I little remember civil Mhow, having spent only a part of my childhood in the cantonment here, so a book set in its Raj nostalgia layered with a more recent journey of discovery becomes a sympathetic read.
Jaysinh Birjepatil’s saga over two generations of women, and loss, is quaintly Victorian, but he gets the detailing right: the Kuttewali Memsahib could have been the Dog Lady from Wellington some of us army brats grew up with, but it is the sorry plight of the Anglo-Indians that is at the heart of this lyrically told tale, of the English unable to come to terms with their almost impoverished existence back in England, of the changed circumstance of Anglo-Indian life in Mhow, or even India, and the continuing grace of cantonment life. This is a slow read, but pleasurable for it — though probably only for those who grew up in small-town India. n
CHINNERY'S HOTEL
Jaysinh Birjepatil
Ravi Dayal/ Penguin
261 pages
Rs 325
High lives
This book “should on no account be allowed in the bedroom, or you will find yourself awake in the cold, small hours, still turning the pages”. That’s what a blurb on the back says, and it is quite right. There’s no shortage of anecdote collections, but this is a new and delightful one, and if you take it to bed, you will be kept awake.
England is a land renowned for its eccentrics, and in these pages little facets — amusing, awe-inspiring, worrying, incomprehensible — from the lives of some of its literary sons and daughters from Chaucer to Rowling, along with a handful from Europe, America and India, stand revealed. As with Yiddish jokes, there’s always room for more good anecdotes. This book is well worth your lost sleep.
THE NEW OXFORD BOOK OF LITERARY ANECDOTES
John Gross (ed.)
OUP
400 pages
Rs 325
More From This Section
Ideas of the Taj
Indian or foreign? Symbol of Indian genius or folly foisted upon India by invaders? This book is not so much about the Taj Mahal itself as it is about ideas of the Taj. Thus the author, British art historian Giles Tillotson, throws open before the reader a bulging portfolio of artists, architects, travellers, poets and administrators — not to mention imitators — from the 17th-century Mughal court to modern ads featuring the likes of Zakir Hussain and Amitabh Bachchan.
The book is presented as a meditative essay, and its slim profile, elegant design, numerous illustrations and simple prose will reinforce that impression, but it’s really quite a serious work. If you like popular history and want to get beyond the few facts and myths that everyone knows about the Taj, this is a book worth owning.
TAJ MAHAL
Giles Tillotson
Penguin
208 pages
Rs 399
Khana Sutra
A book by Singapore-based consultant Zubin D’Souza (a graduate of IHM-Goa), this may attract attention, or raise hackles, with its gimmicky theme. Aphrodisiac cooking is precisely what a Western audience may look for from the rich Indian culinary traditions — except that to put together a cookbook on this premise is pretty dodgy.
D’Souza gives a list of ingredients (not just Indian ones but from all over), said to be aphrodisiacs, and then puts together recipes featuring these. The problem is that the ingredients include everything that we would use in our cooking anyway. The recipes themselves seem pretty workable. But this could have been any other cookbook.
KHANA SUTRA
ZubinD’Souza
Jaico
240 pages
Rs 250
(With inputs from Rrishi Raote and Anoothi Vishal)
