Pavan K. Varma’s prodigious output triggers an anecdote: on being presented with yet another volume of Edward Gibbon’s monumental Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, his patron, the Earl of Gloucester, is said to have remarked: “Another damn’d thick, square book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble, eh Mr Gibbon?” In point of fact, Varma does a lot more than merely “scribble”. And what is more, the volume in question is neither thick nor square. In fact, it is a handsome book of selections, in Nagari and Roman script, from Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas: The Greatest Ode to Lord Ram—along with English paraphrases. And for those who might want the paraphrases in Hindi, those, too, are provided in an appendix.
So, unexceptionable. But that is precisely why this reader is a trifle disappointed.…
