Harini Nagendra writes about the street magicians of India and how these performers of jadoo fascinated Westerners, who copied their ‘tricks’ unashamedly. But the jadoogars, unlike some of their cobras, still had fangs. Growing up in India in the 1970s, I read widely, but was especially fascinated by books that featured animals, and magic. Enid […]
1920s Bangalore, a city of diversities
Harini Nagendra’s The Bangalore Detectives Club is set in 1920s colonial Bangalore, where Kaveri, a budding mathematician, stumbles upon a body at an elite event and is pulled into solving a crime, while exploring the city’s bungalows, brothels and bylanes. Harini tells Historia how hard it was to uncover the diverse voices of Indian residents, […]