Book: Pickles from Home: The Worlds of a Bilingual

Author: Sugata Srinivasraju

Recommended by: Rama Lakshmi, India correspondent

The collection of essays explores the cultural, creative and political tensions that exist among Indians today as they negotiate two worlds – between speaking their regional, “mother tongue” language and English; between living the local and aspiring to be global and cosmopolitan. Most Indians live in a constant mode of translation. But the problem of cultural loss arises, the author says, when Indians arrange the languages in a hierarchy – English first, mother-tongue second.