cambodia

Bastar and Holocausts @ BYOB Party at the Takshashila Institution in Nov 2018 (Part 4)

Image result for the burning forest amazonKrishna had intended to talk about My World and Welcome to it by good old James Thurber, humorous writer and illustrator extraordinaire but he decided that a discussion on The Burning Forest by Nandini Sundar was more important instead. The book talks about the loss of lives of security forces, Maoists, human rights activists, lawyers and ordinary people in Bastar. The story of Bastar is unknown to most people and this book is an eye-opener if you want to know more about the history of the Salwa Judum. Newton, a movie that has delved into this subject, was mentioned. There was disagreement about state property and double standards when it came to tribals. Another book about Bastar that was discussed was Woodsmoke and Leafcups: Autobiographical Footnotes to the Anthropology of the Durwa People by Madhu Ramnath. Here the author focuses on the communal narrative of the Durwa people. Sometimes you need to step out of the world you know to understand that there are many worlds outside the narrative that don’t need to go extinct.

Image result for the boy in the striped pajamas amazonAda talked about a well-known YA Holocaust fiction called The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne. The story revolves around Bruno and his newfound friendship in devastating times. “We don’t have YA books that explore complex subjects this way in India,” Ada said. The mention of the Holocaust sparked off an intense debate on the many pogroms that have affected so many parts of the world. Be it Auschwitz where even the bravest soldier feel the shivers or the mass graves at Cambodia, be it the slaughter of the Native Americans or the Armenians or the eradication of aborigines across the world, human atrocities are common fare. “It’s just a question of who markets their stories better,” a reader said wryly.

This is a link I stumbled on while writing this post. It’s an interview with Lang Leav, who was born to Cambodian parents who were on the run from the Khmer Rouge. Worth a listen.

More books in Part 5.

 

Short Book Review: A History of Cambodia by David P. Chandler

A History of Cambodia by David P. ChandlerSBR: My luck with reading histories continued as I started reading A History of Cambodia by David P. Chandler. Like A Brief History of France by Cecil Jenkins that I read earlier, this book about Cambodia was just suitable for my purpose. The purpose was to get an overall introduction to the history of the country in a readable language and within a reasonable length of the text. I should have read it before our Cambodia trip a year and a half ago. But we acquired this book only in Cambodia and after returning back, it kept getting pushed down the to-read pile. But it resurfaced finally, and I am glad it did. Like other books of this type, this also devotes a large amount of space to modern history. But in Cambodia’s case, I am not complaining, because it is a history that is still playing out and it helped put a lot of what we saw there in context.
To read or not to read: Yes – as a good starting point for or as a quick overview of Cambodian history.

Short Book Review: Watching Cambodia: Ten Paths to Enter the Cambodian Tangle by Serge Thion

SBR: This book was picked up, not surprisingly, during our trip to Cambodia last year and I read it soon after coming back. Don’t be fooled by the tourist friendly cleanliness and maintenance of Angkor Wat, modern Cambodia is a mess and how it became so is a sad and pathetic, almost unbelievable, story. If all you know about Cambodian politics is that Khmer Rouge were the bad guys, then you need to read more. This book, a collection of ten articles written over time, is a good way to get a peek into the how it came to be, what factors were at play, and how utterly incompetent everyone has been in fixing things. But it does need a basic understanding of the modern history of Indo-china and some of the pieces are very academic in nature because of which I had to give up on a couple of them.

To read or not to read: Not for the beginners. If you know something about the tumultuous modern History of Cambodia and are in a mood to go deeper, then you can pick up this book.