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Short Book Review: Hindi Nationalism by Alok Rai

SBR: Hindi Nationalism by Alok Rai is an important book to understand the history of Hindustani, Hindi and Urdu in India and also the politics around languages that still consumes a significant portion of our political, administrative and intellectual resources. Unfortunately, the book’s language is far too academic. The author can’t be faulted for it, however, because he hadn’t set out on writing a popular book. It was supposed to be scholarly. Another book of similar character targeted at lay people would be wonderful to have.

To read or not to read: Yes, if academic jargon and language don’t daunt you.

Closed Doors and Serial Killers @ BYOB Party in September 2016 (Part 5)

Now for some non-fiction.

behind-closed-door Pujan got a non-fiction book called WWII Behind Closed Doors by Laurence Rees. For a war buff, this book is a treasure trove as the author delves into classified data with panache. The choices made by leaders like Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin are unraveled. While the war was being fought and soldiers world over sacrificed their lives, the political games leaders played catered to a very different reality. Roosevelt, for instance, was not overly fond of the idea of the British Empire and minced no words with Stalin about this. To understand more about those troubled times, check this out: http://documentaryheaven.com/world-war-ii-behind-closed-doors/

The conversation veered to the whole idea of empire and whether the British leaving India twenty years later, had Churchill stayed on, would have made any difference. The book Farthest Field by Raghu Karnad was mentioned. The Indian army was the largest volunteer army that fought the World War and now their service is an embarrassing memory for both sides.

Sankharshan was immersed deep in the work in progress of a friend that revolves around the Indian constitution. He came across some interesting discoveries. It’s easier to get books about Ambedkar the man than writings by him. The conversation moved to politics in the US and the impressive political TV series Veep.

serial-killers Sunny, the host of the party, got a book called World Famous Serial Killers by Colin Wilson and Damon Wilson that delves into the psychology of serial killers. The book has been written by two police officers who present various case studies in an objective manner. Sunny spoke about many horrific cases of unsuspecting murderers, including a child murderer. The descriptions were scintillating for Criminal Minds fans but disturbing for others. A brilliant book Lolita was mentioned. The strange thing about the book is that the writer Nabokov’s first person narrative is so bewitching that the reader so easily slips on the shoes of the wrong doer and forgets the criminality of the protagonist.

On that dark note, the party came to an end.

Luck and Objectivism @ BYOB Party in September 2016 (Part 4)

At the BYOB Party in September, we dealt with autobiography and sci-fi. Now for a bit of self-help and fiction.

13-steps-to-bloody-good-luck Rajeev Moothedath is an HR professional and author of the book Straight from the Heart. The book he talked about is Ashwin Sanghi’s first non-fiction book 13 Steps to Bloody Good Luck. Sanghi believes that there is one percent of what is called bloody luck and it turns out that luck is created by other factors like recognition and response. Sanghi has a business background himself and probably did not anticipate being a bestseller author in India. His book is a collection of anecdotes and some simple guidelines in the line of self-help.

Pramit Pratim Ghosh who holds the distinction of having been president of Toastmaster’s International had a tough time choosing between two books that he wanted to talk about. He finally settled on Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

atlas-shrugged The book was Ayn Rand’s last book and her longest. This story is set in the US in an unspecified future time. The protagonist Danny Taggart is the Operating VP of a railway company. Rearden is a steel magnate and John Galt, Taggart’s love interest and the hero of the book.

“There are two kinds of people- the capable ones or the prime movers and those who are not capable but get ahead by treading on other’s toes,” Pratim said. In the story, corruption prevents any real progress. When skillful people disappear one by one, Danny Taggart goes in search of them only to find herself in a utopia where creativity is rewarded and not shunned. This book expands on Ayn Rand’s own philosophy of Objectivism where Rand promotes selfishness as a virtue and calls altruism evil. If everyone works towards their own benefit, the world would be a happier place. Her work is a Bible for Capitalists. To understand her philosophy, a visit to this link would be a good idea: https://www.aynrand.org/ideas/overview.

the-light-of-his-clan Jaya got a book called The Light of his Clan by a contemporary author Chetan Raj Shrestha. The story is about Kuldeep Chandanth, an ex-Minister of the Sikkim government, whose power is fast becoming a thing of the past. The narration is matter of fact and tongue in cheek. The sense of entitlement that Chandanth has and the subtle satire that runs throughout the book makes it worth a read. The beauty of the book lies in the fact that Sikkim is the backdrop, without any obvious saying so. The journey traced is one of every politician from the heyday of his power to the unpleasantness of fading away.

Some books about politics like P.V.Narasimha Rao’s The Insider and Through the Corridors of Power by P.C.Alexander also came to mind.

More books in Part 5.

The Extraterrestrial and Time @ BYOB Party in September 2016 (Part 3)

Science was not far behind in the BYOB Party this time.

threebody-problem Sudharsan read the book The Three Body Problem by Chinese author Cixin Liu . It’s sci-fi or end of the world dystopian fiction, part philosophy, part fantasy, he decides. The book deals with the ultimate sci-fi question: What happens when humans come into contact with the extraterrestrial or the opposite. What happens when extraterrestrials come in contact with humans? The primary characters in the book are Ye Wenjie, who has a haunted past, and Wang Miao who is swept into a virtual reality online game. The book requires a lot of focus but once you get into the flow of things, it becomes a compulsive read. It has been translated by Ken Liu, a writer of a popular book series himself.

a-brief-history-of-time Chaitanya brought along the bestseller A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, a bestseller science book that has sold nine million copies and been translated into forty languages. This book also has the dubious distinction of being one of the books that everyone starts and no one finishes.

This book introduces the reader to the theory of relativity, quantum physics, particle physics, gravity and the fourth dimension. He also explores how Einstein’s ideas changed physics forever. The book is written very simply, Chaitanya confirmed, and there are no equations to put off the mathematically uninclined. The book brought alive a discussion about the Matrix and the role of man in a world where he is merely a pawn.

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.

Short Book Review: Gods, Kings & Slaves – The Siege of Madurai by R Venkatesh

SBR: Gods, Kings & Slaves is one of those books that had great potential, but it fell far short of it because the very first draft was published where severe rewriting and editing was needed. The characters are inconsistent, narrative jumpy, language awkward and even wrong due to the incorrect usage of words and phrases apart from bad sentence construction.

The book is set in the time of the rise of Malik Kafur, Alauddin Khilji’s famous general, who attacked the Pandyan empire’s heart in Madurai. It follows the lives of Malik Kafur and Vira Pandyan until they collide. But apart from the interesting historical context, the book falls flat.

To read or not to read: No. Unless you are keen on reading up just anything about the period in the history that this book covers.

5 Indian Authors in English You Should Read

Neelima
September 16, 2016
General
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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/

Short Book Review: The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory

SBR: The Other Boleyn Girl is another of those best-selling books that should not be read. It is historically inaccurate, the characters who are known to be vibrant, complex and multi-dimensional have been reduced to the single dimension of black and white and the author’s attempt to show Mary Boleyn as an innocent woman victimized by her family and Anne Boleyn as a vicious, revengeful shrew are pathetic. Deviating from historical facts is fine in a work of historical fiction, but those deviations should serve the story. That doesn’t happen here. The idea of seeing Tudor history from Mary Boleyn’s point of view is an interesting premise too. But the story ends up reading like a shallow historical romance. The characters of Mary and Anne Boleyn from the book could easily be adapted for a contemporary Hindi soap opera, where the ambitious woman can only be a vamp and the simpering doormat gets the heroine’s crown. That should tell you how flat the characters and the book are. The writing craft has nothing to redeem the pointless story.

To read or not to read: No. Please don’t.