The Indian Cat: Stories, Paintings, Poetry, and Proverbs is a most unusual book.
In it, renowned art historian B. N. Goswamy illustrates all the varied ways in which cats have made themselves a home in our
art, literature, and speech, as well as in our hearts. In the Jataka Tales, cats turn up as characters whose clever tricks or pretensions
are generally foiled by the Bodhisattva. In Vaishnava bhakti, when a devotee approaches God in utter surrender they follow
marjara-nyaya—the act of a kitten who passively submits to its mother as it is picked up by the scruff of its neck. The Hadith
speaks of the Prophet who once chose to cut off the sleeve of his robe when he had to stand up and go pray rather than disturb
his pet cat, Muezza, who was sleeping on it. In the Mahabharata, Duryodhana repeatedly charges the noble Yudhishthira with
observing the marjara-vrata, ‘cat-like observance’, denoting hypocrisy. Great poets Ike lMir and Ghalib are known to have loved
their cats to distraction, the poet Jibanananda Das saw himself in a cat that went here and there, always following the sun, and
Vikram Seth saw the cat as being full of mischief and cleverness but no evil. All in all, on a daily basis, as everyone knows, the
feline in India is often addressed with affection.
The Indian Cat first presents a delightful picture of the cat in our written and oral literatures. This is followed by a catalogue of
paintings, each showcasing a different aspect of the place accorded to cats in our society. Then there is a selection of poetry about
the cat, much of which is translated from a wide swathe of languages including Urdu, Hindi, Persian, and Bengali. The final
section presents proverbs, sayings, and idioms on the animal. An enchanting and gorgeously designed book, The Indian Cat will
appeal to a wide array of readers.