Rabindranath Tagore had moved to a bungalow there in 1914 because his daughter Renuka was suffering from tuberculosis and he thought the hill air would do wonders for her lungs.
The sense of looking forward to an exchange of ideas with a friend is over, buried in the reels of time.
In ‘The Mendicant Prince’ on the Prince of Bhawal, Aruna Chakravarti cites various instances as to why the sanyasi was most certainly the prince, including a dramatic moment in the middle of a thunderstorm when he is recognised by his favourite elephant Phoolmala, who lifts him on its back and rises on its hind legs in a royal salute.
In ‘When Ardh Satya met Himmatwala: The Many Lives of 1980S' Bombay Cinema’, Avijit Ghosh has put together lists and anecdotes to make a compendium that Bollywood fans and films fans are bound to love.
The book has been debated by Indologists over time and Kamil Zvelebil, the Czech expert on Tamil literature is of the opinion that this is the most fluid of Valluvar’s books, the others dealt with various teachings and social mores since the mentor steps aside to lose himself in the pleasures of love.
‘The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise’ is a combination of musings, travels back in time, and actual wandering. It goes back and forth in time, drawing on Pico Iyer’s travels with his Japanese wife or the inspiration of his flamboyant friend Nicolas. While each place may be a paradise of sorts, the book is a counterpoint of the various shades of spirituality and the unlikely combinations those throw up.
Detail by detail the narrator takes us through his daughter’s school going, the tension of entrance interviews and all the things that anxious parents are aware of. That is when the book comes to life, the love of Oishi and her small world. The narrator covers the family things, a holiday with his wife, and their very Satyajit Ray-like meeting which led to love and marriage.
The book takes its title from verses by Qadir Baksh a lesser-known Urdu poet who wrote under the takhallus ‘Sabir’ and who referred to the number of houses that the British razed in Delhi, making Liddle’s account of the time a broken script indeed.
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