Bibliofile

Master’s Pieces

When Lord Hastings was appointed Governor General of India in 1812, he decided to make a tour of the country he was to rule. He set out on a convoy of boats from Calcutta to Punjab in 1814-15, with a retinue of 10,000 people, on a voyage which lasted 14 months. To record it, he chose a local draughtsman from Barackpore, Sita Ram, to accompany him. At the end of the journey, Sita Ram had done 252 paintings, all of them stunning scenes, from the Taj to the Ganges in Bena­ras. These were kept in the British Library till sch­o­lar and historian J.P. Losty chanced upon them. Now, 60 of Sita Ram’s paintings are on display for the first time in Delhi’s beautifully ren­­ovated Bikaner House, and all the paintings are collected in a coffee table, Sita Ram: Picturesque Views of India (Roli Books).

Page By Chance

Diplomat and author Navtej Sarna has a lot to wind up bef­ore he assumes charge as the high commissioner in London. His new book, Second Thoughts, essays on books and writers, is on top. Sarna says many of the essays are results of chance happenings: the plug sockets in Istanbul airport lounge would not fit Sarna’s laptop, so he started reading Car­­dus on Cricket; a visit to a second-hand bookshop landed him two versions of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and a book on the Lady Chatterley trial; a three-day storm that kept him house-bound resulted in an analysis of the short story, particularly Hemingway’s The Three Day Blow.