Unpublished Reviews

AN ODYSSEY: A Father, A Son, and an Epic

Christopher Nolan's ODYSSEY brought me to Daniel Mendelsohn's memoir - 'AN ODYSSEY: A Father, A Son, and an Epic'. Initially looking for videos of film-crew interviews, I chanced upon a conversation with Mendelsohn on his translation of the epic, which in turn led me to the book.

Mendelsohn deftly braids four strands in it: Homer’s epic, the experience of teaching it in class with his 81-year-old father in one of his Seminars, going on a curated cruise with him that traced Odysseus's adventures, and the transformation in their own relationship during this phase.

Open Intelligence

OPEN INTELLIGENCE: Education Between Art and Artificial, Saikat Majumdar's latest book, is best read as a companion to 'COLLEGE: Pathways of Possibility' (2018). Indeed, it's while reprinting the earlier volume that this new one was suggested by Penguin Random House. Both testify (along with his columns on education) to his commitment as an educator beyond the hallowed space of his premiere University and his official designation as 'Professor of English and Creative Writing'. Conversely, it is his foundational work at Ashoka that propelled him in delving into the possibilities of a liberal Artscience education in India. This book is a logical extension of that exercise.

Batwara

Batwara 1947 belongs to Shabana Azmi the way Main Vaapas Aaunga did to Nasseruddin Shah. While the trailer may focus on the scenes of communal violence in the film, in effect they don't take much of the runtime. And though wherever they occur, the audience is never allowed to forget they are watching Sunny Deol, the (yesteryear) action-star, the narrative is actually woven around the figure of Durgabai, widowed matriarch of a family of jewellers, who simply refuses to leave her home - a grand, 22-room, 2-storey haveli - in Lahore, at the time of Partition.

Aajo Ardhangini, Podcast

Greatly enjoyed this conversation of Churni Ganguly with Sreemoyee Piu, in the latter’s weekly podcast, Straight Up With Shree.

It's a nearly two-hour conversation, spanning the entire arc of Churni's life and work: from her growing up years in Kurseong with teacher parents and two sisters, then coming to Kolkata for high school (Pratt) and continuing to study here for college and university (JU), getting involved with theatre and also acting for television, the big Bombay break and how it came about, the career defining moment that was Chhoti Si Asha (which was shot in Chennai), returning to Kolkata at the peak of her career in Bombay to prioritize marriage, and balancing motherhood and work ever after.

Musafir Cafe

Sharanya Rajgopal's MUSAFIR CAFE, playing on Netflix, underlines these truths of life through the two successive relationships that the male lead Chander (Vikrant Massey) has. Both the women - Sudha and Preeti (Vedika Pinto and Mahima Makwana) - are clear eyed and honest in love; and show remarkable maturity when they meet in person, each acknowledging the part played by the other in their lover's life (at different phases) and in making his dream of a café in the hills come true. Four other people have a direct bearing on these two relationships and the way they unfold – the wonderfully understanding mothers of Chander and Sudha (played by Anubha Fatehpuria and Loveleen Mishra), each of whom act selflessly and try to hold up the mirror to their child's reality; and an elderly couple (Adil Hussain and Sadiya Siddiqui) who become the role model for Chander and Preeti in Missourie. The scenes featuring these four, especially in the final episodes, are the best in the series.

Drown All the Refugees

Refugee experience, and the toll it takes - both on those who leave and who are left behind - is at the heart of Tabish Khair’s novel, Drown All the Refugees. Two of the dearest persons in the narrator’s life go through it – his childhood playmate/brother Pedro, son of his nurse Maria; and his Palestinian lover Abdullah. The latter inherits the condition through three generations of political displacement spanning West and South Asia; the former becomes one, trapped in the maze of global traffickers in the illusion of pursuing a better life. When he goes missing - the place is never named, it's suggested it’s somewhere in the Northeast - his desperate mother tries to bring him back by taking recourse to the Occult, mediated by an ancient woman known as the ‘The Midwife’, who tells the narrator: “No one who belongs ever leaves” and that “if you are forced to leave the place you belong to, one part of you stays behind...”.

Memoir of Kumar Roy

This year marks the birth centenary of the thespian Kumar Roy, who was devoted to the theatre for six decades – throughout being a part of the group Bohurupee, which he joined in 1948 (after a chance encounter with Ritwik Ghatak who introduced him to Sombhu Mitra) and served till his death in 2010. His engagement with theatre encompassed every possible aspect of it - from acting, directing and stage design to writing, editing and teaching - possibly why he looked upon himself as a ‘natya-karmi’ (theatre worker) and not ‘natya-byaktitto’ (theatre personality). It is this ‘karmi’ who comes alive in the pages of his son Indrapramit’s memoir of him – স্মৃতির আয়নায় কুমার রায় (Kumar Roy in the Mirror of Memory).

Main Vaapas Aaunga

Inter-faith romance is a staple of Partition narratives. So are certain other elements, especially with respect to the Punjab: the disbelief that people felt about whether it would actually happen, the communal violence that erupted nevertheless where neighbours could equally turn betrayers or protectors, the killing of women by elders in the name of ‘honour’, harrowing train journeys, followed by years of uncertainty and destitution in refugee camps and colonies, missing family members who could never be retrieved, the slow building of lives in the place forced to relocate, and most importantly, inter-generational trauma that resisted closure.

Learning to Make Tea for One - Reflections on Love, Loss and Healing

What do you do when you lose the two closest people in your life simultaneously, and have two children to bring up on your own? Andaleeb Wajid answers that in this touching memoir -- an honest, courageous reckoning with her grief after losing her husband (Mansoor) and mother-in-law (who was also her paternal aunt).

The originary grief in her life, however, was losing her father at a tender age -- the father she adored, who could've prevented the early marriage to her cousin (that he had planned but not timed) which was forced upon her while still in college, and the early motherhood that followed, when others her age were still figuring out their careers. Somewhere, in the middle of all this, a writing career emerged, almost accidentally, whose highs coincided with the most excruciating lows of her life.

Inshallah Bangladesh

On the front cover of INSHALLAH BANGLADESH: The Story of an Unfinished Revolution – co-authored by Deep Halder, Jaideep Mazumdar and Shahidul Hasan Khokon – is the tagline, “Includes an exclusive with Sheikh Hasina”. That exclusive features in Chapter 7 of the book, summarizing a 13-minute telephonic conversation of the authors with the ousted premier of Bangladesh, in exile in India, on 7 June 2025. Certain sections of it are block quotes; one instance being Hasina spouting a (by now,widely circulated) conspiracy theory:

Don’t call it a revolution! […] It was a terror attack on Bangladesh disguised as a student revolt planned by America and executed by Pakistan. It was done to remove me from power. Whether it was Abu Sayed or other student leaders, the killings were not done by the police. They were killed by terrorists and the killings were passed off as police brutality to turn the public against my government.

Lawho Gouranger Naam Re

Srijit Mukherjee is surely intrigued by famous disappearances in Bengal's history. Hence, after Bhawal Sanyasi ('Ek Je Chhilo Raja', 2018) & Netaji ('Gumnaami', 2019), he has now directed his attention to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. Exactly what happened to him: did he merge with the idols at Jagannath temple, did he vanish into the sea in Puri, or was he murdered by powerful opponents? The narrative of 'Lawho Gouranger Naam Re' investigates this through three parallel timeliness -- Chaitanya's own life (with debutante Dibyojyoti in the titular tole), as it was lived out between his first marriage & disappearance in the early 16th century, visually demarcated in the film by using a dreamy/misty filter; Nati Binodini (Subhashree) playing his character on stage in late 19th century Calcutta, directed by Natyacharya Girish Chandra Ghosh (Bratya Basu); and a contemporary filmmaker (Isha Saha) making a movie on him (with Indraneil Sengupta in the lead).

Umrao Jaan

If heartache could have a face, it has to be Rekha's – as and in UMRAO JAAN. In the film's second half.

The tawaif
The first half of Muzzafar Ali's classic, based on a novel by Mirza Hadi Ruswa, traces the unfortunate - though not uncommon - tale of a young girl sold to a 'kotha' by an uncle (at a time she was already engaged) and brought up by mercenary women (played by Shaukat Kaifi and Dina Pathak) masquerading as mother-figures who look upon her only as an investment.

All Our Loves

The blurb was arresting enough: "ALL OUR LOVES: Journeys with Polyamory in India is an eye-opening book on polyamory—the practice of being in love with or without sexual intimacies with more than one person simultaneously, with the consent of all—in India."

Puratawn

Suman Ghosh's ‘Puratawn’is essentially a loving and languid exploration of decay – both in living beings and the lived environment. Whether it is the gnarled roots of an ancient tree, the twisted veins visible on the skin of an octogenarian woman, or the crumbling bricks of an old mansion, we are invited to witness and acknowledge the continuity of life within decay; of the workings of slow time. The onset of dementia in a mother’s life - and how it’s dealt with - is only one strand in this larger narrative.

Journeys Beyond and Within

Priyanka Gupta’s Journeys Beyond and Within…an Indian woman’s life-changing travel adventures, its blurb tells us “is the travel memoir of a small-city girl who never dreamt of travelling the world”. What shines in the book, above everything else, is the determination of this young Indian woman (who began her writing life as a blogger) to push against the boundaries set for her.