On The Racks

Anmol Arora
The Last Dance | Speaking Tiger

At the height of the Turkey-Kurdish conflict, an 11-year-old girl flees with her family to Delhi. She enrolls in Bharatnatyam class, but fed up of her guru’s traditional ways, leaves it to join a rival dance institute. There, a tragedy unfolds, forcing her to question her beliefs, life choices and presumptions. A gripping tale woven with nuance.

Koenraad Elst
Hindu Dharma & The Culture Wars | Rupa

In these essays, the right-wing aut­hor touches upon contemporary sociological and historical debates. He responds to the contentions of authors like Audrey Truschke, Ramachandra Guha and Devdutt Pattanaik, and writes about “the Modi government as an exponent of BJP secularism”, whether yoga is Hindu, the depiction of RSS in western media, white saviours and ‘academic bullies’.

Hoshang Merchant & Akshaya K. Rath
Gay Icons Of India | Pan Macmillan

A much-needed but feebly written book on gay icons in a country where homosexuality was only recently decriminalised. It chronicles celebrities (Vikram Seth, Rituparno Ghosh, Wendell Rodricks) as well as forgotten figures (the dancer Ram Gopal, b. 1910, and the writer Gita Thadani). The biographical notes are often whimsical and lack depth, but occasionally provide interesting insights into queer life in India.