Scoop by Kuldip Nayar

There are some people who need no introduction, their work speaks for them, Kuldip Nayar, is one such person. Out of many of his books I recently read Scoop the tagline of the book mentions it as providing 'Inside stories from the partition to the Present' Present being till 1999. The book is a good read that gives insider info to events that unfolded post partition. As a young journalist who started his career with an Urdu Daily to serving as a press information officer to Gobind Ballabh Pant and Lal Bahadur Shastri to Emergency the book covers some anecdotes from all his journalistic years.

He while sharing some stories from his stint as a press information officer to Lal Bahadur Shastri also ensures that he sticks to fact telling rather than trying to spice up events as they unfolded or show off in anyway his proximity to the leader. What many in today's writers seem to have forgotten when chronicling their lives and times in important roles in the government.

The book extensively covers the post indepence era from the eyes of a journalist, From Nehruvian period to Shastri era (however short lived) to his scathing attack on the emergency era, also covering the then political upheavals in Bangladesh and Pakistan. 

The book is an interesting and candid collection of some important news events in India's post Independence history. Do read for a quick reckoner to India's contemporary history. 

Guest Review: The Time of My Life

The Time of My Life

Cecelia Ahern

Reviewed by Karishma Upadhyay

If life was a person, would it be a man or a woman? Grumpy or happy? Well, if your life is a Cecelia Ahern novel, then you’d be stuck with Life (yes, in caps) who is grumpy enough to kick your butt. And, he is a man.

Confused? Well, here’s the story of Lucy Silcheste– she is out of touch with her life; hates her job; has lost her gorgeous apartment; hates meeting her family and friends and would much rather stay at home with her cat. Oh, the love of her life has left her to go travelling and make his own tv show. In short, it’s all going South for Lucy.   

Like the proverbial Ostrich, Lucy refuses to deal with her life. She tells herself and others around her, little soothing lies. Lying on her carpet one day when she returns from work is an invitation from Life. She ignores the invitation but soon learns that Life just doesn’t give up on you. Tired of being ignored and mistreated, Life decides to stage an intervention.  When she finally does meet Life, he forced her to take charge and make changes. Together the duo go about setting Lucy’s life right.

Lucy starts off being an annoying, lying good-for-nothing but at some point during the book I found myself rooting for her. Towards the end, there is also a smidgen of chemistry between Lucy and Life. Book stores might stock The Time Of My Life in their chick lit section, but this more than just regular chick lit. Ahern takes a regular theme of reclaiming your life, adds a bit of magic and philosophy with huge dollops of wit to turn the book into a lot more.

(Karishma Upadhyay has been a film journalist for 15 years. When is she not chasing actors or digging for gossip, she is stuck to her books (or now Kindle))

Review: Noon

I recently read Aatish Taseer’s latest book called Noon. Let me be upfront and honest here and say that I haven’t read his previous works (yes I know you just went hawww!). 

After having heard a lot of good things about his books I was sure this would be a great read too. Well it just barely made it to my list of good books to read. That’s the review in a nutshell.

So Noon started off rather well but just mid way through the book I was left wondering what was it that the book set out to say in the first place? But then in the end it got better, but just slight. The book though written in the fiction genre is inspired heavily from some incidents from author’s own life.

The book is stark at some places and at places it is saddening too.  The protagonist of the book Rehan Tabassum  is brought up by single handedly by his lawyer mum and his grandmother. As he grows up with questions in his mind about his father he discovers that his dad is a big man across the border. He goes to spend some time with his father and his extended family.

Rehan comes across as an extremely astute and sensitive human being. But then Rehan’s story is very disjointed, jumping from one place to another and you can see Rehan is a very confused person who is oddly looking at everything from an outsider’s perspective, totally disconnected.

That is exactly my problem with the book. If Rehan was trying to make a point about his life, or the changes around him in India or Pakistan, I as a reader definitely missed the point.

So all in all if someone gifts this book to you do read it, if not you can skip.

Review: Does he know a mother's heart?

One book that made me cry while reading it? It would definitely be Arun Shourie’s ‘Does he know a mother’s heart? How suffering refutes religion’. The book actually made me question my belief in god. Yes the book is so well written with convincing arguments and proofs as to why he says what he does.

Aditya, Arun Shouries’s 35 year old son was declared as suffering from an injury to brain, Cerebral Palsy at birth, that prompted his wife and him to move back to India from US so that Adit could be brought up surrounded by the love of his grandparents, cousins and family. It deals with all the trials and tribulations they as a family have gone through in bringing up Adit. Their struggle to find a good school for Adit, their love for him taking them to various gurujis and ashrams to help him. It narrates many incidents that will tug any person’s heart. Every episode narrated is a lesson on love and patience that one can have as a parent. I have many a times as a mother been frustrated at the situation I find myself in and go into the feel sorry for myself mode, but this book turned out to be an eye opener and made me believe no struggle is big enough to handle and handle with love and tolerance.

What is clear is the father’s immense love for his child. The book written straight from the heart makes him question god’s ways. Why does god choose to give suffering to some? Why does he subject children to sufferings? What makes god make someone perfect while some grapple with imperfections? Aren’t we all equal in his eyes as is universally known? Isn’t his love for all the same? Then why are some discriminated…

Some serious questions the book throws up and with equally valid proven explanations. The book takes the reader through the holy texts of various religions to prove his point.

It is a book which I would highly recommend all to read. If philosophy and religion is something you like reading then this is a book worth picking up.

Hats off to Arun Shourie for coming up with a book which is straight from the heart. A book that has no qualms in refuting some well known religious texts. Well researched and well argued. 

Review: Stealing Karma

I recently read Aneesha Capur’s debut novel Stealing Karma which was a very beautiful mother-daughter story.  Mira and Shanti’s relationship is beautifully portrayed by the author and is a book that will touch you and leave you with tears in your eyes by the time the book ends.

Mira who has lived in India and studied in a convent all her life is married off to Prashant who resides in Africa. Mira after moving to Nairobi knows no life beyond her bungalow and she is happy with her life, with her daughter and Prashant. Life is to change for them when Prashant dies due to a massive attack. Mira finds herself alone but at the same time finds in Wairimu, their native housekeeper,  a friend and confidante. When her friends suggest that she move back to India since Africa would not be a safe destination for them to live alone due to the unrest and resentment that the natives feel towards the Indians settled there, she refuses choosing to continue living in Africa.  Left with no income and a young child to support Mira withdraws into herself. Wairimu is left with no option but take charge of the house and of Shanti. The child sees her mother struggling to come to terms with her grief, she sees her mother go through relationships with other men, her drinking and smoking bouts. While Mira searches for memories from pasts that are not quite hers, Shanti struggles to make sense of her mother’s seeming indifference as she rapidly approaches adulthood. Though at times you feel annoyed wiith Mira but at instances like when she celebrates Shanti’s birthday at her friend’s house the reader realizes how deep her love is for Shanti. With her own burdens to bear she never can truly express it to her daughter.

The story is easy paced, showing various dimensions of human behavior under extreme circumstances and how they struggle to come to terms with it. A nice narrative keeps you engrossed in Mira and Shanti’s lives. Impressive debut by the author. Look forward to many more!

About the Author:

Aneesha Capur has an MFA from Warren Wilson College and an MBA from Wharton. She has attended the Vermont Studio Center, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sqaw Valley Community of Writers Fiction Program, the Iowa Writers’ Summer Workshop and the Fine Arts Work Center. Her professional career spans private, nonprofit and academic sectors. Aneesha was born in India and spent most of her childhood in Africa. She now lives in San Francisco.

Review: Mice in Men

Mice in Men by Anirban Bose is a book of short stories that I read recently. Anirban is the bestselling author of Bombay Rains, Bombay Girls. The stories range from the unexpected to the bizarre said the blurb. The latter is true for sure!

The stories are of ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. Mice in Men is a story of a man who saves a mouse. How this simple act helps this insecure, ordinary man to rise above his afflictions and his love. The Magic of Medicine is of a young doctor who sees his patient, an illegal immigrant fighting for his life. Yet, as death slowly but surely beats him down, the doctor awakens to the strange beauty of his profession. Some interesting ones are The Right Way to Eat a Mango, The New Job, The World’s Greatest Oiban …

The writer being a doctor by profession has managed to use his knowledge generously as most of the stories have a medical backdrop. The writer does manage to detail every single story getting the reader totally involved in the lives of each of the character.

While some of the stories are heartwarming some are absolutely bizarre making one skip to the next story. I found most of the stories lacking. They either were too descriptive or too mundane and obvious. Short stories have to be crisp and gripping from the start however it was not the case with this book.

About the Author:

A doctor by profession, Anirban Bose is the author of the bestselling book Bombay Rains, Bombay Girls that was longlisted for Indiaplaza Golden Quill Award. Other than writing he is passionate about guitars, cricket and music. He lives with his wife and children in Pittsford, USA and is currently assistant professor of medicine and nephrology at the University of Rochester.

Review: Tonight, This Savage Rite

One approaches this book with reverence.

Firstly, it’s from the high priestess Kamala Das, and the devilish genuis Pritish Nandy himself. Secondly, it’s a revisitation of an old book, packaged this time in contemporary design, with Manu Parekh providing abstract accompaniments. And lastly, it’s about love – and what could be more bittersweet than love, revisited.

Love poetry, like great literature, is timeless. The pain, the ecstasy, the dread, the tremble, the anticipation, the bliss, are all feelings which have no boundaries of time or place. But what is different about love in Kamala Das’ world is its despair and its cynicism. Either she has got a lot, or too little. And love, for her, is invariably stolen, and never obtained; got, but very soon, lost. As she asks in “The Stone Age” - “Ask me why life is short and love is /Shorter still, ask me what is bliss and what its price.”

Time and again, she comes as being diminished in life and love (“Cowering/ Beneath your monstrous ego I ate the magic loaf and/ Became a dwarf.”), but is almost as much a culprit of faithlessness (“As the convict studies/ His prison’s geography/ I study the trappings / Of your body, dear love/ For I must someday find/ An escape from its snare”) as much as she searches for faith in love.

The leitmotif of love is the physicality and the illicitness of love in Kamala’s world. As she says “Our hands were timid in love-play, moving/ On the other’s skin, they knew they were but/ Humble caretakers, for a short while allowed/ To make their homes on another’s lot.” She knows she is forever “seeking (the) past in the future”.

She hurts inside, even as she gives pain (“... love’s battles are often strange,/ If the thrusts were mine, the wounds were also mine.”), until her sepulchral request not to have her bones and meat thrown away, but to let people tell by their smell “What life was worth/ On this earth/ What love was worth/ In the end.”.

Pritish Nandy, on the other hand, surrenders. He loves the only way it is possible: by giving in. He doesn’t resist, he doesn’t question. He harnesses Nature on his behalf – rain, the rivers, night – and seeks, and gets, and loses love.

Often – maybe, more often than not – there is lovemaking before love, as also lovemaking to revive love (“This passion alone can / resurrect our love.”)

Imbued in these verses is the sense of inevitable loss of love - and its loneliness. Alas, leaving is easy; forgetting, not (“Forgetting takes much too long: the secret swallows of / my dreams wing towards the morningstar as my / words rain over you, stroking you into silence.”).

Pritish paints love in metaphysical strokes. Unlike Kamala, who finds pain in her body, in her blood, in almost visceral grief, when she loses, Pritish turns to rain, flowers, the sea, to seek parallels. He is gentle in judgement, more introspective, and knows there is life beyond –often with the same person. In one of his most evocative poems he says:

“Goodbye is not always a great exit line. There

are simpler ways of saying you are wrong. The

sign on the window says you are lonely. The void

in my heart says you are gone. There is still

someplace unknown where we can drift and watch

the springtime grow. In silent praise of the love

we as strangers today shall recognize and know. “

In a world where nothing is certain, love, with all its uncertainties, is the only thing which can help us live. Both Kamala and Pritish know it, and live it, and write about it, in tender, often discomforting, candour. Accompanying these poems, Manu Parekh’s drawings are mysterious and often like grosteque smudges – but then, often, isn’t love also just that?

(This book is reviewed by Sunil Bhandari.Sunil is a finance man in a corporate job, who converts balance sheets into pieces of poetic fancies! Sunil loves films, writes to live, lives to write.He blogs at http://2-minute-film-review.blogspot.com.)

Review: Lost and Found

Lost and Found by CP Surendran is a kind of a book that can actually turn out to be bollywood blockbuster. It has all the right ingredients to make it an out and out masala movie. A struggling actor, a terrorist from Pakistan who is in Bombay to create havoc, a whacky lady out to seek revenge from a man who she believes raped her sixteen years back and the man himself meet one fateful night and what is revealed is something that no one is prepared for!

The story begins with Lakshmi who after a drunken night kidnaps Placid Hari, a journalist, who she believes is the man who raped her sixteen years back.  The morning after things start going awry as events unfold they find themselves taken hostage in a terrorist siege of Bombay. Along with them is a teenage fledgling actor Nirmal. The terrorist, Salim, who is trained in Pakistan to create havoc in the city, is prepared to kill and die for the cause he believes in.  What he is not prepared for is the story that unfolds and how the hostages are connected to him. He is deprived of the cause he came to lay down his life for. Nothing is what it seems not just for Salim but all the people involved in the hostage drama.   

 It does end up being a little confused when some characters are briefly brought into the plot.  At times during the story the sarcasm seemed a bit forced. 

The book is funny in parts, witty and sarcastic throughout.  Over the top characters, full on drama makes it interesting.

A good read.

About the Author:

C.P.Surendran is a poet and a novelist. His poetry collections include Gemini II, Posthumous Poems, Canaries on the Moon, and Portraits of the Space We Occupy. He is also the author of the novel, An Iron Harvest.

Surendran is a journalist and columnist as well. His popular columns include ‘Low Life’, ‘Bitch’, ‘Cat Scan’ and ‘Brief Grief’. Currently, he is a senior editor with The Times of India and is based in Delhi.

Review: The F-Word

In her book, The F-Word Mita Kapur takes the reader through an amazing culinary journey, which is a treat for any food lover! The book should be compulsory reading for all foodies worldwide.

This is the story of a woman who loves her food and who also loves to feed! The book is a madcap account of a working woman who spends all day -and sometimes, most of the night juggling family, friends and food. Along the way she introduces the reader to her family and friends and every recipe is preceded by an equally interesting episode. The book takes the reader on an exciting food trip from Lucknow to Thailand, from Rajasthan to Europe. It has an interesting mix of recipes, while some are her experimentations in the kitchen the rest are, from India and around the world. The F-Word is packed with some very interesting recipes to suit every taste, however conservative or weird.

The author’s narrative is so appealing that the reader can almost savour the taste of the food she is cooking up! So whether it is the kebabs & chats to her interesting soup & salad recipes or her awesome desserts they will all leave you hungering for more!

This book for sure comes from the author’s heart no wonder she has managed to do full justice to it! She makes the entire experience of cooking food so effortless and the experience of enjoying food delectable.

The F-word manages to take the reader into a lovely, fun, interesting world of food.

A book for people who live to eat and absolutely not for those who eat to live!

About the Author:

Mita Kapur runs Siyahi, a literary agency based in Jaipur, which also conceptualizes and directs literary events. She writes for various newspapers and magazines on subjects ranging from women’s rights to lifestyle and food.

Review: Inside Central Asia

Inside Central Asia is a political and cultural history of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Iran. Besides maybe Turkey and Iran, the other countries have for years have been clubbed as one single entity in our psyche and not much has been written about them. Dilip Hiro through this book tries to bridge that gap.

These former Soviet republics of Central Asia comprise a sprawling, politically pivotal and richly cultured area. Yet they remain poorly represented in libraries and mainstream media. They have experienced tremendous socio-political change since their inception. But despite the growth of oil wealth, the arrival of western tourists, and the competition for influence by the US, China and Russia, the spirit of Central Asia has remained untouched at its core.

Not many have paid attention to the various ethnic groups that exist and who have now formed separate nation states post the collapse of the Soviet Empire. The author traces the history of these ethnic groups like the Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz and Turks etc over the past 2000 years. The link that Central Asian countries share with the Indian subcontinent goes back almost five centuries. The Mughal Empire was founded in India in 1526 by Zahir Uddin Mohammed Babur. He was born in Andijan (the 4^th largest city in present day Uzbekistan), he then went on to become the ruler of Fergana, and seized and lost Samarkand twice. Samarkand is today a thriving Uzbek metropolis. The author explains how India, because of its shared history, is at an advantage vis-a-vis other countries to build strong, mutually beneficial trade and Industrial links with these countries.

The author traces the history of these countries in the last thirty years. He also analyses the present-day politics, economics and peoples of Central Asia and its neighbouring areas in an international context. In the 70 years of the Soviet rule atheism was the central philosophy but post Independence the people of these countries are re-discovering their religion. Most of these countries are Islamist and in the near past have been battling with the rise of Islamic fundamentalists in their country.

Considering that not many books on these countries have been attempted before this book makes for an insightful reading for someone who is interested in Central Asian history. The author through this book proves his in-depth knowledge and understanding of these Central Asian countries

About the Author:

Dilip Hiro is the author of more than thirty books, including Blood of the Earth and War without End. He contributes regularly to the New York Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post and the Observer, and is a commentator for the BBC and CNN.

Review : The Sacred Grove

‘The Sacred Grove’ by Daman Singh is 13 year old Ashwin’s story. Ashwin is a typical teenager who loves cricket and hates being told what is right or wrong, especially by his parents! The book makes one relive one’s own confusing teenage years. The book will make you laugh at times especially when he describes his relationship with his parents, his aunt, his school teachers and his school. He is a rebellious but endearing child. The book will also manage to bring you close to tears, when Ashwin battles with his emotions when his quiet town is ravaged by communal riots.

Ashwin is the son of the district collector in a small town in India who has nothing to worry about in life. He goes to one of the best school in town, lives in a sprawling government house with a staff that is always at his beck and call. He forms a close bond with his driver Rafiq, who is also his cricket coach. Life is ideal in a peaceful town where the only thing that matters for him is his friends and his cricket.

But it is only a matter of time when things change in the town and change his perspective of life forever. When his history teacher, Sadhana Ma’m, gives the class a project on researching a place of historic importance in the town little does he know that the place he chooses will change his life forever. So he and his friend stumble upon the Sacred Grove and decide to do their project on that. As soon as they start researching they keep discovering new facts about the place. In India, sacred groves are scattered all over the country, some NGOs work with local villagers to protect such groves. Each grove is associated with a presiding deity, and the grove is referred to by different names in different parts of India. They are maintained by local communities with hunting and logging strictly prohibited within these patches. Most of these sacred deities are associated with local Hindu gods.

The grove is also the reason for the simmering tension between two religious groups the Hindus, who find the Grove sacred and the Muslims, who run a school in that area. Soon things go out of hand between the two groups and riots erupt in the peaceful town. Ashwin is deeply shaken when the very people close to him are now fighting amongst themselves. In an effort to take charge of his own life he unwittingly puts his own life in danger.

Neatly crafted and very well written book. The book manages to capture Ashwin’s teenage angst, his fears, his dreams, and his thoughts very credibly. The author has handled the events that unfold in a very sensitive way without blaming or pointing a finger at anyone.

It is a book which you must read for the sheer nostalgia of your growing up years.

About the Author:

Daman Singh graduated in Mathematics from St. Stephen’s College,Delhi, in 1984.She went to the Institute of Rural Management, Anand, for further studies and worked in the field of rural development for twenty years.

Her first novel Nine by Nine was published by HarperCollins India in 2008.She lives in Delhi with her husband, teenage son and dog.