Pickles From Home: The Worlds of A Bilingual by Sugata

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Available @ Axis Books Online 

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This book deals throughout with two linguistic worlds and the perennial gliding that takes place between them. Of the two, what is embedded and constant is the author's native world. It moves inside him and he compares it to the borderless travel of pickles. Pickles follow recipes handed down across generations in a family, and they are prepared in pristine and ritualistic environments. Thats the secret of their longevity and our palete often remembers and seeks the formulas we have been used to since our very early days. This is the book's grand metaphor. To whatever the author perceives in the wider world, the native view is like a homemade pickle that adds a tangy, sharp tickle. In the multi-course meal of experience, the pickle is the most unassuming, yet essential and defining accompaniment. Tasted along with a finely cooked dish, it is a raw delight. Moreover, for what are seemingly a collection of assorted essays, the binding of this book is like a pickle jar that holds them together. Among the plethora of books being written and published on India currently, this book represents an alternative narrative. It does not try to make sense of the country's diversity and complexity by travelling over a wide terrain and skimming the surface. Instead, it digs deep into one culture, or one particular cultural transaction, to assimilate and clarify the confounding mass. 

About the Author

Sugata Srinivasaraju is a journalist, writer and translator. He is currently a senior member on the editorial staff of Outlook, India's premier weekly newsmagazine. He had earlier worked for the Hindustan Times and the Deccan Herald and has contributed to the Irish Times. He has been a British Chevening Scholar and also an ILI Fellow of the Aspen Institute of Colorado, USA. Sugata's books include Phoenix and Four Other Mime Plays (2005), which won the Karnataka academy of letters' translation prize and Keeping Faith with the Mother Tongue - The Anxieties of a Local Culture (2008) both published by Navakarnataka Publications Pvt Ltd. He can be reached at sugataraju@gmail.com