Making of the Colonial Visualization of Indian Floras and Faunas

Memories of Belonging: Images from the Colony and Beyond, by Malavika Karlekar, Niyogi Books, New Delhi, 2014, 228 pages, US$25, ISBN: 9789383098590. 

In book "Memories of Belonging: Images from the Colony and Beyond" distinguished academician and newspaper columnist MalavikaKarlekar presents a collection of colonial images and imaginations with their historical anecdotes. She brings back the memories of colonial India using a set of archival images – photographs, lithographs, drawings and picture postcards. This book contains the reproduction of several hand-coloured illustrations of floras and faunas commonly available during the colonial period (eighteenth to twentieth centuries), with narratives of time, space, and subjects. This book is systematically structured with four sections on a diverse range of topics, namely, (i) Introduction, (ii) Of Birds, Bungalows and Preoccupations, (iii) Points on a Compass, and (iv) Wanderings of a Pilgrim and Others. Each section contains several small chapters to imbibe light read to the quick readers. Most of these chapters printed here earlier appeared as a column in The Telegraph, a newspaper published from Kolkata.