Manjula Narayan, Editor, Books, picks her favourite reads of 2021

Martyn Rix’s work of great erudition that is also a visual treat takes you into the world of East India Company surgeons, who were enthusiastic botanists, and the Indian artists who painted the plants they collected

In earlier years, I always promised myself that I’d keep copious notes of every book I read. It never happened. However, tracking my reading has become easier since I began hosting the weekly Books & Authors podcast on www.htsmartcast.com. The 49 episodes I did this year featured conversations with authors whose work revealed fresh insights on everything from life along the banks of the Brahmaputra to the lives of Zohra Sehgal and Guru Dutt.

Martyn Rix’s book takes the reader into the world of East India Company surgeons and their Indian artists (HT Team)

But if I have to choose one favourite it would be Indian Botanical Art; An Illustrated History by Martyn Rix. A work of great erudition that is also a visual treat, it takes you into the world of East India Company surgeons, who were enthusiastic botanists, and the Indian artists who painted the plants they collected. I flip through this book often for inspiration - many of the exquisite paintings in it are in the collection of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew - and to be calmed by the work of 18th century artists like Bhawani Das and Ram Das. My favourite is Zain al Din’s painting of the cardinal vine on page 75. Indian Botanical Art has also introduced me to the work of contemporary Indian artists working in the genre like Nirupa Rao, Damodar Lal Gurjar and Jaggu Prasad, for which I am grateful.

Manjula Narayan (Courtesy Manjula Narayan)

As usual, my list of favourite reads is heavy on non-fiction. I tend to read to improve my understanding of the world and of history and sometimes forget that fiction does that too. I enjoyed The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction edited by Tarun Saint and Amy Stanley’s Stranger in the Shogun’s City, which isn’t fiction but a recreation of the life of a woman in Edo period Japan. But it was Ruth Vanita’s translation of Mahadevi Varma’s wonderful My Family that has my heart. Elon Musk can have his space travel; someone please invent an inter-species communication device, a Google Translate for animals. I wish I could read My Family to my dogs. I’m sure they’d love this book as much as I did. I’d have to read it to them in the original Hindi though, being as they are very pure northern desi hounds. It isn’t just how lovely these stories are and how invisible the translator is, the introduction and the foot notes also thrilled my Trivial Pursuit aficionado heart.

I could write a book on the books I’ve read this year and the things I’ve learnt from them about the world, about myself. That’s a project for 2022 perhaps.