Neelima, Author at Worth a Read

Shantaram and A Street Cat @ BYOB Party in September 2016 (Part 2)

In Part 1, the discussion involved Intellectual Property and plagiarism. The discussion also meandered to ghost writers. Usually autobiographies of celebrities have a ghost writer author. This may or may not be the case with the book Open by the tennis player Andre Agassi. Supriya loved the book and felt it read like a breezy love story.

“Whatever one’s public persona is, the personal insecurities are the same, irrespective of perception,” she said. Agassi was a tennis player whom everyone admired in his day. “Even if the book is ghost written, what does it matter?” Rajeev said. “Some stories have to be told.”

The book describes Agassi’s training as a child, his adolescence in a Florida tennis camp, his rebellious nature and raw talent. He talks about important matches, relationships, physical pain and true love.

Other sports persons’ biographies discussed were Sachin’s biography and an upcoming movie called M.S.Dhoni: The Untold Story.

There were quite a few biographies at this BYOB Party. Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts is no different. Chaitanya found this book riveting and , of course, it really needs no introduction. The novel spans the real events in the life of the author. Roberts is convicted to a nineteen year imprisonment in Australia but he escapes to Mumbai. There he begins a new life, makes new friends, works with the socially downtrodden, and eventually finds his way back into the criminal circuit. There is a saving grace at the end of the novel.

“Even if we remove the protagonist from the book, Mumbai would stand out as the strongest protagonist,” Chaitanya said. Undoubtedly. Shantaram is said to have done a lot for Mumbai tourism as well. Consider the Shantaram Walking tour.

Speaking of books about Mumbai, there are many others like Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City and City Adrift by Naresh Fernandes.

Piya got a light book in the true sense. “You can read it any difficult street junction; it takes just two hours.” The book called A Street cat named Bob by James Bowen tells his own tale. He is a recovering drug addict, homeless and penniless. He’s pretty much at the end of it all, when he meets Bob who turns things around for him. From that moment of nursing the sick cat to health, Bowen’s experiences as a busker change for the better.

Just as Shantaram depicts Mumbai, A Street Cat named Bob shows the London of the streets. No manicured gardens for you. The book has sold one million copies in the UK and is now being adapted into a motion picture.

Neha got a book called The Ditch Digger’s Daughters . A write-up in The Reader’s Digest caught her eye when she was young and Neha was pleased to finally get to read the book she so coveted. It did not disappoint. The story is set in East Harlem in the US and tells the story of a father with six daughters during the Great Depression. He is an ambitious man and wants all his daughters to become doctors. He goes to great length to achieve this, even cordoning them off from other kids who could be potential bad influences. Even when his daughters created a successful band, he frowned upon the frivolities of a short-term success. “What stood out for me was the Maslow’s hierarchy imprinted in the Father’s head. He chose the security of his daughters above all else,” Neha said.

“Do we have an Indian equivalent to this?” Ralph said.

The discussion then went around to the dearth of such stories in a country where there are only such stories. Everyone could identify with the Father’s struggle in the book. Some books like Kalam’s Wings of Fire and Karmayogi about E. Sreedharan came to mind, but there doesn’t seem to be a book that chronicles the true life of an utterly downtrodden person in popular memory. Websites like Upworthy and Humans of Mumbai/New York are alternatives.

And on a lighter note for individual stories, Goats of Bangladesh.

3-word Sentences and Intellectual Property @ BYOB Party in September 2016 (Part 1)

This time the BYOB Party was hosted with Sunny at his office in Bangalore. The spirit of the party was more in lines with autobiography, though we start with a different kind of reading material.

Ralph talked about Philosophy of Intellectual Property by Peter Drahos. The hard cover version is available at Amazon. This is a downloadable book and as such Ralph does not recommend downloading books as it is an overly strenuous exercise and should be avoided in light of practical difficulties. The sentences are very long, ’23 word sentences’, as he puts it and one must read slowly if one is to assimilate. The treatise as such is extremely topical and relevant, and the gist of it would be that as far as copyright goes, Drahos argues for instrumentalism as opposed to proprietorism.

Jaya broke it down for us. The idea of copyright itself is a relatively new idea, maybe a century old. The idea behind copyright, contrary to the belief prevalent right now, was to incentivize creation to enhance the greater good. What has happened now is that proprietorism or ownership is given leverage and the reason that copyright came into being in the first place has been forgotten.

She pointed out about the recent High Court ruling in India that enabled teachers and students to photocopy textbooks prescribed by an educational institution. Already libraries are doing this, but this ruling is a blow to academic publishers. The conversation meandered to citations, very different from plagiarism, and stayed on plagiarism cited in a First Lady aspirant’s speech and long passages plagiarized in a book called How Opal Mehta got Kissed. Another aspect of book-related ethics discussed was book packaging and ghost writing.

5 Indian Authors in English You Should Read

Neelima
September 16, 2016
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We all know our Vikram Seth and Amitav Ghosh, but there are some Indian authors who seem to have escaped the limelight in spite of being great writers. We hunted down a few authors on Worth a Read’s(WaR) recommendations list.

1) Kiran Nagarkar is surprisingly not read to the extent to which he should be. Nagarkar is an Indian novelist, drama and film critic and screenwriter. Plus he is bilingual- he writes in both Marathi and English. He has been awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, described as the ‘highest tribute Germany can pay to individuals’.

He has also been awarded India’s most prestigious literary award, the Sahitya Akademi Award for the novel Cuckold. This book set in the early sixteenth century in the Rajput kingdom of Mewar is a story about battles, feudalism and love.

A book of his that was featured on WaR recommendations was God’s Little Soldier, a saga sprawling from Mumbai to California. Nagarkar takes fundamentalism by the bones and creates a timely epic that leaves you breathless. Read a detailed review here: https://wortharead.pub/2015/04/01/book-of-the-month-gods-little-soldier-by-kiran-nagarkar/

Nagarkar dabbles in a variety of genres and there seems to be no topic he is unable to address. Take his humor driven Ravan and Eddie and The Extras.

2) Chetan Raj Shrestha is an architect. He lives in Sydney. His debut work of fiction, The King’s Harvest, won the Tata Literature Live! First Book Award 2013.

The King’s Harvest is a beautifully created book and the novellas in the book revolve around Sikkim. One story An Open-and-Shut Case is a thriller. A woman has hacked her husband into forty seven pieces and confesses at the station. It’s a pretty simple case to shut, but there is more to it than meets the eye. The King’s Harvest is a different kind of story about a man who journeys to visit his king to give him a share of his harvest. Shrestha’s writing is magical and literary. Read the review of the book here: https://wortharead.pub/2016/04/11/book-of-the-month-the-kings-harvest-by-chetan-raj-shreshtha/

3) Manu Joseph is becoming a fast favorite in reader circles in India. Former editor of OPEN magazine and columnist for The International New York Times and The Hindustan Times, this Chevening scholar from Kerala raced into the literary scene with his book Serious Men, a witty and comic take on a father-son adventure.

His second novel The Illicit Happiness of Other People is again a look at the father-son relationship. This time a father tries to understand why his son committed suicide. The book deals with many ideas, the thin line between clarity and sanity and the juxtaposition of homor and tragedy, being some of them. Read the exhaustive review here: https://wortharead.pub/2016/08/23/book-of-the-month-the-illicit-happiness-of-other-people-by-manu-joseph/

4) Upamanyu Chatterjee is an Indian Civil Servant from Bengal who weaves in his fiction and essays literary prose that is reminsiscent of authors like Kafka and Camus and a keen observation of present day India. Chatterjee has produced noteable short stories. His best selling work which catapulted him to the hall of fame was English, August, published in 1988. The book can evoke a variety of reactions- you could hate the protagonist, a drunk, stoned Westernized individual stuck in rural India or you could pity him. A detailed review here: https://wortharead.pub/2016/02/04/book-of-the-month-english-august-by-upamanyu-chatterjee/

In 2009, he was awarded Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in recognition of his ‘exemplary contribution to contemporary literature’. He has also been awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award for The Mammaries of the Welfare State. His novel Way To Go was shortlisted for The Hindu Best Fiction Award in 2010.

5) Perumal Murugan is a Tamil writer and scholar but some of his works are available in translation. Murugan was in the news last year as he was under attack for the publication of his novel Madhurobhagan, later translated as One Part Woman. An emotional Murugan promised not to wield his pen henceforth. In 2016, the Madras High Court quashed those charges and the writer has decided to write again.

The controversial story centers on the need to have children and how a couple go to great length to fulfill this need. They find solace in a deity but part of their solace lies in having consensual sex with another partner in order to conceive. The story touches on marriage, social taboos and sexual mores, and though it is set in a distant past, it tells a story still very relevant in India now.

Read the review here: https://wortharead.pub/2016/06/17/book-of-the-month-one-part-woman-by-perumal-murugan/

Drive, Revolution and Diplomacy @ BYOB Party in July 2016 (Part 6)

drive Rahul bought along the book by Daniel H.Pink called Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. This fairly recent book is a must read if you want to understand what motivates the person, the student, the child, the employee, etc. Motivation comes across as a very scientific concept. The kind of incentives that work for a twenty something employee would not work for an employee nearing her forties. The author explains how driving factors today include: autonomy, mastery, and a sense of purpose. He peppers the book with examples of companies who are trying newer models to motivate their staff. Rahul recommends this refreshing assessment of very relevant subject matter and told us about the Japanese concept called Ikigai or the reason for being.

the fourth industrial revolution

Ari talked about a brand new book called Fourth Industrial Revolution by Klaus Schwab, founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum. Schwab talks about the new automated future. The technological revolution of this day and age has led to more and more people losing their jobs to bots. Yet he believes that there is an answer to this conundrum- re-skilling. By re-skilling, human beings have a better chance. Comparisons were made to the computerization of railways and banks in India. At the time, people were threatened by the all pervasive influence of technology. Paranoia when it comes to change is quite common. There was some optimism in the group. While change can be threatening, there are simultaneous checks and balances happening in parallel.

Some, however, felt that scare mongering was valid. In India particularly, the percentage of people who could re-skill is very limited, so succeeding in a digital economy becomes suspect. While in many countries print is dying, in India it thrives, so the Fourth Industrial Revolution has a long way to go, geographically at least.

Aditya Sengupta spoke about a book that he picked up a long time ago called Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy, and the Bomb by Strobe Talbott. This non-fiction revolves around the diplomatic events that surrounded a very crucial time in India’s military history. In 1998, three nuclear devices exploded under the Thar Desert. This led to a US-India standoff. Strobe Talbott, the Deputy Secretary of State, and Jaswant Singh, the Ministry of External Affairs, engaged in serious talks for almost two years and this opened a new chapter in Indo-US relations ever since. Aditya found the Indian viewpoint told through the US viewpoint interesting. If you are interested in the Talbott-Singh dialogues, watch this: https://www.c-span.org/video/?195227-1/usindia-relations

With that we wrap up the BYOB Party episodes of July!

Violence, Classics and Nature @ BYOB Party in July 2016 (Part 5)

Anshuman got the renowned book Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. Unlike McCarthy’s previous books, this one explores violence with gusto. The story revolves around Kid who is part of a mercenary gang who scalps Indians and sells those scalps. The landscape where the gory masterpiece unfolds is the Texas-Mexico borderlands. McCarthy retains the wildness in the Wild West and removes the romanticism of the idea of the Wild West, probably created to reconcile with the goriness of the past..In fact Anshuman felt that it was a parody of the Wild West. McCarthy goes deep into the theme of violence and he pictures redemption through violence like no author can.

Jeeth brought along a classic historical fiction The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas, set in France, in the nineteenth century. The story deals with the classic theme of revenge going wrong. Edmund Dantes has been severely wronged and he longs for retribution. But at what cost? The book has spewed many adaptations on screen and off it.

Meera Iyer got the book Nature in the City by Harini Nagendra. Since we live in Bengaluru, this book is of great relevance to us. We’ve all heard about how beautiful the Garden City once was, but now it’s at the mercy of development and human ambition. Harini Nagendra talks about nature in Bengaluru, something that was once taken for granted but which is now being remembered in its absence. The author effortlessly straddles between history, ecology and sociology of Bengaluru from the seventh century to the present day. She writes about the changing landscape, including its sacred groves, lakes and home gardens. She takes a hitherto unknown look at nature in slums.

Although the author is optimistic about the role of civil society in saving the city, Meera is not completely convinced as the situation requires a radical change of mindset.

More books in Part 5.

Illness and Health @ BYOB Party in July 2016 (Part 4)

There were two contrasting books discussed one after the other. One was a book on cancer and one a book on how to lose weight the healthy way. The literature of the healthy and the sick seems to be quite a talking point.

theemperorof maladies Ajay talked about the Emperor of Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee; this book won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction. Many readers in the group had read this book as well and found that Mukherjee had done justice to a difficult subject. The book is a chronological account of treatment plans over the centuries and treats cancer as the protagonist, antagonist rather. His book features heroes like his patients, researchers and doctors. So much goes into a disease getting the required amount of funding; unfortunately a certain critical mass of patients is required for adequate spending required to formulate breakthrough treatments. The conversation went on to the ‘whys’ of cancer, including the recent potassium bromate in bread controversy. Mukherjee’s book is optimistic and opens up healthy dialogues about this otherwise stigmatized disease.

dont lose your mind lose your weight Nowadays there is a lot of awareness when it comes to staying healthy and keeping disease away. Megha spoke about a book called Don’t Lose Your Mind, Lose Your Weight by Rujuta Diwekar, expert nutritionist known for her contribution to Kareena Kapoor’s size-zero look in Hindi movie Tashan.

What makes Diwekar’s book so popular is that she encourages you to lose weight without giving up on food. That she is a nutritionist only adds more credibility to her book. Diwekar explodes many myths. For instance, if you eat too much low fat, you end up replacing it with sugar, which is only worse. There is nothing wrong with good old Indian ghee, in moderation, of course. Another observation is about the necessity of sleep and how adequate sleep actually helps to burn calories and lack of sleep can pile on the pounds.

“I don’t understand how such a simple thing as food is now being manipulated by the media. All we need are five to six simple home cooked meals a day. If we eat what our grandmothers did, we would be better off. In fact, we shouldn’t feed our children anything in a commercial. As simple as that,” Megha said. Some criticism of the book was shared, particularly the obsession with healthy food being only Indian.

Abhaya ended the health conversation with two observations:

“India is the second country on earth that spends the largest amount of money on fresh foods.

There is often nothing short of a stampede to buy buy fresh green veggies when they are unloaded in the market.”

This is good news if you live in India. The question is can eating healthy really stave off disease? There doesn’t seem to be a conclusive answer to this, no matter how much literature is out there on the subject.

More books in Part 4.

The Bipolar, the Surreal and the Light @ BYOB Party in July 2016 (Part 3)

Basav Biradar, a playwright in Bangalore, shared a book that we have heard a lot about at our BYOB Parties. Em and the Big Hoom is the story of Pinto’s parents and inadvertently a powerful gaze at mental illness. His mother ‘Em’ has bipolar disorder and his father is the ‘Big Hoom’. The book has been awarded the Hindu Literary Prize and recently Pinto was awarded the Windham-Campbell prize. The book was first published by a small press in India and what stands out about the book is the humor that runs throughout its pages. Basav read out a passage from the beginning of the book that revealed the affection that Em really had for the Hoom. Hearing the passage made me want to buy it instantly.

Archana talked about her love- hate relationship with Haruki Murakami. We’ve spoken about Murakami before as well and noticed that there are two kinds of people in the world- those who swear by Murakami and those who cannot understand him. Archana is neither- she loves the short stories he wrote in the book The Elephant Vanishes , yet she fails to understand his long and surreal novels. “I understand the things he talks about in his short stories like being trapped in a lift, but his novels are so very boring.”

The group came to the conclusion that Murakami fans had to be Gen Y; maybe books about lifts, cats, earthquakes and the strange subterranean inner life of Murakami characters were too outlandish for older people.

I was introduced to Murakami by a much older person, so I guess with Murakami no conclusions are adequate. Another comparison was made between Chetan Bhagat and Murakami’s writing style, both being very simple and easy to follow. But with Murakami, the story delves into the inner lives of the characters, and the language is repetitive in an almost hypnotic way. Chetan Bhagat writes simple sentences as he believes his readers do not need to be burdened; so I don’t think a comparison is warranted.

Sunny has a penchant for light reading and this time he brought along The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Everyone is familiar with the adventures of these two immortal characters. Most of us have read Twain as part of our primary school curriculum, though Twain’s books are devoured in equal measure by adults. Tom has everything that Huck Finn doesn’t and yet he envies the freedom of this son of a drunkard. Their adventures together are modeled on Twain’s own experiences. “There’s nothing existential about this book at all and there’s a bit of suspense to add to the thrill. I enjoyed the book as a child but rereading has been more enjoyable,” Sunny said.

Rereading a book that you had read as a child can be an enlightening experience. Archana talked about how she regretted rereading Doll’s House, a play by Ibsen. It isn’t her favorite play any longer. So the experience differs from person to person.

More books in Part 3.

Book Thieves and Potato Peels @ BYOB Party in July 2016 (Part 2)

In the BYOB Party in July 2016, there were two books on books and the solace these provided during the World War II period in Germany.

The Book Thief

Chetan talked about the well-received book The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. The story is set during the Holocaust and the focus is on a foster girl who steals what all us readers love most—books. She not only steals books but she shares them too. The book throws light on the ordinary lives of the people in Germany and how Nazism failed to swallow the humanity of some. In this context, Jaya mentioned a book called Fatherland, an alternate history book that deals with the question—what happened if Nazism never left the world?

guernseyliteraryandpotatopeelpiesociety Gayatri took just about a day and a half to finish The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a lovely book by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, probably the only famous book by an aunt-niece duo.

This is Mary Ann Shaffer’s only book; she was encouraged to write the book by those who who knew her at a book club. Though the book is remarkably ‘English’ as in British English in its tone, the authors are American. The story starts with an author who is struggling to write not her first but her second book. She receives a letter from Dawsey Adams from Guernsey, a town under German occupation. Her correspondence with a member of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society leaves her intrigued and asking for more. The letters hold the stories of the German occupation and the remarkable courage that individuals display in times of moral
ineptitude.

More books coming up in Part 3.

Internet Privacy and a Hacker’s Story @ BYOB Party in July 2016 (Part 1)

There have been nine BYOB Parties so far and many books have been discussed.

The BYOB Party in July this year started with the theme of privacy and the lack of it in this internet obsessed world. Piya Bose read The Circle by Dave Eggers , a book about a young woman called Mae Holland who works at a powerful internet company. The story explores the helplessness of individuals in a surveillance reality and parallels are made to the world’s most powerful internet companies today. The Circle is a hi-tech lavish campus with open plan office spaces, towering glass facilities, dorms, etc. But when Mae’s life takes a turn with a personal tragedy, she realizes that transparency could be a dangerous game to play. At The Circle, all employees wear cameras; their lives are transparent and for all to see. Trading her private life had an awful price for Mae. Piya liked the simple and engaging style in which the book was written and the moment she finished with the book, she rechecked her privacy settings on facebook.

“It’s not just famous people who are trolled,” she said. The book reminds you of 1984 by George Orwell, considering that it deals with problems of our times and looks into the future as well. Comparisons were made with a new book called The Voyeur’s Motel by Gay Talese which deals with the true life story of a motel owner who builds an observation platform to spy on the people who visit his motel.

Ghosts in the Wires Akshay also spoke on the same theme of privacy issues, this time from a hacker’s perspective. Ghost in the Wires by Kevin Mitnick and Steve Wozniak is an autobiography of the most wanted hacker on earth. So how does a curious child turn into a hacker? He breaks simple codes so that he can travel on buses for free and hacks into drive-through telecom systems. What starts as pranks leads him to juvenile home and prison.

He ends up bypassing security systems of organizations like Motorola, Sun Microsystems, etc but his interest is more benign and less malicious. Kevin Mitnick now works as a security expert. His unbelievable story led to major changes in how security measures were implemented. So we get two completely different perspectives of privacy and its evils.

More books in Part 2.

Secrets and Mumbai@BYOB Party in May,2016 (Part 6)

It was Sarika’s first BYOB Party and she bought along the book The Secret by Rhonda Byme, Australian TV writer and producer. “This book is nothing like the books you all sharing here,” Sarika said. “It’s a light read.”

And a bestseller at that. This slender self-help book which stresses on the ‘law of attractions’ and explains how thoughts are magnetic and the thoughts that we send out frame our life. Ideas like visualizing what you want to achieve your goals are also explained. However, there is no scientific basis for these ideas and this has led the book to controversy. Even then sales have been phenomenal and the book has been translated into 46 languages. Comparisons to Paulo Coelho’s Alchemist came up during conversation.

Abhaya visited Mumbai for the first time this year and was fascinated by the energetic city. He’s been looking for a book about Mumbai that bypasses Bollywood and the underworld. He came upon the City Series released by Aleph Book Company. There he found City Adrift by Naresh Fernandes. The book is more about how Mumbai evolved by the process of land reclamation from the sea and how the city has grown at such an alarming rate, so much so that there are more slum dwellers than dwellers in apartment complexes. Fernandes chalks out the history of these seven conjoined islands that turned into a cosmopolitan nightmare or heaven, whichever way you’d like to describe it. Some other writers who have featured this maximum city include Salman Rushdie, V.S.Naipaul and G.D.Roberts.

“It is a very readable book. And a good launchpad for picking up another more detailed book about Mumbai. I’m not sure which one would that be but I envy people like Naresh who live and work in the city they were born in, thus getting to know it intimately and having the skill to write about it in precise words.”

Another book Abhaya got was a Hindi novel by Manohar Shyam Joshi called Kuru Kuru Swaha. Manohar Shyam Joshi is a name well known to an earlier generation of Indians who watched soap operas like Hum Log, Buniyad and Kakkaji Kahin. He was also a prolific writer and even won a Sahitya Academy Award for one of his novels. But he is unlikely to be seen on the recommended books lists and the bestseller lists of Hindi literature.

“I loved Kuru Kuru Swaha from the page one. The book set in Mumbai is dedicated to Hazari Prasad Dwivedi (of Banbhatt ki Aatmkatha fame) and his effect is clear: the wit, the sarcasm, the innovative craft, daft use of multiple Hindi registers. And a story of a middle class struggling writer in Mumbai who is well read in both Indian and western literature. He carries off that mix beautifully. Between Manohar, Joshi Ji and M. S. Joshi(the characters in the book), this is a masterful exposition of internal gymnastics going on in the heads of a middle class intellectual. You need to have a tolerance for the absurd, and mental jumps from the Upanishads to Graham Green in the same sentence. The usage of as many as six Hindi dialects and other languages makes this book unique.”

What a fantastic spread of books! Make sure you have read parts 1-6 of the BYOB Party in May.

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