Jhalak is the Hindi term for a glimpse, a glance, a taste. That is exactly what this book is: the glance of Ilaria Magliocchetti Lombi on India, the outcome of the last of her many journeys through that manifold, complex land. Jhalak has no ambition to illustrate; it wants to take its readers on a journey made of apparitions, of places and daily life captured and handed over to the reader's eye, far from stereotypes. Here black and white, grain and contrast suggest sensations rather than recount facts, expressing almost tactilely the density of the places, their materiality, the clothes and the skin of the people. The introductory text by Vasco Brondi recounts another journey through India, one that, like hers, has nothing to do with the exotic and much to do with an inner resonance, something pre-existing that finally finds its place. The volume is a book that is not quite a book: with its unbound photo-posters held together by an elastic band it invites the reader to take an active part, the pictures shown only halfway, interacting with one another and suggesting new possible meanings before revealing themselves in full once the band is removed and the posters set free.