The Indian Quarterly - July - September 2019

I dette nummeret

Our authors have taken quite divergent routes to the past in our Memory issue. In chapters from her forthcoming memoir, mercifully unsteeped in nostalgia, Shanta Gokhale revisits her childhood with tongue firmly in cheek. While Ruchir Joshi traces the evolution of his taste buds, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra reminisces about his teaching days and the absurdities of academia. Whereas Poonam Ganglani follows the arc of her grandmother’s journey from pre-Partition Sindh to Chennai, Vidyun Sabhaney writes about and illustrates the effects of Partition on an elderly Sikh gentleman pining for his “mother tongue”. Alok Sarin and Sanjeev Jain delve into the chequered and rather tragic history of Delhi’s rst mental asylum. Alisha Sett shows us the importance of documenting the unremarkable when it comes to embattled lands like Kashmir. Aditi Sriram considers the varying cities in the public memory of Pondicherry. And Anil Nauriya takes a serious look at how a nation remembers its heroes and villains.
Our essays section is diverse: Stephen Alter writes about his expedition to the Kanchenjunga. Ananya Vajpeyi compares and contrasts Istanbul, Delhi and Venice—all sites for cross-fertilisation. In his graphic essay, Bharath Murthy follows the most notable event of our recent history—the country’s general election. And Philippe Calia’s photographs of Indian museums reveal a wry eye. As always our fiction and poetry sections are stimulating reads.
With the monsoon here and long hours indoors ahead, good reading is all the more essential. This issue might be a good place to start.