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Essay

A new cultural lexicon
In the face of threats by foreign television and entertainment industry, Bollywood had to reinvent itself in the 1990s. With the parallel decline of folk traditions and middleclass biculturalism, the screen has become the site of contemporary discussions on modernity and tradition. It would be simplistic to dismiss Bollywood as offering formulaic escapism, says SUNIL KHILNANI, reviewing two books on the subject.


A hero betrayed
From the woman who recently wrote a biography of Anne Frank, comes a biography of Otto Frank, a man who fought bravely for his country in the First World War but found himself being persecuted by its rulers hardly 30 years later. A review by BOB MOORE.

People
IN CONVERSATION
Staying in touch with humanity
"It's sheer hysteria," said a British litterateur, referring to the "Arundhati Effect" on the Western world. You saw just what he meant at the Locarno international film festival this year (August 1-11) where Indian writer ARUNDHATI ...

Columns
CLASSICS REVISITED
Amichai's little ironies
My life is spiced with heavy lies, and the longer I live, the bigger the art of forgery keeps growing inside and the more real. The artificial flowers seem more and more natural and the growing ones seem artificial. Who will be able to tell the ...
BOOK WATCH
Some remarkable things
THE editors of Granta 78 (£5.99) can congratulate themselves, having had the literary prescience to publish a short story by Jon McGregor, who was then a mere dishwasher in a Nottingham restaurant working on a novel as many a cultured ...
DIFFERENT REGISTERS
Voices in the wilderness
ONE has seen and heard about communal violence and war-related atrocities against women. In 1998 when SPARROW organised a workshop on communal harmony and invited two Sikh women to come and speak about their1984 experiences, after 14 years they ...
The fate of reading
EVERYTHING in the world as we know it would have changed in the 25th Century. Everything but the book. In some cozy corner of a room you will still spy a person reading a book. And she will be holding it as we hold a book today. And it will be ...

Book Review
MEMOIRS
Humorous look-see
NOT many are aware that the leading writer Ashokamitran had worked at the Gemini Studios for some years as Public Relations Officer at a time when the Indian movie mogul S.S. Vasan and Gemini Studios were at the zenith of creative activity in ...
POETRY
Raking up the everyday
It is impossible to get away from Anita Nair's poems, evoking as they do states of mind that we recognise immediately. Yet, there is a difference between being a poet of the ordinary and an ordinary poet, says KALA KRISHNAN RAMESH.
Nerve-end sensations
Is writing poetry very different from writing prose? Do you follow the same writing process for both? TO categorise it very simply, my prose stems from an idea whereas my poetry is born from a feeling. Naturally this means that there is a ...
CONTEMPORARY POLITICS
Making sense of changed lives
Worlds in Collision, in bringing together a range of scholars from across the spectrum, is an indication of the directions that intellectual debates have taken since `9/11', says PRANAB DHAL SAMANTA.
HISTORY
Timeless classic
Reprints of classics need as much editorial care as new manuscripts, says NARAYANI GUPTA, reviewing a reissue of Alberuni's Al Hind.
SOCIETY
Anatomy of a riot
The Deadly Ethnic Riot, based on a number of case studies from different countries, looks at the social psychology of riots, says SUDHANSHU RANADE.
PERSONALITY
The man behind the missile
SOARING skyward on wings of fire, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam is now the 12th President of the largest democracy in the world. But while everyone recognises him as the wizard missile-man, most people have meagre awareness of the man behind the ...
NON-FICTION
Intimations of immortality
In the nature of a contemplation on writing and writers, Negotiating with the Dead is motivated by Atwood's desire to bring something back from the dead, says M.S. NAGARAJAN.
POETRY
Goodness of nature and God
ROSE MARY WILKINSON'S collection Sing in the Wind with Love contains 105 poems, mostly inspired by spiritual devotion and the admiration of nature and its beauty. Some of the other pieces in the collection are "occasioned-poetry" written ...
HIGHER EDUCTION
Globalisation and the gendered academia
Gendered and the Restructured University is of immense value for understanding the male-dominated, massive, market-oriented structural and organisational changes that are now sweeping the universities in the West, says P. RADHAKRISHNAN.
BIOGRAPHY
Medicine man
A Life of Healing is a sympathetic and often personal reading of the life of P.S. Varier, the founder of the Kottakal-based Arya Vaidyashala, says KAVITA SIVARAMAKRISHNAN.
FICTION
Creative confusion
In spite of the fact that the narrative should have been 80-100 pages shorter, one gets rather fond of Pi, the plucky, innovative and forever hopeful survivor, says ZAHIDA WHITAKER.
TRANSLATION
Imperfect justice to Tagore
Though flawed, Four Chapters needs to be commended for displaying a measure of scholarly ambition, says SWAPAN CHAKRAVORTY.
TRANSLATION
Desiccated roots
"Translations (like wives) are seldom faithful if they are in the least attractive," maintains Roy Campbell. On that criterion, Roots can be considered to be entirely faithful to its original text in Malayalam. The disappointment of the ...
New Books
Contemporary Indian Art: Other Realities, edited by Yashodhara Dalmia, Marg Publications, p.140, Rs. 2250. Embattled Identities: Rajput Lineages and the Colonial State in 19th-Century North India, Malavika Kasturi, OUP, ...
From the blurb...
"India's beauty queens did a hat trick in 2000, winning the titles of Miss World, Miss Universe and Miss Asia-Pacific. Earlier winners like Aishwarya Rai had by then become household names. Coincident was the leap in the cosmetics industry, from ...

Extracts
The tiger by the river
Exclusive extracts from Ravi Shankar Etteth's first work of fiction, published recently.

Focus
PASSING THROUGH
Passage to France
"GANESHA ... help us," says Jean-Claude Perrier, raising his hands and then looking towards the ceiling. People around glance at him and smile. A Frenchman taken in by the sights and sounds of India? Yes, to an extent, but to be more ...
Man Booker 2002 factfile
ON Monday, August 19, the panel of judges for selecting this year's Man Booker Prize, announced the long list of 20 authors, selected from a total of 130 entries this year. In alphabetical order: The Strange Case of Dr. Simmonds & Dr. ...
CHILDREN'S LITERATURE
A judicious choice
The Hans Christian Andersen Awards are given by The International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) to an author and illustrator every alternate year. This time around, Aidan Chambers and Quentin Blake get the nod, says PREMA SRINIVASAN.



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