SPEAKING OF FILMS By Satyajit Ray Translated by gopa majumdar Penguin Price: Rs 275 Pages: 220

Anyone who loves cinema has a favourite Satyajit Ray memory. Even 50 years after he made his first film, Harihar pulling out a sari for Durga, who is no more, Charulata playfully raising her lorgnette or the mournful funeral chant which ends Pratidwandi, probably the most angry film Ray made, are embossed in one's consciousness. But such is the power of the images he has left behind that even now when one reads fragments of Pather Panchali's screenplay in Speaking of Films, it brings tears to the eyes.

Such is the impact of Ray's uncommonly good words. And such is the influence of this book, first published in Bengali, a compendium of his lectures and his writings in various publications, expertly translated by Gopa Majumdar who seems to have captured every inflection in Ray's tone. There are many things in this collection which any lover of Ray would have read before in Andrew Robinson or Marie Seton. His ambivalence towards Santiniketan, his abiding love for western classical music or even how Bicycle Thieves changed his destiny.

PICTURE SPEAK

THE TITAN: Ray

But there is much gold to be mined here as well: his comments on the boy caught in mid-run, facing the audience, in a freeze-frame in Francois Truffaut's 400 Blows, the harsh sharpness of Citizen Kane's cinematography that showed up even the heroine's blemishes, or the scene in Alexander Dovzhenko's Earth, where the dead Vassili's cheek is gently brushed by a ripe apple. A filmmaker can open the door to a character's mind in front of a camera if he can mix sharp powers of observation with an understanding of deep emotions, says Ray at one point. This book gives us a key to that door-and to the soul of one of the world's greatest filmmakers.

It is a key that directors today should use with care. Ray's films, with their gentle use of music, their delicacy of touch and their deftness of dialogue are as resonant now as they were decades ago. In a world run amuck with the excesses of moving pictures, Ray would have put on his most disapproving avuncular air. One that he displays often in this collection- whether it is admonishing young men who wear too-tight trousers (it is the fashion, he complains, but because of it young Bengalis can no longer sit cross-legged on the floor) or cutting poor Bosley Crowther, then The New York Times' unfortunate film critic, into tiny ribbons with his rudeness.

Can such a seemingly slight book succeed so spectacularly in reminding us how impoverished we are by the absence of such an intellect? It can. And it does.

INDIAN SCULPTURE By Grace Morley Foreword by Kapila Vatsyayan Roli Price: Rs 595 Pages: 144

The founder-director of Delhi's National Museum, Grace Morley wrote in her last years about the history of Indian sculpture, giving commentaries on the art of casting and carving and weaving the context around each artefact.

THE WILD ANIMALS OF INDIA, BURMA, MALAYA AND TIBET By R. Lydekker Natraj Price: Rs 450 Pages: 412

More than a century after its first print, naturalist Lydekker's exhaustive documentation comes out in a reprint. He labels the animals, defining their physical features and even giving mythological references and anecdotes.

BECAUSE I HAVE A VOICE: QUEER POLITICS IN INDIA Ed by Arvind Narrain and Gautam Bhan Yoda Press Price: Rs 295 Pages: 278

A collection of writings on alternative sexuality. On the one hand, it speaks of the queer movement in India, the legal problems and the question of sexual identity. On the other, it is a record of the personal journeys of gays, lesbians and hijras.