Written For Ever: The best of Civil Lines
edited by Rukun Advani
Ravi Dayal, 2009
What is one thing Suketu Mehta, Amitav Ghosh, Amitava Kumar, Ruchir Joshi and Allan Sealy have in common, besides falling under that catchall term 'Indian writing in English'? They all appeared, many of them quite early in their writing careers, in the now-defunct literary journal Civil Lines: New writing from India, which lived a short but vibrant life between 1994 and 2001. Editor Rukun Advani, while putting together the anthology, unabashedly reveals the fine art of selection, "If, for example, I had taken an irrational dislike to a piece, I kept that piece out for no fault of the author's. Some pieces I kept out for reasons I can't myself fathom." Either way, it is a treat to be able to read early works – such as Amitava Kumar's "Indian Restaurant", Allan Sealy's "Ethical Cowboys", Khushwant Singh's "Village in the Desert" and Ruchir Joshi's "My Father's Tongue" – all in the same volume.
Besides the splendid pieces from the now-out-of-print journal (back issues are known to have been filched by wily guests while their host momentarily turned away to refill their drink), the editor's introduction, "Civility, Civilization, and Chivas Regal" is a gem. Advani is truly droll as he paints an intimate portrait of the "mummy" of Civil Lines, Professor Dharma Kumar, that "perfect blend of vigour, charm, and sarcasm". This "affluent Nehruvian intellectual", as Advani calls her, having plied him with a barrel of scotch, let him loose to contact "writerly people", asking them to "send us anything fresh they happened to be writing, that connected in some loosely literary or imaginative way with India and that hadn't already been published". The result is a superb set of writings that have now made their way to this collector's item. (Laxmi Murthy)
Mumbai Post-26/11: An alternate perspective
edited by Ram Puniyani & Shabnam Hashmi
Sage, 2010