Ragas and Reels

About the Book: 

The rhythmic imagery of Bashabi Fraser tells the intricate stories hidden in the portraits of Hermann Rodrigues. Eastern culture collides with Western culture to form a colourful depiction of today’s Scots.

Reviews:

In Ragas & Reels, Bashabi Fraser consolidates her reputation as one of the foremost poets of contemporary Scotland dealing with international themes and questions that arise in the full context of any national identity. PROFESSOR ALAN RIACH

An illustrated collection of poems with forms and rhyme schemes as diverse as the people she writes about. The Herald

They document the “New Scots”, among whom they number themselves, who have embraced tartan and whisky while bringing their own religious rituals and wedding traditions into our culture. The Herald

Anyone who shares the authors’ interest in multicultural Scotland will find much to delight and fascinate them here. The Herald

The intricate stories told in Rodrigues’ portraits are matched by the rhythm and imagery in Fraser’s poetry. This book offers an insight into the fusion of Eastern and Western cultures in today’s Scotland. By peppering her poems with both Scots words and Indian words, Fraser demonstrates the bi-cultural nature of many of today’s Scots. Scottish Review of Books

About the Author

BASHABI FRASER was born in West Bengal in India. Living a multicultural and colourful life, Bashabi divides her life between the two countries she loves most – India and Britain. After living in London, Bashabi returned to India to attend a convent boarding school on the Himalayas where she was threatened with expulsion after breaking all possible rules! Happily this threat never came to fruition and with a PhD in English Literature, she is now an associate lecturer in English Literature for the Open University and a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Centre for South Asian Studies at Edinburgh University. She travels widely working as a poet, attending councils and conferences around the world and has written for many publications, has two collections of poems in print and has been included in a number of anthologies. Bashabi has also written children’s stories and is writing a shadow puppet play and a book on the Bengal Partition and is a classical Indian dancer and choreographer. She now lives in Edinburgh with her husband and daughter.

HERMANN RODRIGUES (b. 1961, Jaipur) has been documenting South Asian life in Scotland for twenty-two years. He is the proprietor of the award-winning restaurant Suruchi, where he has hosted Bollywood stars.