for the IAS, but failing that, of what can ideally happen but only rarely ‘objective-type’ learning and testing, is
for the PCS (the provincial civil service), does, one aspirant takes the examination and daunting enough. But what terrifies the
and failing that, for any kursi in sight, i.e., goes home to his fields. To his surprise he is daylights out of these Hindi-medium souls
any job at all as a government functionary. called for an interview and convinced that he is the compulsory paper in English. The
There is a candidate here who is acclaimed has blown it, goes home again. He is helping paradoxical wisdom on the subject among
for being selected ‘direct’ as BDO (block with the transplanting of rice standing ankle- them is that as one can never hope to
development officer), and another who deep in the muddy fields when the local answer the questions on either grammar
lands an unspecified lowly post in the rural school-teacher arrives to break the news that or vocabulary, their best hope lies in
development department but will rank as an our man has attained the 9th rank in the doing well in the essay! The strategy to be
officer, nevertheless. And there are numerous country in the IAS. (More of him later.) But adopted is that after perusing the previous
others who after many years of striving have when another such young man goes back years’ question-papers, one should simply
crossed the permissible age-limit and have to his village home after ‘exhausting’ all his memorize three or four essays from a book
no recourse but to go back right where they ‘chances’, he is bitterly cursed and all but including ‘comma full stop’. But when the
came from, which in most of their cases is a disowned by his brother who all this while
village. It is for them all or nothing—IAS or has been tilling the fields and depriving
bust. himself in all kinds of ways to finance his
sibling in the city. The hope that he will one
Lalit Mohan day lift the family fortunes to another level is
Rayal, author dashed forever and the prodigal brother on
of Khadakmafi his return can be offered no forgiveness.
ki Smritiyon Se
(2018), Atha shri Much of this book of lively comedy,
Prayag Katha however, is about not the result but the
(2019) and process. It gives us intimate glimpses of the
Chaakari Chaturanga (forthcoming), daily lives of these modern-day seekers of
is currently working as Cane instant glory who wish to leapfrog from
Commissioner, Uttarakhand. the log-cabin to the White House—or in
our context, from a mud hut to a sarkari
6 The Book Review / October 2020 bungalow. They live two to a room
measuring ten feet by ten feet, and such
‘room-partners’ as well as ‘side-partners’
(those in adjacent rooms) develop not only a
mutual support group but a fraternal feeling
in which they share books and photocopies,
cook for each other by turns, and have no
secrets left from each other. Some ‘seniors’
in such mini-communities pull rank,

“Much of this book of lively begins to explain where that moniker comes HINDI NON-FICTION
comedy, however, is about from, whereupon the interviewers discreetly
move to another topic before he can describe the family imposed just one tough condition
not the result but the process. that adult film in detail. In the nicest way, he (as kings used to in fairy-tales for suitors of
is one step ahead of his interviewers; he has the princess): that the fellow must get into
It gives us intimate glimpses their measure, not they his. the IAS—which he did! It is said that love
conquers all; here, we had an example of IAS
of the daily lives of these The other shining source of inspiration Vincit Omnia.
for these aspirants is Allahabad and its
modern-day seekers of instant lingering glory to which paeans are still It was, of course, too good to last.
sung in the ‘ateeta raga’. However, the great Allahabad University faded as other centres
glory who wish to leapfrog nursery of IAS officers was not that city of academic excellence came up, notably St
but Allahabad University—which oddly Stephen’s College in Delhi. After teaching in
from the log-cabin to the is not mentioned even once in the whole Allahabad University for two years, I went
book! None of these young men has gone on to teach next in St Stephen’s for fifteen
White House—or in our to that university and none has grown up in years (1969-84) and saw that what Allahabad
the city; they are waifs and orphans of our had done St Stephen’s could do better. One
context, from a mud hut to a grossly inadequate educational system from year, four classmates shyly told one another
numerous smaller and unsung places, now that each of them was ambitious of getting
sarkari bungalow. congregating at what once upon a time was a into the IFS—and each one did. An M.A.
centre of legendary achievements. tutorial group I taught had two students,
”topics in the question-paper are at variance and both got into the IFS. In those decades,
I was myself a student at Allahabad that small college of nine hundred students
with the topics mugged up, improvization University from 1963 to 1967, and though must have contributed more IFS/IAS officers
becomes necessary. Writing impromptu on the golden age of our great institution was per square inch of campus than probably any
alternative sources of energy, one candidate already past, we still took great pride in it. other campus in India. But the privileged
boasts that he was able to mention ‘air It was still known as the Oxford of the East, bright boy there soon began to want to go
energy’, and when another person says, not only locally but in distant Bihar and to the IIMs or for study abroad and then to
‘Better might have been “wind energy”,’ the Orissa as well. This was so for its reputed work in the corporate sector for a fat salary;
first examinee stops in his tracks and says, academic excellence but perhaps also (in the IAS for him had gone down in the
‘Well, that does it. I know I won’t make it my sceptical hypothesis at least) because it world.
this year either.’ This wind-blown man is left seemed to ‘produce’ IAS officers with the
gasping for air, for Hindi has one and the same easy abundance as Oxford had once To return to the book, its erudite,
same word for both: hawa, or more formally, produced ICS officers. In my days, our insightful and humorous author Lalit
vayu. university provided on an average about 10 Mohan Rayal himself got selected for the
IAS ‘proper’ officers every year in a total PCS in Uttarakhand and is now senior
However bleak their estimate of their intake of about 100 for all of India (when enough to be promoted to the IAS, so
own chances of success or those of their some entire States could not send a single he’s made it. His book joins a band of
‘partners’, these multitudes are kept going one). Among these a couple were usually similar books of mofussil aspiration which
year after year by two sources of inspiration. ranked in the top 10 and could choose began with the path-breaking Alpahari
One is the example of a rare peer who makes either the Indian Foreign Service, the elite Grihatyagi (2010) by Prachand Pravir about
it with flying colours, and the other is the of the elite or, if opting for the IAS, could IIT aspirants in Patna, and includes Dark
undying reputation of Allahabad as an IAS get a posting in the coveted U.P. cadre. This Horse (2017) by Neelotpal Mrinal about
assembly-line. Candidates from hundreds handsome annual yield was routine and IAS hopefuls swarming around Mukherjee
of miles away name Allahabad as their entirely taken for granted. Nagar (a stone’s throw away from Delhi
‘centre’, the place where they wish to take University), and Allahabad Blues (2020) by
the examination, as if it had magical career- In fact, getting into the IAS seemed the Anjani Kumar Pandey about the IAS trail in
boosting powers to match the emancipatory one and only aim of most bright students Allahabad again.
powers long associated with the holy sangam. at our university, the summum bonum of
their lives, the great new purushartha. The Two of these titles are in Sanskrit and the
Atha Shree Prayag Katha ends with Political Science Department devised an other two in English, but the books are all
a vignette of a heroically nonchalant MA syllabus which just happened to provide in Hindi, and constitute a new sub-genre. In
performance at the interview which won that in one ready basket all the five papers one the West, they have the Campus Novel; here
rice-transplanting candidate the 9th rank in needed to take in the IAS examinations is our indigenous Off-Campus Novel. There
all of India. He is asked shortly after entering in those days, and a particular hostel are noises once again that the IAS will soon
what he would do if he is not selected and overflowed with tested-and-tried strategies be structurally reformed and its officers, who
replies, ‘I’ll go back and plough my fields. I to be shared and handed down to juniors. still enjoy summary executive power and
shan’t starve, sir.’ Asked what his hobby is, It all seemed only too easy. One family pomp and circumstance as in the colonial
he says, ‘Whistling, sir.’ (Like everything sent four brothers to the university one times, will be transformed into austere
else in the book, this sounds better in Hindi: after the other over a span of about a dozen karmayogis. But until that happens, the IAS
seetee bajana.) He promptly adds that this years and each one duly got into the IAS. will remain the shimmering object of desire
involves some risks, and proceeds to give a In another family, after two brothers had for the educated but underprivileged youth
demo of three different ways in which he got into the IFS and the IAS respectively, from our ‘backward’ regions and their one
can whistle. When an interviewer remarks their sister fell in love with an apparently hope of breaking through.
that he seems to be a man of ready wit, he unsuitable boy, whereupon the patriarch of
responds: ‘My pleasure, sir, though there is Harish Trivedi, a retired Professor of English, never
only a thin dividing line between wit and appeared for the IAS.
impertinence.’ Asked to name a famous
whistle-blower, he names Deep Throat and The Book Review / October 2020 7

Hinduism Explained educate the boy (a doctor) through the HINDI NON-FICTION
in ‘A Conversational lessons in Hinduism the girl sends him as
Mode’ his teacher. This helps the author adopt an disappears
easy, conversational tone that makes the at the end
Ira Pande content of these exchanges so much more of the
engaging than the heavy philosophical month-long
TUMHARI JAY jargon that academics of a higher order often celebration.
By Ashutosh Shukla prefer, leaving many lay readers out of the As the
Prabhat Prakashan, 2019, pp. 176, `350.00 loop. It is easy to see why Shukla decides author/
to take this intimate, conversational pitch: Ladki
In these volatile times, he is addressing the reader who is most points out,
when every word written likely to read this book (so forget the woke the Kumbh
is scrutinized for any hint of generation of metropolitan India, ever ready is not just
religious fundamentalism, it to fire weapons of gender discrimination and a religious
is difficult to assess a book minority rights). Also, he understands that event, it has
like the present one. Its very the only dedicated readers of Hindi are now been a vast
title is bound to raise the hackles of those those who have been left out of the powerful platform for
who read anything that has the word ‘Jai’ English-speaking world, trapped in small an exchange
in it with the Pavlovian reaction familiar to towns in middle-class India that still lives of skills, ideas and knowledge as well.
so many readers. And yet, many of us who at least two decades behind the rest of the Certainly, a fact that needs reminding.
refuse to be slotted into the known binaries globalized world. There are other moving chapters too,
of ‘them’ and ‘us’, must learn to overcome such as the one on folk songs and the innate
the temptation of dismissing anything that What interested me is the unravelling of wisdom of pastoral folk, whose lives still
discusses Hindu culture with the customary keywords, such as dharma, from the miasma follow the seasons rather than the Gregorian
disdain we have adopted. As a friend once of confused translations and renderings. It calendar. The sacred geography of this land
remarked, ‘There are two types of Hindus is the tragedy of the English language that and its diversity of beliefs and practices is
in India: those who say ‘Garv se kaho hum it does not share the same linguistic and another chapter, while still another dwells on
Hindu hain’ (Declare with pride, we are mythical matrix with Indic languages that it the concept of kingship and noblesse oblige.
Hindus), and those who say ‘Sharm se kaho does with European or even Latin American So far, so good. As long as the author
hum Hindu hain’ (Admit in shame, we are ones (since many of these evolved from highlights the mistaken interpretations of
Hindus). Spanish or Portuguese and shared a common Hindu concepts, such as dharma as religion,
That said, let us get down to the text. Christian world). It is now fairly widely one can have no problems with his insistence
Written in an easy and accessible Hindi, the accepted that the notion of religion and that rather than a religious creed, Hinduism
author chooses to write about the majesty worship followed by non-Abrahamic cultures is a way of life, beliefs and rituals. It is when
of Indian (read Hindu) philosophy and its was falsely slotted as pagan and heretical he tries to nudge the reader towards the
cultural history in a series of chapters that by the conquerors who came into India, perfection of the Hindu way of life that
mark the flowering of a Platonic friendship from the 6th century on. In an interesting one begins to feel uncomfortable. He does
between a girl and a boy, called simply Ladka chapter on the Kumbh, the author draws indeed refer to reformers, starting from the
and Ladki. The two live in Kanpur, the very our attention to the fact that long before Buddha and Mahavira, to Ambedkar and
heart of small-town northern India, and the bandobast of present times, millions of Gandhi to show how Hinduism has the
respect all the social norms of behaviour that pilgrims consulted their almanacs and started capacity to autocorrect itself but nowhere is
govern the relationship of a girl and boy in a their long journey to Prayag to reach there this conveyed with any degree of criticism of
world still wrapped in all kinds of patriarchal in time for the auspicious month of Magh. this way of life or that it was unashamedly
rules. Their friendship is tracked through a Traditionally the coldest month of the year, patriarchal and socially unjust.
series of dialogues exchanged on WhatsApp even the most hardened cynic and iconoclast All those who are proud of their cultural
and emails between them, with scarcely any cannot help but be moved by the spectacle of past must never forget that those who paint
hint of romance or sexual attraction. those who get up long before the sun to take the past as a perfect Utopian world are also
Having placed the two central characters a dip in the freezing waters of the Ganga guilty of misrepresenting its true history
of the book on a pedestal of purity and with devout fervour. and of sowing the seeds of fascism. There
rectitude, the author then proceeds to are enough instances in world history (and
Diana Eck, the celebrated Harvard indeed in the present as well) where such a
Ashutosh Shukla, Professor, in her book on Hinduism, is one worshipful attitude creates a dystopia where
author of three of the many foreign scholars (starting from
books, on Benares, Hieun Tsang who came here in the reign “All those who are proud
on education and of Harsha in the 7th century) to wonder at of their cultural past must
on contemporary this remarkable confluence of pilgrims from
youth, lives in every part of the country who come here, never forget that those who
Lucknow. braving the cold and the crowds. Many do
not speak the language of the north and paint the past as a perfect
8 The Book Review / October 2020 yet something binds every Hindu who goes
for the customary dip with the unknown Utopian world are also guilty
Indian next to her. Then, as miraculously
as it appeared, the hey presto township that of misrepresenting its true
springs up on the floodplains for the event,
history and of sowing the

”seeds of fascism.

“As long as the author Journey to Far Away HINDI NON-FICTION
highlights the mistaken Places
like Chandrakanta Santati and Chitralekha
interpretations of Hindu Pramod Joshi when he was growing up.

concepts, such as dharma as BAHUT DOOR, KITANA DOOR HOTA HAI This book begins with the story of Bunty,
a village boy. Salim and Jeevan are his
religion, one can have no By Manav Kaul friends. Every day an aeroplane goes in the
Hindi Yugm, 2019, pp. 160, `200.00 sky. Bunty has a question. From where does
problems with his insistence it come and where does it go? It comes from
Manav Kaul is not a a faraway place and goes a long distance,
that rather than a religious regular writer in a replies one of his friends. His next question
sense, so one can call him is, ‘How far is too far?’ This is the beginning
creed, Hinduism is a way of a Sahityakar in Hindi. He of imaginings and curiosities. This book is a
has a creative mind and description of the writer’s travels in Europe,
life, beliefs and rituals. It experience of working in which he did in May-June 2019.
the vast field of theatre,
is when he tries to nudge cinema and allied arts, including writing. Kaul’s journey begins from London.
It makes him a perfect artist. He writes Sitting in Paul Café of Gloucester Road he
the reader towards the stories and poems. This is his fourth book, starts thinking of writing something about
which he calls a different type of travelogue. his past. He begins to untangle the threads of
perfection of the Hindu way Of course, it is. It begins with a story, his life. Here he meets Catherine, a waitress
develops as a travelogue, becomes a novel in the Café. This character consciously or in
of life that one begins to feel with a poetic approach. In the end it is part his dreams also travels with him throughout
travelogue, part fiction and part essay. this journey. He goes to Paris and a few
”uncomfortable. Most of the characters in this book small places in France. He also travels to
are real, while some sequences are surreal. Geneva. The journey ends at Strasbourg.
one creed, one language and one way of Perhaps he started a novel and finished a During this visit he meets Marcia, Tariq,
worship is foisted upon a country that has travelogue or vice versa. He says in the book, Martine, Benoit, Mary, Alex, Li Wan and
a glorious tradition of cultural diversity as he for sure is doing ‘something different’! In so many others. His interaction with these
well. another place he writes, all this is a personal people also highlights a cultural dialogue
travel experience, but dreamy. Like this river with these characters, what they know and
Pride in one’s heritage is a noble concept is a reality, but whatever flows with it is think about India.
and let it be said that we Indians have much unreal. It reminds one of Nirmal Verma’s Ve
to be proud of but let it not be forgotten that Din. Nirmal Verma is his favourite among There are interesting instances in the
there is enough to be ashamed of as well. My those he has named in an interview. They house of Marcia in Chalon-sur-Saone,
friend was not so wrong after all. are Vinod Kumar Shukla, Nirmal Verma, where he stays as a paying guest. Marcia
Rabindranath Tagore, Albert Camus and speaks Portuguese. Manav Kaul talks to
Ira Pande switched to editing and publishing after Franz Kafka. One can see the impact of her with the help of google translate on the
teaching English Literature at the Panjab University. Nirmal Verma in his writing, at least in this phone. She writes in her phone, ‘You are
She has worked at Seminar, Biblio and was Chief book. from India. Can you please bless this house
Editor of Roli Books and the Chief Editor at the Bahut Door… has definitely established with your mantra?’ It is an embarrassing
India International Centre’s Publications Division. Manav Kaul’s skills. It has also highlighted situation for him, but he sees an undefined
She is also an author and translator and received his thought processes. It is raw creativity, hope in her eyes. He cannot decline the
the Sahitya Akademi Award for her translation of but no claims. He has a moderate family request. With a sip of beer, he recites, ‘laaga
Manohar Shyam Joshi’s T’ta Professor. background. He told an interviewer, ‘I chunari mein daag chhupaoon kaise…’ (I am
am an instinctive writer.’ His mother, a besmirched, how do I hide my shame...). The
Book News Book News literature student, introduced him to books
The Book Review / October 2020 9
Usne Gandhi Ko Kyon Manav Kaul, born
Mara by Ashok Kumar in Baramulla,
Pandey explores Kashmir, is
the socio-political an Indian
reasons for the theatre director,
conflict between the playwright, author,
philosophies of non- actor and
violence and violence filmmaker apart from being a writer. He
that developed in the is the author of Theek Tumhare Peechhe,
freedom struggle and Prem Kabootar and Tumhare Baare
brings out the reasons that led to Gandhi’s Mein.
assassination. At the same time, going into
the bottom of the allegations that justified
the Gandhi assassination, he not only
exposes the untouched aspects of that deep
conspiracy, but also uncovers the ideological
conspiracy that ultimately leads to it. Gandhi
caused the murder.

Rajkamal Prakashan, 2020, pp. 280,
`299.00

host is happy. Now she wants to learn the Gyan: Questions HINDI NON-FICTION
mantra. He recites another song, another that May Never be
day. Answered What is knowledge? What is its source?
‘Water is the original source of knowledge.
Not only characters, Manav Kaul visits Aditi Maheshwari-Goyal Knowledge is God. Simple. Yet, not so
places of historical importance, museums, art simple,’ said the author in an interview two
galleries, etc. In a way this is also an inward GYAN KA GYAN months ago. The answer left me as satisfied
travel of the writer. At the end he says, it as otherwise.
seems I had a dream, which I have put down By Hriday Narayan Dikshit
before it disappeared from my mind. Did it Vani Prakashan, 2019, pp. 296, `415.00 While the initial two chapters of the
happen? Like the water of a river. Or have book shed a flood light on the process of
I written what I wanted to happen? This G yan ka Gyan is a multi- knowledge creation, the next four chapters
sentiment he repeats throughout the journey. nodal intervention are more of a spotlight on each of the chosen
This way it becomes a poem. Readers have in the academy of Vedic Upanishad. The origin of life is described
several questions unanswered. Probably the studies, or Vedic ontology with reference to Rigveda where water is
writer himself did not have the answers. to be precise. The Vedas, collectively called jal matayein or the ‘water
What happened to Catherine? What was in Rigveda, Samveda, Yajurveda mothers’ who give birth to life. Mesopotamia
the back room of Marcia’s house? and Atharvaveda, in that order, are one of is the earliest civilization that was born
the most ancient sources of knowledge. around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers as
Hindi has a role in his life and writing. From the four Vedas essentially created from early as 4,000 BCE. The first instances of the
He is a different Hindi writer. His meeting Sruti (what is heard), Samhita (the hymns), hydraulic empires (leading to establishment
with Catherine in London did happen, Brahmanas (ritual explanations), Aranyaka of control over water access) and Neolithic
because she sees his laptop and screams, (forest treaties) and Upanishad (philosophical revolution (the Agricultural Revolution)
‘What the heck is this?’ He tells her, treatises) develop the paths that set learning enables us to see the movement of
‘Hindi…I’m a Hindi writer.’ In the context in motion. It is the systematic assembly of knowledge from the water to the land. In the
of present-day Hindi writing Manav Kaul ideas in the form of Upanishad and their chapter on Ishopanishad and Kathopanishad,
is different. Simplicity of language and epistemological transformation through ages the uncanny parallels between Rigveda and
narration are also his strength. A beautiful that informs the prime concern of Gyan ka Darwin’s theory of evolution are drawn;
cover page and a subtle subdued title of this Gyan. that the former preceded the latter by a few
small book say it all. The author, Hriday Narayan Dikshit thousand years is a fact we all are aware of.
studies the Kathopanishad & Ishopanishad,
Since 2015, Kaul has published a Prashna Upanishad and Mandukya Upanishad This catches the reader’s attention for
collection of prose, poems, travelogues and to underline their scientific fervour towards a reason. This is an exact moment when a
reflections titled Tumhare Baare Mein, and defining the concept of knowledge and jingoistic strain may surface in the heart of
two short-story collections in Hindi. As process of its attainment. He rhetorically the naive reader proclaiming ‘our’ knowledge
he says about himself, he never thought he cautions the reader right in the first five to be better and more advanced than
would write a book. He started jotting down pages of the book to watch out for the signs ‘theirs’. But, the sound philosopher, the
his thoughts on his laptop while writing and that differentiate knowledge from being author, brings ‘us’ and all of ‘them’ on the
producing plays and acting and directing ‘prachin’ (ancient) to ‘pichda’ (backward) same pedestal while asking a very pertinent
feature films. He only made it into a book in the society (and literature) around us. question: how to define God?
when his friends pointed out that they could Both the concepts may appear familiar
be reworked into short stories. prima facie, but according to the author the The various civilizations created the
latter clearly lacks scientific objectivity of concept of God without consciously
Pramod Joshi, a Hindi journalist and writer and the former. Of course, we learn through this interacting with each other. The isha
witness of five electrifying decades of Hindi Media warning that the author is not only a Vedic or the one who rules is a term used by
from the seventies till now, has worked with scholar but also the statesman who believes Shankaracharya in Isho Upanishad for a
Swatantra Bharat, Nav Bharat Times, Sahara TV and in history and its critique—primarily ruler-god-king. Similar definitions are found
Hindustan. He writes on social issues, polity and through the self and secondarily, through the in Islam and Christianity (pp. 48-49). As we
media, and ran a weekly show ‘Baarish Sawaalon society. go along with the author, one pauses and
Kee’ on FM Gold Radio of AIR for several years. His asks if there is A God who is The ruler or
blog is titled Jigyasa. Hriday Narayan The God who is A ruler? The idea of God
Dikshit, born in being the ‘ruler’ and the perils associated
Book News Book News 1946 in village with this concept make for a delightful
Lauva, Unnao read for an inquisitive mind. There is no
Bolna Hi Hai: Loktantra, (Uttar Pradesh) criticism, only critique about the image of
Sanskriti Aur Rashtra Ke is a writer,
Bare Mein by Ravish Kumar columnist, politician and the current
explores how freedom of speaker of Uttar Pradesh Legislative
expression has been disrupted Assembly.
in India, how the scope
for dialogue and meaningful debate has
been reduced and this has led to hatred
and intolerance in the country. Before its
publication in Hindi, this book has been
published in English, Marathi and Kannada.

Rajkamal Prakashan, 2019, pp. 240, `250.00

10 The Book Review / October 2020

God being a ruler. Then, who is ruled? Why humans. They were deployed to understand HINDI NON-FICTION
is this world such an uneven regime? Why the knowledge in Vedas. They were like The Book Review / October 2020 11
does justice not always prevail? Who decides user manuals and were incomplete as they
punishments? did not have a philosophical base. They
provided perspectives, points of view on
The book thoroughly empowers asking observations and not systematic study
questions even when it may seem practically of society and life to understand their
impossible to find one or more answers. pattern—combination, obliteration or most
It logically makes way for the next big importantly, points of departure. However,
question: if God is a ruler, then is it only one it is when the Upanishads were created that
ruler who governs the world? Or are there the philosophical vision was added to the
many? Since the source of life is one for all, Brahmana and therefore, Vedas.’
how can there be more rulers? Who is the
One one then? Is it the sound, an alphabet, Gyan ka Gyan is to the four Upanishads
a sign, a breath that is the nomenclature chosen by the author, what an Upanishad
of this God? Why so many religions? Does is to a Brahmana and a Brahmana is
this mean that one has to ‘do’ something to to the Veda. They are interpretive
know this God? Does this lead to karma? enumerations that help understand the
What is karma? And finally, what is death? source of knowledge. This book tries to
Who dies when we die? The list of the trace this genealogy in an academic yet lucid
questions is endless and fortunately that framework, showing us how as a society we
of answers too. This is such a relief in the are constantly at risk of losing our gifted
contemporary world order with deepened scientific and objective fervour. Yes, it may
chasms between the ‘us’ and ‘them’. sound like an inaccessible read. But no, it
doesn’t lose the reader in the process at any
The semiotic study of the origin of page.
knowledge, and along with it of the desires
and life, is based on three sources—vision, So, why should anyone read this book?
approximation and nomenclature--that are ‘Those who believe in God are in a hurry to
understood as the signifier, the signified and deduce and reduce everything. Those who
the sign (in that order) by the Saucurrean don’t believe in God are in a greater hurry
linguistic unit in modern times. The history to do the same. I find myself somewhere in
of knowledge, therefore, is a long narrative between these two states of being. I seek, I
of acquisition, assimilation and application don’t believe and neither am I an atheist’,
of observations as a unit. This unit leads to underlines the author as he describes his
questions and the process of finding answers authorial position while writing this book.
forms the basis of knowledge. The next Does this book describe God as described in
chapter on Katha Upanishad states that the Upanishads? Or does the book prescribe
science and philosophy together make an a method to reach God? So what is up
inevitable pair of eyes for the modern world for discussion, anyways? The answer is the
and therefore knowledge. Both disciplines question itself—knowledge.
are based on the very fabric of asking
questions and Katha Upanishad celebrates Aditi Maheshwari-Goyal, heads the Department
that through a series of stories like that of of Copyrights and Translation at Vani Prakashan and
Nachiketa. is the Managing Trustee at Vani Foundation. She
taught a unique course on ‘Narrativising, Editing
The six questions of Prashna Upanishad and Book Manuscript Creation’ at the Cluster
etch a range of knowledge about those that Innovation Center of University of Delhi in year 2014
are ruled by a ‘ruler’ God, life, prana and and 2015, and taught it at Indraprastha College
philosophy behind dreams. The shortest for Women, University of Delhi in 2016. She is an
of all Upanishads, Mandukya Upanishad executive advisor to Jaipur BookMark— South Asia’s
deals with four states of consciousness. largest publishing platform, Mumbai Lit-o-Fest,
In summary, the power of wholeness of Kumaon Literature Festival and Indore Literature
knowledge and belief in self-corrective Festival. She also manages the award secretariat
element nature is the foundation for a seeker. of Vani-Samanway Distinguished Translator Award.
She is the Curator of India’s first Hindi literary festival
The question that arises from here is ‘Hindi Mahotsav’, organized in association with the
whether knowledge obtained through Oxford Bookstore.
the observation of the world is enough to
understand and improve it? Is it enough All the Lives We Never Lived by
to be passed down as a gift for the future Anuradha Roy has been shortlisted for
generations? Does this provide a blueprint for the International Dublin Literary
to understand how the world works? Well, Award. The €100,000 award, sponsored
the answer is not simple. Dikshit explains, by Dublin City Council, is the world’s
‘The Brahmana, in the post-Vedic times, most valuable annual prize for a single
are ritualistic books or granths and not work of fiction published in English.

A Saga of Loss and migration to countries like the Reunion HINDI NON-FICTION
Survival Island, Mauritius, Fiji, Surinam, Caribbean
Island, Eastern and Southern Africa as well the Calcutta
Rashmi Bhardwaj as Malay and Myanmar. One chapter is depot, they
based on Sikh migration too. According to were sent
COOLIE LINES Jha, ‘It is difficult to collect the information in ships to
By Praveen Kumar Jha regarding their migration as their History is different
Vani Prakashan, 2019, pp. 280, `299.00 not written properly. British, French and countries. They
Dutch Historians have penned down a little, used to come
C oolie Lines is an but they have their own limitations.’ happily to the
extensively researched depot, but after
non-fiction which Jha opens with C J Lewis’s quote boarding the
narrates the untold saga on migration : ‘Migration is a two-way ship, when they
of migration. Around process; it is a response to economic and saw the land
two hundred years ago, social change and equally, it is a catalyst to receding and
the British had sent millions of Indians change for those areas gaining and losing looked at the unforgiving sea ahead, they
as indentured labourers to countries like migrants’ and goes on to establish the fact were terrified. The author has described
Mauritius, Fiji, Surinam, Trinidad and that migration equally affects the migrants their life on ship very effectively weaving
South Africa. These bonded labourers and the natives. Together they form a new in intricate details. Even on the ship, there
were called ‘Girmitiyas’ or ‘Bidesiya’, sent culture and create an identity which Homi were discriminations based on caste, religion
away from their homeland either by force Bhabha calls Cultural Hybridity and the and gender, which were later reduced due
or with false temptations. Most of them Third Space. This book goes back to the to understanding of each other’s sufferings
never returned back, toiled and ultimately origin of the term Girmitiya and thoroughly and were completely forgotten once they
died in a hostile and strange land. In the explores the socio-economic reasons for their were forced to settle on foreign lands. Going
process, they lost their country, their people creation. According to the book, this word through such descriptions is like living
and their identity. History is silent about must have come from the English word through the pages of a lost history where
that massive migration, this enormous loss, ‘agreement’. After the abolition of slavery, the Bidesias’ collective lament and songs are
and its aftermath. Praveen Jha has tried to the British wanted cheap labourers to work inscribed.
give words to that pain, separation, and in their gardens. Faced with hunger and
longing. The book is full of heart-wrenching unemployment in the British Raj, villages The author has consulted the
incidents. The author is successful in in Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh were manuscripts available in English in writing
narrating the immense grief, exploitation, appropriate destinations for getting cheap this book. He met the new generation of
and their ability to endure all and survive. labour. They were not even educated enough Girmitiyas himself and recorded the story
This is a story of survival and victory of to read and understand the terms of that of their ancestors. A remarkably interesting
human beings under all circumstances. agreement. They used to call this agreement description of their present lifestyle,
The book not only talks about an almost as ‘girmit’ in their native language, thus language, and food is also included in the
unknown segment of history but also whoever signed this agreement was called book. This thoroughly researched book is
showcases the culture, lifestyle, fearless girmitiya or indentured. They did not even made more interesting due to the inclusion
attitude and endurance of the migrants. know that once they signed it, they would of pictures.
Praveen Jha calls himself a migrant pledge their freedom forever. They would
or Bidesiya. ‘We may call them NRIs or be loaded on ships and sent across the seven The book’s get up is very elegant. The
diasporas but we migrants know that we are seas, from where it was almost impossible to cover will attract the readers at a glance. The
displaced. We are all Girmitiyas. I haven’t return. They married either the local people editing is also excellent and almost error free.
met the Girmitiyas and couldn’t do so. or members of other indentured families,
Their new generation have arrived, but their saved money with hard work, bought land The contemporary period may be called
History is forgotten. I have tried to gather and settled there. the non-fiction period of Hindi literature
and narrate that saga’, Jha writes in the because Hindi readers are attracted towards
introduction of the book. By exploring the origin of indigenous factual and interesting non-fiction literature.
The book is the history of Indian words like ‘Girmit’, ‘Kantraki’, ‘Arkati’, The new generation readers will welcome
Praveen Jha also exposes the social, economic this book due to the writing style of the
Praveen Kumar and religious structure of backward areas author which treats a vast subject like history
Jha, an author by of that time like Bihar and Eastern Uttar with the flow of fiction, and hence a path
choice and doctor Pradesh. They say that for widows and breaking work. Praveen Jha believes that
by profession is poor unemployed youth, this migration the research on the history of Girmitiyas is
settled in Norway. agreement was like a dream of independence. by no means complete and there are many
He loves writing Their situation was so hellish in our country answers yet to be sought. This book does not
and has published that they dreamed of changing their lives generate answers, it raises questions and that
five non-fiction by going to foreign lands. It is true that is its speciality.
books. their early lives were spent in strenuous
work, facing slavery and exploitation. But Coolie Lines is an unprecedented tale of
12 The Book Review / October 2020 through their hard work and determination, the forgotten history of our country and its
they planted their roots on foreign soil and displaced people, which does not just talk
their future generations found relaxed and about their displacement but also narrates
comfortable lives. Jha talks about how, from the story of their courage and restraint.

Rashmi Bhardwaj is an author, poet, translator,
editor and educationist. She has published two
poetry collections, various translated books and a
book of criticism.

Searching for a India, Chikkiah searches for freedom from Creative Writing in English
River of a Thousand oppression and a desire for respect, dignity
Faces and a life of meaning. He finds a measure of and dignity seem like distant dreams. In a
happiness at this commune. Being unable final act of defiance, he dies by suicide after
Vasundhara Sirnate Drennan to read or write, his wife, Mahadevi, and he refusing to lead an unequal life. His final
compose and finish each other’s songs while entry in his diary reads:
I HAVE BECOME THE TIDE they work on the commune and raise their
child Kannappa. They manage to find a way This is a cobbler’s child. Don’t sit next to
By Githa Hariharan to send their only son to a monastery to be him.
Simon and Schuster, India, 2019, pp. 336, educated, not knowing that this decision
`499.00 will transform their lives, their son’s place in This is a washerman’s child. Don’t speak to
history and the ultimate fate of a professor of him.
Can the centuries old literature in contemporary India.
song of a humble This child’s mother lifts buckets of shit. Run
washerman, Chikkiah, The novel shifts back and forth through away from him.
speak to us in contemporary time. Hariharan painstakingly creates
India today? If that song Anandagrama for the reader and then takes My tears for these children have dried up.
could be heard today, how the reader to contemporary India where Must my voice too grow silent? (p. 269)
would we comprehend the world which Professor PS Krishna has been given access
shaped the song? Would we hear the echo to a delicate palm leaf manuscript, centuries Satya’s story in Hariharan’s novel takes
of Chikkiah’s struggle for freedom and be old, which contains a collection of poetry. us back to the demise of Rohith Vemula
able to find him in the body of someone just Professor Krishna is a controversial figure in at the University of Hyderabad in 2016.
like him today? If so, who understood that academic circles because he interrogates the Facing institutional discrimination, Vemula
song enough to carry its weight through time castelessness of a poet-saint, Kannadeva. He committed suicide after leaving a note which
to bequeath as a gift for people who would asserts that manufacturing the poet-saint as contained the line ‘My birth is my fatal
rediscover its meaning with every passing ‘casteless’ allowed him to be presented as an accident.’ The hard-hitting fact of Vemula’s
generation? If Chikkiah’s song is still being acceptable literary figure in contemporary death due to what has now been termed
heard, and still being sung after centuries, India. But who was Kannadeva? Was institutional murder, is an invisible reality in
does the oppression that made him create the he born into a casteless society? What India. The novel pays tribute to the students
song, still exist? motivated his poetry? While poring over facing discrimination by caste Hindus. It
Githa Hariharan’s poignant novel I Have the manuscript, which undoubtedly also challenges the hierarchies of education
Become the Tide is a brilliant attempt to give bears Kannadeva’s distinct style, he also in India today where independent thought
back to people that were forcibly placed discovers that the manuscript held together and rationality have become capital crimes.
at the bottom of India’s tyrannical social with silk thread, is a compendium of Satya dies by suicide in the novel; Professor
order, a measure of dignity, voice, respect poems composed by multiple people, Krishna is assassinated by a brainwashed
and to find for them the individuality that with Kannadeva writing it all down in his neophyte, Srikumar.
was denied when they lived. It stands as a educated hand and recording them for
powerful and deeply empathetic retelling posterity. Professor Krishna is the personification of
and representation of a history of Dalits Indian rationalists—Gauri Lankesh (killed
and weaves that history into the odious This discovery becomes the subject of 2016), MM Kalburgi (killed 2015), Govind
contemporary politics of India today. controversy and opens up Professor Krishna Pansare (killed 2015), Narendra Dabholkar
Chikkiah’s song asks, ‘Where is the land to attack from the religious Right, who start (killed 2013) and many others. For the
where water flows free?’ This search for free- seeing the Professor as a source of sedition, assassin Srikumar, Professor Krishna is a
flowing water, a symbol of boundlessness and, as a rakshasa (demon) that has to be threat to the Hindu Rashtra and he has been
and infinity, is a representation of eliminated. taught that the Rashtra’s survival depends
Chikkiah’s quest for the liberation of his on the elimination of very specifically
spirit. Born as an ‘untouchable’ person Simultaneously, the book also tells us constructed enemies. Since the Bharatiya
who joins a casteless commune called about three Dalit students—Satya, Ravi and Janta Party’s (BJP) rise to political power
Anandagrama during an unspecified era in Asha—who regularly face microaggressions in India in 2014 institutions of higher
and institutional caste discrimination in
Githa Hariharan higher education. They are looked down The Book Review / October 2020 13
has written novels, upon because they are seen as ‘quota
short fiction and admissions’—the inference being that
essays over the they do not really deserve a place in higher
last three decades. education. While they study in different
Her most recent places their experiences are common. They
publication is a are accused of cheating when getting a good
collection of essays entitled Almost grade, financial aid is stopped arbitrarily,
Home: Cities and Other Places. they are treated with disdain and face
exclusion through small acts of contempt by
their lecturers or peers. Ravi joins a group
called Bhim Shakti and finds an ideological
lodestone in the figure of inspiring Professor
Senthil. Satya, however, is unable to
continue in a life where justice, equality

“Githa Hariharan’s poignant lived and worked, where they were the Creative Writing in English
novel I Have Become the closest ever to liberation.
rebellion against the makers of the Hindu
Tide, is a brilliant attempt Hariharan has a very unique ability to Rashtra. Kannadeva isn’t casteless. He is
tell three different stories and find a space for the descendant of a cattle-skinner and a
to give back to people that them to meet. Each individual in the story— washerman. It is precisely his origin which
Chikkiah, Kannapa-Kannadeva, Professor shapes the questions he asks and the answers
were forcibly placed at the Krishna, Ravi, Satya, Asha, Professor Senthil— he offers. His poetry is his interrogation of
in their own way attempts to dismantle caste or caste. For Professor Krishna, Kannadeva’s
bottom of India’s tyrannical at least offer it a spirited challenge. But in the power as a Bhakti poet does not come
end, they are devoured by it, not it by them. because of the Right-Wing stance that
social order, a measure Such is the power of caste, that it demands that he stands outside and above the Hindu
those who challenge it be punished through hierarchy. His power as a poet comes
of dignity, voice, respect rituals of blood. because Kannadeva is someone who was
destined to be crushed by the caste system,
and to find for them the The book shows us the immense burden like so many millions before him, but he
of history, grief and trauma that Dalits in found a way to defeat that system through
individuality that was denied India carry today. It does so by skilfully his poetry, even though he was ultimately
making the sense of despair and loss swallowed by it.
”when they lived. experienced by its characters—the main
emotional offering in the book. In a country That gift of that poetry, however, became
education have faced repeated structural, where schools teach students about caste the inspiration for Professor Senthil, the
physical, political and financial assaults. with the disclaimer that it was all something Bhim Shakti movement, Ravi, Satya, Asha,
Violence against minority groups has risen, that happened in the past, a book like I Professor Krishna, and thousands of others.
as has the assault on independent journalism. Have Become the Tide becomes a corrective Chikkiah’s centuries old quest for free-
The murders of specific rationalists were cold tool which doesn’t take the easy way out by flowing water and the river of a thousand
and careful plots executed by paramilitary relegating the institution and the system of faces found fruition when the people rose
outfits owing allegiance to the central caste oppression into the dustbin of history. in agitation against the terribly stifling
ideology and goal of the Hindu Rashtra. Perhaps that is what is most gripping about and oppressive idea that they had no right
the book. Hariharan is explaining original to think different thoughts, live different
In many ways Hariharan’s book is a and inherited trauma held and experienced lives, ask different questions, interrogate or
snapshot of this moment in Indian history. by entire social groups. She is making the challenge the power structure. The people
It captures the rise of a dangerous political argument that it isn’t over yet. India still refused to accept the structure laid down
hegemonic force that purports to derive has Chikkiahs and Kannadevas—those in an old text and they now had mounting
legitimacy from a ‘higher’ Hindu morality, who search for equality, dignity, peace evidence that the system that was built by
yet strikes down all resistance to it using and liberation for their whole lives and are design to crush the vulnerable could never
the most brutal agents of coercion at its ultimately denied it in the final assessment offer liberation. These individual thoughts
disposal—its legions of supporters that are simply because the society they were born turned into gentle susurration, spoken in
ever-primed for mass violence. India’s new into believes that they have no entitlement to living rooms and at dhabas; on social media
permissiveness about using state violence those things. even. The people then became a movement.
combined with an encouragement of The people in the movement became a river
civilian violence against detractors of the In this book Githa Hariharan has of a thousand faces. They became the tide.
BJP, has worked at the level of mohallas delivered a meticulous arraignment of Indian
and neighbourhoods to rend the fabric of society and its preservation of caste. Acutely Vasundhara Sirnate Drennan is Director of
trust in social relations. On the heels of this, conscious of her own positionality in this
targeted violence against Dalits and Muslims process, she also adds a note to the book Research and Co-founder, The Polis Project Inc.
specifically has also increased. which says, ‘no privileged person in terms or
caste or class can, despite choices made as an Book News Book News
Back in Anandagram, we learn that adult, really “know” the lived experience of
the commune is not impervious to the those who have been historically oppressed.’ Voices of Dissent: An Essay by Romila Thapar
hate of the monarch and the guards of the The narratives in the book are familiar looks at the articulation of dissent—focusing
local temple. There is a peaceful march. to those who follow Indian politics, even on nonviolent forms—that which is so
There is an attack on the protestors. In this cursorily. That is not the innovation here. essential to all societies, and relates it to
battle die the final traces of Anandagram. The innovation is in demonstrating that various moments of time and in varying
Daring to imagine an alternative to the deep empathy is possible in writing even if contexts as part of the Indian historical
suffocating presence of caste in the lives of the trauma experienced is not one’s own. experience. This timely historical essay
the poor is punishable by death. The young There is a difference between appropriation shows that dissent has a long history in the
son Kannappa, now entering manhood is of narrative and experience, and an subcontinent, even if its forms have evolved
already on his way to being a wise mystic empathetic retelling of it without claiming through the centuries, using a trajectory
and poet. He will become the Bhakti poet- ownership over it. from the Vedic times to the present. Thapar
saint Kannadeva, he will take the songs of maintains that the articulation of dissent and
the people of Anandagrama and copy them For the character of Professor Krishna, debate through dialogue is what makes of
carefully onto palm leaves and leave it for a caste Hindu rationalist who occupies it a movement that changes society for the
the future to make of it what it will. The the same positionality as the author of the better.
most important song in that compendium book it is important to capture Kannadeva’s
will refer to a ‘river of a thousand faces’, origins as a form of truth, as a form of Seagull Books, Calcutta, 2020, pp. 163,
a song composed by both his parents in `499.00
Anandagram next to the river where they

14 The Book Review / October 2020

Melding Medical day. The restaurant reopened as a symbol of Creative Writing in English
History and resilience and defiance, and people flocked
Speculative Fiction to it as a symbol of solidarity. Here, the background of the authors is evident in the
café, which has been operational since 1871 writing, as they focus on a variety of medical
Madhumita Chakraborty serves as a link between the past and the conditions, from the discovery of neuro
present. And sitting there, Ratan waits to muscular motion in frogs in the prelude to
SYNAPSE: RATAN OAK STORIES enter his ‘other life’—of Ramratan Oak. dementia, suicide, human tails and many
The grandfather and the grandson have a other conditions. Another aspect in which
By Kalpish Ratna mysterious connection, which is reflected in the authors score well is the extensive
Speaking Tiger Publications, New Delhi, 2019, the stories. The connection allows Ratan to research that they have put in to their
pp. 203, `499.00 travel back in time to the period when his writing, that has allowed them command,
grandfather was a young man engaged in his not only over their plot and structure, but
S ynapse: Ratan Oak practice as a pathologist. He is able to see his also makes the blending of the two worlds
Stories is my first grandfather’s practice and engage with cases seamless. The stories manage to transform
encounter with the of that period through time travel. In the fact into fiction by taking actual theories
fictional world of Kalpish process, he learns more about himself. and applying them to various scenarios. For
Ratna, about whom those invested in the genres of science fiction
frankly I knew nothing In subsequent stories also, a deft mix of or speculative fiction, the collection may
before this book came to me. Their works fact, fiction and history intersect with each provide a wholesome read, but this world
‘explore the interface between science and other, with references to Sarah Baartman, of ‘vedic scientists, Brahminical eugenicists,
humanities’. Ratan Oak and Ramratan Oak, the Bombay Ripper along with human lusty serial killers and beautiful ghostly
his grandfather, made a debut in the novel beings with tails! My favourite story in the seductresses’ may not appeal to a universal
The Quarantine Papers. Both authors are collection is ‘The Bastard Wing’. As a story audience.
surgeons, and the stories are reflective of it has many parallels to the dystopic and
this knowledge. The title Synapse as defined misogynist world that we live in these days. Madhumita Chakraborty is Assistant Professor
by Kalpana Swaminathan herself is this: The story of the girl who wishes to present in the Department of English, Zakir Husain Delhi
‘Within your brain there are a hundred her paper in a science conference but is not College (Evening), University of Delhi, Delhi.
trillion synapses. And these are all the spaces allowed to do so by elements who wish to
between your nerve cells. But outside of impose a view that the first aeroplane was Book News Book News
your brain, all around us, we exist in a invented by the Hindu Muni Bharadwaj. The Brass Notebook: A Memoir by
synapse also, which is the space between As she rises to challenge this notion with Devaki Jain is a no-holds-barred
you, your thoughts and something that’s fact, she is silenced, trolled on social media, memoir. The noted feminist,
going to happen. So a synapse is really the disowned by her parents, and ultimately ends economist and academician
place where all thought begins.’ (Odisha her life (or is she silenced?). Given the toxic recounts her own story and also
Literary Festival 2019, ‘Synapse To Murder: atmosphere that pervades our lives today,
Transforming Fact into Fiction’ by Kalpish the ‘my way or the highway’ attitude of that of an entire generation and a nation
Ratna). The stories in the collection reflect powers that be, this story naturally resonated coming into its own. In the words of Romila
these intersections, as we move science with me. The writers make their ideological Thapar, ‘since the author interleaves her
and humanities, past and present, and position clear through the stories. As personal and public life… then what she has
generational interactions between Ratan and doctors, their belief in the scientific temper is to say is not just a memoir, it is an event.’
his dead grandfather. unquestionable, though they do not hesitate Speaking Tiger, 2020, pp. 232, `599.00
The opening story encapsulates all these to call out wrong doings in their profession
themes. Called ‘Leopold Café’, it is set as well as challenge those belief systems The Book Review / October 2020 15
thirteen days after the events of 26/11. The where mythology is sought to be passed off
bullet holes on the walls serve as a grim as scientific fact. Padmini’s end is also sadly,
reminder of what transpired on that fateful not uncommon, neither is the attitude of her
parents following the controversy, until it is
Kalpish Ratna too late for them to do anything but repent.
is the
pseudonym Honestly speaking, I did not enjoy
of surgeons reading all the stories, and found some of
Ishrat Syed them unnecessarily and overly complicated,
and Kalpana with too many intersections. Having
Swaminathan. Their novel The said that, there are some interesting
Quarantine Papers was shortlisted for methodologies used by the authors, and I
the Crossword Award and the recent particularly liked the blending of the past
Room 000 is a pluripotent history of and present through the combination of
the epidemic of bubonic plague that time travel and dual personalities between
devastated Bombay in 1896. the grandfather and the grandson. The use
of different fonts by the authors to delineate
the different timelines is useful, although
not really a requirement. The collection is
a mixture of the genres of medical history
and speculative fiction. The professional

Lessons from the Punjab in particular) in 1946 and 1947 have Creative Writing in English
Partition never been properly acknowledged. The
Radiance of a Thousand Suns by Manreet story.
Ravi Menon Sodhi Someshwar invites the reader to With
revisit.
THE RADIANCE OF A THOUSAND SUNS such people
By Manreet Sodhi Someshwar The book has several inter-woven in her
HarperCollins, 2019, pp. 352, `499.00 themes—communities turning against each upbringing
other, hatred of the other, exploitation of it is little
In July 1947 an women and the concept of nationhood. The wonder
accomplished lawyer from author uses the backdrop of the Partition, that Niki is
England made his first, and the riots of 1984 and the stories of three attracted to
only, visit to India. When women to bring these themes to life. The the notion
he left after five weeks he theme of brother turning against brother is of doing
left behind a boundary anchored by references to the Mahabharata. right and
line which created two new countries. Brief descriptions of episodes from the epic standing
The Partition would result in the largest punctuate the book. up for
communal massacre and human migration women. Post her MBA she lands a job in
of the 20th century and would affect the This is the story of an upper middle-class a consultancy firm, marries, accompanies
lives of millions for decades. The lawyer’s Sikh family, the Nalwas. The father is a her husband to Hong Kong and New York
lack of knowledge of India and the short lawyer, whose speciality is civil rights cases. where she takes a sabbatical to complete her
time allotted to his task are often cited as an He is compiling a book of oral histories father’s unfinished work.
example of how this decision was taken. It of the victims of both the Partition riots
is no doubt true that years should have been and the riots of ‘84 in order to bring these If the thesis of the book is that the
allotted to do a proper job of establishing into a public discourse. When he dies, his horrors of Partition have been glossed
a boundary line, one based on a study book incomplete, his daughter makes it her over by posterity, the underlying theme is
of demographics, natural features, canal mission to complete the task. the status of women and their role in our
headworks, communications and culture. society. The book pauses in its narrative
The truth is that no conceivable border Historical events whether it is the ever so often for characters to highlight the
could have satisfied the demands of Partition or the 1971 War or Emergency role of women. The issue of female foeticide
Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus. Indeed prior touch the Nalwa family at various stages. or the case of the forgotten population is
to the arrival of Radcliffe, the Commission Niki’s grandmother Dadima helps powerfully covered at one point. At another
had deliberated for weeks in Lahore with institutions settle children orphaned or point Niki thinks, ‘History is like a woman,
lawyers representing the Muslim League, abandoned during the Partition and the ’84 substantial, vigorous, complex and always
the Congress and the Sikhs arguing their riots. Thus they are Sikhs by birth but in given the customary short shrift.’ Niki
cases only to end in a deadlock. It is also action seek to act as if the world does not argues at one point that Draupadi’s role
undeniable that since the time the idea of recognize any religion. They take into their in the Mahabharata has been trivialized
Partition came to be discussed and appeared household a young Muslim woman Nooran in the popular imagination thus denying
a possibility, people who till that time had who works for them but is virtually a family her intellectual qualities—a point made
lived as brothers began to take sides on member. forcefully in Yuganta by Iravati Karve.
communal lines.
This raises the question that has Biji or Dadima relates an incident from Pregnancy and childbirth are also used
fascinated scholars ever since. What could her childhood. Her closest friend Ameena to illustrate how the memories of atrocities
possibly cause brother to turn against brother was a Muslim, and Biji longed to eat nihari are either suppressed or denied. Niki’s
resulting in massacres and migrations on a made at her friend’s house but knew her grandmother tells her about a cousin of her
scale never seen in the 20th century? religion forbade it. She finds a simple friend who repeatedly conceived and suffered
It can be argued that while the process of solution. On the way to Ameena’s house she miscarriage after miscarriage. It is only when
Partition has been exhaustively examined, recites the kalma, ‘becomes a Muslim’ and she describes the atrocities she has witnessed
the horrors that were perpetrated by the eats the nihari. On her way back she would to a friend that she is able to become a
ordinary people of India and Pakistan (the recite the mool mantra and become a Sikh mother.
again.
Manreet Sodhi Niki’s task brings the third woman of
Someshwar is an Nooran herself is in many ways the this book into her life. Her father’s plan
award-winning focal character of young Niki’s life. In had been to locate one narrative which
and bestselling times of crisis she asks herself ‘What would would serve as ‘the spine’ of the book—that
writer of five books, Nooran do?’ Nooran is unconventional. Her is, one narrative of a victim of both the
including the complexion ‘like the underside of a griddle’ Partition as well as the riots of ‘84. This is
Mehrunisa series did not detract from her self-confidence in Jyot who sees her family killed by her father
and The Long Walk Home. a land where a light complexion was prized. to prevent them from falling into the hands
She looked the world in the eye, her attitude of marauding Muslims. She survives and is
16 The Book Review / October 2020 exemplified in her walk. ‘Punjabi women found on a mound of bodies by her uncle.
normally tiptoed around their men but She is raised in a gurudwara and trained
Nooran strode like an unapologetic peacock.’ to work in a hospital and is finally taken
The embroidery Nooran works upon—the to New York where she works with an
only item she could retrieve from her house organization helping immigrants to settle.
where her family was butchered by rioters Niki joins this organization to establish
plays an important role in Niki’s life and the contact with Jyot and record her story for
the book. She meets a dour, withdrawn

“The book has several inter- Metamorphosis of Creative Writing in English
woven themes—communities Lives
life owes us nothing, that womanhood is
turning against each Semeen Ali a spectrum of nuisances, heartbreaks, and
tragedies.’
other, hatred of the other, A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF HEAVEN: A NOVEL
By Mathangi Subramanian The book introduces the readers to the
exploitation of women and Hamish Hamilton/Penguin, Random House India, protagonists of this novel—and how all of
2019, pp. 292, $26.95 them come together to create the heaven
the concept of nationhood. they live in, rather, survive in. Deepa, a
‘You can’t understand other people’s stories if girl blind by birth has the zeal to learn new
”person who refuses to communicate. you don’t understand your own.’ things. When other children attend a school
that provides free education, Deepa makes
Traumatic events finally make Jyot open up When I began reading an effort to be a part of their class and even
to reveal her secret. this novel, I realized learns to dance, she dances to her own tunes.
the novel gave access to She understands the vowels that are taught
The concept of national identity is its readers into the lives of but cannot write them down; she knows the
poignantly captured in the story of a Sikh those living in the slums names of all the things and animals that are
cab driver Niki meets in New York. He is of Bangalore. Two books being taught but cannot identify them. But
the archetypal immigrant from Punjab who that I had read years before, came to my it does not scare her. She wants to learn as
has followed the three pillars of Sikhism— mind: Shantaram, a 2003 novel by Gregory much as possible and it is that defiance that
work hard, share with others, contemplate David Roberts that depicted the slums of later on in the book makes her decide on
God—all his life. He has worked unearthly Bombay and City of Joy, a 1985 novel by the path she wants to take and with whom.
hours and shared rooms with three others Dominique Lapierre that described the However, what concerns the mothers of
to save money to send home so that his slums of Calcutta. But in both the cases, it Heaven is that Deepa’s womb is functional
family can build a brick house. In a tragic looked inside the slums from an outsider’s and that is all that matters to them. The
commentary on India he says, ‘….. I am point of view. There was a constant checks that are placed on the movement
American now. I go back to my des, my exchange between those who arrived from and the thought processes of girls by women
India, every few years, but this is where I the outside and settled down in these areas come trickling out in the novel. ‘Sons can
belong. When I first came here all you had with those who were already living there. It wander and roam and get into all sorts of
to do was to arrive and you were American. required an entity from the outside world delicious trouble. Boys will be boys, after
All the people here are like streams from to draw the readers’ attention to this part of all. But daughters are not to be trusted.
across the world which have ended up in the the world. A People’s History of Heaven does When you are a girl in Heaven, someone is
Hudson. But in India you have to be Indian nothing of this kind. It invites its readers to always watching.’ Further on in the book
to be Indian.’ meet the residents of a thirty year old slum, the children discuss: ‘Rukshana grumbles,
who are all strong women and what makes imitating our teachers, our mothers. “Keep
This book ends on a triumphant note this novel highly interesting is the detailed your knees together when you sit. It’s so
as Niki’s daughter makes an addition to approach to each character without breaking sunny, take an umbrella so you won’t get
Nooran’s embroidered cloth—a sun. This the flow of the narrative. The stories that dark. No, no, don’t speak up. Just do as
follows a conversation in which Niki tells her every individual brings with her are a you’re told.” “It’s the way things are,”
daughter that Oppenheimer’s first thought force to be reckoned with. These women Padma says. “Might as well accept them.”
when he saw the atomic bomb explode in and girls are not your weak, subdued, or “Plus, it’s better than being a boy,” Joy adds.
the desert was a line from the Bhagvad Gita: oppressed characters but strong willed and “Is it, though?” Rukshana asks.’
‘If the radiance of a thousand suns...’. To determined to stay afloat in the face of any
Niki this was an appropriate description of circumstances. ‘Early on, we girls learn that What makes this book quite refreshing
the beacon in her life. is how sensitively the fluidity of gender and
Mathangi
This book leaves us with the grim Subramanian, an The Book Review / October 2020 17
knowledge that we forget the events of award-winning
Partition at our peril. If communities united writer, author, and
by culture can be divided by religion in an educator, is a native
instant, the very idea of India as a nation of Minnesota and
is in danger. The only way forward is to now lives with her
internalize the eternal truth ‘we are one’ husband and daughter in New Delhi. In
and put it into action. Or to remember the India she was a founding member of the
immortal line from the Mundaka Upanishad UNESCO Mahatma Gandhi Institute
‘..like a thousand sparks from a blazing fire of Education for Peace. She is the
are we…..’ author of three books for young readers.

Ravi Menon retired from the Union Bank of India
as General Manager (Training) in 2011. He has
conducted Leadership Training Programmes for
corporate training institutions and banks including
a bank in sub-Saharan Africa. His articles have
appeared in The Hindu, New Indian Express and
The Wire.

“As one comes to the end of anger, hold back tears. The unwritten Creative Writing in English
this book, one realizes the rules of our lives. All the things the rest of
us dread, hate, flee? Anand chases them Aunty decides to convert, her idea to do so
halves in which one lives and like Bollywood dreams. As if the lock that is not to uplift herself in the eyes of others
binds us is the one that sets Anand free.’ but she feels that it would help her gain
continues to ignore aspects He constantly reminds those around him confidence in herself: ‘Becoming a Christian
about his identity—the one he has chosen won’t change the way her neighbours treat
regarding oneself that have for himself. ‘I don’t want to be a girl,’ Anand her. Selvi Aunty knows that much. Knows
said, straightening the skirt he’s started that thousands of years of caste oppression
long been shelved for the wearing to school. ‘I am a girl. I already told cannot be erased by something as simple as
you that.’ For Anand, clothes turn into a a change in faith. But maybe becoming a
sake of an idea of being powerful way of expressing himself. What Christian isn’t about the way her neighbours
one wears defines right from the beginning see her. Maybe it’s about the way she sees
a whole. The book is one who one is—one’s identity to start with. herself.’
Anand chooses to dress himself up as a girl
of the important reads in and becomes Joy: ‘Sometimes a dress is A history of a place is defined by the
more than a dress. Sometimes a dress is a structures that had been there or came up. By
contemporary times as it does parachute, a promise of a hurtling fall, an the people who populated that place. Heaven
uncertain journey. A soft landing.’ The place is an area that is defined by its houses that
not work with stereotypes, that Joy occupies in Heaven is an accepting threaten to spill into the manicured areas of
one but the world outside works on a Bangalore. ‘The newest buildings are only
rather it goes a long way in different set of rules and is not willing to thatch. Woven walls listing and tilting, not
easily accept people like Joy: ‘In Heaven, she yet anchored to the ground. The oldest homes
debunking them and making is just like the rest of us. But out here, in the are solid, stubborn. Brown brick walls, red
real world, she’s an unknown, an in between. shingled roofs. Wooden doors streaked with
the characters come close to No one is going to want her to marry their rainbows of waterproof paint, warped from
son, to mother their grandchildren. No years of Bangalore’s monsoons. In between
the readers and not make one will hire her to be a bank teller or a call are all the other houses, the ones still waiting
centre operator or an engineer.’ for more time, more money, more hope.’
them stand at the periphery. The narrative voice in this book is shared by
The school these children attend provides several in this book and does not belong to
”questions regarding one’s sexuality have them with a sense of freedom. They are not a single person. The novelist blends in her
discouraged to dream beyond their means, own voice in between the spaces that she
been discussed through two characters, rather they are encouraged to join colleges finds within the novel. Language comes up
Rukshana and Joy (who was formerly and become independent and free. A school as one of the concerns in the book. Although
Anand). Rukshana’s and Leela’s feelings that looks beyond the parameters that would Kannada is the primary language that the
for each other never find an outlet but the otherwise be set out for children from this children learn, it is Hindi that they identify
stirrings of the heart have been beautifully area. But they are aware of the divide. ‘In with more readily. ‘ “I think it might be
expressed in their brief friendship that Bangalore, posh kids go to private schools. Hindi,” Rukshana says. “Are you sure?” Joy
they share before Leela and her mother go Which means they have a lot of things asks. “Because this Hindi is not the Hindi
away. Rukshana struggles to find a voice that we don’t have: Textbooks. Electricity. we’ve pieced together from All India Radio
for herself and questions the act of covering Toilets. Water for the toilets. Water to and Bollywood movies, from the sentences
herself to be protected from the male gaze. drink. But there’s one thing we government- we copy out of the workbooks they give us
She goes ahead and cuts off her long hair, school kids have that they don’t. Rats. Lots at school. This Hindi is peeled out of the
hair that for women is considered not only and lots of fat, juicy, scurrying, burrowing pages of the out-of-date dictionaries our
a form of beauty but also goes a long way rats.’ But the divide is not only between the grandmothers used before their brothers
in determining a potential suitor in the city and the slum areas but it is also within burned them all in the name of Kannada
marriage market. What turns ironical in the slum areas where children of the migrant pride...”’
this scene is when her mother collects her workers are not considered at par with the
discarded hair to sell it to buy new things for slum children. ‘We make fun of their ashy Of the various mediums to express
their home. elbows, their bare feet. Their accents, their oneself—two have been given a lot of
naïveté. Convince ourselves that we are attention in the latter half of the book, one
On the other hand is the story of Joy better than them. Different.’ is graffiti, a form of art that one can express
who, personally, is my favourite character in oneself in and need not show one’s true
this book. Confident, unabashed and clear The issue regarding one’s caste has also identity as happens in the case of Kalla—
about who she is and who she is not. Her been introduced in the book where different who draws and colours walls with thought-
previous identity as a boy named Anand treatment by one’s neighbours does not go provoking images. And as people begin to
is not an easy one for her to accept and unnoticed no matter how much one talks discuss Kalla’s identity, one automatically
she willingly gives it up. What comes as a about living together as a community in this assumes as in the novel, that the artist is
heart-warming addition is the unquestioning area. The novel does not undermine, nor a man. But as one character in the novel
support that Joy’s mother later on gives overlook the realities that are a part of one’s points out, ‘How do they know it’s a he?’
to the choice that Joy has made. But not daily life. It seeps through the pages as a On the other hand is a woman photographer
without initial hesitation and doubts. constant reminder to the reader to not settle who intends to capture the lives of those
Initially Selvi Aunty feels that she down comfortably with this book. As Selvi living in the slums without getting too
‘…[s]hould stop the quiet notes of involved in their lives: ‘We watch her as she
speculation that she recognizes as the prelude frames our lives—or, at least, what’s left of
to a symphony of pain.’ But Anand is on
his own road: ‘We see him watching us,
measuring, memorizing. The way our hips
move when we walk. The way we unleash

18 The Book Review / October 2020

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‘She’s getting it all wrong,’ Joy says. scattered through Dharini The Book Review / October 2020 19
‘She’s getting us all wrong,’ Rukshana says. Bhaskar’s consummate
In Heaven, we are used to treating our debut novel, but also its unique style—half
girlhood like a territory that must be defended, facts, half metaphors, half desires and half
staving off intruders and fending off disasters fantasies—to mesmerize her readers.
with each strategically plotted move. Like Scheherazade of the Arabian Nights,
In our mothers’ eyes, in our eyes, it’s a war whose stories were tinged with anxiety about
we have a chance of winning. But in the foreign the dawn, Bhaskar’s story is laced with
lady’s photographs, it’s one we’ve already lost. saudade, a feeling of longing, melancholy,
possibly nostalgia? So that even in its
There is anger in them for being sealed happiest moments you are not sure how long
in photographs without being asked for the ephemeral feeling will last.
their permission: ‘She’s not even asking The protagonist Deeya weaves a tale
permission. It’s like she thinks she can do entwining three generations of women;
whatever she wants with us. Like we don’t strong women all—who recognize the
even exist.’ freedom they hold over their bodies and
minds. And yet, when the moment arrives
As one comes to the end of this book, to exercise that freedom, they find their feet
one realizes the halves in which one lives and bound in the tradition of past women—of
continues to ignore aspects regarding oneself mothers and grandmothers.
that have long been shelved for the sake of The male characters are not bound by
an idea, of being a whole. The book is one tradition. They express their freedom, even
of the important reads in contemporary
times as it does not work with stereotypes, Dharini Bhaskar,
rather it goes a long way in debunking them the former editorial
and making the characters come close to director of Simon
the readers and not make them stand at the and Schuster
periphery. India, was one of
five young Indian
‘The world is full of almosts. Almost writers selected
living, almost dying. Almost husbands, for Caravan’s Writers of India Festival,
almost wives. Almost together. Almost apart. Paris. She has been published in an
Almosts that taste like rust and rain. Almosts anthology, Day’s End Stories, and in
that empty you, that leave you clinging Hindu Blink and Arre, among other
to nothingness, trying to find a foothold. publications.
Trying to survive.’

Semeen Ali is currently pursuing PhD in English
Literature from the University of Delhi, Delhi.

Awarded
Cricket Country by Prashant Kidambi
was awarded the Lord Aberdare Literary
Prize for 2020 by the British Society for
Sports History.

if sometimes to regret it later. The men “Memories of a five-year old Creative Writing in English
are flawed though—either because they shade the stories in the hue
cannot speak up, or because they cannot De ne to
carry through on their promises explicit and of childhood’s hopefulness. Re ne
implicit—made in the heat of love. Or even
because they are insensitive to the women in Nothing is anchored in this Your Life
their lives, driven only by their need to show
up their masculinity. beautiful tale of possibilities. A journey to Re ne yourself
into the best and most unique
The characters draw you in and you So in the end, it is Deeya’s
become a voyeur in the most intimate of version of your own self.
family scenes; hoping with the five-year ”stories you hear.
old Deeya, peeping through the crack in CHAITALI MEHTA
the wooden chest she hides in, that the anguish, beautifully rendered, the telling of PREMAL PAREKH
inevitable will get transformed, or at the which belies past heartbreaks. ‘What can HARDCOVER SOFTCOVER E-BOOK
very least, postponed. Deeya alerts us when one say of childhood grief? That it is lonely. ₹849.00 ₹399.00 ₹169.00
memory and imagination co-author her That it is invisible. That it is denied the
telling of the events, which may not have vocabulary granted to adult despair.’ And www.partridgepublishing.com/india
actually happened the way they are written. about adult despair—that ‘One mourns in
Memories of a five-year old shade the stories the present tense.’ In this new
in the hue of childhood’s hopefulness. motivational self-
Nothing is anchored in this beautiful tale Most amazing is the fact however, that help book, readers
of possibilities. So in the end, it is Deeya’s you never judge—because each character will be taken on an
stories you hear—the probabilities she is complete; none painted black or white. inspirational journey
conjures up from the happenings of her I did want at times though, to shout out to help guide and
twenty something life. This we do know— to a character saying: ‘Go, you fool, just redefine their dreams,
‘We’re doomed to spend our adult lives go! Don’t miss the boat!’ Something I have desires and happiness
recovering from our childhoods.’ rarely felt the need to do in the books I read. in a positive and

The nuances of each character are The story moves and shifts although the uplifting way.
beautifully etched. Deeya with her father’s locations do not vary very much. A lot of
talent of hearing the unsaid, of living in Bombay, a bit of Delhi, a flash of Norway,
her own far-away world; Ranja with her Bombay again and then the US. This story
mother’s inability to accept the truth and takes on the protagonist’s restlessness.
Tasha—precocious and confident but
surrendering in the end. ‘For we don’t Dharini Bhaskar’s language flows like
choose the stories that frame our lives; stories a refreshing mountain spring, with wild
sniff us out and claim us.’ abandon. The turn of phrases—all her
own, like ‘Shadow boxing with pronouns’.
You lean in, wanting to know more, She avoids all clichés, although, ‘Aren’t
hoping against hope that the unquiet clichés the greatest truths?’ Her story is
characters of this beautiful novel will find a conversation with her readers—told
peace, while they seem to hurtle in exactly interspersing events and characters from
the opposite direction. It is a book of two distinct times, sharing possibilities, even
probabilities.
20 The Book Review / October 2020
Ms. Bhaskar has a romance with words.
Words from around the world. She holds
us spellbound with her cache of exquisite
sounds: Saudade, tartle, koi no yokan, and
mamihlapinatapai. Words to roll around
your tongue and experience the bliss of.
Words that are well nigh impossible to
translate. Her book is peppered with
references to Greek mythology, Japanese
phrases, Portuguese thoughts, world
literature, Sigmund Freud, and a host of
writers, notably Anne Carson, as well as a
fascinating tribal anecdotes. The scrupulous
referencing at the back of the book is
helpful.

These, Our Bodies, Possessed by Light is an
exceptional novel, reminding me a little of
another extraordinary debut—of Arundhati
Roy.

Malati Mukherjee is a writer and translator and
sometimes a poet, based out of the Nilgiris.

CREATIVE WRITING IN HINDI—FICTION & POETRY

Exploring Multiple them profusely in her poetry. A suffusion women, ordinary women from the folk
Streams of Self- of Maithili, Bajjika, Bhojpuri, Magadhi tradition, everyday women who aspire for
Truth and Angika adds to her rich repertoire in a life of dignity that form the core of her
Hindi. Her poetic tradition reflects multiple poetry. The pain and suffering of Nirbhaya,
Ranu Uniyal influences—if she is calm and intense like the gruesome attack on her body and the
Mahadevi Verma in a few poems, one also anguish of her mother is expressed with a
PAANI KO SAB YAAD THA sees the rage of Nagarjun or the aesthetic chilling clarity. In a series of poems where
innovations of Kedarnath Singh in her Nirbhaya epitomizes the endless replaying of
By Anamika literary oeuvre. Her literary interests were the various stages in her life the poet chooses
shaped by her parents who were Professors to draw attention to the pivotal role of the
Rajkamal Paperbacks, Delhi, 2019, pp. 167, in Muzaffarpur, Bihar. A bilingual writer mother in her struggle for justice: ‘The world
`150.00 with an equal felicity in English, Anamika is behind Nirbhaya.’ Displaced women in
is capable of drawing the best of both the the prison cell engaged in the act of listening
Reading Anamika is like traditions, from the East and the West. Her and laughing have the power to unsettle the
getting back to a world of literary forebears enriched her understanding status quo with their voice and their gaze.
memories, fun filled laughter, of the local landscape and her engagement The two poems, ‘Gayatri Kaul Kholi Number
aspirations of a young with the global gives her the freedom to 55’ and ‘Asha Kaviraj Kholi Number 57’
adolescent female who enjoyed enter multiple subject positions. exhibit women with agency and voice.
being in the company of trees
and streets, books and beats. Anamika is Anamika’s poems have a wide Writing in Hindi, Anamika responds
a recipient of several literary awards like breathtaking canvas. She sees with the to the linguistic environment of her
the Kedar Samman in 2007, Sahitya Setu perception of a philosopher but her words childhood and draws energy from the
Samman in 2004, Parampara Samman in strike us with the voice of a fellow traveller years of innocence and intrigue. Her poem
2001, Bharat Bhushan award for poetry in who has shared and smiled at your joys, ‘Santawana Puraskaar’ (The Consolation
1996. As a poet, a novelist, a translator and borne your pain and held you in your Prize, pp. 73-74) embodies one such
a critic she has extraordinary merit. She moments of acute loneliness and misery. experience. Her poems lie open to conflicts,
raises profound questions and has addressed Her words strike you as ordinary tales conversations and negotiations between
the woman question with unbending faith of momentous dimensions. There is a those who have the urgency to control and
and courage. Some of her major poetry quiet celebration of the spirit of Subhadra those subjected to control. The need to strike
collections are Doob Dhaan, Galat Patey Kumari Chauhan who wrote about the an alliance compels her to look beneath and
Ki Chitthi, Beejakshar, Anushtup, Khurduri famous Jhansi ki Rani—the mardani beyond the socio-cultural matrix. She prefers
Hatheliyan, Tokri Mein Digant, Kavita Mein queen who picked up cudgels against the to explore the intimate recesses of women’s
Aurat, Theri Gaatha. Paani Ko Sab Yaad Tha British. Anamika recognizes the selfless lives and fill up the omissions, silences
(Water remembered everything), her most contribution of Subhadra Kumari to the and gaps with counter narratives. Poetry
recent book of poems in Hindi captures life world of impoverished and brave, defiant becomes her growl and gravel on which
in its multiple shades. The writing becomes and unyielding women of her times who she walks with elan and chooses to write
a tribute to women who have been victims of joined the struggle for freedom and were ‘Tagore Ko Mera Prem Patra’ (My Love Letter
patriarchal society. the least mardani—manly—of women. to Tagore). ‘Bangaal Ka Kaala Jadoo’ (The
By drawing women and men from the ‘Neend-1’ sums up the isolated space that Black Magic of Bengal) captures the mystery
margins to the centre of her poetic discourse women inhabit with a disarmingly poignant and magic of the women in waiting. The
she not only speaks of the anger and realization ‘night was spent laying the bed technique of using multiple languages and
anguish of the helpless, but by redefining and life was spent getting ready to live’ (my dialects to enhance the variegated nature of
their actions she retrieves them from the translation, p. 53). She writes about poet her poems, the appropriation of the woman’s
annals of history, myth and memory. Her Ghananada with remarkable ease. ‘Kasbe
choice of language is Hindi with interesting Mein Shakespeare Shikshak’ (Teacher of The Book Review / October 2020 21
rhythmic patterns and colloquial diction. Shakespeare in a Qasbah) is a poem that
She identifies with the local dialects and uses brings out the naivetè of those living in small
towns. The poem is a satire on Shakespeare
Anamika, Associate in contemporary India. ‘Russi Auratein’ if
Professor in the translated in English is ‘Russian Women’,
Department of English, but mere translation does not bring out the
Satyavati College, subtlety and depth of the poet’s imagination.
University of Delhi, is It also reveals the primary difficulties
a Hindi poet, novelist one would face in translating a poet of
and translator. Her novels include Dus eloquence. It would involve a dynamic
Dwaare Ka Peenjara and Tinka Tinke interplay of inclusion and incursion. The
Paas. Her writings have been translated intra-textual and the extra-textual can pose
into many languages. She has translated many challenges to the reader/translator.
Rilke, Neruda, Doris Lessing, Octavio Anamika plays with words and ideas
Paz and fellow women poets. She is the and is also conscious of the contentious
recipient of several national awards. relationship between demand for rights and
the discourse of the privileged.

It is the inner world of the old and infirm

“Anamika’s poems have a CREATIVE WRITING IN HINDI—FICTION & POETRY
wide breathtaking canvas.
Rural Life and
She sees with the perception its Multi-layered
Struggle
of a philosopher but her
Kamal Nayan Choubey
words strike us with the
AGNILEEK
voice of a fellow traveller By Hrishikesh Sulabh
Rajkamal Prakashan, Delhi, 2019, pp. 256,
who has shared and smiled `250.00

at your joys, borne your Many novels portray after Independence, there was dominance
changes which of the Upper Castes (UCs) in the politics
pain and held you in your have occurred in different of Bihar. Gradually, due to the half-
periods and their impact on implemented land reforms, process of
moments of acute loneliness the lives of various sections democratization and politicization of
of society. The novel Maila Backward Castes (BCs), the dominance of
and misery. Her words strike Aanchal by Phanishwar Nath ‘Renu’, for the upper castes was challenged. Leaders
example, depicts the changes in grassroots like Karpoori Thakur played a crucial role
you as ordinary tales of politics, contestation of moral values and in mobilizing the BCs and the Dalits for
emergence of a new political culture in political power in the State in the 1970s.
momentous dimensions. Bihar in the first decade after Independence. Later, in the 1990s, the emergence of
The book under review, Agnileek, a novel Lalu Prasad Yadav entirely changed the
”body and mind highlights the plural by Hrishikesh Sulabh, not only depicts political scenario of Bihar, and established
the complexities of the socio-political and the dominance of the BCs, particularly the
sensibility inherent in the discourse. cultural life of contemporary Bihar, but Yadavs. Indeed in most part of the State it
Anamika’s lifelong commitment to through interconnected storylines presents a could be found that now BCs, particularly
mesmerizing depiction of the emergence of Yadavs, Kurmis and Koiries have strongly
exploring the Indic traditions, her conscious the backward castes at local level politics and challenged the dominance of the upper castes
awareness of the advaita philosophical its impact on different sections of society. at the grassroots or panchayat level politics.
tradition and her fascination with Bhakti Though the novel starts with contemporary Agnileek presents the story of changes in the
sutras is exemplified in her verse. Paani times, it leads readers to the struggle of socio-political life of a panchayat over the
Ko Sab Yaad Tha must be read because previous generations and exemplifies a last six-seven decades.
she compels us to look at the ordinary picture of changes which transpired at the
and the trivial with an eye open to radical grassroots level. It also probes the nature of The novel is based in the Siwan
new aesthetics which is life giving and life patriarchy in the rural areas of Bihar and the district of Bihar, which has been known
nurturing. Anamika writes, ‘The informal struggle of women to assert their choices in a in the post-1990 era as a synonym for
chit-chat tone of (women poets), their non- male dominant society. the ‘criminalization of politics’ due to the
ending talk stories too contributed a great The politics of Bihar has seen a criminal-politician, Syed Shahabuddin.
deal in changing the tone and timber of sea change in the social profile of the Though there are many interconnected
contemporary Hindi poetry…and the wit representatives in the last three decades. stories of different characters in the novel,
in women’s poetry is specially successful in However, earlier, in the first few decades the story of the Mukhiya of Devali,
quashing the hierarchy between the so called Leeladhar Yadav, is at the centre of the
higher and the lower forms of reality’ (The Hrishikesh Sulabh, a novel. The novelist has beautifully portrayed
Book Review, May 2019, p. 33). Anamika’s storyteller, playwright the struggle of the father and mother of
voice offers space to the spaceless and and theatre critic, Leeladhar Yadav, who started their marital
homeless. I must admit that contemporary has published short life from the first decade after Independence.
Hindi poetry has consigned women to a story collections:
subordinate position and failed to realize Toothi ki Awaaz, The novel not only shows the struggle
their potential as a critical entity with an Halanta, Vasant’s Assassin; Amali,
ability to forge and spur literary struggle of Batohi, Dharti Aba (drama); Maatigaari
sorts. The woman poet engages not merely (Reconstruction of Mrichhakatikam
with the personal as political, but also by Shudraka); Maila Aanchal
reinvents the domestic space as a crucial site (dramatization of Phanishwar Nath
of female bonding, belonging and becoming. Renu’s novel), Daalia (drama based
As co-travellers and comrades in struggle, on the story of Rabindranath Tagore);
women participate and commune, speak, Theater of Democracy and Rang-Arang
share and scale with amazing fortitude the (Natya-Chintan).
inner depths of their consciousness.

Ranu Uniyal, Professor and Head of English
Department at the University of Lucknow, has
published three poetry collections: Across the
Divide (2006), December Poems (2012), The Day
We Went Strawberry Picking in Scarborough
(2018). She is also a founding member of PYSSUM,
an organization for people with special needs in
Lucknow.

22 The Book Review / October 2020

“Agnileek, a novel by CREATIVE WRITING IN HINDI—FICTION & POETRY
Hrishikesh Sulabh, not only
any question due to the difference in caste; A Saga of Love or a
depicts the complexities Revati raises her voice against the system, Polemic?
but her boyfriend Manohar is killed by her
of the socio-political and brother Sujit. Between caste and patriarchy Nishat Haider
women are still facing violence from their
cultural life of contemporary own family members against their choices. JAS KA PHOOL
The novel has also underlined the impact By Bhalchandra Joshi
Bihar, but through of reservation for women in the Panchayati Rajkamal Prakashan, 2019, pp. 224, `199.00
Raj system, which forces male political
interconnected storylines actors to give space to women candidates. ‘Hamein mazhab ney naheen, itihaas ney
All of them, however, leave their spaces for paraast kiyaa hai.’
presents a mesmerizing a women candidate from their own families.
Revati, the granddaughter of the Mukhiya (It is actually not religion but history that
depiction of the emergence Leeladhar Yadav, also contests election due has defeated us) (Joshi 2019, 13)
to the pressure from her grandfather. But the
of the backward castes at novel underscores the progressive potential Bhalchandra Joshi’s
of all women candidates to move away from Hindi novel Jas Ka
local level politics and its the shadow of their male guardians. Indeed, Phool (2019) addresses
one candidate, the wife of Sarpanch Akram, the contemporary shifts in
impact on different sections decides to fight the election on her own. India, particularly linked
to the issues of communal
”of society. Though the novel reveals the different conflicts and urban imagination, which
aspects of the rural life of contemporary are incessantly reproducing/negotiating/
of the Yadav family, but also describes the Bihar, some crucial aspects have been challenging narratives and images of
changing nature of the village: gradually overlooked by the author: first, the novel the society in the face of contradictions
many upper caste families, particularly presents a narrative of postcolonial Bihar emanating from cultural heterogeneity,
Kayasths, leave the village for better lives and depicts a picture of the emergence of modernity, nationalism, or identity. Acting
in the urban areas, most families of the the OBCs. It does not, however, present as a witness to the ‘slow violence’ (Nixon
dominant Rajput caste lose their influence the influence of any State/national level 2011, 2) of the vexed and vexing history
due to bad habits of their members and the leadership of the State. The influence of land of human exploitation that is premised
hard work of the persons belonging to the reforms, the JP movement, Karpoori Thakur upon caste, class and religious hierarchies,
BC families. The novel portrays the struggle and Lalu Prasad Yadav is not mentioned Bhalchandra Joshi imagines the experiences
of the parents of Jashoda and Sudama anywhere, which actually diminishes the and travails of a Brahmin, lower middle-class
Yadav, who represent the first generation of a realistic presentation in the novel. It seems as boy, Jagdish Sharma, who falls in love with
backward caste family in post-Independence though all changes have occurred naturally a Muslim girl, Nargis. However, they are
Bihar. There are many Muslim characters and ideology no larger influenced them. eventually separated by the conflicting truth
in the novel too and the most prominent Second, the novel has entirely centred claims of history and religious differences.
of them, Akram (a Sarpanch of the Devali on parliamentary politics and there is no Their friends endearingly call them
Panchayat) gets affluence due to the mention of any other mobilization except Shahrukh and Kajol respectively, the lead
migration of his two brothers to the Gulf election for the panchayat. Third, similarly, romantic pair of numerous superhit Hindi
countries for work. Overall, one can easily the novel presents the picture of a life mainstream films like Dilwale Dulhania Le
connect with these characters because they where different communities are competing Jayenge (1995).
represent the social structure of most of rural with each other for power at the local
Bihar. level. However, though it is a well-known Bhalchandra Joshi,
fact that the politics of communalism has an engineer by
Though the novel is primarily focused strengthened its roots in the different urban profession, has an MA
on the Yadav caste protagonist, Leeladhar and rural areas of Bihar too, its emergence in English literature.
Yadav, at the later stage of the novel it and role find no place in the novel. He is an author,
becomes obvious that the author has translator and critic.
successfully captured the churning in the Hrishikesh Sulabh, like Panishwar His story collections include Neend Sey
minds of the non-Yadav, backward castes Nath ‘Renu’, also uses many terms and Baahar, Pahaadon Pe Raat, Charasa,
and Dalit youth, who are not ready to follow idioms popular in rural Bihar and which Palwa, Jal Mein Dhoop, and Hatyaa Ki
the dictates of the dominant Yadav caste. are generally not used in Karhi Hindi Paawan Ichaen. In addition to a book
The novel portrays a small incident where literature. In this sense the novelist has of criticism entitled Yathaarth Ki Yatra,
the son of Leeladhar Yadav’s driver Rangoon made a successful attempt to capture the he has been editing React, and a special
Manjhi (Dalit) scolds the grandson of Yadav environment of rural life. The novel not issue on novel writing, Kathadeesh
for his misbehaviour with his father. This only tells the story of the dismantling of old (the July 2002 Special Issue on New
kind of churning is, however, only at the feudal and upper caste dominant system, Writing) as well as the journal Yathaarth
periphery of the plot of the novel (p. 223). it also portrays the complex situation of for a brief span of time.
women under patriarchy.
The novel has also depicted the complex
relationship between caste and patriarchy. Kamal Nayan Choubey teaches in Dyal Singh
The women characters of the novel, like College, University of Delhi, Delhi.
the mother of Leeladhar Yadav, Jashoda,
and his granddaughter Revati, face stiff
opposition from the social norms of caste
hierarchy. Jashoda leaves her love without

The Book Review / October 2020 23

“Jas Ka Phool is neither a CREATIVE WRITING IN HINDI—FICTION & POETRY
consummate love story nor
and vulnerabilities which have been modern relationships. At the beginning of
an unequivocal anatomy unleashed by the gnawing class, caste and Jas Ka Phool, the male protagonist Shahrukh
religious divide in contemporary India. is part of a gang of semi-skilled, illiterate,
of disaster; it is a powerful Mapping out Shahrukh’s experiential unemployed, and a few educated, youths
trajectory from a stage of callow youth to in a small Indian city uncorrupted by the
polemic on the haunting a state of maturity, Joshi narrativizes the ideals of intellect, progress and politics.
frightening reality of communalism and the Laced with ‘the aesthetics of everyday
legacies of trauma and socio-economic changes taking place in small life’ (Light 2005) and interspersed with
towns and cities. After finishing his early dialogues that reflect folk wisdom, wry
”terror… education in a small town, Shahrukh goes to humour and teasing banter regarding gender
the big city to complete his higher education relations and matters of the heart, the novel
In the novel, Joshi has created a male and subsequently starts teaching in a frames characters who speak the thoughts
protagonist harking back to the literary coaching centre. When Shahrukh returns and language of the world where they
and cinematic tradition of the intensely home after a long gap of about ten years, he belong—the largely socially conservative
passionate and good hearted but somewhat is taken aback by the lopsided development patriarchal world of a small town in the
flawed hero. Alluding to the onscreen and social anomalies that have come in the state of Madhya Pradesh in north India.
Bollywood romance between Shahrukh and wake of globalization, liberalization and Upending traditionally masculine heroic
Kajol, Joshi subverts the totalizing claims market economy. The nature of change is tropes and using young-adult patois with a
of nationhood in the (re)constitution of so extreme that Shahrukh finds it difficult lot of invectives, Joshi explores the everyday,
identities and scrambles the banal and the to identify his own locality. While he comes recognizable, relatable, and ‘vernacular’
everyday with the aura of tinsel dreams, to understand himself initially through type of masculinity in Jas Ka Phool. In
love and hope. While none of the characters the structures, traditions and rituals of the the foreword to the novel, Joshi says that
in the novel is a downright villain, Joshi Brahmin working class family, the latter ‘while writing this novel my aim was to
shows one of Shahrukh’s friends, who later part of the novel encapsulates his lived relive the thrill of going through childhood
becomes a corrupt religious guru, as an experiences as tied in with the unfolding and teenage days’ (p. 7). Eschewing elitist
anti-hero protagonist. However, his genial history of capitalist economy, liberalism and and idealized forms of language, Shahrukh
behaviour and bawdy sense of humour modernity in India. and his friends transform the common
mitigate the effects of a corrupt mind, profanities to Sanskritic terms which
masculinist lascivious desire and dangerous A writer extraordinaire, Joshi indicates punctuate the register of an otherwise
ambitions, and over the course of the novel his critical slant in the novel’s paratext wholly vernacular masculinity. Although
the readers are forced to contend with the in the form of a foreword entitled ‘The most critics do not talk much about the
incongruency of his stereotypical spiritual Culmination of External and Internal complexities involved in the language and
exterior and corrupt interior. Framing the Pressures’ (pp. 7-8). The novel’s beautiful its various registers, I will contend that
local and the social, the religious and the cover introduces the text as ‘The journey of a Joshi prompts a dialogue with monologic
secular, and the sexual and the textual in Hindu boy and a Muslim girl’s innocent love positions, and attempts to unveil and shatter
their intimate rhizomatic entanglements in the era of struggle against unemployment.’ them. The novel unfolds in the various
with the cultural politics of the state, Joshi In fact, the publication of Jas Ka Phool voices and registers of each social group that
examines how they affect caste, class, and coincided with India’s devolution from a speaks in its own ‘ “social dialect”—possesses
religion construct the notions of ‘India’ and period of exuberant market economy to a its own unique language—expressing shared
‘Indian’. prolonged economic crisis and slowdown.
Whether the timing of the publication of
An engineer, a short story writer, a the novel is fortuitous or not is a matter for
novelist, an editor, a critic or merely a man: readers to decide. But what is apparent is
the many faces of Bhalchandra Joshi, or the fact that the paratext (as simultaneous
are they? Even looking at his life closely it hermeneutic and marketing frameworks that
is hard to tell. Born on 17 April 1956 in regulate a reader’s interpretive practices or
Khargone, Madhya Pradesh, Bhalchandra reception) not only criticizes the capitalist
Joshi and started writing fiction in the late economy and disparages the narratives of
1980s. Apart from doing a special study of development but also renders the current
tribal life and art, he wrote abundantly in the caste hegemonies, religious discrimination
different genres: stories, novels, criticism and and gender power struggles in India visible,
articles. Joshi’s story collections and novels despite the strong predilection for denial
which include Praarthana Mein Pahaadh and and inattention in public discourse. The
Jas Ka Phool have left indelible impressions paratext enables Joshi’s authorial persona
on the literary world. For his creative to be continually constructed in ways that
excellence he has received many awards consolidate not only his aesthetic virtuosity,
including the Vagishwari Award, Ambika but also his ethical authority and secular
Prasad Divya Smriti Award, Shabd Sadhak credentials.
popular author award, Abhinav Shabd
Shilpi Samman, Spandan Kriti Samman and The novel explores the crevices of young
Shailesh Matiyani Katha Award. minds that straddle many worlds—socio-
religious, caste, class, intellectual, and
Jas Ka Phool is a repository of experiences personal—and shows how difficult it is not
and memories that epitomize precariousness to lose one’s mind in the complex politics of

24 The Book Review / October 2020

CREATIVE WRITING IN HINDI—FICTION & POETRY

values, memories, perspectives, ideology, and the aftermath of Babri Masjid demolition (6 Love in the Times of
norms’ (Bakhtin pp. 292-93). Joshi brings a December 1992) and Gujarat riots (2002) Hatred
variety of languages or ‘world-views’ in a way as manifested in the socio-religious tensions
that elicits Bakhtin’s notion of each language in the contemporary Indian society. While Bharti Arora
as ‘a kind of ideology-brought-into speech’ Muslim characters have been represented, or
(Booth 1986, 151). rather, misrepresented in literature, Muslim JINHE JURM-E-ISHQ PE NAAZ THA
women as well as the symbolic frames with
Jas Ka Phool begins with the following which they are frequently associated have By Pankaj Subeer
quotation from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The not been amply represented in the Hindi
Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877): ‘I have texts. Addressing this aporia in Jas Ka Shivana Prakashan, 2019, pp. 312, `200.00
seen the truth; I have seen and I know that Phool, Joshi frames the limits of modernity,
people can be beautiful and happy without religiosity and secularity to enunciate and Pankaj Subeer’s novel
losing the power of living on earth. I will expose the ‘worldliness’ of religious and Jinhe Jurm-e-Ishq pe
not and cannot believe that evil is the caste beliefs with ethical honesty, earnestness Naaz Tha is a colossal
normal condition of mankind.’ Akin to and empathy. This is evident when Kajol, project that seeks to set
Dostoyevsky, Joshi recognizes that to be on being dissuaded from pursuing her right the religio-cultural,
human is to suffer alienation, violence, and relationship with Shahrukh because he is an political and historical
despair but this does not mean that life is not upper-caste Hindu, says: ‘Grief is on both violations of the last five thousand years
worth living. Although the novel confirms sides, Ammi. The boy’s [Shahrukh] sister of human civilization. The novel centres
difficulties of human existence, at the same Meera went missing in the same riots... . Her on the narrative of Rameshwar, an idealist
time it demonstrates that happiness and family members mourn every day thinking teacher, owner of a coaching centre in a
meaning can be achieved in this world if of her death and burn a lamp every day in small mofussil town (given a generic name
one understands that one should voluntarily the hope that she may be alive’ (p. 170). kasba) and his musings during a fateful night
do good by his/her own conscious choosing The novel evocatively represents the two that witnesses a near-riotous situation in his
and it is this awareness that enables one parallel, yet interconnected, and seemingly neighbourhood between Hindu and Muslim
to transcend the meaninglessness of one’s contradictory processes—marginalization communities. The night is filled with dark
existence. The title of the novel justifies this of the persecuted Indian minorities and the memories, hatred and violence. What makes
theme. socio-religious domination of upper-caste the situation even more dramatic is the fact
Hindus—both subjected to market forces. that his assistant Shahnawaz is trapped in his
The story of Jas Ka Phool is woven The narrator or the narrative voice is not home in Basti, the Muslim locality placed
around a place in Madhya Pradesh where that of an isolated writer disconnected from at the brink of this riot, along with his
the Nimadi dialect is spoken in which the his social milieu; instead it encapsulates pregnant wife and family. Shahnawaz and
word ‘jas’ means credit or acknowledgement. a polyphony of various voices and patois his wife experience misery every second as
Shahrukh is a person who helps everyone which reflect a hierarchical Indian society in the majoritarian crowd indulges in arson and
despite his limited means but no one gives a socio-economic flux. violence on the highway, which also acts as
‘jas’ for his actions. Although Kajol leaves the gateway to the Basti.
Shahrukh owing to the stiff opposition Works Cited The novel records this tense situation
from her parents and the fear of communal Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1985. ‘Discourse in the Novel’. to reflect on the socio-political and cultural
tensions, he does not betray the memories In The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, edited by issues that have been plaguing India since
of her love and rejects every prospect Michael Holquist and translated by Caryl Emerson Independence. One cannot help but read the
of relationship or proposal of marriage and Michael Holquist, 259-422. Austin, TX: novel in light of the Partition and numerous
that comes his way. He even rebuffs the University of Texas. communal riots that have taken place in
physical advances of his research guide, Booth, Wayne C. 1986. ‘Freedom of India since 1947. The novel mentions
Dr. Karuna Shastri, who is trapped in a Interpretation: Bakhtin and the Challenge of Feminist fictionalized accounts of some of these riots,
loveless marriage. He actually believes that Criticism’. In Bakhtin: Essays and Dialogues on His especially the ones which spread like wildfire
Kajol will remember and reciprocate his Work, edited by Gary Saul Morson, 145-75. Chicago: across the country after the Babri Masjid
love notwithstanding religion and history. University of Chicago Press. demolition. These references make Subeer’s
During a chance meeting with Shahrukh Light, Andrew, and Jonathan M. Smith, eds. book relevant and topical for years to come.
at the end of the novel, Kajol tells him that 2005. The Aesthetics of Everyday Life. New York: Subeer delves into the latest phenomenon
after leaving him she could only survive Columbia University Press.
because of his memories that gave her the Nixon, Rob. 2011. Slow Violence and The
strength to face life. She acknowledges Environmentalism of The Poor. Cambridge, Mass:
Shahrukh’s role as her daughter’s mentor
and she gives him credit for her daughter’s Harvard University Press.
excellent performance. Kajol gives a flower
to Shahrukh saying that it was the ‘jas ka Nishat Haider is Professor in the Department of Pankaj Subeer is a
phool,’ that is, both an acknowledgement of English, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. storyteller, Hindi
her gratitude for all that he unknowingly did poet and novelist of
for her daughter and an appreciation of his A feast for young bookworms and India. He won the
unconditional and pure love for her (Kajol). parents of toddlers, beginner readers Navlekhan Award
or the Young Adult. Visit our website: given by Bhartiya
Jas Ka Phool is neither a consummate www.thebookreviewindia.org to access Jnanpith for his novel Ye Vo Sahar To
love story nor an unequivocal anatomy of the double issue on children’s books Nahi in 2010. His research on Ghazal
disaster; it is a powerful polemic on the with scintillating reviews and articles. earned him the honorific ‘Ghazal Guru’
haunting legacies of trauma and terror in in the community of new Ghazal
learners.

The Book Review / October 2020 25

of the ‘WhatsApp University’ to poignantly CREATIVE WRITING IN HINDI—FICTION & POETRY
reflect on how the social media is deployed
as a riot engineering machine to circulate “Pankaj Subeer’s novel Jinhe
fake news. The novel takes upon itself the Jurm-e-Ishq pe Naaz Tha is a
task to dispel the fiction/whim/rumour/
cultural and communal biases/stereotypes colossal project that seeks to
pertaining to the Hindu-Muslim dynamics.
In doing so, the novel clinically reflects on set right the religio-cultural,
how communal riots are constructed. As
Subeer would like us to believe, and rightly political and historical
so, the riots are deliberately engineered by
interested fringe elements and identarian violations of the last five
groups. These elements are interested in
broiling hatred and suspicion amongst However, at various instances, the novel thousand years of human
communities. For instance, Rameshwar becomes too didactic. Rameshwar seems
often reiterates that riots mostly happen due to be living in this ideal world where he ”civilization.
to reasons other than religious ones, ‘No believes that his role as a teacher centres
riot is communal in nature. There are other on and around the project of educating fascinating study Sita’s Kitchen (1992) argues
factors behind it. These are created by those his students and cultivating a sense of how such a textual approach becomes
who create the riots in the first place. Riots accountability in them—how Hindus and counter-productive in many ways. He
are engineered to serve vested interests’ (p. Muslims must be committed to each other’s recounts his personal experience during his
162). He offers multiple instances to bring safety and progress. The onus, Rameshwar visit to Ayodhya before the demolition of the
home this argument. The trigger could be an suggests, is on the Hindus as they comprise Babri Masjid:
inter-communal love relationship, a religious the majoritarian community in India and
procession, or agricultural land dispute, therefore must cultivate an environment ‘The insistence that the sanctum
but on probing deeper, one often reaches wherein their Muslim brothers could live sanctorum of the mosque is the precise and
the economics of it. The novel ambitiously peacefully. The narrative often lapses into exclusive place of Rama’s birth’ is blasphemy,
takes up the task of addressing all these romance and nostalgia about the glorious not faith; and of course it is not theology or
concerns. This becomes both the strength period of Hindu-Muslim relations, which archaeology or history. It is not blasphemous
and weakness of the novel. got destroyed after the arrival of the British to hold a zone, a finite surface, to be the
in India and the systematic rise of Hindu birth place area, every part and portion of it;
The novel starts off with a declaration and Muslim fundamentalist parties. because such a zone, so understood, would
that all religions of this world are regressive be a lucid image of omnipresence; Rama’s
and work towards clipping the wings of Such a trajectory of discussion around Godhead [… ]. What is blasphemous is
human imagination (p. 27). They are communal relations in India might prove the denial of omnipresence by imposing
unwilling to re-engage with their authority counter-productive. The author does the task of imaging it exclusively on any
in light of the contemporary scientific not address how differential access to spot in the zone area. This is what Hindu
discourses as well. However, it is strange resources amongst communities affects narrow-mindedness is doing—accusing the
to realize that Subeer does not offer to their status in society/nation. Also, there is Babri mosque of standing on the supposedly
rectify the dominant-distorted meaning no engagement with the issue of how both singular spot marking Rama’s birth’ (p. 17).
of dharma as religion. There is not even a these communities occupy intersectional Ramchandra Gandhi argues that any mature
single reference in the novel which informs nodes of caste-class, regional, gendered, response to this contentious issue must be
us that traditionally dharma has always been communal contexts in society. The authorial in line with the principles of secular India.
understood as duty and not religion. suggestion to overcome religious prejudices (p.107)
by cultivating tolerance comes across as
Even as Subeer takes pains to discuss a community sensitive way of addressing Another significant aspect of the novel
the origin and evolution of four major these issues. This is especially evident comprises dream sequences with Nathu
religions across the world—Judaism, when he discusses the Ram Mandir issue, Ram Godse, Mohammad Ali Jinnah and
Christianity, Islam and Hinduism—as asserting that Muslims in India should have MK Gandhi. Even as these sequences
the novel progresses, this discussion lapses shown greatness of heart with respect to the come across as interesting recreations of
into an analysis of the troubled relations contentious issues of the cow and Ayodhya historical personalities, and Subeer must
amongst Hindus and Muslims only. He (p. 107). He does so by digging deep into be congratulated for his writerly skill, at
offers numerous examples to establish how the Quranic references and Hindu religious this juncture one feels that somehow the
both the Hindus and Muslims have become texts respectively.
victims of suspicion, cultural assumptions, Book News Book News
hatred and communal socialization in Alternatively, Ramchandra Gandhi’s
post-Independence India. Out of these Pitra-Vadh / Raza Pustak
examples, Subeer specifically dwells on the Mala (Hindi) by Ashutosh
controversial issue of the demolition of the Bharadwaj is an intimate
Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, followed by the discussion on the dialogue with
expansion of Muslim ghettoization in society. the modernity of the Indian
Rameshwar’s musings on these events acquire novel. It re-engages with the
a certain poignancy against the backdrop of work of novelists like Tagore,
an impending riot in the novel. Nirmal Verma, Ananthamurthy, Arundhati
Roy and the poetry of Muktibodh, Shrikant
26 The Book Review / October 2020 Verma and Ashok Vajpayee.

Rajkamal Prakashan, Raza Foundation,
2019, pp. 250, `799.00

CREATIVE WRITING IN HINDI—FICTION & POETRY

reference point of Nathuram Godse and Contemporary
Jinnah’s dream sequence remains Gandhi. Politics in India
They mostly seem to either accuse Gandhi or
defend their own actions vis-à-vis the Kashish Dua
anti-colonial nationalist politics.
Nevertheless, the Jinnah dream sequence KEELEIN
could be described as one of the strengths of By S.R. Harnot
the novel. Its narrative encourages readers to Vani Prakashan, 2019, pp.147, `225.00
seriously engage with Jinnah’s insecurities
and concerns with respect to the Congress Keelein (Nails), a an incisive critical eye towards the folk
and Gandhi, thereby representing the collection of short traditions of Himachal. He intensifies the
diversity of a mind that worked tirelessly stories, reaffirms SR impact of these violent stories by making the
behind the idea of Pakistan. Harnot’s merit as an readers witness the chaotic world through
important literary and the eyes of school boys. Through a narrative
The dream sequence on Gandhi is political voice from about the hateful practice of striking nails in
equally interesting. Rameshwar subjects the Himachal Pradesh. Deeply rooted in the the Nangadevta idol and thrashing it with
‘Mahatma’ to all sorts of questions that have contemporary milieu, the collection brings shoes to wish ill over one’s enemies, Keelein
been troubling him: questions especially together one previously unpublished story exposes evil human nature and critiques
pertaining to inter-communal relations in and six stories that appeared from 2013 to Himachal’s Dev culture.
India since 1947. Gandhi’s responses mostly 2019 in reputed literary journals. Harnot’s
foreground a sense of regret and lamentation powerful tales revolve around ordinary ‘Patthar ka Khel’ combines the critique
over how his ideals of violence and passive characters, ranging from a tea seller to a of local traditions with the nightmarish
resistance have been twisted over a period retired IT official. What connects these visions of oppression of Muslims and Dalits
of time. This offers an interesting insight stories to each other is their setting in at the hands of the blind followers of the
insofar as Gandhi is shown as revisiting/ the hills of Himachal Pradesh and their current political regime. It plays with a
reassessing some of his own political engagement with how the seemingly peaceful sense of impending doom by situating the
positions vis-à-vis the foundations of the Valley becomes a site of violence. Readers go possibility of a riot amidst Dhami village’s
nation state. Nevertheless, Rameshwar’s through an extraordinary reading experience centuries-old tradition of appeasing Goddess
extremely reverential attitude towards as the lives of these ordinary characters Kali through the event of Patthar ka khel.
Gandhi needs to be problematized at times. intersect with Harnot’s discontent with the These gory stories where national and global
politics of current times. violence enters the idyllic land of local folk
Having said this, one of the most Harnot’s genius lies in transforming songs, myths and innocence, form the most
remarkable aspects of this novel is the the use of nature from a mere element of transfixing part of this collection.
clinical study of a riot situation. Police aesthetic relief to its flora and fauna being an
official Varun Kumar, who is deputed integral part of the characters’ lives that also Harnot’s astute manner of making his
to control the rioters, maintains his cool function at a metaphorical level. The local fiction politically charged takes a nuanced
throughout the situation. He lets the rioters culture of the hills and the deep emotional form in the well-paced plot of ‘Aag’
burn all the shops belonging to Muslim relationship between the characters and (Fire). ‘Aag’ engages with the increasing
traders lined across the highway. Varun their surroundings, allow the author to communalization and Islamophobia by
Kumar describes how the burning of the explore important issues like erasure of weaving together a narrative of the state’s
shops, in a riot situation, acts as an anger local natural life and culture by the effects influence in saffronization of the school
management mechanism: ‘In reality a crowd of commercialization and capitalism as in curriculum with an incident of communal
seeks to either run away or display its victory the opening story ‘Bhagadevi ka Chaighar’ violence. Language becomes both the
to all. They attach no great importance (Bhagadevi’s Teahouse). medium and the subject of this story.
to the idea of victory. It considers arson In the stories ‘Keelein’ and ‘Patthar ka The story follows the protagonist, Shastri
as one of the ways of hoodwinking the Khel’ (Stone Pelting Fair), the author turns Vedram, a village headmaster’s concerns
police and administration. This is the when he discovers disturbing changes in the
reason why the crowd sets fire to buses HR Harnot, a noted new curriculum books. The way the chapter
on roads and government buildings’ (p. Indian writer from on alphabets replaces anaar (pomegranate)
169). The incident offers an insight into the State of Himachal with Ayodhya (a place in Uttar Pradesh
how administrative finesse could prove an Pradesh, is the author infamous for communal strife) and aam
effective tool to mitigate the programmatic of nine short story (mango) with aatank vaad (terrorism),
agendas of the riots. The author suggests collections, including sets Vedram on a journey to research the
that administrative ingenuity and finesse Panja, Aakashbel, Peeth Par Pahad, meaning of the word Hindu. Given such
could together triumph over the orgies of Jeenkathi Tatha Anya Kahaniyan, Mitti deceptively oblique references to the rise of
communal violence. One could only wish Ke Log, Dus Pratinidhi Kahaniyan, and
that it was true! the novel Hidimb. He has received The Book Review / October 2020 27
numerous awards, including the All
Works Cited India Bhartendu Harishchandra Award.
Gandhi, Ramchandra. Sita’s Kitchen: A Testimony of
Faith and Inquiry. Penguin Books, 1992.

Bharti Arora is Assistant Professor in the
Department of English, Tagore Government Arts
and Science College, Puducherry.

“Harnot’s genius lies in CREATIVE WRITING IN HINDI—FICTION & POETRY
transforming the use of

nature from a mere element

of aesthetic relief to its flora

and fauna being an integral 25 years of publishing excellence
part of the characters’ lives

that also function at a A People’s History of India 30

”metaphorical level. The National Movement:
Origins and Early Phase, to 1918
Hindutva and the mention of election of
the fifteenth Prime Minister, it wouldn’t be by Irfan Habib
wrong to call ‘Aag’ a powerful microcosm
of contemporary India. The intelligent 6.25 x 9.5 inches • (x+122) 132 pages
writing technique and richness of the story’s ISBN: 978-81-934015-4-5 • Rs 280
intertextuality makes the concluding story
‘Fly Killer’ a little tedious and slow. A People’s History of India 31

In ‘Fly Killer’, Harnot continues to The National Movement, Part 2:
expose the damaging effects of the changing The Struggle for Freedom, 1919–47
socio-political climate of the nation through
the eyes of a retired IT professional. The by Irfan Habib
story describes the suffering of the masses
through specific instances of chaos caused 6.25 x 9.5 inches • (x+170) 180 pages
by decisions like demonetization and an ISBN: 978-81-941260-1-0 • Rs 350
atmosphere of fear created by the rise of
extra-legal bodies like anti-Romeo squads Tulika Books
and cow vigilantes. However, the political
digressions in ‘Fly Killer’ undercut the 44, first floor, Shahpur Jat,
pleasure of its fictional narrative. New Delhi 110049, India
T (+91-11) 26497999, 26491448
Slightly different in subject and E [email protected], [email protected]
preoccupation, the other two stories in this
collection—‘Phoolonwali Ladki’ (Flower W tulikabooks.in
Girl) and ‘Lohe ka Bail’ (Iron Bull) should
be read to understand why Harnot is often
compared to Premchand. The manner in
which matters of class and caste are explored
through these stories testifies to Harnot’s eye
for social details.

Keelein successfully manages to evoke
feelings of anguish through its stories that
are dark like the current times, and the
characters that resonate with any thinking
being. The frustration and suffocation of
modern human beings living in a wasteland
marred by terrorism, massacres, silencing
of dissent and persistent untouchability are
cleverly captured in the pages of this book.
Harnot’s skill in penning dystopic visions
and psychological struggles of an existential
nature can be best savoured through a slow
and meditative read. Litterateurs must pick
this book for Harnot’s witty use of language
which seamlessly moves between Hindi,
provincial registers and the global language
of commercialization.

Kashish Dua is Assistant Professor of English at
Jesus and Mary College, University of Delhi, Delhi.
She is pursuing her PhD from the Department of
English, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.

28 The Book Review / October 2020

Day-1 PL1: VoW 2020: BLESSINGS, BENEDICTION & INAUGURATION
Nov 20, 2020 (Friday)
Blessings: His Holiness The Dalai Lama and Lobsang Sangey, President of Tibet

Inaugural: Hon’ble Union Minister, Shri Dharmendra Pradhan (1000-1100 hrs)

Savoy: State Room Savoy Writers Bar Savoy Post Office

1 RSTF-1: 2 EL-1: 3 MHS-1:

Dehradun City: Its Historic Importance Punjab 1919-2019: A Century of Violence The Valiant DOGRAS

Ajay Sharma in conversation with Navdeep Suri and Inauguration by: Dr. Jitendra Singh

Dr. Samir Sinha Manreet Sodhi Someshwar in conversation with Sanjeev Curator: Debashish Mitra

Chair: Lokesh Ohri Chopra Lead Discussant: Lt. General Ranbir Singh,

(1100 - 1200 hrs) Moderator: Major Moshe Kohli

(1120- 1220 hrs) (1130 - 1230 hrs)

4 RSTF-2: 5 EL-2: 6 MHS-2:

The India- Nepal Boundary Question –NS Napalchayal in The Moral & The Immoral: Existentialism in Translation The Northern Boundary (History & Management)

conversation with Nadeem Khan & Prema Jayakumar in conversation with Prof Lt Gen HS Panag,

Ranjit Rae Satish Aikant, Lt. Gen Pravin Bakshi,

Moderator: Krishna Rautela Dr Jaiwanti Dimri (1230 - 1330 hrs) Maninder Kohli

Moderator: Shiv Kunal Verma

(1215 - 1330 hrs) (1245-1345 hrs)

7 HI-1: 8 Misc-1: 9 MHS-3:
(1345-1445 hrs) The New World Order – Great Game 2.0
सेतु भाषाओं के: Mapping the Indian States Air Marshal Harish Masand,
Vice- Adm Pradeep Chauhan
सुभाष नीरव/सतं ोष आलेकस् / Sanjeev Chopra in Prof. Eric Brown

जे॰ एल॰ रेडड् ी/दामोदर खडस् /े उत्पल बेनरज् ी conversation with Moderator: MD Nalapat

अधय् कष् : लक्ष्मी शकं र बाजपये ी Monika Dhami and

Setu Bhaashaon Ke: Gauri Parashar Joshi

Subhash Nirav/Santosh Alex/JL Reddy/

Damodar Khadse/Utpal Banerjee (1400-1500 hrs)

Chair: Lakshmi Shankar Bajpai

(1345 - 1445 hrs)

10 HI-2: 11 EL-3: 12 Misc-2:
(1500-1600 hrs) Publishing: Present Tense
प्राचीन मूल्य आधनु िक जीवन: Transcendent Tide? Trisha Niyogi,
Kapil Kapoor and
आशतु ोष शुक्ल, मालिनी अवस्थी, सुशील उपाध्याय, अंजुम शरम् ा Ananth Padmanbahna
Moderator: Tania Saili Bakshi
अधय् कष् : हृदय नारायण दीकष् ित Githa Hariharan in conversation with

Pracheen Mulya Aadhunik Jeevan: Mugdha Sinha

Aashutosh Shukl, Malini Awasthi,

Sushil Upadhyay, Anjum Sharma

Chair: Hriday Narayan Dikshit

(1500 - 1600 hrs) (1510-1610 hrs)

13 Acceptance Speeches-1 14 Book Launches-1 15 EL-4:
ENF (1620 - 1700 hrs) i). Dateline Dehradun by Raj Kanwar (1615-1715 hrs) Time and Eternity
HNF ii). Barabanki Narcos by Aloke Lal, Saleem Kidwai in conversation with Ritu Menon
iii). Catharasis by Mukul Kumar

Chair: TBC

(1615-1700 hrs)

16 HI-3: (L) 17 Misc-3: (R) 18 EL-5: (R)
कावय् स्वर: Poetry Café Eyespan/Synapse
बुद्धिनाथ मिशर् , लक्षम् ी शकं र बाजपये ी, Robin Gupta /
रजं ीता सिहं , कमु िु दनी नौटियाल, जे॰ पी॰ पाण्डे, Sanjeev Chopra Kalpish Ratna in conversation with
ममता किरन, अनपू भार्गव Sunil Bhandari/ Mugdha Sinha
Divya Murugesan
अधय् कष् : लीलाधर जगूड़ी Curated by Ganesh Saili (1710-1800 hrs)
Kavya Swar: (1810-1840 hrs)
(1730 -1800 hrs onwards)
Buddhinath Mishra, L S Bajpai, Ranjita Singh, Kumudini
Fireside Chat: 20 Acceptance Speeches 2:
Nautiyal, 19 Bijoya Sawian in conversation with Madhu Gurung HF/EF

J. P. Pandey, Mamta Kiran, (1810-1840 hrs)

Anoop Bhargav

Chair: Leeladhar Jagudi
(1710 hrs onwards)

Day-2 PL2: Morning Concert : Suhel Saeed Khan, (0800-0900 hrs)
November 21, (Saturday)
Savoy Writers Bar 21 Savoy Post Office
Savoy: State Room
20 HI-4: MHS-4:
19 DE-1: Galiyon Ke Shahzaade: Can India be Self Reliant in Defence?
KV/JNV Debate: Nasera Sharma in conversation with Dr Jaiwanti Dimri Admiral Arun Prakash,
Can Online Classes Replace Classroom Education? Anand Mahindra,
Jury: LS Bajpai, Ganesh Saili, (1000-1100 hrs) Air Marshal Philip Rajkumar,
Abhishek Kesarwani Sanjay Prasad
Chair: Nidhi Pandey, Co-Chair: JP Pandey Moderator: Lt. Gen Sanjiv Langar
Moderator: Sonika Rawat (0900-1000 hrs)
(0930-1030 hrs)
22 RSTF-3: 23 EL-6: 24
MHS-5:
COVID Impact on Economics of State, Reverse Migration and need Waste to Wealth - Ankur Bisen in conversation with Catching them Young- Military History in Schools
Darshan Singh, Col Vivek Sharma,
of Micro Finance Arkaja Singh Jagpreet Singh, Padmani Sambasivam
Moderator: Ratna Manucha
Chair: P D Rai, Chair: Sanjeev Chopra
(1040-1140 hrs)
Co-Chair: Dr Indu Kumar Pandey (1115-1215 hrs)
EL-9:
Panelist: Bharti Gupta Ramola, Theerish Kapoor, Prof. B.K. Joshi, and
Family, Memory, Loss
Ratan Aswal Dharani Bhaskar and Mathangi Subramanian in con-
versation with Bijoya Sawian
Moderator: Ms. Binita Shah(1010 -1110 hrs)
(1145-1245 hrs)
25 RSTF-4 26 Acceptance Speeches - 3 27
COVID- Impact on Public Health and Society Issues Translations –H
Dr Ravi Kant, Dr Harish Sethi, Translations –E
Chair: Ravi Shankar
Moderator: Anoop Nautiyal 20:20:20
(1120-1220 hrs) NM/SD/SR (1230-1330 hrs)

28 Acceptance Speeches 29 30 DE-2:
Translations to English (1230-1310 hrs) Sanskrit Debate
Translations to Hindi F-1: Co-ordinated by
Puducherry , France and India: Prof Dr. Shreyans Dwiwedi
Prof of French (TBC) in conversation with Sanjeev Chopra Vice Chancellor Maharsi Valmiki Sanskrit University,
Haryana
(1340-1440 hrs)
(1250-1350 hrs)

The Book Review / October 2020 29

31 Book Launches-2: 32 33 EL-7
Cultural Nationalism in Bengal - Arunava Sinha,
1.Bumble Bee: Aayan Gogoi   Sirsho Bandopadhyaya,
F-2: (R) Ashoke Mukhopadhyay
2. Awasthis of Aamnagari: Shubha Sharma Session: Translation Workshop (French to Hindi) Chair: Tarun K. Goswami
Christine Cornet (1450-1550 hrs) (1400-1445 hrs)
20.20.20 (1330-1430 hrs)

34 HI-5: 35 36
EL-8:
सोशल मीिडया और fgUnh:
डॉ॰ बालेन्दु दाधीच, श्री विजय कुमार मल्होतर् ा, F-3: Dastaan-e-Hind; Dastaan-e-Aurat
Conversation: Saba Dewan in conversation with Saleem Kidwai
शोभा अक्षर, सधु ा ओम ढीगं रा Prince Patron & Patriarch Brigadier H. H. Sukhjit Singh and Chair: TBC
Cynthia Meera Frederick in conversation with
संजय अभिजञ् ान Aman Nath (1450 - 1550 hrs)
Social Media and Hindi: Chair: His Excellency Emmanuel Lenain Ambassador of
France HI-7:
Balendu Dadhich,Vijay Kumar Malhotra,
(1600-1650 hrs) यातर् ा lkfgR;: लिलत मोहन रयाल,
Shobha Akshar, Sudha Om Dhingra
पर् वीण झा, डॉ सत्यकाम
Sanjay Abhigyan (1450-1550 hrs) Yatra Sahitya: Lalit Mohan Rayal, Pravin Jha, Dr Satya
Kam
37 HI-6: 38
(1600-1640 hrs)
दशे -िवदशे मंे fgUnh: (प्रवासी लेखक)

शलै जा सकस् ेना (कनाडा), अनूप भारग् व (अमरीका),

तजे ेनद् र् शरम् ा (यू॰ के॰), श्री सुशील उपाधय् ाय, अनिल जोशी
Desh-Videsh me Hindi: (Pravasi Lekhak) Shailja Saksena (Canada),

Anoop Bhargav (America),

Tejendra Sharma (UK), Sushil Upadhyay

Anil Joshi (1600- 1700 hrs)

PL-3: Text and Context: Dr. Arif Mohammad Khan (Hon’ble Governor of Kerala) (1700-1800 hrs)

39 Misc-4: Mushayara: 40 Fireside Chat 2: In Search of Heer 41 Misc-5:
Piano Recital:
Presided by S Farooq Manjul Bajaj in conversation with

Compered by Asif Azmi Mita Kapur (1810 -1830 hrs) (1830 hrs Onwards)

Pawan Kumar, Alok Yadav, Dr Nausha Asrar, Aziz Nabeel, Mum-

taz Nasim, Suhaib Farooqui, Meenakshi Raj, Rizwan Farooqui 42 Fireside Chat 3 : Ganesh Saili in conversation with Stephen Alter
(1810 hrs onwards) (1830-1900 hrs)

Day-3 PL4: Morning concert : ITC SRA Kolkata (0800-0900 hrs)
November 22, (Sunday) PL5: Conversation : François Gautier & Makrand Paranjape (0900-1000 hrs)

Savoy: State Room Savoy Writers Bar Savoy Post Office

42 DE-3: 43 EL-10: 44 MHS-6:
VoW Mantrana Debate (1015-1115 hrs) Identity, Solidarity & Community: Should India align with Taiwan?
Jury: Jyoti Dhawan Yashica Dutt in conversation with Raja Shekhar Vundru Chung-Kwang Tien,
Leena Aparajit Chair: Dr Jaiwanti Dimri V-Admiral HCS Bisht,
Prof Shrikant Kodapalli
(1030-1130 hrs) Moderator: Shiv Kunal Verma
(0930-1030 hrs)

45 EL: 11 46 HI-8: 47 MHS-7:
How Free Is Free Speech? (1130-1230 hrs) प्रेम की बदलती मुद्राएं: भालचनद् ्र जोशी, The Future: Will Artificial Intelligence Fight the
Panelist: Abhinav Chandrachud, पकं ज सबु ीर, एस आर॰ हरनोट Wars
Gautam Bhatia, Suruchi Singh Rajiv Malhotra , Lt. Gen PJS Pannu
Chair: Raj Kumar अधय् क्ष : अनािमका
Prem Ki Badalatee Mudraayen: Bhalchandra Joshi, Pankaj Moderator: AVM Bahadur Manmohan
Subeer,
S. R. Harnot (1040-1140 hrs)
Chair: Anamika (1145-1245 hrs)

48 EL:12 49 HI-9: 50 MHS-8:
The Indian Machine: History & Future (1245-1345 hrs) किवता तेरे िकतने रपू : (Special event )
Tanuj Solanki and ममता किरण, अमब् र खरबन्दा, ओम िनश्चल, लक्ष्मी शंकर 150 years of USI - A Road Map for the Future
Mohan Sukumar in conversation with Maj Gen Ian Cardozo ( Lt Gen PK Singh) (Maj Gen
Manish Sabharwal बाजपये ी BK Sharma)
Kavita Tere Kitne Roop: Moderator: Maj General Jagatbir Singh
Mamta Kiran, Amber Kharbanda, Om Nishchal, LS Bajpai
(1200-1300 hrs)
(1300-1400 hrs)

51 Book Launch -3 52 RSTF-5: 53

1.In the Nick of Time: Ajay Raina in conversation with Shiv Kunal A Tribute to Pitamber Dutt Barthwal DE-4:

2. Mapping the Global Future: Ambassador Yogendra in conversation Panelists: G P Bahuguna, Vox Populi:

with Dr Devendra Singh Tribute to DPT

Manasi Kumar Dr. Savita Mohan MP’s Debate

Chair: Leela Dhar Jagudi by Dr Amna Mirza

3. Artificial Intelligence: Is India Ready? Co-Chair: N S Napalchyal

Rajiv Malhotra in conversation with (1415-1515 hrs) (1310-1430 hrs)

Sanjeev Chopra(1400-1500 hrs)

54 EL-13: 55 HI-10: 56 Misc-6:
The Wild Heart of India
A Generation Called Z: Awareness and Activism fgUnh लखे न मंे यवु ा: Dr Malvika Onial in conversation with Dr T.R.
Shankar Raman
Supriya Sehgal, Bijal Vachharajani in conversation with Gauri Parashar श्री िववके मिश्रा, अलक् ा िसUहा, सषु मा गुपत् ा, अंजमु शरम् ा Chair: Dr Dhananjai Mohan

Joshi अधय् क्ष: जितदंे र् श्रीवासत् व
Hindi Lekhan me Yuva:

Vivek Mishra, Alka Sinha, Sushma Gupta, Anjum Sharma

Chair: Jitendra Srivastava

  (1510-1610 hrs)   (1530-1630 hrs)   (1445-1530 hrs)

57 58 59 Book Launches-4
Misc-7: i) Khakhi Files: Neeraj Kumar
The Uttarakhand Vice Chancellor’s Round Table Misc-8: ii) One Day at a Time :
Curated by Anoop Nautiyal Pakistan: The Garrison State (In Collaboration with Fair Mamta Shrivastava
Observer) (1540-1620 hrs)
(1620-1720 hrs) Prof Ishtaiaq Ahmed in conversation with Atul Singh
Chair: Sanjeev Chopra 60 Acceptance Speeches -4
Writings for Young Adults
(1640-1740 hrs) (1630-1710 hrs)

PL 6: Acceptance Speeches, Valediction address by Dr. Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, Launch of PFC – VoW Book Awards 2021 by Dr R S Dhillon, Chairman – PFC (1730-1830 hrs)

Sessions: PL-6, RSTF-5, EL-13, HI-10, MHS-8, Misc-8, DE-4, F-3, BL-4, AC-4, FC-3

30 The Book Review / October 2020

REC-VoW Book Awards 2021

Submission Guidelines

Valley of Words (VoW), a not-for-profit initiative of The Valley of Words Foundation Trust, Dehradun, which organizes an
annual event the ‘International Literature and Arts Festival’, will mark its fifth edition on 19 – 21 November 2021.

Power Finance Corporation and Valley of Words have joined hands to acknowledge and celebrate writings published in
India during the course of the preceding year (2020) through the ‘PFC-VoW Book Awards’.

While the event brings together the entire literary community of authors, readers, publishers and booksellers, the Book
Awards provide a platform for the shortlisted authors to share their works with a larger audience. This forum also serves
as a platform to showcase fresh talent, creating a confluence of ideas and creativity. We are committed to support cultural
diversity and inclusion.

Nominations are invited for Book Awards 2021 subject to the following terms and conditions:

1. Submissions will only be accepted from registered publishing houses having offices within the territorial jurisdiction
of India. There is no limitation on the number of submissions in each category. In other words, a publisher may send books
by multiple authors across categories. Submissions of international authors by publishing houses, registered in India are
also permitted.

2. Nominations are accepted in the following categories : ➢
»» Creative Writing in English (Fiction & Poetry) ➢
»» English Non-Fiction
»» Creative Writing in Hindi (Fiction & Poetry) ➢
»» Hindi Non-Fiction ➢
»» Translation from Hindi and other Regional Languages into English, Translation from Regional Languages into Hindi ➢
»» Writings for Young Adults (11-16 years) (English) ➢
»» Writings for Young Adults (11-16 years) (Hindi)

3. Five identical hard copies & soft copies of each book must be submitted by India Speed Post or Courier by the Publisher
along with the nomination form (which can be downloaded from the VoW website) clearly stating the category for which
the book(s) submitted are to be adjudicated. The books submitted will not be returned.

4. Eligible titles must have been published in print during the previous calendar year (2020). Each entry should be the
author’s original work or an authorized translation into Hindi or English. Books will be received in good faith, and plagiarism
checks should be done by the publisher before submitting a book or multiple books. The Valley of Words Foundation Trust
will not be responsible for any plagiarism issues which come to light at any point of time, even after the Awards have been
given.

5. The following publications are not eligible for submission: Academic Books and Theses, Edited Volumes, Anthologies
or Books written by more than one author, Reference Books, Text Books, Guide Books, Educational Materials including
books made of open access Study-Materials online, Manuals, Reprints and Television, Radio and Film Tie- ins/Trivia and
ghostwritten books.

6. All books entered must have a registered ISBN number or equivalent indicator recognised by international book
repositories.

7. The five (5) identical hard copies of all entries to be posted to Shri. Bikram Singh 43, Usha Sahastradhara Road Dehradun
– 248013 Uttarakhand.

8. Entries must be submitted along with the nomination form [and an email to [email protected]] with all
details of the books sent.

9. Books will be received till 23:59 hours, 31 March 2021. The Valley of Words Foundation Trust reserves the right to
extend the closing date of the competition.

10. Proof of posting a submission is not proof of receipt by The Valley of Words Foundation Trust. The Trust will accept
no responsibility for submissions that are delayed, misdirected or otherwise lost prior to receipt.

11. A panel of judges, including at least one member who is independent of PFC-VoW, will select a shortlist from all valid
entries received in accordance with the evaluation criteria for good literature. Shortlisted entrants shall be sent notifications
of their short-listing on or before 30th June 2021 and the shortlisted titles will be posted on the VoW website.

The Book Review / October 2020 31

12. The PFC-VoW team reserves the right to modify the leadership team or to add therein if there are unavoidable
circumstances. Events of the nature of the ‘Acts of God’ category may force PFC-VoW to alter its adjudication method/team/
leadership structure.

13. A second panel of Judges, including at least one member who is independent of PFC-VoW, will select the 8 (eight)
finalists from all valid shortlisted entries on or before 30th September 2021.

14. All the finalists for the PFC-VoW Awards 2021 will be invited to attend Valley of Words International Literature and
Arts Festival from 19 – 21 November, 2021 in Dehradun. The organisers are not responsible for any medical reimbursements
to any author or publisher who participates in the Valley of Words.

15. The winners of the PFC-VoW Awards 2021 will be announced between 19 – 21 November at Valley Of Words International
Literature and Arts Festival 2021 and will be shared at www.valleyofwords.org after the actual awards-giving ceremony
is over. Payment of the individual prize of INR 1,00,000 each, along with a certificate and plaque will be presented to the
Awardees during VoW 2021.

16. All shortlisted books will be reviewed/ featured in a special issue of The Book Review, closer to the festival, in 2021.
17. While PFC-VoW and The Valley of Words Foundation Trust believe in ethical transparency, we also believe in the need
for confidentiality and fairness in the process of adjudicating. No publisher or author will try to find out about the judges till
after the actual physical awards of prizes in each category. Judges, authors and/or publishers found unethical will be liable
to prosecution in Indian courts of law. While certain criteria for good judgement may be published, the names of judges
and their identities will not be disclosed before the end of the Awards ceremony at Dehradun.
18. The judges’ decision is final and cannot be contested. No correspondence will be entertained by PFC-VoW and The
Valley of Words Foundation Trust with the authors or publishers in this regard. When choosing the shortlisted books and the
winners, the judges will select the entries which in their combined wisdom are the best in terms of set standards followed
globally. Ethical practices will be strictly adhered to from the moment the nominated books are received.
19. The publisher must have the consent of the author to submit the title or titles to the PFC-VoW Awards 2021. In
addition, the publisher must secure the consent of the author to participate in promotional activity, including publication of
the author’s name and image, in connection with the PFC-VoW Book Awards 2021 on the reasonable request of PFC-VoW.
20. The PFC-VoW Book Awards 2021 are not open to employees of PFC- VoW or their family members, nor to anyone else
connected with the aforementioned Awards.
21. Entries that do not comply with these terms and conditions shall not be considered for the competition. By submitting
a title to the PFC-VoW Book Awards 2021, the publisher of the submitted title warrants and represents that it has complied
with the protocol of the PFC-VOW Book Awards 2021, including the terms and conditions mentioned here.
22. The Valley of Words Foundation Trust reserves the right to not award a prize in any category whatsoever without
disclosing the reasons thereof.
23. Indian laws shall govern the PFC-VoW Book Awards 2021 and any dispute arising in this regard will be subject only
to Indian courts of law.
For further details or information, please visit the website at www.valleyofwords.org or drop an email to celebrate@
valleyofwords.org
Come, let us join in celebrating the Word.

32 The Book Review / October 2020

A Community on Kathak dance evolved. Notwithstanding ENGLISH NON-FICTION
the ‘Margins of their sophisticated music and dance skills,
Patriarchy’ the tawaifs in a formal performance were limitation that the author talks about was
expected to enact through facial expressions, the attitude of the people towards the
Meena Bhargava hand gestures and dance movements each erstwhile tawaifs. As she moved around the
line of bandish, thumri, ghazal or any other city of Banaras, particularly old Banaras
TAWAIFNAMA song-type that they sang. This performance areas like Chowk, Dal Mandi and Raja
in its entirety was called mujra. In addition Darwaza in search of the whereabouts of
By Saba Dewan to being professional singers and dancers, the tawaif families (who allegedly lived
the tawaifs functioned in multiple roles from in the apartments above the crowded
Context, an imprint of Westland, Chennai, 2019, being companions and lovers to men from bazaars), she received a non-committal,
pp. 606, `899.00 local elite. Training in music and dance standard response—and each one she spoke
regardless, they were expected to acquire to pleaded ignorance about the tawaif
Tawaifnama is born proficiency in literature and politics and families, ‘the tawaif was dead’. She recounts
out of Saba Dewan’s intricacies of social etiquette and erotic her conversation with a number of male
trilogy of films on simulation. musicians—tabla and sarangi players who
‘stigmatized’ women had accompanied the tawaifs but now they
performers. The book is Celebrated as artists and sought after considered it to be ‘impolite’ to be asked so
a chronicle, a history of as lovers, the elite tawaifs enjoyed high and denied any links with the courtesans.
different generations of a well-known tawaif prestige and considerable wealth, yet their However, several tabla and sarangi players
family that had its origins in Banaras and non-marital sexuality and stigma attached including Shanney Khan Sahib accepted
Bhabua. The author through the stories of to them as women in ‘public gaze’ put them that they were accompanists to the ‘great
the family and self-histories brings forth on the margins of ‘respectable’ society, gayikas’ or ‘ganey wali’ (in colloquial term)
to the reader the nuances that were wiped which was, as Dewan says, ‘neither totally like Siddheshwari Devi and Rasoolan Bai.
out by conventional histories or rewritten contained within pre-colonial patriarchy nor Dewan observes that while these male
deliberately. It is a valuable micro-history entirely outside it’. It was this ‘liminal’ space musicians shared the nostalgia connected
that deserves a prominent place in the that Saba Dewan explores in this book. She to the lives of the celebrated gayikas and
study of gender, sexuality and culture in the also investigates the processes that led to commended their struggles, they attempted
history of South Asia. changes in their status from late nineteenth to distance themselves from their tawaif
The author talks about her several visits century, the colonial discourse, the Indian background and the cultural contexts in
to Banaras since 2002 to research and film nationalist response and the construction which they first started performing.
a documentary on tawaifs, the courtesans, of tawaif within both. The tawaifs, the
performers and entertainers, who almost author narrates, found themselves in the The stories of the tawaifs that Dewan
until the mid-twentieth century played a grip of both ‘public’ and ‘personal’ laws. narrates emerge from her conversation and
significant role in the cultural and social The public laws criminalized their sexuality reminiscences of a best-known tawaif of
life of northern India. They were, however, while the male-dominated personal laws her times she met at Shanney Khan Sahib’s
recast from the late nineteenth century, eroded their customs, deprived them of their house in Banaras. As they befriended each
when they became marginalized and were customary rights to property, succession other, Dewan learnt about the household
‘branded as deviant and obscene’ in Dewan’s and inheritance. Colonial laws increasingly and lifestyle of the former tawaifs and
words. Tawaifs congregated in Banaras, dissolved the autonomy and ‘privileged especially the life of their daughters. Most
making it the city of the arts associated position’ that the tawaifs had enjoyed tawaifs married their daughters, chose
with their distinctive musical style, the bol as ‘independent women of substance’. ‘izzatdar, honourable path of not living off
banao thumri and its related genres such as Narrating her experiences as she met and the earnings of daughters any more’ though
hori, chaiti, kajari and dadra. It was with interviewed the tawaifs, Dewan understands there were a few who sent their daughters to
the dance form and art of the tawaifs that the ways in which they negotiated the dance bars to contribute to family income.
onslaughts of colonialism and nationalism This tawaif who urged anonymity,
Saba Dewan is a on their life-style and art, the strategies that narrated with great pride the life of her
documentary film- they adopted to meet the challenges and great-great-grandmother, Dharmmam, an
maker. Her focus is whether they could survive successfully.
on issues of gender, The Book Review / October 2020 33
sexuality and culture. The experiences that the author
This is her first book encountered as she embarked on the research
and has emerged from her trilogy of and investigations on the women performers
films on stigmatized women performers: are gripping and remarkably revealing. The
Delhi-Mumbai-Delhi (2006) is about fragmentary histories of the tawaif artists and
the lives of bar dancers; Naach (The the historiography on them was significantly
Dance, 2008) on women dancers in challenging, she says, especially in view of
rural fairs and The Other Song (2009) the fact that the community of the tawaifs
about the art and lifestyle of the tawaifs stood on the margins of patriarchy. The
or courtesans. ‘history of erasure and silencing’ of the arts
of the tawaifs over the last century and a half
further complicated her research endeavours
to retrieve the performing art, culture and
lifestyles of these women artists. Yet another

“The experiences that the Foundational ENGLISH NON-FICTION
author encountered as she Moments in Empire
Building* “William Dalrymple’s The
embarked on the research and Anarchy is the story of the
Amar Farooqui
investigations on the women rise of the EIC, from modest
THE ANARCHY: THE EAST INDIA COMPANY,
performers are gripping and CORPORATE VIOLENCE, AND THE PILLAGE OF AN beginnings to its ascendancy
EMPIRE
”remarkably revealing. in the latter half of the
By William Dalrymple
early nineteenth century tawaif-turned- ”eighteenth century.
warrior during 1857. The life of Dharmmam Bloomsbury, London, 2019, pp.xxxv+522,
Bibi of Arrah, the ‘illustrious purkhin’ as R699.00 East India Company (VOC) excluded other
she was called, who could handle the ‘sword European traders from the Cape route even
with the same sure touch with which she In September 1499 Vasco more aggressively than did the Portuguese.
caressed a lover’ is intensely and interestingly da Gama returned to Finding their access to supplies of spices
written. Discussing the life of Sadabahar Lisbon, having successfully in south-east Asia blocked by the VOC,
as a child and then maturing into a late travelled to Malabar via the EIC increasingly became dependent
nineteenth century tawaif, Dewan succinctly the Cape of Good Hope on commodities such as cotton textiles,
probes the kind of education that they were route. A century later, a procured from India, for its earnings. India
subjected to. While music and dance were group of London merchants launched the had initially been of subsidiary interest to the
just one part of their ‘intensive education’, trading venture, which was to grow into a plans of the EIC. Its main aim had been to
proficiency in reading and writing Urdu giant modern corporation, the East India purchase spices from south-east Asia for its
and learning Farsi (Persian) with correct Company (EIC). These London merchants European markets.
diction was insisted upon since without petitioned Elizabeth for a royal charter
specialization in these languages, a tawaif that would give them the exclusive right to In 1613 the EIC set up a factory at
could not hope to sing ghazals with the trade with the ‘East Indies’. The charter was Surat, the main port of the Mughal empire,
‘right understanding and feeling’. Moreover, granted in 1600, marking the beginning and subsequently, in the second quarter
as in the case of Sadabahar, her ‘mothers’ of the Company’s monopoly. The EIC’s of the seventeenth century, had begun
monitored her language, mannerisms and charter was renewed from time to time expanding its commercial activities on the
body posture that could never be acquired allowing it to monopolize the trade between Coromandel coast. It soon had to contend
through formal lessons. In other words, a England and Asia for over two centuries. with yet another rival, the French East India
tawaif had to be completely equipped with William Dalrymple’s The Anarchy is the Company formed in 1664. The first half
the art of rijhana—use of sexuality in subtle story of the rise of the EIC, from modest of the eighteenth century witnessed a fierce
and overt ways to attract and captivate male beginnings to its ascendancy in the latter half contest between the French and English
patrons. of the eighteenth century. companies in south India, a contest that
Vasco da Gama’s voyage had spilled over into eastern India by the 1750s.
Writing about the several lovers of the demonstrated the viability of the new The EIC’s conquest of Bengal and Bihar
tawaifs’ and their relationship, Dewan all-sea route between Europe and the in 1757 put an end to the French colonial
investigates whether there were any Indian Ocean. Already by the late 1480s venture in India.
courtesans who broke the professional code Bartholomew Diaz had established that there
and fell in love with a lover patron. In was a sea passage between the Atlantic and Dalrymple’s book focuses on three
this context, she quotes Umrao Jan, mid- the Indian oceans, along the southern coast foundational moments in the early history
nineteenth century courtesan of Lucknow, of the African continent. For most of the of Britain’s Indian empire, between 1757
of how they learnt the art of pretence, the sixteenth century the Portuguese controlled and 1805: the battles of Plassey (1757) and
feigning of love and were guided by the the all-sea Cape route, and thereby the Buxar (1764); the campaigns of Cornwallis
sixty-four courtesan skills as enumerated in long-distance trade between Europe and and Wellesley against Tipu Sultan,
Kamasutra, written in the sixth century. Asia along this route. Their monopoly culminating in the final defeat of Tipu in
prompted a search for alternative routes. In 1799; and the second Anglo-Maratha war
The book is a story of the several well- fact, the earliest scheme, proposed in 1527, (1802-1805). His narrative by and large
known, best-known tawaifs—Dharmmam, for undertaking a trans-oceanic voyage from
Sadabahar, Teema, Bindo, Asghari, England to Asia was for a route that would William Dalrymple,
Phoolmani, Pyaari and so many others— not involve going round the Cape of Good is historian and
their childhood, their grooming, their Hope. This was for a north-western route, writer, art historian
adolescence but also their resentments through the Arctic archipelago. Two English and curator, as well
and perhaps disappointments, expressed expeditions sent out to locate a possible as a broadcaster
discreetly, nonetheless. Grasping, engaging, north-western passage ended in failure. By and critic. His new
interesting, succinctly written, the book the time the EIC became active, the Dutch books are The Anarchy: The East India
is a fascinating micro-cultural history that had superseded the Portuguese. The Dutch Company, Corporate Violence and the
deserves a special place in the understanding Pillage of an Empire and Forgotten
of Indian history. *Reprinted from TBR, Volume XLIV Number 1 January Masters: Indian Painting for the East
2020 India Company. Dalrymple is one of the
Meena Bhargava is in the Department of History, founders and a co-director of the Jaipur
Indraprastha College for Women, University of Literature Festival.
Delhi, Delhi.

34 The Book Review / October 2020

adheres to standard accounts of this phase subedar ENGLISH NON-FICTION
of colonial expansion in India. Thus Siraj of Bengal.
ud-Daula’s problems are depicted as being, Shah “The loot and plunder, on a
to a large extent, the result of flaws in his Alam’s massive scale, by the EIC’s
character. Some of the recent writings on farman
the conflict between Siraj and the EIC, most of 1765 employees, in the wake of
prominently Sushil Chaudhury’s The Prelude authorizing
to Empire (2000), have forcefully argued the EIC Plassey, was responsible for
that most of the sources on which historians to act as
have based their negative assessment of Siraj diwan for the great anarchy which
ud-Daula are hopelessly biased. Dalrymple the eastern
seems unimpressed by Chaudhury’s ‘spirited’ provinces contemporaries spoke of in
attempt ‘to resuscitate his reputation’, and further
remarks that the evidence points to ‘Siraj confirmed lamenting the passing of the
behaving rather like Uday Hussain in pre- that it had
9/11 Baghdad’ (p. 82n56). a formal status in the imperial hierarchy. The era of Siraj’s grandfather
Company sought legitimacy by observing
The loot and plunder, on a massive Mughal protocol, and acknowledging the Alivardi Khan (d. 1756).
scale, by the EIC’s employees, in the wake sovereignty of the emperor. The narrative
of Plassey, was responsible for the great about the Company’s expansionist drive is Dalrymple describes vividly
anarchy which contemporaries spoke of in interspersed with the story of the travails
lamenting the passing of the era of Siraj’s of Shah Alam, whose reign (1759-1806) the political, social and
grandfather Alivardi Khan (d. 1756). coincided with the rise of British power in
Dalrymple describes vividly the political, India. economic chaos in eastern
social and economic chaos in eastern India Within five years, the EIC as diwan
during the initial years of Company rule. and de facto ruler of Bengal had destroyed India during the initial years
Mir Jafar, a veteran military commander the agrarian economy of the suba. In 1769
who had betrayed Siraj ud-Daula and paved a large part of Bengal was engulfed in a ”of company rule.
the way for the EIC’s victory at Plassey, was terrible man-made famine, which lasted for
acknowledged as the new subedar of the a few years. The book devotes considerable intellectual contribution of Francis to the
eastern provinces of the Mughal empire. space to the horrors of the famine, and the ideas that shaped the Permanent Settlement,
However, the Company soon dispensed utterly callous and inhuman behaviour of had commented that, ‘To contemporaries
with him, as he was unable to comply with the Company’s servants in this grave crisis. Francis’s reputation was slightly higher than
their continuous demands for money. His As reports of conditions in the EIC’s Indian that of Warren Hastings: but later historians
son-in-law Mir Qasim, who turned out to be territories reached England, criticism of the reversed the scales. ... How could this
an exceptionally competent administrator, Company’s activities began to be articulated happen? The answer is that Francis has been
replaced him. in the strongest terms. Condemning the the victim of second thoughts about Warren
EIC an angry Horace Walpole declared that Hastings. All the luminous adjectives applied
Within a very short time Mir Qasim ‘We have outdone the Spaniards in Peru!’ to Hastings’s Indian record are in fact a
fulfilled promises made to the Company, (p. 223). This was the context in which a nineteenth century invention.’
promises forcibly extracted from him and permanent mechanism for parliamentary
his predecessor. Simultaneously he tried to oversight of the Company’s Indian empire It has at times been remarked that the
salvage some of the vital components of the was put in place in 1784. EIC established its empire surreptitiously,
administrative and military apparatus of the The impeachment trial of Warren and that Indian elites were hoodwinked into
nawabi regime with the objective of resisting Hastings, which commenced in 1788 and regarding the Company as a peaceful trading
the EIC. Dalrymple’s account indicates dragged on for several years, became an concern until it was too late to do anything.
that at this stage influential sections of that occasion for investigating and exposing the The Anarchy emphasizes that this was not
regime had not entirely given up hope, and EIC’s systematic plunder. Later, during the so. Right since the time of Alivardi Khan,
might have viewed Plassey as a temporary, nineteenth century, Hastings came to be and of Anwar ud-Din, Mughal subedar of
albeit catastrophic, setback. Mir Qasim did depicted as a great empire-builder. In his Carnatic in the late 1740s, there was an
not lack allies; without them he could not account of the impeachment proceedings, awareness of the potential which the English
have achieved what he did. It was obvious Dalrymple seems generally sympathetic to and other European companies had for
that the British could not be ousted without Hastings whom he considers to be relatively undermining Mughal authority. Throughout
a military confrontation. The confrontation enlightened in his attitude towards India the latter half of the eighteenth century,
eventually took place at Buxar in 1764. and Indians. On the other hand, Hastings’s rulers of the various political entities in the
leading political opponent, Philip Francis subcontinent in which the EIC operated,
In a desperate move, the EIC decided is introduced in the book as a ‘scheming tried to check the growing power of the
to once again acknowledge Mir Jafar as the polemicist’ (p. xiv), who was ultimately Company leading to bloody wars. The
subedar, notwithstanding (or because of) the source of the vicious propaganda in British, i.e., the Company, backed by the
his addiction to opium. Dependence on the England against Hastings. It is pertinent British state, encountered fierce resistance
drug had rendered him useless for purposes that in his classic study A Rule of Property for at every step in its endeavour to achieve
of governance even in a limited way. What Bengal, Ranajit Guha, while discussing the complete dominance. Empire was won by
is significant is that the Company had to unleashing violence on an unprecedented
maintain the fiction that it governed on scale. Dalrymple pays close attention to
behalf of the nawab who was the Mughal some of the key battles through which the
EIC achieved supremacy.

Whereas the Company was not yet
in a position to take on the Mughal war
machine at the close of Aurangzeb’s reign,
as was demonstrated in the 1680s when it

The Book Review / October 2020 35

tried to defy Mughal authority (‘Child’s A Sweeping to a ENGLISH NON-FICTION
War’), by the 1740s it had become clear that Sweeping (A to be
Indian rulers were starting to lag behind in LC) “Shankar Raman goes a leap
methods of warfare. Nevertheless, within a forward to engage with
few decades some of the States had updated Raza Kazmi
their methods, making each battle a tough the underlying humanity
military contest. Tipu Sultan and Mahadji THE WILD HEART OF INDIA
Sindia were the foremost innovators in of nature and the oft
this field. It is for this reason that the wars By T.R. Shankar Raman
with Mysore, and the Second Maratha war, forgotten, yet omnipresent,
were among the bloodiest the EIC fought Oxford University Press, 2019, pp. 476, `795.00
in India. The Sindia army along with the presence of nature in
forces of the ruler of Berar came close to Who is TR Shankar
defeating the British in the Battle of Assaye Raman, the author ”humanity.
(September 1803), one of the two decisive of The Wild Heart of India?
battles of the Maratha War. The British were This is not a question of Rajasthan, from your garden to his home
led by Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of I ask, it is a question in the lofty hills of the Anaimalai, from
Wellington: ‘Arthur Wellesley would later that the author himself Andamans to the city ‘national park’ of
remember [the battle] as one of the hardest is confronted with as he chances upon Guindy in the heart of Chennai, and from
he had ever fought, and altogether tougher an old essay written as a schoolboy while the branches of ancient roadside tamarind
than his later confrontation with Napoleon visiting his childhood home in Mylapore, and banyan trees to the countryside and
at Waterloo’ (p. 370). Chennai. ‘…and who am I? Shankar, the plantations of Valparai plateau, from the
birdwatcher-scientist walking the woods, Kaveri river to the seas. Consisting of more
In his slim volume, The Corporation or Sridhar, spontaneous writer…?’ As I than sixty essays written over a 25-year
that Changed the World, Nick Robins had finished reading the epilogue—, I sighed period, ten of which are co-authored with
highlighted the predatory character of the and muttered to myself, ‘He is both, and the fellow wildlife scientist and his wife,
East India Company. The EIC has provided something more—an exemplary student Divya Mudappa, the entire book is neatly
the model for present-day multinationals, and practitioner of philosophia naturalis, the divided into three sections, the first being
which have much in common with their dying art of philosophical exploration of nature notes from his field studies, the
ancestor. Dalrymple echoes Robins’s the natural world.’ The result of this trifecta second dealing with conservation threats
understanding in the concluding sentences is a delightful and equally impactful book, facing the natural world, and the final, and
of his book: ‘The East India Company one that for me will be a classic. The book in my view the finest, dealing with a ‘deeper
remains today history’s most ominous is delightful because it perhaps is the finest and more reflective perception of nature…
warning about the potential for the abuse of natural history writing to have emerged broadening into the domains of aesthetics,
corporate power—and the insidious means from India in recent decades, it is impactful ethics, and the intangible’. The old world
by which the interests of shareholders can because rather than merely shock and horrify charm of the author’s writing is aptly
seemingly become those of the state. ... Four the reader with the appalling state of our complemented by exquisite sketches—a
hundred and twenty years after its founding, natural world through numbers, data and rarity in today’s age of picture perfect
the story of the East India Company has statistics as most conservation writing tends nature photographs—by Sartaj Ghuman
never been more current’ (p. 397). to do these days, Shankar Raman goes a that ‘reflect the setting and the spirit of the
leap forward to engage with the underlying essays’, as the author perfectly sums up.
Amar Farooqui teaches in the Department of humanity of nature and the oft forgotten,
History, University of Delhi, Delhi. yet omnipresent, presence of nature in The subjects of each essay in the opening
humanity. He achieves this through prose and closing sections are a masterclass in
Book News Book News that is beautifully elegant and eloquent, nature writing of the finest order, especially
and yet so simple and heart-warming in its in the world of modern conservation
Archives of Empire: Volume message. writing in India that is usually focused on
I. From the East India The Wild Heart of India is a deep dive— the country’s megafauna. While many of
Company to the Suez Canal scientifically, philosophically—into the those charismatic animals do make their
edited by Barbara Harlow natural world, a world that in the words appearance, Shankar Raman gives equal
and Mia Carter traces the of the author is not ‘something out there, in focus to the bounty of diverse species
beginnings of the British forests or far wilderness, separate from the that make up India’s wilds—ranging
colonial enterprise in South dwelling or presence of humans’, rather from the Great Hornbills to the humble
Asia and the Middle East one that ‘throbs around you, inseparable, little warblers, from elephants to the
by bringing together key texts from the era omnipresent…from city park to savanna,
of the privately owned British East India roadside to rainforest, and ocean bed to TR Shankar Raman
Company through the crises that led to the mountaintop’, a world which ‘both envelops is a writer turned
Company’s takeover by the Crown in 1858, you and forms a part of who you are’. And wildlife scientist. His
and ends with the momentous opening of so the author takes the reader across the focus is on the ecology
the Suez Canal in 1869. length and breadth of India’s natural world, and conservation of
from the evergreen rainforests of Mizoram tropical forests and
Duke University Press/Primus Books India, and Arunachal Pradesh to the arid habitats wildlife. Apart from The Wild Heart of
2020, pp. 832, `1995.00 (For sale only in India, he has co-authored Pillars of Life:
South Asia) Magnificent Trees of the Western Ghats
with Divya Mudappa.
36 The Book Review / October 2020

Malabar Whistling Thrush, from towering jarring, but might even make some of the ENGLISH NON-FICTION
Dipterocarps in the rainforests to sentinel more impatient readers to not proceed onto
roadside banyans, from blackbucks in the the final, and the finest section of the book The Danger of a
city to bustards in the desert, from Hoolock where Shankar Raman truly comes into his Single Story*
Gibbons in the North East to Bonnet own and takes the book to another level
Macaques and Nilgiri langurs in the Western altogether. And it would be an utter shame Asma Rasheed
Ghats, from clouded leopards in Mizoram’s if some reader missed out on that section
Dampa to tigers in Central India, and from due to some of the drier essays in the middle COMING OUT AS DALIT: A MEMOIR
otters in the Kaveri to the dolphins in the of the book. The second, even if minor, By Yashica Dutt
sea. The section on conservation shocks, quibble would be the absence of a map. Aleph Book Company, New Delhi, 2019, pp. 220,
pains and worries in equal order. While conservationists usually have a good `416.00
idea of India’s geography, to the uninitiated
Just as Shankar Raman ‘hesitates, to list or even a generalist reader—who perhaps Yashica Dutt’s
his favourites’ among plants while closing his more than anyone else needs to read this compellingly gritty
acknowledgments with gratitude to places, book—it always helps if a map marks out the tale offers points of
animals and plants that have inspired him, prominent locations where the essays are set. identification for probably
I find it very difficult to list my favourite scores of third or fourth
essays from the book because there are too However, to reiterate, these minor generation Dalits today,
many of them, and each has too much to drawbacks pale in comparison to the sheer who are ‘new’ arrivals in public/professional
admire and appreciate. However, the ones overall brilliance of the book. Finally, if spaces, as well as those from other
that really stayed with me was his tribute to there was one take away from the many, marginalized, minority communities. Her
his earliest mentors, RKG ‘Cutlet’ Menon, many takeaways that this book provides the memoir is a conscious exercise in reminiscing
the extremely informative and insightful reader with that I would like to mention and examining lives and events, personal and
essays on the much maligned jhum here, it would be this critical message that communitarian, including that of her own as
cultivation in North East India, his evocative gently, and heart-warmingly, resonates a student, as a journalist, and, most germane
essays on roadside banyans, the diminutive throughout each essay of the book. ‘I to this narrative, as a Dalit.
warblers and his experiences with elephants think an approach built on science, alone, Dutt intersperses her story with
of Valparai. cannot help conservation. We must include discussions on history and politics across
human sentience…The foundations of a the span of the last century or so; her
While listing my favourites might be conservation ethic must be built on human interpellation of a life against this larger
hard, it is easy to list down my complaints sentience, tempered by empathy’, sums up canvas allows her to deftly bring out the
simply because there are so few—just two, Shankar Raman in the concluding chapter macro- and the micro-politics of life beyond
to be specific. The first is that I found some of the book, aptly titled ‘Sentience for the margins, particularly in the context of
essays in the middle, especially in the section Conservation’. The author couldn’t have north India. But the most moving parts of
dealing with conservation, to be lacking made a better case for this argument that he her account come, as far as this reviewer is
the eloquence of prose and the sense of puts forth—one which he honestly admits concerned, in Dutt’s edgy acknowledgement
wonder that otherwise permeate the book is him reiterating and rearticulating the of the determination of her mother to cover
and are its hallmark. These few essays read ideas of some of the finest natural historians up the caste origins of their family. Struggling
more like statistics-laden dry reportage of yore—than he has by writing this book. to make ends meet, Dutt’s mother scrambled
rather than the author’s trademark lyrical Shankar Raman’s book deserves to be on to find the means that would put her first-
essays, and they also tend to repeat issues every bookshelf, his writing hits you, and born—the author—into a convent school,
and expressions already used in preceding it hits you hard, but it not just hits at the into a hostel, into a boarding school. She
essays of the same style. This sudden change rationality of your mind, rather, and perhaps began with pawning her wedding jewellery,
in tone of the essays in-between is not only more importantly, it hits at the empathy of then selling it, to finally fighting with her
your heart. in-laws to sell some bit of ancestral property.
She dressed her daughter in shoes and clothes
Raza Kazmi is a conservationist, writer and wildlife and accessories that would allow her ‘to
historian. He works as a Consultant at the Ashoka be like them’—the upper caste girls—and
Archives of Contemporary India, Ashoka University,
Sonipat, Haryana. *Reprinted from TBR, Volume XLV, Number 5, May
2020.
Book News Book News
Yashica Dutt is a
The Phoenix in the Sky: Tales of Wonder and New York-based
Wisdom from World Religions by Indira journalist who writes
Ananthakrishnan, who has a special interest in on gender, identity
reading the scriptures and interpreting them and culture. She was
for children, is a fascinating collection of tales, previously a principal
handpicked from a range of texts–from the correspondent with Brunch and the
Mahabharata and the Upanishads to the Bible Hindustan Times and is the founder of
and the Quran, from the Jatakas and Jain Documents of Dalit Discrimination.
parables.
The Book Review / October 2020 37
Hachette India, 2020, pp.176, `299.00

‘successfully blend in’ (p. 26). Struggling a mix of hard work, ambition and chance ENGLISH NON-FICTION
with an alcoholic husband and his meagre allowed Dutt to enroll for a Master’s in
salary in small towns, Dutt’s mother believed journalism at Columbia University. And it “Dutt’s memoir is an
that ‘good schooling’ was their ‘only ticket was in that context, with the distance, space important intercession that
into uppercasteness’ (p. 34). She continued and readings that allowed her to reflect on
to scrimp and scrounge to educate all her colonialism, race, class, and caste, Dutt says documents the struggles
children—a resolution that included forays she could ‘come out’ as Dalit (p. 136). At
into ritual fasts, astrology and vaastu shastra the 125th birth anniversary celebrations of and successes of her own
(p. 50). She stitched clothes, learnt candle Dr. Ambedkar organized by the Ambedkar
making, became a salesperson for Amway Association of North America at Barnard life, and that of her family’s.
products, and finally worked at an NGO in College, across the road from Columbia,
the mornings while running a boutique in Dutt grabbed her first copy of Annihilation It excavates the labour, grit
the evenings. of Caste (p.137).
and tenacity of parents and
Dutt recalls being racked by guilt over Dutt acknowledges that unlike Dalits
her mother’s constant stress to find resources who grow up with Ambedkarite ideology, grandparents whose dreams
as she pleaded and begged in the offices of she knew ‘next to nothing’ about him (p.
school principals. Over the years, Dutt says, 136). She seesawed between anger and and bodies have fed into
she internalized a sense of inferiority that sadness as she thought, Dutt writes, about
drove her to excel and, eventually, instilled how she had ‘gone for so long without the hard-earned success
within her a ‘great bitterness’ (p. 36). When asking why’ (p. 135).
she managed to get admission in the iconic of second/third/ fourth
St. Stephen’s College in Delhi as a B.Sc. Dutt’s reports of her family’s struggles
General student, Dutt’s mother suggested would perhaps be no different from that ”generation Dalits.
she tick the box for an SC/ST candidate for of lakhs of poor parents’ dreams for their
the first time in her academic life. Dutt did children in India. What marks her story of if the lives that dream of reaching the stars
not have a choice: it was the only way she course is the actual form of those struggles: and beyond are quite on the same level
could avail of financial aid and scholarships for instance, she recalls that her grandfather’s field as that of a Yashica Dutt, a Tina Dabi,
(p. 60). She recalls her own naïve ideas first wife worked to support her family until or more recently a Kanishak Kataria. The
that just because she had made it to St. her husband cleared the CSE. She worked as despondency and despair of being reduced
Stephen’s, she would be ‘transformed into a manual scavenger, clearing dry excrement to a name—a Dalit—in countless first
a Proust sprouting, self-assured and stylish from people’s toilets (p. 41). So, as Dutt generation Dalit lives make the value and
Arts student’ (p. 62). In reality, she says, points out, though her great-grandfather respect due to the achievements of a handful
nothing much had changed apart from her was able to get an education, it took four of Dalit ‘toppers’ and success stories indeed
location. She continued with her financial generations for a family member to enter a all the more worthy of our attention. At the
struggles—taking tuitions and working at prestigious college like St. Stephen’s (p. 93). same time, they draw our awareness once
a call centre—even as she grappled with again to the caste and community-based
her feelings of shame amongst upper caste Dutt’s memoir is an important bigotry and bias that seem to continue to be
students around her. intercession that documents the struggles the defining axes of our worlds.
and successes of her own life, and that of
Nonetheless, Dutt was able to leverage her family’s. It excavates the labour, grit Asma Rasheed teaches at the EFL University,
the capital of becoming a Stephanian to and tenacity of parents and grandparents Hyderabad.
land ghost-writing ‘gigs’ on newspaper whose dreams and bodies have fed into
supplements, become a copywriter at a the hard-earned success of second/third/ Book News Book News
leading advertising agency, a reporter for fourth generation Dalits. It tears into and
entertainment and lifestyle magazines and complicates mainstream media reports Singing in the Dark: A
finally a fashion journalist at leading daily that reduce Dalit achievements to having Global Anthology of Poetry
newspapers. Seven years into the profession, ‘benefited’ from policies of affirmative under Lockdown edited
action or to their identities as Dalit. It is by K Satchidanandan
38 The Book Review / October 2020 an intervention which is, deservedly, going brings together the finest
to find a place in courses on marginalized of poetic responses to the
communities/literatures. Coronavirus pandemic.
More than a hundred of the
The author locates the inspirational world’s most esteemed poets reflect upon a
success story (for that is what this is, crisis that has dramatically altered our lives,
undoubtedly) of her life amidst the tragedies and laid bare our vulnerabilities. The poems
of suicides by Dalit students, including that capture all its dimensions: the trauma of
of Rohith Vemula in January 2016 at the solitude, the unexpected transformation in
University of Hyderabad. Rohith’s death the expression of interpersonal relationships,
was by no means the first, and sadly, it the even sharper visibility of the class divide,
does not appear to be the last, of promising the marvellous revival of nature and the
and hopeful young lives torn apart by profound realization of the transience of
discrimination lodged into systemic and human existence. The moods vary from
systematic inequities. While Dutt invokes quiet contemplation and choking anguish to
and claims the trauma of Rohith for herself suppressed rage and cautious celebration.
and for her community, it is to be wondered
Vintage Books, 2020, pp. 376, `499.00

Tackling Hazards of the doubly underprivileged, ENGLISH NON-FICTION
Urbanization and speaks volumes about ‘the
Industrialization* messy story of sanitation in The picture of a child rag-
India’.
Rafia Kazim picker on a mound of urban
The book under review
WASTED: THE MESSY STORY OF SANITATION IN problematizes waste garbage hopping in a wanton
INDIA, A MANIFESTO FOR CHANGE management in India in a
By Ankur Bisen manner where the author mood, unmindful of the
Macmillan, New Delhi, 2019, pp. 573, `699.00 tries to disentangle the intertwining of
caste, sanitation, attitude towards hygiene risk it involves, and how the
Ulrich Beck in his and the deep-rooted apathy towards filth.
much-acclaimed Despite the entire landscape of India garbage dumps become the
book Risk Society: Toward being dotted with untended mounds of
a New Modernity throws garbage, overflowing open sewers, men treasure-troves of the doubly
light on the consequences urinating shamelessly in public places, open
of a wide range of defecation being enjoyed as a group event, underprivileged, speaks
hazardous and deadly risks of a highly and poor children sieving garbage mound
industrialized and urbanized society. He for sustenance, neither the state in particular volumes about ‘the messy
further elaborates that modern risks are not nor the citizens in general show any concern
restricted to place or time, rather these risks about the havoc that such ‘Waste’ creates story of sanitation in India’.
are ever compounding and are multiplying for the entire society. Why are Indians so
exponentially thereby putting the entire stubbornly undisciplined in keeping their public space in a similar manner as they
world on high alert. Not surprising then that surroundings clean? Why is it that Indians maintain their respective homes.
the new generation represented by Greta keep their homes relatively clean while on
Thunberg dares to reprimand the world the other hand they treat the public space as Ankur Bisen tries to highlight the stark
leaders for being unabashedly lackadaisical their rightfully owned dumping ground for failure of the state in prioritizing sanitation
in their approach to tackle environmental all kinds of garbage? This book provides an and waste management despite being the
risks. This insincerity on the part of the insight into the psyche of Indian society at world’s largest democracy. What is notable
respective governments of nations across large as far as waste disposal and treatment of also is the fact that waste treatment was
the globe towards ill management of public space is concerned. never accorded importance by the framers
environmental risks is something that has The author mentions at the outset of the Indian Constitution. However, his
forced young children to intervene in ringing that ‘there are no villains in this story, but remark that Indians need not suffer from
the alarm loud and clear. Ankur Bisen’s there are biases and prejudices’ (p.10). The inferiority complex just because the clean
book Wasted: The Messy Story of Sanitation in bibliography consists mostly of references countries of today started their cleanliness
India, A Manifesto for Change, packed with from newspapers and journals. The absence drive a century ago is not well argued. On
information (sans tables and charts) makes it of reference to books reveals the fact that the contrary, the clean countries of today
readable for all concerned global citizens. for this pertinent issue not much has are clean because of the concerted efforts of
The cover illustration of Wasted is as been documented or written. Wasted tries both the state and the citizens to keep their
captivating as is the book itself. The picture to fill this gap. Every library, private or respective countries clean.
of a child rag-picker on a mound of urban public, should have this book on its stacks
garbage hopping in a wanton mood, for the simple reason that it provides an One of the most informative chapters is
unmindful of the risk it involves, and how the intensive narrative about the creation of the penultimate one that illuminates us on
garbage dumps become the treasure-troves of waste (it traces the history behind it), its the hazards of e-waste, or the new generation
disposal during the pre- and post-industrial waste. India is the third largest generator
*Reprinted from TBR, Volume XLIV Number 5 May times, and how with every technological of e-waste, after the USA and China, and
2020 advancement humans also create collateral according to an estimate India annually
hazardous waste. The author brings out ‘generates 2 metric tonnes of e-waste’ (p.
Ankur Bisen is the stark differences between the treatment 432). Unfortunately, any legislative effort
a management of waste in India and in other developed to acknowledge the hazards of e-waste and
consultant at countries by juxtaposing their respective thereby to make any effort to arrest its
Technopak Advisors sensibilities of hygiene. proliferation began only by 2015. India is
and before that in The twin concepts of cleanliness/purity far more backward than Japan in handling
the Tata Group and and pollution are anchored deeply in the e-waste, or recycling it by using various
Lemon Tree hotels. He researches socio-religious psyche of Indian society. The processes such as metal extraction. The
and writes about solutions for India’s private space is treated as pure/clean while Indian political class is myopic in its vision
sanitation problems. He has written the public as impure/polluted. Furthermore, that deliberately avoids taking stern measures
regularly for leading English dailies. the problem gets compounded by the caste to handle the hazards of e-waste.
Wasted is his first book. structure where cleaning of the public space
becomes the duty of the untouchable caste. What then is the panacea to make India
This practice has been there since antiquity, a clean country? How far has the clarion
and will remain so unless Indians start call for ‘Swachcha Bharat’ been able to
owning responsibility for maintaining the make an impact on Indian society at large?
The author comes up with some viable
suggestions in the last chapter, ‘Clean India:
Capturing the Chimera’, to help India
achieve comparable degrees of cleanliness
with that of the first world countries.

Rafia Kazim is Assistant Professor in the Department
of Sociology (LNM University) and a Former Fellow
at CSD, Hyderabad.

The Book Review / October 2020 39

ENGLISH NON-FICTION
40 The Book Review / October 2020

Translation from Regional Languages into English

An Honourable same as in her first novel, My Temples, Too, and disillusionment in
‘Afterlife’ as also the literary and cultural geography, their lives, but they were
although the worldview presented in Ship cheerful people who,
M Asaduddin of Sorrows is less optimistic, the tone more despite their misery, tried
ironic, even cynical at times. Existentialism to help others. They
SHIP OF SORROWS: A NOVEL casts a long shadow in the book which is lived their lives reciting
not surprising considering the fact that both Kabir and Anees, and
By Qurratulain Hyder. Translated from the original Sartre and Camus were very popular in the even on their death beds,
Urdu by Saleem Kidwai Indian subcontinent in the fifties and sixties used double entendre.
of the twentieth century and influenced Comparisons between different schools
Women Unlimited, 2019, pp. 316, `550.00 many modernist Indian writers. of singing and of performances at poetry
readings became a matter of life and death.
Ship of Sorrows is the In a review of My Temples, Too (2005)*1 The magic of Fasana-e Azad was alive, and
English translation of I had mentioned that the milieu of Hyder’s the Begums still used itr smelling of rain and
Qurratulain Hyder’s second novelistic world is Forsterian, the world henna. In the evenings, on the shady roads
novel, Safinae Ghame Dil of ‘only connect’ where individuals were of Sikandar Bagh and Hazratganj, the British
(1952) written during trying to reach out to one another to build came out on horseback. (p. 23)
the tumultuous years in up meaningful personal relationships It is a charmed circle, a very limited
Pakistan immediately following the Partition with the help of ‘goodwill plus culture world, fenced in by the privileges of feudal
of the country. It is regarded as a sequel to and intelligence’. Rakhshanda, the main entitlements. The sordid realities of daily
her first novel, Mere Bhi Sanamkhane written protagonist of that novel, along with Vimal, life and its ugliness are resolutely kept
on the eve of India’s Independence when Pichu, Kiran and Christabel, despite being at bay. Of course, there are small hints
the author lived in India. Ship of Sorrows scions of the feudal gentry, were young that tell discerning readers that all is not
obliquely mentions the circumstances professionals working together with great well in the idyll. The appearance of a
that had compelled the author’s family to optimism for a better world. They lived character like Khunkhunji demonstrates
migrate to Pakistan in 1947. Safinae Ghame in a self-contained world that revolved that the façade of aristocratic grace
Dil was followed by Aag Ka Darya (1958), around Ghufran Manzil, Chatter Manzil and refinement was maintained by the
her magnum opus, while she was still in and Dilkusha Club. As said, Ship of Sorrows advances from moneylenders and pawn
Pakistan, after which she returned to India has almost the same cast of characters, brokers, that marriages were sometimes
where she lived and wrote an impressive only a few more in number than the earlier contracted depending on which groom
body of work, fiction and non-fiction, till novel—Anne (the author-narrator), Fawad, could redeem the mortgaged property of
she breathed her last in 2007. Urdu’s finest Arun, Ali, Riyaz, Mira, Rahil, and Elmore— the genteel family, and despite the flaunted
writer in the twentieth century, Hyder who were brought up in the tradition of emancipation of women, it seems that they
had equal felicity in English and, to my liberalism and free thinking and inhabited are still a long way off from acquiring real
knowledge, she enjoys the distinction of the same self-contained world encompassing agency. A heart-warming feature of Hyder’s
being India’s most prolific self-translator. three cities—Dehradun, Mussoorie and art is a sharp sense of irony that illuminates
Daringly experimental for a novel written Lucknow, with Gopalpur as a yearly contradictions in human beings of which
in Indian languages in the fifties of the retreat of reflection and meditation during they themselves are unaware. For example,
twentieth century, Ship of Sorrows deals with Muharram. The novel explores the tenor of the narrator says about the newly-minted
the lives of the Muslim feudal families in life lived in a feudal milieu and the leisurely advocates of Hindi that they composed
northern India in the two decades preceding life of the upper-class households. The focus poetry in Urdu and opposed it in the most
Partition, exemplifying the composite is on the younger members of these families chaste and elegant Urdu.
culture of the time popularly known as exploring life for themselves and shaping Zarafat nigari (humour) which has a long
Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb. The ensemble of their destinies. They know that they are on and rich tradition in Urdu is closely woven
characters in the novel is more or less the the cusp of change and Hyder depicts how into the texture of her language which is
they navigate through it by placing them in always a delight to read. The dialogues in
Qurratulain Hyder different situations. Early in the novel she a Qurratulain Hyder novel or short story
is one of Urdu’s gives us a fine vignette of the people and the are places where witty sparks fly out in
greatest fiction writers. milieu she is speaking about: all directions exhibiting the author’s total
Her published work control over the language replete with puns,
consists of four These were the sort of people who, repartees and innuendos, much of which has
collections of short just to create the right atmosphere, held survived in the current translation. We know
stories, five novels and several novellas. dinner parties with candles burning in silver that the best humour springs from one’s
She was a journalist, scriptwriter holders, and spent the night discussing a ability to laugh at oneself and one’s own
and broadcaster with BBC, as well single couplet of Ghalib or Nasikh. people. Hyder takes a self-deprecating, wry
as Producer Emeritus, AIR, and look at her own circle:
copywriter for an advertising agency. This was the new Lucknow. But beyond This was the breed of upper
Among her many awards and honours the Iron Bridge, the Lucknow of Fasana-e middle-class Indians that had grown
are the Bharatiya Jnanpith, the Padma Azad, Mirza Ruswa and Awadh Punch up with English choruses and Morris
Shri, the Sahitya Akademi Award, and was still alive. Opium eaters gathered in dances. They had lived at a strange,
the Padma Bhushan. Nakhkhas and spun long tales. Mussolini’s pitiable, comic crossroads. They thought
conquest of Addis Ababa was discussed, quail of themselves as the inheritors of an
and kite flights were held. There was sadness
The Book Review / October 2020 41
*It appeared in The Annual of Urdu Studies (Wisconsin,
Madison).

Translation from Regional Languages into English

old feudal culture and were proud of translation, often denying translators their Commemorating
it. Now they were ready to abandon due and undervaluing their efforts. They a Dark Moment in
all the wranglings [sic] of their religion are either unwilling or unable to discuss the India’s History
and move across the border…. For one complex and arduous process that involves
moment, distancing myself intellectually transfer of a linguistically and culturally Rakhshanda Jalil
and emotionally, I thought about how I rooted text to a new and vastly different
would have looked at this version of my linguistic and cultural tradition. Normally, KHOONI VAISAKHI: A POEM FROM THE
life had I been a progressive critic, which the bulk of the review is expended on the JALLIANWALA BAGH MASSACRE, 1919
unfortunately I am not …. (p. 214) original author or in unraveling the plot or
From one Gymkhana to another— storyline whereas the review is supposed to By Nanak Singh. Translated from the original
be about the text mediated by the translator, Punjabi by Navdeep Suri
Mohammad Bagh Club, Lahore more appropriately, the translator’s text.
and Karachi Gymkhanas—life was A translated text exists in an independent HarperCollins, 2019, pp. 128. `399.00
proceeding very smoothly and in a well- zone or a contact zone between the source
ordered manner. The adventure of the language/culture and the target language/ Writers and poets have
country’s Partition had turned out to be culture and its stature and impact often always taken note of
an exciting experience when overnight, depend on the quality of mediation by history. Sometimes, when
they flew from Kanpur to Lahore in a the translator. A translator can make the history is exceptionally
Dakota, piloted by a Polish girl. (p. 232) reputation of a writer just as he can mar it brutal and bloody, the poet
In fact, a sensitive reading of her works irredeemably. may fall silent but the prose
makes one believe that she was convinced writer is compelled to pick up his pen, and
of the validity of the maxim that the most This is greatly relevant for a book sometimes it is the reverse. Some events
civilized way of being sad is to be humorous. like Ship of Sorrows where the efforts and shake the conscience of thinking men and
Uncharitable readers might find Hyder’s scholarship deployed by the translator in women the world over, send seismic tremors
fictional world limited by her class, that taking the novel to a wider (global) audience across the length and breadth of a nation,
her preoccupations were insufferably are truly impressive. Such a culturally rooted unspool events of unforeseen consequences
haute bourgeoisie, her sympathies not wide and hugely allusive text must have required and find reflection not only in the literature
enough to embrace the hoi polloi and the much more than a readable linguistic of their age but for generations to come. The
terrible plight of the common people; that transfer. The translator’s comprehensive cold-blooded massacre of peaceful protestors
the characters portrayed in Ship of Sorrows 21-page long Introduction situates the writer at Jallianwala Bagh on 13 April 1919 is
are self-indulgent drifters, some of them in her own tradition and in the context of one such incident. It marked a defining
irrevocably moving towards doom which self-translation of her own works. Then moment in the history of modern India. It is
they so eminently deserve. However, the fact he catalogues the challenges offered by significant from a purely literary perspective
remains that Hyder never claimed herself to the text and explains how he faced them too: the spurt in overtly political activities
be a chronicler of the common people or the with commitment and determination. The and a growing political consciousness that
quotidian. She felt comfortable in depicting multiple speaking voices within a chapter, began to find reflection in Indian literature
people of her own class and never pretended nay, within a page and a paragraph would can be traced directly to it. Khooni Vaisakhi,
otherwise. For her, there was something have been any translator’s nightmare. The a long poem in Punjabi, written by 22-year
incomparably beautiful in the grace and translator had to walk the tightrope of old Nanak Singh (1897-1971) who was
charm of the inclusive Lucknowi tehzeeb giving the reader in English the flavour present in the Bagh and recorded not merely
and she made it her preoccupation to record of the original style, retain the voices and an eye-witness account but also a subaltern
it for posterity, much like Françoise Sagan, make them intelligible to the reader without history is one such intervention.
her contemporary and a precocious writer unnecessarily muting or oversimplifying While a great deal of scholarly work
like herself writing her groundbreaking them. Then, transliteration of foreign names has been done on the Jallianwala Bagh
first novel Bonjour Tristesse at the age of 19, of persons, places and objects and working
dealing with the elegance, sophistication and out the allusions to world history and Nanak Singh
hedonism of the French upper class. happenings must have entailed an enormous (1897–1971) is widely
In reviewing translated books, reviewers amount of research work. There were regarded as the father
rarely give serious attention to the process of other challenges that the translator has met of the Punjabi novel.
valiantly, so much so that this may be set up With little formal
Saleem Kidwai is a as a textbook example of how to translate a education beyond the
medieval historian, certain genre of books that demand scholarly fourth grade, he wrote an astounding
scholar and translator. engagement. I applaud Saleem Kidwai’s fifty-nine books, which included thirty-
He has co-edited painstaking efforts and have no doubt that eight novels and an assortment of plays,
Same-Sex Love in his translation will rescue Ship of Sorrows short stories, poems, essays and even
India: Readings from from the neglect it has suffered in the a set of translations. He received the
Literature and History, and translated original language and offer it an honourable Sahitya Akademi Award in 1962 for Ik
Qurratulain Hyder’s Chandni habitation and ‘afterlife’ in English. Myan Do Talwaraan. His novel Pavitra
Begum: The Singer, Song Sung True, and Paapi was made into a film in 1968,
Mirror of Wonders and Other Tales, a M Asaduddin, Professor of English, Jamia Milia while Chitta Lahu was translated into
collection of short stories by Syed Rafiq Islamia, New Delhi, is currently Dean, Faculty of Russian by Natasha Tolstoy.
Hussain. Humanities and Advisor to Vice Chancellor, Jamia
Millia Islamia, Delhi. His latest work is a four-volume
42 The Book Review / October 2020 collection of Premchand’s short stories in English
with the title, Premchand: Complete Stories.

tragedy, its reflection in Indian literature in Translation from Regional Languages into English
the different bhashas is often overlooked.
Yet if one is curious to see how an incident “Veteran diplomat Navdeep
that stirred the conscience of millions, one Suri’s attempt at translating
that had far-reaching implications for the
national freedom struggle, that made British his grandfather’s poem—
colonial interests in India morally untenable,
found its way through pen and paper to first written in May 1920
reach the nooks and crannies of the popular
imagination filtered through the mind of the and banned by the British
creative writer, it is important to read what
was being written in the bhashas at the time. government immediately
Veteran diplomat Navdeep Suri’s attempt
at translating his grandfather’s poem—first thereafter and ‘lost’ for
written in May 1920 and banned by the
British government immediately thereafter all practical purposes for
and ‘lost’ for all practical purposes for
decades—and providing a much-needed decades—and providing a
context to not just the poem but the
incidents surrounding it is a laudable effort. much-needed context to
With the original Punjabi poem written in
Devnagri on one side and Suri’s felicitous not just the poem but the
translation that has retained the original’s
rhyme scheme on the facing page making effectively authorized the government incidents surrounding it is a
only a slim booklet-sized book, additional to imprison, without trial, any person
heft has been provided by three essays, each suspected of terrorist activities. Anything ”laudable effort.
distinct and interesting in its own way. that smacked of ‘revolutionary’ activities
could be punished. The Rowlatt Act, dubbed O Rulers! Our sacrifices don’t forget
First, there is Suri’s own luminous the ‘Black Act’, caused widespread outrage Just bear in mind thousands died for you
piece entitled ‘The Bagh, the Book and among Indians of all religious and political
Our Bauji’. Narrating the adventures in dispensations and led to the first satyagraha Punjab was already on the boil when
tracing the long-lost original copy of Khooni under Gandhi’s leadership on 6 April 1919. General Reginald Dyer, freshly summoned
Vaisakhi, the help from unexpected sources, On 10 April 1919 two Congress leaders who from Jullundar, decided to teach India a
he goes on to paint a vivid picture of his had been asking for a repeal of the Rowlatt lesson. Each milestone in the catastrophic
grandfather—not just as a litterateur but Act were arrested in Amritsar—Satya Pal climax on the bloody Sunday of 13 April is
as a family man. Born as Hans Raj to a and Saifuddin Kitchlew—culminating in listed by Nanak Singh: the protests, Martial
poor Hindu family in Jhelum district, he the worst bloodbath the country had yet Law, the state of affairs in Amritsar, the
embraced Sikhism in 1915 and applied his known: the Jallianwala massacre three days Ram Navami celebrations, the high noon
fledgling talents to writing hymns in praise later. Poignant and searing in its honesty and of Hindu-Muslim amity in the Punjab,
of the Sikh gurus; this collection of poems admission of shame, Justin Rowlatt’s essay the arrest of the two beloved doctors
entitled Satguru Mehma (1918) sold over a begins with his visit to the Bagh and ends culminating in the protest in the park:
hundred thousand copies and launched this thus:
fourth-standard pass lad to a life-long career As the clock struck five on the thirteenth
involving books and writing that would I still believe the measures April
eventually establish him as the foremost my great-grandfather’s committee
public intellectual of Punjab and a reformist recommended were unjust and They all gather in the Bagh, my friends.
writer in the league of Premchand. Inspired misguided... I still am sick to my stomach Seeking justice fair and honour they stand
by Premchand, he wrote socially-purposeful at the way the British forces behaved in Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims together, my
novels such as the hugely popular Chitta Jallianwala Bagh. And I am still appalled friends.
Lahu (‘White Blood’), Pavitra Paapi (‘The that my great-grandfather was honoured
Saintly Sinner’), among a host of others. for his work on the Sedition Committee What follows is described in minute
with a Knighthood. detail: Dyer’s arrival, the hail of bullets,
The second essay is an interesting but descriptions of dead and dying and people
altogether unexpected one. Written by The third essay by HS Bhagat gives a defying the curfew to rescue their loved
Justin Rowlatt, former BBC South Asia historical perspective to Nanak Singh’s ones, the lament of wives, mothers, sisters,
correspondent whose great-grandfather, oeuvre and his career as a novelist. He
Sidney Rowlatt, was the architect of traces Nanak Singh’s evolution as a socially- Navdeep Suri,
the infamous Rowlatt Act and the man purposive writer and his liberation from currently Distinguished
responsible for driving the last nail in the ‘the themes of romance and tragedy’. While Fellow and Director,
coffin of British rule in India. By indefinitely seemingly a ‘minor’ poem when compared Centre for New
extending ‘emergency measures’ (under the to his formidable body of work, Khooni Economic Diplomacy
Defence of India Regulations Act) enacted Vaisakhi is nevertheless important as a at the Observer
during the First World War, ostensibly to ‘historical artefact’. Research Foundation, is a member of
control public unrest and root out conspiracy, the Indian Foreign Service(retd.). His
this blatantly draconian piece of legislation Beginning with an invocation to Guru English translations of his grandfather
Govind Singh, the poem goes on to touch Nanak Singh’s classic Punjabi novels
upon the Rowlatt Act and the ‘clarion call’ that have been published by Penguin as The
echoed across India reminding the British of Watchmaker and by Harper Collins as A
all that Indians had done for them especially Life Incomplete and Khooni Vaisakhi.
during the recently-ended Great War:
The Book Review / October 2020 43

the actual scenes of death and destruction Translation from Regional Languages into English
are interspersed with passages entitled ‘The
Poet’s Thoughts’: From the Pen of the
Writer of Mayyazhi
What can I say about the morrow
Don’t whisper a word, my heart warns me. N Kamala
At every corner, bodies strewn in rows
In the bazaar of corpses, no vendor to see. THE BELLS ARE RINGING IN HARIDWAR: THREE
Even Death, it seems has turned its face NOVELLAS
‘Enough!’ it says. ‘Just let things be.’ By M. Mukundan. Translated from the original
Malayalam by Prema Jayakumar
Reading Khooni Vaisakhi, one is reminded Ratna Translation Series, Ratna Books, Delhi,
precisely why poetry was once considered 2019, pp. 218, `399.00
the most suitable form for passing down
history. Some of our greatest epics came Mukundan’s latest on this earth for him’ (p. 7). The temple
to us in verse. There was a long lull when offering in translation town soon has him in its grip with its
poetry was thought to be about the softer is a collection of three sights of abject poverty and intense faith.
emotions of life, about love and romance novellas—the eponymous Filled with sadhus who have renounced
and fantastical adventures in magical long novella and two short the world and the destitute the world has
realms of the imagination. However, it ones. But these are not new renounced, Haridwar tugs strongly at the
took events of great magnitude, such as the stories; on the contrary they heartstrings of the hero. His mind is pushed
Great Uprising of 1857 to release a burst are pretty old ones written in the late 1960s to reflect upon his own mortality as his
of political consciousness that left no one and early 70s. They have been introduced psychedelic world of hallucination is filled
untouched—not the creative writer or even to the English reading public some fifty with a torrent of Indian mythology that
the poet. With something as soul-stirring years later in an interesting translation by suffuses his very being, be it the Pandavas or
as the Jallianwala Bagh incident, the poets Prema Jayakumar. The book indeed raises Dattatreya or Daksha Prajapati or a dozen
of the age were compelled to take note. the usual questions of the time gap between more. Cows look like Kamadhenu and he
In fact, 1919 marks a turning point in the original and the translation that so many can smell Bhimasena’s sweat in the sacred
the literary history of India as poets in the scholars of Translation Studies ask as also pond (p. 82). Stanzas in Sanskrit from the
different bhashas begin to take up newer, the reasons for publishing these stories now. Purushottamayogam flow all around him. As
more immediate concerns like never before. Does it also indicate that translated stories he leaves behind the known material world,
No longer were they content to sing of the are now accepted more readily by the reading the protagonist surrenders and is engulfed
forlorn lover or traipse around in the magic public as compared to half a century ago? into a dark abyss beyond redemption. It is
gardens of the dastans and fasanas. This Have the themes around which the author a tale of harsh reality, of the consequences
literary ‘adventurism’ required a new diction, weaves his tales become relevant again? Is it of drugs, and amplifies the striking contrast
and a new vocabulary. For these ‘new age’ the extension that breathes an afterlife into between what is considered sacred and what
poets language became a means, not an earlier works? Is translation into English the profane.
end of a creative exercise. No longer was it only path to obvious visibility that all writers
necessary to revive the debates on whether— need? M Mukundan is the
or the extent to which—literature should In The Bells are Ringing in Haridwar, author of over forty
reflect contemporary realities. Realism had Mukundan addresses some of these queries books comprising
crept into the poetry of even those who shied and demonstrates his strong connection novels, collections
away from labels or chose not to belong to with issues of language and translation. The of short stories, a
schools of thought. Nanak Singh’s lost poem protagonist Ramesh who is a translator for play and a study
amply illustrates this turning point. a foreign gentleman Senor Herozi in Delhi of modernity. His bestselling books
marvels, ‘The Sahib […] wrote everything include On the Banks of the Mayyazhi,
Rakhshanda Jalil is a writer, translator and literary in Spanish. If the translator was absent Delhi Gathakal and The Bells are Ringing
historian. She has edited Jallianwala Bagh: Literary from the office the white man did not have in Haridwar. He served as President of
Responses in Prose & Poetry (Niyogi, 2019), among an existence. Ramesh was his tongue. The the Kerala Sahitya Akademi for three
several other books. white man’s tongue was red like a dog’s. Was years.
Ramesh that tongue? […] a prisoner in the
Book News Book News mouth of Senor Herozi…’ (p. 5).
This story is not really about translators
The Man who Learnt to Fly But Could Not but about the descent into a dark world
Land by award-winning author Thachom induced by substance abuse. The charas-
Poyil Rajeevan, translated from the original addicted Ramesh with his beautiful girl
Malayalam by PJ Mathew, is a tale both friend goes to Haridwar for a weekend
deeply personal and political—tracing a web break and also because he thinks that his
of caste, sexuality and ideology, while also footsteps should also fall on that holy city
navigating the struggles of a man coming because footprints were all he had. He
to terms with himself as a writer and as thinks that, ‘The walk that started from the
an individual. Rajeevan weaves a magical womb and went on to the pyre. A funeral
almost-biography of a fictional writer. pyre must be getting ready somewhere

Hachette, 2020, pp. 328, `450.00

44 The Book Review / October 2020

“ Translation from Regional Languages into English
It is therefore surprising to read in the The Bells are Ringing in Coherence of Form
inner jacket that this story had come in for
a lot of criticism when it was first published Haridwar is a tale of harsh and Content
in Malayalam for glorifying drug culture.
Quite the contrary! It highlights with reality, of the consequences
finesse the disintegration of a human being
dependent on drugs. With such a time gap, of drugs, and amplifies the Maya Pandit-Narkar
maybe it is easier to see the hippie era with
critical distance and unmask its ugly face. striking contrast between THE STORY OF BEING USELESS + THREE CONTEXTS
Its location in a far-off time brings a smile OF A WRITER
to our lips when a long taxi trip costs thirty what is considered sacred and
rupees and the driver is thrilled to keep By Avadhoot Dongare. Translated from the
the change, or that thankfully there are ”what profane. original Marathi by Nadeem Khan
no mobile phones to rudely interrupt any
conversation or thought! some fresh air and ends up spending the Ratna Translation Series, Ratna Books, 2019, pp.
night with the wife of his former political 224, `399.00
The second novella, Savitri’s Girdle, takes rival in, what is suggested to be, a kind of
us back to his beloved Mayyazhi that is childlike innocence! But as the husband T he story of being useless
redolent of a forgotten feudal system where returns early, the hero has to rush out of the + three contexts of a
things chug along slowly and time flows house without a stitch on him and this is the writer is a translation of two
gently, much like the narrative about an oil plight that he endures for several days, that Marathi novellas by a young
mill owner Ramunni. This unlikely middle- the novella recounts with subtle humour writer, Avadhoot Dongare.
aged hero of upright character and moral and increasing farce. It is never ribald, nor
standing becomes slowly but steadfastly forgiving either. Mukundan manages to spin Nadeem Khan who has
obsessed with the fair waist of the wastrel a good yarn that has us turning the pages. translated these two novellas into English
Neelakantan’s wife Savitri. The husband The author’s overall narrative tapestry is rich needs to be congratulated on his choice of
pledges his wife’s gold girdle to Ramunni with subtlety, a fine sense of humour, and the texts as they introduce the readers of
for a sum of money to run his household. has been wonderfully translated by Prema English translations of regional language
In fact, Ramunni is loath to take it so he Jayakumar. We could quibble at the use of texts to the recent innovative developments
goes to Neelakantan’s house to return the such terms as ‘breechclout’ (p. 61) for a loin in Marathi literature.
girdle when he espies the wife and his moral cloth or the unexpected ‘Negros’ (p. 7) but
fibre starts unravelling. The usual Indian it is a translation that brings home the gentle The two novellas are significant literary
obsession with fairness is spelt out clearly. but intense touch of the author from Mahe. expressions in Marathi as they afford us
‘The people of the village used to wonder The kind of book that will make your stay- minute glimpses into the complex questions
how Neelakantan, who was so dark had at-home-restrictions easier to bear. of artistic creativity and engagement.
managed to find such a fair woman as a wife. They open up a complex world of creative
Even Sarojini, Meethaledath Ramunni’s N Kamala is Professor of French at Jawaharlal imagination seeking an expression without
wife, was not half as fair’ (p.145). It serves Nehru University, New Delhi, and specializes in losing the edge of the rebellious engagement
to explain in part the protagonist’s fixation Translation Studies. Her recent publications include with the established linear and sure-footed
on that fair lady. The build-up of tension a co-edited two-volume anthology of translations conventions of organizing narratives. These
to the point of his withdrawal from his wife of contemporary short stories from mainly lesser novellas represent a significant departure
and his good friend Achu Master is told with known Indian languages into French, Rangoli. from the established tradition of Marathi
mastery and style. It leads clearly but gently Anthologie de nouvelles indiennes contemporaines. novel in terms of both the form and content.
to its logical conclusion that you dread but Tomes 1 et 2. They explore the very process of writing, and
know will inevitably happen. raise questions about what gives the writing a
Prema Jayakumar formal and semantic coherence.
The third and last novella is The Naked does translations
Lord. This does not refer to any celestial god from Malayalam into The novellas would be a challenge for
but to Kunhikrishnan Thampuran who was English and writes any translator. As the character ‘writer’ says
‘richer than god and handsomer too. He was for periodicals. Her in the novella, three contexts of a writer,
god incarnate to the people of Kallissery’ (p. translated works there is a gap between the beginning of
180). He rules over this piece of land as a include God’s Mischief his act of writing and the end result of his
benevolent dictator, disliking all ‘newfangled (Daivathinte Vikrithikal). Her works writing. The same applies to the act of
things’ including long pants and motor cars! have been published by Penguin and translation as well. Moreover, there is a void,
‘He often said it was better to hang oneself the Sahitya Akademi. She has retold the
than to live in disgrace’ (p. 181). He dislikes Ramayana, the Mahabharata and other Avadhoot Dongare has
the government and its functionaries and stories from the Puranas for Mango published four novels
when they dare to hold elections in his Books and Real Reads of the UK. in Marathi: Svatahala
village, he makes sure that even the opposing Faltu Samjanyachi
candidate’s wife votes for him, the Lord of The Book Review Literary Trust thanks Goshta (2012), Eka
the region! This wife is a ‘woman with a The Digital Empowerment Foundation Lekhakache Teen
honey-coloured body and dark black hair’ for its collaboration in the Archive Sandarbha (2013),
(p. 183). As electricity goes off one night, Upload Project (1976 to the present). Paan, Pani Ni (2015) and Bhintivarcha
Thampuran goes out of the house to get Chashma (2018). He has also published
a critical essay Svatahacha Avakash
Tapasatana (2017) and a book of short
stories for children.

The Book Review / October 2020 45

a gap, between the generative context of the Translation from Regional Languages into English
source text, and the much wider context
of literature translated into English, a sort “The two novellas are
of limbo, into which the translation seeks significant literary
to intervene. The void is not really a void.
If a translated text is believed to be a sort expressions in Marathi
of ‘after life’ of the original text, then this
void is really a space teeming with diverse as they afford us minute
texts enjoying the state of their ‘after life’.
It is a limbo because the system into which glimpses into the complex
it enters, of translated texts, is necessarily
neither ‘here’ nor ‘there’. questions of artistic creativity

The translated texts being reviewed here and engagement. They
have not only given an afterlife to the two
Marathi novellas, but sparkle with a life of open up a complex world of
their own because they communicate to us in
a language which is quite unique, dissimilar creative imagination seeking
to English and Marathi, and which creates a
culture that signifies a mix of modernist and an expression without
postmodernist sensibilities in the world of
translated literature into English. losing the edge of the

Let us turn to the texts. The word rebellious engagement with
‘faltu’ in Marathi signifies a wide range
of meanings: cheap, ordinary, irrelevant, understand where it comes from and where the established linear and
vulgar, meaningless, etc., and the it goes. The only things that possibly give a
protagonist of the novelette, a sub-editor context to his life are the tea vendor, the guy sure-footed conventions of
in a regional edition of a popular Marathi that sells old books, the three-legged dog, the
newspaper from the Metropolis, Mumbai, young couple. ”organizing narratives.
feels that his life is a sum total of all of
these attributes encapsulated in the term In the second novella, there is a writer the sombre and ironic tones of dialogues
‘useless’. A sub-editor, he has been taught who explores three contexts of writing where and situations. My favourite excerpt is
in journalism courses, is the spine of the he portrays the lives of three characters, his translation of the process of writing
news organization, because he is responsible including himself. The first is that of a described by the writer, a kind of impasse
for defining what is newsworthy and what colour-blind man, who suffers from piles where he feels trapped in the triangle of
is not. But his experience is completely and whose wife has fibroids in her ovaries; writing (p.189). There are quite a few
different. He has to look at things which the second is that of a girl called Saavali who excerpts such as this. It is clear that he has
are extremely ordinary, mundane, without teaches Political Science in the university. allowed the lifeblood of the Marathi text
any potential of meaning or for change. And the third is the writer himself. But there to flow in his veins. In a sense this appears
There are headlines and reports which is a catch here. He feels that he is the writer, to be a continuation of the varied work he
become a trope for the assorted, unrelated the author of the two novellas all right has done in the area of translation of diverse
events taking place somewhere in the but the guy whose name is printed on the Marathi writers such as Bhau Padhye and
world including India but there is no sense cover is someone else! Is this a case of a split Vishwas Patil.
of belonging, no sense of history but a personality? Is he the one who was a sub-
piecemeal juxtaposition of diverse events editor in the first novella? Or is he the ‘first The most interesting part of the language
that offers distorted images. The print context’? Like the sub-editor, he considers of this translation is its auto-referentiality—
media was supposed to have created a sense himself a useless person and secondly, he is pointing to the interesting mix of language
of an imagined community: but there is no never finished and satisfied with what he has he has created in the text. Right from the
community that is experienced. As his friend written. He is involved in it forever, as he is missing capital letters in the title to the
says, ‘journalism is fucked.’ lying tangled in the web of diverse contexts linguistic expression used, the translation
and his words go on scattering along the demonstrates a creative spirit. The language
There is an overpowering sense of ennui. lines. But he is trapped inside and if he is good English, of course—fluent, racy at
The guy can do nothing at all. From the tries to come out, it is emptiness! So he has times and transparent too, but at the same
fight with the rikshawala for two rupees to to go on writing. But it is stolen by a thief time, it is close to Marathi as it evokes the
the young girl who falls to her death from who publishes it in his name. Is he honest cadences of its tones and undertones in
a building, trying to save herself from her enough? Why does he write and what is it
attacker, all he can do is—nothing; except that lies hidden in the words? Nadeem Khan, a
crash in bed. He should have run away from teacher of English since
this world but there is no place to run. In The novella three contexts of a writer thus 1973, has translated
spite of the moral spring-cleaning of the raises questions about the act of writing into English the
news kids coming into the profession, he itself. If the first novella raises distant echoes writings of well-known
knows that the talks of moral and immoral, of the worlds of Camus and Kafka, the Marathi novelists Bhau
ethical and unethical are plain hogwash. second novella raises the utter confusion of Padhye and Vishwas Patil, Hindi short-
The news is like traffic, it is difficult to a soul in the world of multiple voices and story writer Doodnath Singh, as well as
identities where no centre holds. artists Ram Kumar and Jangadh Singh.
46 The Book Review / October 2020 He has also translated Sathya Saran’s
The translation of the two novellas by My Daughter, My Shakti from English
Nadeem Khan is excellent. He brings alive to Hindi.
the subtle shades of meanings through the
apt choice of linguistic devices to create

interesting ways. The unique feature of this Translation from Regional Languages into English
translation, however, is the use of Hindi film
songs scattered over a few places and mainly An Affair to
the Marathi abuses, curse words, which Remember
increasingly go on getting more graphic and
ruder, which are strewn all over. They are Nabanipa Bhattacharjee
used almost like punctuation marks. In fact
the translations create a language which is TIGER WOMAN
quite distinctive and almost unique in the By Sirsho Bandopadhyay. Translated from the
world of diverse cultural texts and contexts original Bengali by Arunava Sinha
translated in English. The translation holds Picador India, New Delhi, 2019, pp. 248, `399.00
its place not just because it gives an afterlife
to the original text, but also because of its Few historical epochs captivates but more importantly also alerts
linguistic structure and organization. And of India have drawn us to the contribution of performative and
kudos for this effort, Mr. Nadeem Khan. as much attention as organized art to the shaping of anti-colonial
nineteenth century Bengali identity and (Indian) nationalism.
Maya Pandit-Narkar is a retired professor of Bengal. Hailed as the time
English from EFL University, Hyderabad. She works of birth and growth of Tiger Woman follows the publication of
on Feminist Criticism, Translation Studies and Bengali nabajagaran or ‘renaissance’, the Professor Boser Apurba Bhraman Brittanta
Marathi Theatre. Her translations include, Baby period (extending until early twentieth (2013), a Bengali travelogue/diary penned
Kamble’s The Prisons We Broke, Urmila Pawar’s The century) unceasingly reminds us, and by Priyanath Bose himself sometime around
Weave of My Life, Dario Fo’s An Accidental Death of the Bengalis in particular, of the glorious 1904. Bandopadhyay, we guess, may have
an Anarchist, and Ramu Ramnathan’s Mahadevbhai, achievements in nearly all human terrains drawn from the travelogue but what his
Jayant Pawar’s The Nowhere People and Sanjay of contemplation and action; nineteenth novel has is a full story of forty-six short,
Pawar’s Pass the Buck on Brother, Mahatma century, not surprisingly therefore, becomes non-chronological chapters describing,
Phule’s Slavery, Saniya’s Thereafter, among several one of the most defining markers of modern first, the circumstances which led to the
others. She is the author of Gopal Ganesh Agarkar, Bengali identity. While it is true that the birth of the Great Bengal Circus in 1887,
Adventures with Grammar and Compositions and ‘renaissance’ claim has been contested (by and second, the complex relationships
a poetry collection, Talkhali. historians) from time to time, yet even the Priyanath formed with the circus performers,
learned critics seem to retain an unwaning particularly Sushilasundari. Moving back
Book News Book News attraction to the famed epoch. Indeed, there and forth in time, the book’s locales stretch
must be something(s) about the era which from Calcutta of the 1880s to Singapore
Quiet Flows the River continues to rouse our deep interest and of 1920 where Bose, born in 1865, passes
Jhelum (Jhelum Nodir Tirey) abiding fascination for it. away. Son of Manomohan Bose, an ardent
by Binoy Mukhopadhyay That nineteenth century Bengal has, nationalist poet and playwright, young
‘Jajabor’ (1909–2002), for want of a more suitable expression, Priyanath, having displayed little interest
translated from the original a wondrous quality is obvious from the in regular studies, was admitted to the
Bengali by Sujit Kumar voluminous writings, both literary and Indian Art School. Growing up in the
Das, recounts the thrilling otherwise, built around it; Shibnath Shastri’s intense nationalist atmosphere of colonial
tale of how the erstwhile Ramtanu Lahiri O Tatkalin Banga Samaj Calcutta, Priyanath, influenced as it were
Princely State of Jammu & (1904) and Sunil Gangopadhyay’s Shei by the likes of Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar,
Kashmir acceded to India, under the threat Shomoy (1981-1982), for instance, are
of invasion by Pakistan-supported troops. unforgettable illustrations of that. Sirsho Sirsho Bandopadhyay
Bandopadhyay’s novel Shardulsundari is a journalist and
Niyogi Books, 2020, pp. 92, `250.00 (2016) too falls in the larger nineteenth author, currently
century genre. And thanks to the excellent associated with the
Book News Book News translation by Arunava Sinha, it is now Bengali daily Aajkaal
available as Tiger Woman to the non-Bengali and the German
A Bengali Lady in reading public. This slim novel has the broadcaster Deutsche Welle. Tiger
England by Nabanita regular nineteenth century ingredients Woman, originally published in Bengali
Sengupta, an annotated of course, but what makes Tiger Woman as Shardulsundori, is Bandopadhyay’s
translation of stand out is its unique theme. In the first novel. He has published four other
Krishnabhabini Das’s backdrop of late nineteenth century novels, the most recent being Tero
Englandey Bangamahila, Calcutta, Bandopadhyay re-creates the life Nadir Paare, forthcoming in English
is the first travelogue by of Priyanath Bose, the ingenious builder/ translation. He has also published two
a Bengali lady writng ringmaster and owner of the first successful collections of feature writings and a
from England. Her Bengali circus, and Sushilasundari (a stage series on forgotten Bengali luminaries.
account is one of the name), a young woman trapeze artist and
most comprehensive narratives on British tiger handler. Now, not many novels come The Book Review / October 2020 47
race and cuture, and needs to be read against to mind when we begin to think of circus or
the tropes of rising nationalism. its inner workings and politics either in India
or the world. So, Tiger Woman, undoubtedly,
Shambhabi, Calcutta, New Delhi, pp. 287,
`500.00

Translation from Regional Languages into English

Narendranath Dutta (later Swami trained artists performing trapeze, juggling FIRE
Vivekananda) and later Sri Ramakrishna, and animal (horse) acts in small towns BLOOD
vowed to dedicate his life to social reform and villages of Bengal to a fully-fledged
and (nationalist) character building. Taunted circus of international repute. Apart from Rising from Ashes
often as a ‘nationalwallah’, he left no stone Priyanath—and his elder brother Motilal
unturned when it came to ‘keep[ing] alive who became a shareholder and manager— M J. D
the nationalist cause against the British two other star artists—Ganapati Chakrabarty
rulers’ (p.10). One particular avenue of and Sushilasundari—catapulted the Great HARDCOVER SOFTCOVER E-BOOK
combating British rule, as colonial Bengal Bengal Circus to its much-deserved fame ₹649.00 ₹299.00 ₹169.00
watchers will know, was to raise awareness and glory. Ganapati, the first Bengali
about health and physical fitness among the magician, enthralled the audience as did www.partridgepublishing.com/india
Bengali youth. This was so because Bengali Sushilasundari with her fearless play-acts
men were stereotyped by the British (and with the Royal Bengal tigers. Though Reconnect to
by extension, the community itself) as an the novel is titled after her name, yet your Inner Flame
emasculated and cowardly folk involved in Sushilasundari is not, as must be obvious by
intellectual discussions alone. Gradually, as now, its main protagonist. She (and sister
a corrective measure, gymnasiums began to Kumudini) makes an early entry in the
be set up in Calcutta and its neighbourhood book—from the time Priyanath discovers
where these boys trained to become her performing rudimentary gymnastic and
courageous and able-bodied patriots fit to rope tricks on the street–but it is not until
challenge the mighty British empire. much later that the immense significance
of her character, both in the circus and
A substantial portion of the novel Priyanath’s personal life, is communicated
is devoted to Priyanath’s engagement to us. Of course, Bandopadhyay does justice
with sport and physical activities such as to her but somehow Priyanath overshadows
wrestling, gymnastics and so forth. With Sushilasundari in Tiger Woman. We are told
Gaurhari Mukherjee as guru and Nabagopal about her daring tiger related performances
Mitra, the founder of the Hindu Mela, as in considerable detail but Sushila the woman
the much-revered guide, Priyanath, as the is missed in the narrative.
book progresses, embarks on the project of
restoration of Indian (Bengali) pride and This is perhaps, among others, due
self-identity. Mitra, again, is an important to the meagre information available on
character in the novel, for it was he who the famed female artist. The novel hints
established the National Circus in 1883, at Sushilasundari’s unrequited love for
and the same year his associate Rajendralal Priyanath (or as she calls him, Priyababu)
Singha too formed another one named at the end but that is where it stops. The
the Great Indian Circus. Having failed nature of Priyanath-Sushila relationship has
to remain solvent, these two folded up by been open to speculation. The book, due
the time Priyanath arrived on the scene to lack of sufficient information, makes no
with his all Bengali cast and crew circus direct reference to a romantic relationship
in 1887. The latter part of Tiger Woman but as Bandopadhyay notes at the end:
revolves around Priyanath’s undaunting ‘Yes, although Priyanath could not socially
commitment to transform a travelling acknowledge Sushila as his wife, he did have
circus troupe of a motley group of under- a relationship with her, the existence of
their two sons being the evidence’ (p. 247).
Arunava Sinha Sushilasundari’s life in the Great Bengal
translates classic, Circus may have been active and fulfilling
modern and but it was, at the same time, coloured by
contemporary Bengali deep loneliness and physical suffering too;
fiction and non-fiction not surprisingly, she died young about four
into English. Over years after her beloved Priyababu.
forty-five of his translations have been
published so far. Twice the winner of Tiger Woman is a work of history in
the Crossword Translation Award, he every sense. It offers us a view of Bengali
has translated Sankar’s Chowringhee nationalism through the lens of a cultural
(2007) and Anita Agnihotri’s Seventeen phenomenon—the ‘swadeshi’ circus—
(2011), When the Time Is Right otherwise relegated to the margins of
(2012). He has been shortlisted for society. But the best part certainly remains
the Independent Foreign Fiction the woman professionally christened as
Prize (2009) for his translation of Sushilasundari and her love-affair with tigers.
Chowringhee. Her appearance, slightly limited though, is
enough to make us read and love the book.
48 The Book Review / October 2020
Nabanipa Bhattacharjee teaches at Sri Venkates-
wara College, University of Delhi, New Delhi.

Translation from Regional languages into Hindi

A Metaphor for too brutal. Which is why one is grateful hiding it, sometimes
History for Ghashiram Kotwal. But for this play, becoming spectators,
Tendulkar’s oeuvre would be unbearable. So sometimes turning their
Sudhanva Deshpande harsh is his language that the last thing one back and refusing to stand
expects from Tendulkar is a musical. With witness, was a brilliant
GHASHIRAM KOTWAL Ghashiram, one can almost hear Tendulkar staging device, it should
saying to the ‘theatre of roots’ wallahs, also perhaps be noted that
By Vijay Tendulkar. Translated from the original ‘Anything you can do, I can do better,’ to this was not a directorial
Marathi by Dr Damodar Khadse borrow from Annie Get Your Gun. (Though intervention but was conceived already in
it should be mentioned that Tendulkar the script by Tendulkar.
Vaani Prakashan, New Delhi, 2019, pp. 84, himself said that he did not ‘think of a form What Tendulkar did not conceive was
`199.00 first and then look for a subject that will suit the gorgeous, multilayered, sumptuous
the form’. He arrived at the form, he says, musical score, conceived by Chandavarkar
The accepted wisdom through ‘a series of accidents’.) with significant inputs from Jabbar Patel.
about Vijay There is hardly a form from the rural
Tendulkar’s plays is that The play is set in the Pune of the late traditions of Maharashtra that did not
they are about power and Peshwa period. The Brahman ruling class feature in the production—be it the lavani,
violence. Well, are they? is steeped in decadence, pursuing carnal the bharud, the abhanga, the ovi, and so
Think of his ‘violent’ pleasure, as the British wait in the wings, on, and even including non-Maharashtrian
protagonists—Sakharam (in Sakharam ready to seize the opportunity. Nana forms like the qawwali and thumri. This
Binder), Ramakant (Gidhade), Ghashiram Phadnavis is the Prime Minister of the was, to my mind, the first time that simple
(Ghashiram Kotwal), Benare’s prosecutors Peshwa and the de-facto ruler. We first meet humming was used as a musical element
(Shantata! Court Chalu Ahe), Arun Athavale Nana as he enjoys a lavani performance in in a play. Today, of course, humming is
(Kanyadan), and others. Who, among Bavannakhani, the red-light district of Pune. so commonplace we scarcely notice it; the
them, is actually powerful? Sakharam bullies He sprains his foot as he dances flirtatiously human curtain, too, became a rage for a
helpless women, but at the first sight of with the courtesan. A north Indian Brahman while in the 1970s.
a woman with gumption, he becomes a from Kannauj provides him relief, offering But what makes the musical score more
whimpering puppy. Ramakant is abusive his back to let Nana rest his foot. This is than a tastefully assembled medley of
towards his wife, uncle and father, but Ghashiram. musical forms is the brilliance with which
cannot stand up to his two equals, his Chandavarkar was able to underline the
brother and half-brother. Ghashiram can After Ghashiram is falsely accused of main theme of the play by juxtaposing
be a tyrant only at Nana’s pleasure, once theft and beaten up, he vows vengeance the sacred with the profane. Thus, when
his ‘use’ is over, he is pitilessly cast aside. upon the Brahmans of the city. Using Ghashiram brings his young daughter Lalita
Benare’s prosecutors are petty, mean, his young and beautiful daughter Lalita Gauri to Nana’s attention in Act One, the
vindictive, small men and women. Arun Gauri as bait, he inveigles himself into (sacred) abhanga seamlessly transmutes into
Athavale is a wife-beater from the historically Nana’s inner circle. Desperate to ‘have’ the a (profane) lavani, and again to abhanga, and
powerless Dalit community. daughter, Nana agrees to make Ghashiram then again to lavani. The climax is reached
Not one of them can be thought of as the Kotwal, or Chief Inspector of Police, when, almost without us noticing, the words
‘powerful’. In fact, in crucial ways, they are of Pune. Thus begins Ghashiram’s reign of of the abhanga are sung in the lavani tune!
all powerless. Tendulkar’s plays are about terror, while Nana ‘enjoys’ his daughter, The play ran into rough weather because
violence, it is true. But this violence is not gets her pregnant, and dumps her. In of its depiction of Brahmans, and in
the violence of the strong. It is the violence trying to get an abortion, Lalita Gauri dies. particular the depiction of the character of
of the weak. This is the one line that runs This turns Ghashiram into a monster. Nana. It was one of the early instances of
through his cruel, pitiless, brutal oeuvre. His cruelty now knows no bounds. He non-state social groups exerting pressure to
Too cruel, one has to think, too pitiless, punishes anyone caught indulging in sensual censor the play. Eventually it was allowed
pleasures outside marriage. Bavannakhani, to tour on the condition that a disclaimer
Vijay Dhondopant the red-light district, once bustling with was read out before each performance.
Tendulkar was colour and song, wears a desolate look. In This controversy also led to the split in the
a leading Indian the end, when the Brahmans can take it no Progressive Dramatic Association and the
playwright, movie more, they clamour for his head. Now that formation of Theatre Academy.
and television Ghashiram’s daughter is dead, Nana, sly Tendulkar, however, was at pains to
writer, literary and unscrupulous as ever, throws him to the underline that:
essayist, political journalist, and social wolves. Ghashiram is lynched on the streets ‘This is not a historical play. It is a story,
commentator primarily in Marāthi. He of Pune. Peace returns, Brahmans get back in prose, verse, music and dance set in a
is best known for his plays Shantata! to their debauchery, and Nana is hailed as a historical era. Ghashirams are creations of
Court Chalu Aahe (1967), Ghāshirām saviour. socio-political forces which know no barriers
Kotwāl (1972), and Sakhārām Binder of time and place. . . . I have no intention
(1972). Tendulkar had been a highly For all its violence, Ghashiram is of commentary [sic] on the morals, or lack
influential dramatist and theatre Tendulkar’s most pleasurable play, because of them, of the Peshwa, Nana Phadnavis or
personality in Maharashtra for over five it is the most aestheticized. The Theatre Ghashiram. The moral of the story, if there
decades. Academy production, directed by Jabbar is any, may be looked for elsewhere.’
Patel and with Bhaskar Chandavarkar’s ‘Historical’ plays can either purport to
music, has passed into theatre lore. If the
human curtain formed by the Brahmans, The Book Review / October 2020 49
sometimes revealing the action, sometimes

“Ghashiram is not an allegory Translation from Regional languages into Hindi
for any specific historical
has gone right back to the start; the end is dialogues of Ardh Satya, directed by Govind
situation, it is a metaphor the beginning, and nothing will change, no Nihalani. If you’ve seen a production
matter how many times you replay the loop. of Ghashiram in Hindi, it is his iconic
for history itself. ‘The irony,’ translation you’ve seen.
I don’t know if he read it, but Tendulkar
according to Tendulkar, is surely would have loved Saramago’s novel. Chandavarkar’s music for Ghashiram was
The moral of the story, he would have said, breathtakingly diverse and sumptuous, and
that we ‘stone to death a is that history repeats itself, not as tragedy musicality runs throughout the text of the
and then farce as in Marx, but in tragedy play. Tendulkar, who shows us how harsh
person pretending that it is again and again. In being a play about and heartless language can be in plays such
history, Ghashiram is a historical play, but as Gidhade, here shows us how pleasurable it
the end of Ghashirams.’ The with its broken record view of history, it is a can be, with delightful punning, alliteration,
fundamentally ahistorical play. rhyming, and so on. His virtuosity with
character Ghashiram, then, language, his command over different
Ghashiram, however, made history in registers of speech, is matchless. From
stands for the notion of numerous ways. One, through its artistic the highly Brahmanized, flowery yet
innovations—I’ve discussed above the understated, full of innuendo and double
tyranny, which keeps coming human curtain and the music. Two, through speak Marathi of Nana, to the bawdy,
its success in India—it ran to literally muscular, vulgar Marathi of the brothel, to
back again and again hundreds of performances in Maharashtra; the demure and shy Marathi of the Brahman
it also toured all over the country, wooing women folk, to the northern-inflected
through the revolving door audiences. Three, along with Habib Tanvir’s Marathi of Ghashiram, Tendulkar delights
Charandas Chor, Ghashiram became Indian in deploying language as an instrument of
”of history. theatre’s calling card in the West, where pleasure as much as politics.
audiences were used to musicals with lavish
show you the past ‘as it was’–which turns out sets and technological razzmatazz, but had In translating the play, Vasant Dev also
to be, more often than not, a sort of calendar never seen anything so pared down, spartan deployed multiple registers, but inflected
art view of the past—or they can use almost, but no less sumptuous. Four, it it with Bundeli with a touch of Bagheli.
historical material as allegory to talk of the occasioned the split in the Progressive As much as the original Marathi, Vasant
present. An example of this from Marathi Dramatic Association, who were to have Dev’s translation has also acquired an iconic
theatre is Kichakvadh, where KP Khadilkar originally produced the play but were status, having been presented in dozens of
uses mythological material to build an revulsed by what was perceived as its anti- productions over the years.
allegory about colonial rule, wherein Kichak Brahman stance, and led to the setting up of
stands for Lord Curzon, Yudhishtira stands Theatre Academy, which became a pre- The present translation, by Dr Damodar
for the moderates in the Congress, Bhima eminent theatre company in Maharashtra, Khadse, renders the play closer to standard
stands for the extremists, and Draupadi producing dozens of innovative plays. Five, Hindi, Khadi Boli. As illustration, consider
for India. Ghashiram, Tendulkar seems several members of that production became this early exchange where the Sutradhar
to be saying, is the latter sort of play. He first known for Ghashiram—for example, the accosts a Brahman sneaking off to
had the rise of the Shiv Sena in mind. But play catapulted Mohan Agashe, who played Bavannakhani as night descends, in Vasant
the allegory is not very precise—who is the lecherous, cunning Nana, to stardom; Dev’s translation:
Nana? The Congress? Then what about the Bhaskar Chandavarkar became one of India’s
Communists? Where are they in the play? pre-eminent music directors; and director Sutradhar: Oo Oo Oo Maharaj–dubkein,
Who does Lalita Gauri stand for? And so on. Jabbar Patel became a well-known figure dubkein –
even before his first feature film released.
Ghashiram is not an allegory for any Six, along with two other Tendulkar plays Brahman: Tupkein? Kaun ki tupkein?
specific historical situation, it is a metaphor from the same period of the early 1970s, Firangiyanki kai kurangiyan ki?
for history itself. ‘The irony,’ according Sakharam Binder and Gidhade, it came
to Tendulkar, is that we ‘stone to death under furious attack (in this case from the Sutradhar: Tupkein naay Maharaj, mein
a person pretending that it is the end of Shiv Sena and the Brahman lobby as a kahi dubkein-dubkein–
Ghashirams.’ The character Ghashiram, whole), marking an important moment in
then, stands for the notion of tyranny, the history of theatre censorship in India, Brahman: Hei..darpukke! Dubkein-
which keeps coming back again and again where it transitioned from the realm of law dubkein kahe? Hum taan chhati jaye rahe.
through the revolving door of history. and state intervention to the lawlessness and
History is a spool with no end, looped to terror tactics of hooligans on the streets. Sutradhar: Maharaj, pahar bhar raat
play on and on. One is reminded of a novel That history is very much still with us. bhayee, savari kaan jaye rahi?
by Jose Saramago, The Double, in which
the protagonist, a school teacher, confronts The first, and, till now, the only, Brahman: Jara aiseyeen!
his exact double who is a bit actor in films. translation of the play into Hindi was by Sutradhar: Kaan jayegi gaadi?
They exchange lives for a night, but the Vasant Dev, who worked as a lyricist and Brahman: Naik agadi.
actor, pretending to be the school teacher, screenwriter in cinema, apart from being the Sutradhar: Agadi kaan tallak?
dies in an accident. The school teacher, pre-eminent Marathi to Hindi translator Brahman: Tain jaan ke kaha karega re
with nothing to prove his identity, is forced of plays from the 1970s till his somewhat bhallak? Hat agey tain hat. Aber hoye rahi.
to take on the role of his double, the actor, premature death in 1996. Among his film
and, in a déjà vu moment, is confronted by credits are the song Mann kyu behaka from Damodar Khadse,
a man whose double he is, just as he had Utsav directed by Girish Karnad, and the born in Surguja,
confronted the actor to begin with. The loop Chattisgarh, is an
author and translator.
50 The Book Review / October 2020 He writes in Marathi
and Hindi and has
also translated books in both languages.