February nonfiction: A selection of history and personal stories for a new month of reading

All information sourced from publishers.

Colombo: Port of Call, Ajay Kamalakaran

In the heyday of steamships and ocean travel in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, at a time when the sun did not set on the British Empire, Colombo was a major link between East and West. On the voyage from Europe to Australia, the city was the last port of call before ships made the long and humdrum voyage down under. It was also the primary port for reloading coal and supplies for ships heading to Japan and China.

Colombo: Port of Call is an attempt to look at Colombo and Sri Lanka through the stories of well-known international figures who visited the port. People like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Don Bradman, Anton Chekhov, Mark Twain and Mahatma Gandhi were among the many who visited Sri Lanka and left behind their impressions of the land.

Deftly narrated, this book is a social document recording the racial hierarchies and imperialist impressions of some of the visitors and a throwback to a nostalgic era of luxury hotels, high tea and much else.

Chapal Rani, the Last Queen of Bengal: The Life and Times of a Female Impersonator, Sandip Roy

Blending biography with vignettes, Chapal Rani traces the career of Bengali stage actor Chapal Bhaduri and his struggle for artistic identity in a changing world. As the last great female impersonator of Bengali theatre, Chapal Bhaduri – known as Chapal Rani – once held audiences spellbound in the jatra tradition, where men became goddesses and heroines. But when women finally took their place on stage, Chapal found himself exiled from the world he had ruled.

In this biography, Sandip Roy captures the rise and fall of a performer whose art was inseparable from his identity. Told in Chapal Rani’s own voice and interwoven with evocative fictional vignettes, Chapal Rani, the Last Queen of Bengal, brings to life Kolkata’s golden age of theatre and the resilience of a man who refused to disappear. Through decades of research and deeply personal interviews, Roy crafts a moving portrait of gender and belonging.

Faith and Fury: Covid Dispatches from India’s Hinterlands, Jyoti Yadav

On the morning of May 7, 2020, young journalist Jyoti Yadav set out to cover the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and the migrant exodus that began once the country went into lockdown. She travelled on the highway and passing through small towns and villages, she documented the migrant crisis and the breakdown of India’s healthcare infrastructure, battling frequent exhaustion, bouts of sickness, troll abuse, searing heat, abysmal sanitation, unreliable statistics and official resistance to truth-telling. Interviewing hundreds of people on the road, in the local administrations, staff in hospitals, crematoria, and families of victims, she did numerous stories which later received awards for fearless journalism. She set out again when the far deadlier Second Wave struck, collecting data which exposed the undercounting of deaths by the state governments.

Jyoti Yadav gives us a riveting chronicle of the unremitting tragedy that Covid was and the resilience that also sometimes accompanied it.

Stories the Fire Could Not Burn: A Personal Account of the Manipur Crisis 2023–25, Hoihnu Hauzel

On May 3, 2023, the north-eastern state of Manipur plunged into the gravest crisis it has faced since its formation. Decades of differences, aggravated by grievances over land and identity issues, between the Kuki-Zomi/Mizo tribes and the majority Meitei community, spilled over resulting in deadly clashes that have, till the writing of this book, left over 200 dead and over 60,000 displaced.

The book describes what happened in Manipur without filters, and from within the Kuki-Zomi/Mizo experience. Hauzel describes the night of terror when her parents’ home and those of others in the tribal enclave in Imphal she grew up in were burnt down along with the church the family went to. She also recounts – among many other such instances – the ruthless beheading of David Thiek, and the stripping and unbearable humiliation suffered by two women, which were seen in viral videos on screens everywhere and that brought national focus on the crisis. She weaves the history of tribal and Meitei antagonism, the formation of Manipur, and its unique geographic and ethnic make-up, with personal history.

Stories the Fire Could Not Burn is a compelling portrait of love for one’s homeland and the incredible pain of losing it forever. This is a book about a conflict, but it is also about geography, movement, and the difficult work of continuing life when the ground beneath you has shifted for good.

Whatever It Takes: Autism, Parenting and a Dream, Sangeetha Chakrapani

In Whatever It Takes, Sangeetha Chakrapani shares a courageous, intimate memoir of pregnancy, parenthood and relentless hope. After a disrupted IVF journey and a challenging pregnancy, Sangeetha is faced with the extraordinary task of raising quadruplets – two of whom have autism – while building a life that honours their individuality and potential. Through parenting lessons learnt along the way, steadfast advocacy and a deeply practical love, she manages to turn chaos into a carefully crafted care system.

This is not only a story of one family’s daily battles and small triumphs; it is a larger, transformative dream: to unlock independent living for individuals with autism by creating communities that support parents, caregivers and, most of all, the people they nurture.

Busy Women: Building Commerce and Culture in Middle India, Shinjini Kumar

Busy Women is an important work to understand contemporary India and what its fabled post-liberalisation growth has achieved beyond its bustling metros. Based on extensive travel across 30 cities of Middle India and interviews of over 300 women and also a few men, the book brings together the economic growth story with the poignant humour that runs through narratives of women fielding the two-buck question thrown at them all the time – “kya zaroorat hai?”

Through multiple meetings across multiple cities, Shinjini has captured the unique stories of these very “Middle India” women, witnessing how they have risen despite their archaic marriage and family structures behind the modern living rooms with Apple and Google television sets and Pinterest-inspired gardens.