Men and moths in history

The heart of the matter (Katha, Rs 295) selected by The North East Writers’ Forum collects 28 short stories from Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland. Two of the stories are in English, and the rest are ably translated by a number of local academics and writers. The writers and translators are from varied professional and creative backgrounds. Most of the stories trace not only the rich culture and colourful history of these states (of which storytelling is an important part), but also the bleaker, darker present, shadowed by insurgency and economic backwardness.

Tea with pandit nehru and other memoirs (EastWest, Rs 150) by Sumangali Chettur is a slim and elegantly designed book of reminiscences in which a daughter remembers the various aspects of her late father’s personality. S.K. Chettur was a Tamil civil servant and diplomat who was also known as a writer, poet and wit. The memoirs are mainly anecdotal, and although of value to Chettur’s family, friends and colleagues, too personal for general interest. This could have been salvaged if the prose were of a higher literary quality.

Gendering caste: Through a feminist lens (Stree, Rs 225) by Uma Chakravarti is an excellent deconstruction of brahmanical patriarchy. Examining the crucial links between caste and gender, Chakravarti unmasks the mystique of consensus in the workings of the caste system to reveal the underlying violence and coercion that perpetuate a severely hierarchical and unequal society. The subordination of women and the control of female sexuality are crucial to the maintenance of this system. It is part the Theorizing Feminism series, addressing students and the general reader, edited by Maithreyi Krishnaraj.

Goodness and good manners (Icon, Rs 125) by Vaasamoorti is subtitled “A little guide book on Human Relations”, and is a somewhat prolix translation of the Telugu Manchi Maryaada. Vaasamoorti put this book together in reaction to the go-getting utilitarianism of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. Being good, he argues with numerous anecdotes endearingly shared, is its own reward. A rather sweet book, although it tends to ramble a bit.

Puppets of faith: theory of communal strife (Self Imprint, Rs 165) by B.S. Murthy tries to steer through the bigotries of both Islam and Hinduism to arrive at a balanced view of the history of Hindu-Muslim conflict in the subcontinent. Murthy “seeks to outline the background of the Musalman-kafir animosity on one hand and the Hindu-Muslim communal divide on the other, both products of one or more of the scriptural notions, religious dogma, medieval history and modern politics, or all put together.” Murthy seldom manages to extricate himself from bombast, which makes the book rather dangerously unclear and confusing.

Of moths and men: intrigue, tragedy and the peppered moth (Fourth Estate, £ 8.99) by Judith Hooper is a fascinating story of hubris, delusion and heartbreak behind the most important paradigm in 20th-century evolutionary biology. In the early Fifties, the peppered moth experiment was used to “prove” natural selection: the black variety of the moth thrived in industrial areas because camouflage on blackened trees protected it from predatory birds. However, these findings, now immortalized in our biology textbooks, are botched and inaccurate. They came from a scientist who, hungry for fame and recognition, became blind to the truth. “Clustered around the peppered moth is a swarm of human ambitions, and self-delusions shared among some of the most renowned evolutionary biologists of our era.”