Backflap – The Tribune

In the winter of 2004, Akash Kapur and his wife Auralice moved to Auroville, not to look for something new, but to look into the past. Both of them had grown up in Auroville; the latter leaving after the sudden death of her parents, John Walker and Diane Maes, when she was 14. Like the rest of their community, they never really understood those deaths. This is the mystery Akash Kapur sets out to solve in Better to Have Gone and slowly they come to understand how the tragic individual fates of John and Diane intersected with the collective history of their town. This is a book about the human cost of our age-old quest for a more perfect world. It probes the under-explored yet universal idea of utopia, and portrays in vivid detail the daily life of one utopian community.

The ghats, sometimes buzzing with mortal activity, sometimes deathly calm, the lanes lined with wall in the hole shops promising nirvana, the many temples, the sadhus, the urban populace, the fleeting visitors... Banaras is a living landscape, with elements of antiquity, symbolism and built-in environments created and recreated by agencies that have made it the city that millions throng. In Banaras: Of Gods, Humans and Stories, author Nilosree Biswas and photographer Irfan Nabi discern the engaging narrative of a unique chromosome that makes Banaras. Written about so many times, the book is the authors attempt to understand a city that has intrigued her since childhood, so much so that she goes back to it again and again.

by Nilosree Biswas

& Irfan Nabi.

Niyogi Books.

Pages 240. Rs1,750

Published in 1972, this book is the last of Mahadevi Varmas prose works, and the most neglected as well. However, it is a work that demanded attention, for in the preface to the book she writes that all her prose stems from her writings about animals. The book, aptly titled Mera Parivaar, brings together her world of animals, her family. The relationship that began with saving a chick in her childhood persisted till the very end of her life. Animals were the only beings permitted beyond the living room of her house; Gillu the squirrel being the special one who ate off her plate, died clinging to her finger. This work sprang from the fount of Varmas feelings for animals. It has been translated into English for the first time by Ruth Vanita, a professor at the University of Montana.

by Mahadevi Varma.

Translated by Ruth Vanita.

Penguin Random House.

Pages 168. Rs399

With the political patterns beginning to worry, with the Muslim community being made to feel threatened for being the other, it was important for author Humra Quraishi to help people comprehend the ground realities of present times. Quraishi says she had never imagined that a day would come when she, an Indian Muslim, would be looked upon as a suspect just because she greeted with a loud and clear As-Salaam-Alaikum, or because she was critical of the government of the day. In the recent past, several Muslim scholars have tried to reason being a Muslim in India. This book is based on the authors writings of the last many years, including on the living conditions of Muslisms and the challenges they face in everyday life.

the Largest Minority Community in India

by Humra Quraishi.

Aakar Books.

Pages 292. Rs595

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Backflap - The Tribune