Marrying Anita
A Quest for Love in the New India
by Anita Jain
Penguin, 2008
Here is a tedious book about an Indian-American woman's experiences with love and marriage in Manhattan and Delhi. Rather than a comedy of manners, this is a snide book about alienation in our times. Sneering asides about pre-liberalisation India don't help us get over the fact that this is less a book about the "new India" and more about a small fraction of urban India who now navigate the new social identities produced by cash and real estate, by privacy and an end to privation that was not afforded an earlier generation of the middle class. (Vijay Prashad)
Prostitution and Beyond:
An Analysis of Sex Work in India
by Rohini Sahni, V Kalyan Shankar, Hemant Apte (Eds)
Sage Publications, 2008
Topics as sexy, literally, as sex-work, are bound to spawn a slew of writings. Projects, programmes and theses on sex work and prostitution have mushroomed over the past couple of decades, when issues of HIV/AIDS, sexuality and sex work became visible. There is much-needed debate on these issues, but the present work, edited by Rohini Sahni et al, is a disappointing medley of uneven pieces. Some chapters, such that by Svati Shah on the "Politics of Red Light Visibility in Mumbai", and the "Scripting of Stage Actresses as 'Prostitutes' and 'Fallen Women'" by Lata Singh are undoubtedly thought provoking. The rest of the book, for the most part, is a hastily assembled collection of odds and ends. A pity, since this contentious issue would certainly benefit from incisive analysis and in-depth research. (Laxmi Murthy)