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| CURRENT ISSUE APRIL 16, 2007 |
| SOCIETY & THE ARTS: BOOKS |
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The Lost Sheen | ||||||||||||||||
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| By Dilip Bobb | ||||||||||||||||
Arvind Mehrotra, a well-known poet and writer, has put together this anthology which attempts to recapture some of the glory days and succeeds, but only in part. The roll call of writers could not be more illustrious, from Rudyard Kipling (newspaper reporter for The Pioneer) to Nehru, Hsuan Tsang, Ghalib, Mark Twain, Harivansh Rai Bachchan, Nayantara Sehgal, Saeed Jaffrey, Ved Mehta, Pankaj Mishra, Alan Sealey and others who either lived in the city or visited it. The drawback is that in many of the pieces the city itself is only the backdrop for a wider story: Kipling, for instance, only talks about his job at The Pioneer, Nehru describes the family home in brief but the rest of the extract from his autobiography has no local relevance. Ghalib said that hell was a better place. Only a few are nostalgic about utopian childhoods but this book is pretty much a tribute to a city that no longer exists. Only those who have an Allahabad connection may find it worth the read but others will find the impressive list of writers somewhat misleading.
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THE LAST BUNGALOW: WRITINGS ON ALLAHABAD | |
| CURRENT ISSUE APRIL 16, 2007 | |
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| IN THIS ISSUE | |
| COVER STORY | |
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| Living The Dream Her Own Space A Taste Of Freedom Daring To Be Different Vocation Blues Will & Grace |
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