The mind of the guruConversations with spiritual mastersBy Rajiv MehrotraVikingPrice: Rs 395For years Rajiv Mehrotra has been conducting television and radio interviews with spiritual leaders. In this volume he puts some of them together as part of his quest for ways “to find enduring happiness and to avoid suffering from those who seemed to have found it or at least were said to have claimed to have”. It’s a tall order, indeed, and after leafing through these pearls of wisdom, consensus may still be elusive. It is, as they say, a matter of faith. But Mehrotra has certainly notched up a most representative list. Among those interviewed: the Dalai Lama, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Deepak Chopra, Swami Agnivesh, Thich Nhat Hanh.In another culture: colonialism, culture and the english novel in indiaBy Priya JoshiOxford University PressPrice: Rs 595Before Arundhati Roy and The God of Small Things — indeed before Salman Rushdie and Midnight’s Children and his burgeoning tribe of legatees — too there was the Indian novelist in English. Priya Joshi, who teaches literature at Berkeley, surveys a vast expanse, right from Krupa Sattthianadhan (believed to have penned the first Indian novel in English) in the late nineteenth century right till the life and times of Salmam Rushdie, to show how an alien form and an alien language were used to address local needs. Given the spatial and temporal expanse before her, Joshi compares cultural and literary dynamics in colonial and post-colonial times.Dancing round the maypoleGrowing out of British IndiaBy Rani SircarRupaPrice: Rs 195A children’s writer knits together writings to capture times and ways of life long gone. Schooldays in Colombo, Madras and Lahore, post-independence changes in Calcutta and thence travels beyond, Sircar attempts to capture it all. For nostalgia buffs.
