Doomed love and Chicken Patiala

Afterwards (Penguin, Rs 250) by Jaishree Misra is a Penguin India Novel, which is a particularly prolific sub-genre within the Indo-Anglian Novel. It is a story of two worlds, the Indo and the Anglian, and of doomed love. The prologue says that this novel is the “flip side of a Foreword, acknowledging that life isn’t like a book, recognizing gratefully that, long after the last page is read and the shiny hard cover is slapped satisfyingly shut for the last time, there will still be more to tell”. Shades of Readers’ Digest and Woman and Home. There are lapses into rhyme (“The beer was cold, frosting the glass into murky gold”) and nuggets of lugubrious wisdom: “Wallowing in grief must be the easiest thing in the world, especially when there’s absolutely nothing left to live for.”

The mountain of the moon (Katha, Rs 150) by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay is Santanu Sinha Chaudhuri’s translation of a Bengali classic for young readers, published in 1937. It is set in an Africa of the imagination, as much a product of adolescent day dreams and reading as of travel. Shankar dreams of the eponymous Chander Pahar after he reads Anton Hauptmann’s account of climbing an African mountain in Westmark’s Geography. This translation is done in a curiously archaic English, which is not entirely uncharming, but might pall on reading at a stretch: “Oh! What a dream! Do early morning dreams really come true? Many people say so!” Suddhasattwa Basu’s illustrations evoke the wistfulness of a lost world of beautifully illustrated children’s books in Bengali, with just the right effect of amateurishness.

Sudhir Dar classics (Penguin, Rs 200) is a collection of rather unfunny cartoons by this well-known Indian cartoonist, who, we read, has been called a “Tasty Indian Nut” by Mad Magazine and figures in the private collection of Yehudi Menuhin and the British Queen (not known for her sense of humour). Dar writes in his preface that he has always kept the reader in mind: “After all, he is the oppressed, the voiceless one, the underdog, and the cartoonist must speak for him, give him hope, and a smile!” A lot of the political satire and social observation in this book fall flat.

Selected essays (Rupa, Rs 295) by Rabindranath Tagore is a useful collection bringing together four decades of Tagore’s thinking on aesthetics, pedagogy, politics and history. The pieces collected are “Creative Unity”, “Sadhana”, “Man”, “Personality”, “Nationalism”, “Crisis in Civilization”, “The Religion of Man” and “Greater India”.

Talisman: extreme emotions of dalit liberation (Samya, Rs 200) by Thirumaavalavan is Meena Kandasamy’s translation of essays by one of the most militant and charismatic leaders of the Dalit movement in Tamil Nadu. Gail Omvedt’s introduction provides the political context to the intense intellectual debate in these essays, which take positions on women’s liberation, Tamil nationalism, economic rights, Indian and Tamil history, the oppression of minorities and the future of democracy.

Madhur jaffrey’s flavours of india (Penguin, Rs 495) is some sort of a classic of diasporic Indian cooking, although the recipes here are all echt items from Kerala, Gujarat, Goa, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Punjab. First published almost a decade ago, this cookbook also includes detailed instructions on techniques such as cleaning squid, marinating meats, and dry roasting and grinding of spices. Recipes have been collected from such diverse locations as a Khasi tribal home, a rice boat in the middle of Lake Vembanad in Kerala. There are also Sophie Gonsalves’ Chutney and Hoshiyar Singh’s Chicken Patiala.