Translating the Indian past: and other literary histories

Through his poems, criticism, translations, and edited books, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra has played a major role in defining Indian literature in English. This, his second essay collection, carries all the elegance, incisiveness, and erudition of his first, partial recall. Some of the essays here are on an unexamined piece by toru Dutt; an old appreciation of Amrita Sher-Gil by an obscure critic; the almost forgotten Srinivas rayaprol who corresponded with William Carlos Williams; Arun Kolkata's unknown early poems and his letters to his first love, Darshan chhabda; Eunice de Souza, admired for her sparseness and acerbic feminism; and the reclusive dickinsonian poet Reshma Aquil who loved anonymity. Throughout the book The collective presence of the ‘Bombay poets’ is unmistakable. What animated many of the essays is mehrotra’s hostility to contemporary critical amnesia and his affection for quiet, unflamboyant writing. His distinctive view of the past stitches these pieces into something like an argument: if we value a complex literary history of Indian writing, he says, the byways and shaded locations need to remain visible

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