A cupboard full of mangled toys

The path of the parivar: articles on gujarat and hindutva (Three Essays, Rs 140) by Mukul Dube collects a number of newspaper articles and letters to sundry editors, all of which are highly polemical critiques of the Hindu right during and after the Gujarat pogrom. The articles must have had a necessary and powerful impact when they came out. But gathered together, and prefaced by a laudatory introduction by A.M. Khusro, their unmodulated expression of rage and outrage begins to pall on the reader.

Walking in goa (Eminence Designs, price not mentioned) by Heta Pandit is full of beautiful photographs of Goa, most of them bathed in a golden afternoon light. Mapusa, Don Valdo, Savlem Pilerne, Reis Magos, Portais, Altinho, Dona Paula, Chinchinim, Velim: Pandit knows Goa intimately and describes 16 walking routes, taking a particular delight in architecture. Pandit is actively involved in the Goa conservation movement.

The mahabharata (MapinLit, Rs 95) retold by Mrinalini Sarabhai is a pointless little book — dedicated to “Mallika, whose path has been more difficult than the heroine Draupadi” — offering a very brief and unremarkable retelling of the epic, together with forgettable illustrations by A. Pandari Nathan Nayagar.

Screams in the night (Puffin, Rs 99) by SMI is a children’s thriller about Gothic goings-on in New Delhi. The five find-outers are Sheena, Aman, Akbar, Anthony and Akbar’s pet cockatoo, Sindbad. Aman’s mother screams, and there is a cupboard full of mangled toys soaked in blood. SMI is “a film-maker who lives in a little island off the coast of a vast continent”.

Contemporary india: a sociological view (Penguin, Rs 250) by Satish Deshpande intends to revive the general reader’s interest in the discipline of sociology: “This book tries to show what is at stake in doing sociology. It presents one vision of what the discipline could become.” The italics are the author’s, and he tends to use too many of them throughout his text, giving the book a tone of erratic insistence. Deshpande looks at the content of everyday life in modern India, to explore the ambivalence of that modernity. The key themes are HIndutva and development, the middle class on independent India, caste inequality and globalization.

The wada trilogy (Seagull, Rs 350) by Mahesh Elkunchwar is Shanta Gokhale’s English translation of this veteran Maratha playwright’s plays about a single family, the Deshpandes of Dharangaon. The three plays are The Old Stone Mansion, The Pond and Apocalypse, and were written in the mid-Eighties and Nineties. They are introduced here by Samik Bandyopadhyay, who also conducts a long conversation with Elkunchwar, which is transcribed here: “I’ve always been attracted to the idea of renunciation. I don’t know why, but I think there is great beauty in renunciation.”

The path of the buddha: writings on contemporary buddhism (Penguin, Rs 250) edited by Renuka Singh is an interesting and varied collection of essays by the dalai lama, Buddhist scholars, clerics, nuns and practitioners from all over the world. “In our modern, technologically sophisticated, violence- and pollution-ridden globalized world, what role is Buddhism playing? What does it signify in the lives of people? Is it faith, philosophy or practice? In today’s world, how do individuals or masses come in contact with Buddhism and its subsequent change of heart? Each chapter in this book deals with these questions, and each is self-sufficient.”