Bibliofile

This Girl Is Late

So, when is The Suitable Girl coming out? This question has chased Vikram Seth forever. At a book reading of his newly-illustrated Beastly Tales From Here and There in Delhi, a reader asked him this question and he promised jokingly it would be bigger than the 1,349-page The Suitable Boy. In a literary festival in Bhutan when fans asked him this he was evasive, saying he was working on it. But now his publishers are asking him this, or else if he could ret­urn the advance of $1.7 million ple­ase. Seth’s agent has said talks are on. Penguin, which has Hamish Hamil­ton (who gave Seth the money) under it now, would only say that it has nothing to do with its merger with Random House.

Gone Too Soon

The sudden death of Sharmila Rege comes as a shock to all whom she touched as a teacher, as a Dalit activist and as a writer (her book Against the Madness of Manu was reviewed in these pages recently). She was just 48 and had a brief battle with colon cancer. Her fight for women against upper caste patriarchy and her study of Ambedkar’s interventions for India’s women’s movement broke new ground. She published four books, but her true legacy lies in the students to whom she introduced Ambedkar and Dalit women’s narratives while teaching in Pune University since 1991. Rest in peace, Sharmila Rege.

Stands Righted

A few book details in last week’s review of Sattriya: Classical Dance of Assam, Edited by Sunil Kothari, with photographs by Avinash Pasricha, were printed wrong inadvertently. Here are the correct details. It’s published by The Marg Foundation, costs Rs 2,800 and has 148 pages.