Celebrating the city through Tara Books

CHENNAI: Tara Books, with 25 years of publishing history in Chennai, is not one to let the Madras Week pass without marking it in its own way. “This city has informed our practice and can be seen everywhere from our cultural space for the books and art (Book Building), to the books we publish. Book Building, like many other spaces, has sadly been closed.

This year, since so much of our lives has become enclosed and indoors, the vivacity of Chennai urban life is sorely missed. Tara Books is celebrating by looking at Madras through Kitchens, Cinema and Seas,” reads the release from the publication house. With this in mind, they’ve listed three books below that retain the flavours of Chennai, while also positioning its culture within the currents of global contexts.

THE 9 EMOTIONS OF INDIAN CINEMA HOARDINGS
The Erotic. The Valorous. The Furious. The Terror-stricken. The Pathetic. The Comic. The Disgusting. The Marvellous. The Peaceful. There is a spectrum of nine emotions that the superior work of art should evoke, explains the Natyashastra, one of the oldest surviving texts on stagecraft in the world. This book deconstructs each of these emotions and explodes them into their modern context: Indian cinema billboards. Film hoardings artist MP Dhakshna uses his colourful palette and bold imagery to invoke the visual history of a public art form that has all but disappeared from our streets.

TRAVELS THROUGH SOUTH INDIAN KITCHENS
For a traveller, a household kitchen in a strange land is usually a remote destination, but it is one that tells the ‘truth’ about food and everyday life,” says Nao Saito, architect and designer from Japan. A kitchen is usually thought of as a particular arrangement of space. But a space is not just a fixed physical structure — it is also fluid, shaped by the way in which people use it. Keeping this connection in mind, Nao Saito set out to explore a colourful variety of kitchens during her stay in Chennai. With her abiding interest in people and cookery, she finally came up with this richly perceptive travelogue, bringing together floor plans, sketches, photographs, impressions, recipes and conversation.

AN INDIAN BEACH
This beach, based on Besant Nagar beach is full of activity. By day, you can see fishermen bring in the catch, women selling fish, people and animals going about their business…but then, when the sun starts to set, the beach becomes a different place — now it’s time for everyone to play, talk, sit around, eat and have fun…until the fisherfolk go to sleep, and all the others go home.