Provoked; by Kiranjit Ahluwalia, Rahila Gupta.

Rarely does one come across a true life story lived so courageously and the account told so simply - most people prefer to brush things under rug for sake of social pretensions and economic considerations. Few care about a life or a million wasted as long as it is lives of women, in the process forgetting that women are mothers and home carers who bring up choldren, and sacrificing them and their lives and their health and conerns is not exactly healthy for the children in any way whatsoever, whatever the gender of the children.

How could anyone forget Provoked - the book I read quite recently, this year that is, but the film came perhaps earlier and I am unsure if it was this year or last.

The film is a good make from the book and it is amazing how well a city born well educated Aishwarya Rai - she had a couple of years, perhaps three, of architecture before her Miss World crown - played a girl from a small village in way far Punjaab.

There are some factors kept out, though not quite hidden and changed, from the book to the film.

For one thing Kiranjit was not uneducated, she had been to college in Gujarat where her brothers were well to do, and then had visited her other siblings in UK and Canada to find a husband, while the guy who persued her through the usual channels did it against his parents' wishes in not worrying about their consent to begin with.

Subsequently she did work in UK and was appreciated in her workplace too.

All this was kept out perhaps because people have a simple - and false - equation in their minds, that any woman abused by a husband must be an illiterate simpleton. Disabusing this notion in this story, a difficult one already where one has to understand an abused woman murdering her husband, would have been a formidable task, and perhaps it was wisdom to leave that to another time.

But fact of the matter is simple solutions such as education and economic independence and financial security are just that - simple, but not quite solutions. None of those prevent women from being abused by a husband, a lover, or any other male willing to try. The change required is civilisation of males of human species.

What Women Want; by Patricia Ireland.

Dignity, Justice, Security, Humanity, and a civilised society. Being able to live without fear of the fellow men or afraid of being perceived as objects, and finding love without fear of being treated as those that are rightfully duped or fearlessly attacked - that would be roughly the agenda.

Equal pay for equal work and rewards for ability would be the goal every human aspires to and women are denied generally without men and frequently women seeing any injustice in this unequal view, since most peoples' perception is blinded by the overwhelming attention they pay to gender.

Think how famous a Bobbit or a Kiranjit Ahluwalia is, and then think of how many men you personally know to have brutalised their wives and children, and justified it.

Think of your own response to the sexual harrassment of an employee by an employer - when the former is a female you think, why does she not leave such a job, she deserves it or maybe she wants it, after all she is putting herself out there for money and risking her goodness as a woman by going amongst men. But when the latter is a woman, and the former is a male, he gets to throw the whole shebang at her of course, no one would say he ought to leave and find another job.

Or think Fatal Attraction - what if the tables were turned, what if the erring partner in the marriage was a woman and the lover came after her because they were expecting a baby together? Would he die, murdered by her, encouraged by her husband?

Most cases it is not that drastic, it is about seeing things for what they are, without prior prejudice along what institutions insist on gender roles. Fairness is what women want, and love - or the possibility of growing it; a life for all of humanity without fear of half the humanity.

Ganga Descends; by Ruskin Bond.

We had returned from a journey along the river to two of her sources and very pervaded with the essence of the river and the memory of the whole experience, and so when we saw the book, that too by RB, it was inevitable to buy it even in those days of counting pennies, and it was with a hope of recapturing some of our memories and experiences forever.

Beautiful pictures, of course, and writing as benefic as the river - and why not, he lives in the neighbourhood, has done for a long time now - but of course the book had both more and less than what we had lived for a short period. Every life, every journey after all is different.

I think we have both the copies, one reading and other coffee table small for the pictures. Those are after all the memory keys.

The Story of the Trapp Family Singers; by Maria Augusta Trapp.

I remember reading this long ago, and several years later when driving about in Vermont I managed to find the place where the Trapp family has managed to make a second home after leaving Austria. They told us Maria Von Trapp usually came down early to dinner, but we could not wait too long, driving in dark in rather unfamiliar hills would be risky. We waited as long as we could and then went away.

Another decade and more, and now we were in Salzburg, the hometown of Maria and her family where in fact they have special Sound Of Music tours. We took the comprehensive which included a couple of the important sights anyway. It was funny to discover that the house shown in the film, the Von Trapp home, is in fact two different houses, one with a lake front and another where there is the driveway. The chapel is very popular for weddings.

None of that compares with the delightful writing of Maria Von Trapp - the anecdotes, the simplicity, the spirited young woman who grew into a loving and still spirited mother of ten - she lost two of her own and had seven from her husband's previous marriage.

Some that stick in memory are the episode about the sandwiches, the camera, the baby that did not stop crying and embarrassed the mother (and runs the place now), the horse and the house and the singing camps, the woman who told the greengrocer indignantly "ten cents? I can become a cabbage myself around the corner for five cents" - perhaps my memory is incorrect about the cents number, but other than that it is as fresh as the film based on the story.

In Great Waters 1939-45: The Epic Story of the Battle of the Atlantic 1939-45; by Spencer Dunmore.

The subject is sort of a side facet of the whole history of the war, with main stage being the continent of Europe and the second, perhaps more important, being the resolute holding on by British, and the later tough fight by Russians.

But all along, the battle of Atlantic was a key factor, and Allies could not afford to lose it or give way any more than the world could afford to make treaty and stop fighting in name of wistful dreaming of Peace, which sometimes one has to win when endangered by forces against it.

Britain could then fight openly, but however convinced Roosevelt was that the forces of darkness had to be defeated, he was bound by the various facets of his nation that he had to herd along before he could join his nation in the battle on the side of right.

The battle of Atlantic is here told in some detail, with descriptions of U-boats attacking convoys ferrying hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and in turn the British giving a tough fight back. There is the Enigma and its having been broken and yet the necessity of keeping the fact secret - and hence sacrifice of unsuspecting sailors. There is the various instances of British treating the pow Germans well, to their surprise, since they had been doing the opposite and expected the worst treatment in return.

There is the background of U-boat, the so named wolf pack that was officially and otherwise much celebrated in Germany, since they were perceived as the front and the dangers of their lives very well understood. However, they succeeded for long enough to forget about the last part and then had surprises.

Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany; by Hans J. Massaquoi

There is generally little heard about how "other" people fared in pre-war Germany, in the darkness that enveloped the nation. Here is one window, with an astonishing tale of a boy who was born and raised German, with his father a member of the diplomatic core of an African nation with a distinct class structure of its own.

This boy grew up taking the difference of skin colour as casually as that of colours of clothes, and his mates as well as his teachers did nothing to break that either, until such time as the distiction was no longer invisible so to speak. He gives a moving description of how he was a sudden hero himself by association when an African American won the gold medal at an Olympic event in Munich, and he felt proud of his other race, and his classmates asked him questions about the Olympic hero as distant from him as from them.

Survived through the war he went in serach of his other roots in Africa, and tried to find a life - and eventually migrated to US. He compares the two nations, his first and his last, and no surprises there, the last does not come off much better than the first.

His mother staunchly tells him to not allow anyone to tell him he is less than anyone, ever - and not on the basis of his being half German, either. He is a child born in love, and that is a strength never lost. This keeps him from sinking in a morass that many cannot help drowning in.

Contact; by Carl Sagan.

From attempted discovery of aliens to space travel through worm holes across light years to questions of what is conveniently termed paranormal, fear of which makes mobs of normal rational people willing to discredit the respected and persecute the fellow humans, even colleagues and other well known professionals.

It is a bit like watching someone painstakingly constucting a pendulum clock in the atomic wristwatch and gps and blackberry age. Or a tall building without a steel skeleton structure in the landing on Mars age.

While he does mention wormholes, actually using them for travel seems to have been a slate of hand sort of trick, what with the observers never seeing the vehicle leave the spot much less earth. Leaving on a plane other than physical needs no vehicle much less one constructed with instructions arriving from space.

There is the laborious effort to keep everyone happy, with meticulously portioned out considerations.

And then the scary pendulum to stand under. It could crush you and standing under it requires a great deal of faith in science, the people who constructed it, and more.

Dahan (The Burning); by Suchitra Bhattacharya.

The original was published a few decades ago, and I remember reading it long back, it made a vivid impression. There is much horror, depicted through a young woman that went through much including being gang-raped in the middle of a street, and another one that attempted to help and th horror it brought to her own life.

The city where it all happened witnessed much in terms of a horror in public several times, majorly during what is known as the Naxal (extreme left terror groups) era of sixties and seventies, which was to overshadow even the horrendous massacres of '46 and dim the memory of the so called Bengal famine which reallly was - like the famine of Ireland before that - an appropriation of harvests of the lands by the ruling for the soldiers, resulting in several hundred thousand dead of starvation in Bengal.

This story belongs to the Naxal era if I am not mistaken, when the supposed ideals of left - equality, fraternity - often took a back seat to the goons that ruled the roost and neither women nor middle class were entirely safe as they normally are or at least perceived to be more so under better circumstances.

For that matter the "party" generally followed either of the two major communist nation's diktat, depending on the faction, and several "intellectuals" proudly declared themselves convinced of superiority of Mao over the way their own nation took, of consent and freedom rather than enforced ideology.

It was quite obvious even then that it was an attempt by a neighbour country to take over the nation if possible without sending anything more than pamphlets that would turn young heads. The about turn by the nation they then aspired to emulate has left the movement, the party, the young and the now not so young a bit confused, a bit embarrassed, and turned the naxals into mostly highway robbers with a few ideologues fighting feudal remnants in the few states where history has not washed away the feudal system so firmly established by the various colonial rulers.

The terror of the general times compounds with a goon-dominated street terror atmosphere and further adds to a general pervasive culture where normal middle class families, including men, are afraid for their lives and those of their own near and dear. And hence the whole street being unable to testify to the goons burning a young woman alive after rape, while the sole witness woman is turtured deeply within even as her own family attempts to dissuade her from making her witnessing the horror known.

While it is tempting to sum up this work as another example of a male dominated society, that would be belittling the work apart from a critique that is incorrect at the very least, showing a lack of perception and judgement; or possibly much worse, hypocrisy or dishonesty at a grave level.

Because a society that is old fashioned or conservative or male dominated - or as usually is all of the above - does not easily tolerate a violation of a woman by strangers. Such a toleration generally shows a lack of virility of males of the neighbourhood, the clan, the social setting the said woman belonged to. This is a direct result of the idea that a woman is a possession, not a person in her own right.

So a society that does tolerate this, or fails to protect or even avenge the woman, it in fact might be a modern society where people are in fact alienated and selfish in that they would rather not risk their own security; and when it is - as it is this story - worse, fails even to seek justice for fear, it amounts to a society paralysed by fear of the goons, the internal terrorist elements within the society. It could be fascist, or it could be terror by another self proclaimed label. Labels are less important when your lives are at stake, and goons are free to do as they please.

When terror reigns at street level, and acid along with other weapons are used freely, the prudent keep their own counsel until better times prevail. Then again, someone - or more than one - has to step forth and strike a determined blow at the terror or it would never go away.
..................................................

Aesop's Fables

I read the two - this one and the other very similar, but not at the plot level, old book from another old culture - Panchatantra, around the same time, give or take a few years, many decades ago. Both teach lessons of dealing with the world, how people play games, and so forth.

Every child should read them.

Especially those that need the skills to defend themselves socially, from those that would play various games to cheat or attack or worse. It might help, for some that can grow out of naivete to defend themselves.

Then again there might be those that never lose hope that the world is good and noble principles of justice are not to be given up, only to be taken a bite out of by someone who came pretending to be young and innocent and in need, and then bit the hand proffered to feed and help.

But of course, one should not lose hope, and perhaps other children might learn to be less naive and better able to defend themselves by learning to understand social games, by reading this book.

Srikanta; by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyaya.

Over the years when I read it, and reread it, baffled about the mystique surrounding it and the sparse nature of the book, it took some reflection about the time and space this came from and depicts and belongs to, to realise its height compared to the ground it rose from. Although that time was not short of people of great stature in the world and in the nation this came from, still, this was a shocking read for the age for the common reader, all the more so since here was a male writer depicting women of his own culture as all too human, deserving of the same consideration and respect as given men under similar circumstances. And he was perhaps saying they were greater in many ways, without saying it in so many words.

What sticks in memory when other details are forgotten is the small side story of the Burmese wife of the man from Bengal who not only leaves her with no intentions of returning to her, every intention of going back to his family and accepting the arranged marriage (with dowry, no doubt) and the society that would then embrace him - but cheats her, the Burmese wife he is leaving behind without informing her of this intention, of the money and jewellery, openly, declaring all this in his language so his compatriots comprehend and hers do not, and he has made of his wife of many years a public spectacle just so his own people might forgive him of his betrayal in taking a wife not of their own circle.

Such behaviour has been engaged in by others, of many other nations and of course few other continents, and certainly many of other faiths.

In fact one city has been known in decades past for selling its own little daughters with the traffic very very thinly veiled with a marriage contract which usually favours the rich - foreign - buyers.

It takes a writer of courage, however, to expose one of his own social circle, to subject the whole culture to a shame that they may not have wished to own or admit.

The Naked Ape ; by Desmond Morris

I remember reading this long ago and a few things stuck during the fast skimming while on a visit to a relative - unlike years before, one was no longer excused from conversation any more when in company - and one of the various things that did stick in memory was recently brought back to the surface of memory by some recent events - the terror attacks, the subsequent reactions, and the furious debates in media.

A member of glitterati was brought on camera to counter a minority leader of a party that normally gets all sorts of attacks without a second thought, except this leader was not offendable by the media due to his status and so the member of glitterati went obliquely to comment and counter the original comment by the leader.

The original comment by the leader was about people of the upper class aping western ways and to go on a candle lighting vigil at the historic site of recent terror attacks, and specifically he was dismissive of people who wear lipstick and have fashionable hair and show themselves at this site to be perceived as concerned about the nation while none of them have paid attention to the far worse attacks that have been going on during last decade and a half when it was not the rich and their lairs but the middle class on streets and in buses and in trains being killed by far greater numbers.

So the glitterati member went obliquely at the "people who do not like educated women", without thinking about what he was saying, let alone bothering to explain, or really stopping to consider implications of his words, about what - if anything - education had to do with lipstick.

It was not clear if he thought buying a lipstick or indeed a whole complete makeover had to be a matter of passing a tough examination on intellectual and generally knowledge plane, rather than handing over money; whether an education automatically implies a lipstick application and generally fashion consciousness, and whether the converse is true according to him.

Coming from someone from the country he belongs to, if he thought one thing implied the other in either direction, or if he thought that only those with some sort of western oriented schooling with much money forked over and aping of western fashions as the prime value taught was the only education he could perceive as education, it would certqainly imply he has had little contact with the earth he lives on, and his mind is in another world - I am not sure if that is a real one either.

Most well educated women - by which I do not mean those that have had an expensive high school level but little else other than consciousness of appearing like a Seventeen cover model - whether doctors, engineers, physicists or whatever other particular subject they chose to qualify for a higher degree, have little or no time to think of a personal grooming over and above a basic hygiene - bathing and wearing fresh clothes to start the day, and getting hair settled firmly out of the way - because they are far too busy with their responsibilities, in the world of their work and their own homes as well. They are far too busy to bother looking like a Seventeen cover.

At work their responsibilities are not reduced compared to male colleagues on par, and at home they do not have a wife to take over the need of attention and care they must pay the home and children, making them more than twice as busy as their male colleagues, and also their housewife neighbours. Not that the latter have it easy, for all that.

As a matter of fact all of that is all too true for a "working mother" in the west, and come to think of it for all mothers as well, since there are really no mothers that are non-working - and education whatever level, most women are far too busy taking care of the world to worry about a makeover every time they step out. That they manage to be well groomed and clean is one of the miracles they regularly perform without thinking.

No, the glitterati member was thinking of his own circle - those in professions where appearance is what chiefly matters, and other glitterati and "society" people who can delegate most responsibilities and in fact do, to hired "help".

It is not clear, when he equated education of women with a lipstick and a professional expensive hairdo, if he thinks no schools other than those imparting a western orientation - by virtue of their own origins or any other reason - are good enough, and if he thought that all middle class or poor are by definition stupid and ignorant, and if he thought he knew more of everything than every person taught in a non expensive school where lipsticks are not perceived as a hallmark of civilisation, or education.

Perhaps he could learn much by a journey to familiarise himself with his nation, but one does not know if he can benefit thereby.

Why is this relevant here is amusingly because amongst other things of similar sort Morris explains quite explicitly why humans have certain features, and if people read this on a wide scale - and comprehended it properly - lipstick and perhaps most cosmetics industry bubble would burst completely. That bursting of the bubble only needs a pin, and this is more like a stampede by a determined bull on intent on a duty to do farmwork.

For that matter a similar effect on many industries would be the result of people reading Subliminal Seduction and comprehending it.

The Red Carpet; by Lavanya Sankaran.

Very true to life portrayal of a town the writer probably knew well long before it became the "IT" place to be, and expanded at exponential rates. Lavanya Shankaran gives a little piece of the life of the town in old times changing to new with whiffs of arrivals of new people and of expat generation returning or sojourning from abroad for visits or more. It is a gentle change in the old establishments of old colonies, where people have lived in cetain traditional ways for long, through colonial times carrying out the older ways and adapting to new colonial ones, until now it is yet another change, like a whiff of something else carried on a breeze through the muslin curtains of an old bungalow.

Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe by Bill Bryson.

Bryson comes into his own when writing about the British Empire, it seems - his work on UK the most entertaining and the one about Australia the most informative. In US he gets ponderous, seems a bit afraid to joke, and in Europe he is a bit lost.

The wit is in place but he is not, in this work. He begins in Hammerfest, which is nice to know of, but he then goes on that way with much small and unimportant details about strange places and then nothing about the most attractive - it is one thing to avoid a tourist route, but then why the details of going unplanned into yet another strange town and troubles of hotels and beer and food? Makes no sense at all. And, he neither drives nor plans the trip, so there is much travail on that account that is easily avoidable.

One reads Bryson for the fun, and this book gives that - from time to time. But then it is a chore to finish it most of the time. Worth reading since there is always something of a little smile unexpectedly or even an outright laugh at what he says, but all too often he plays to the gallery and uses unnecessary indecorous language.

Surprisingly he is unhappy with Switzerland, and too with Scandinavia, while he is happy with Italy and Germany - one can only conclude he did not know what one generally goes to Europe to look at, and while it is nice to know Sofia is beautiful or Hamburg is nice that is more useful for those who are likely to live there for a while or more. The rest of us are more interested in the normal nice things about places one is either likely to go or would wish to if only one knew about it.

Perhaps this was the first of the whole series he wrote, and he came into his own only with the land where he spent his growing adulthood years - Britain.

Rumpole of the Bailey; by John Clifford Mortimer.

A most unlikely hero as far as tv or films go, but all too likely when you think of real life - for the action is in sharp intelligence and wisdom gathered through years of experience, applied to life, specifically to legal questions and cases, with effect of helping humans that might not be picture perfect either but do need help with defence, and cannot afford much.

If Rumpole applied all that mind to getting ahead as the style is today, he would be the leader of the firm, and the QC, and more - but he manages to stay on back burner in spite of being the son in law of the boss, due to his deep seated reluctance about certain attitudes or actions or ways that one must adopt in order to get ahead. Rumpole sticks to his work and his honesty, and the smooth one gets ahead, and the disappointed wife is not too happy, can't blame her after all. Still, one has to like Rumpole.

The African episode is unforgettable - is it in this part or another, of the series? - About the basic principle of justice he is supposed to apply, to create a martyr, with a declaration of Innocent Until Proven Guilty. That is supposed to help spark the revolution - and instead he manages to actually prove the man was innocent, with - need one say it? - his sharp intelligence, his experience and observation and wisdom. He disappoints those only who had called him to perform and did not expect him to actually get to the bottom of the case and win. With honesty, too.

One is far more likely to appreciate it with reading first rather than seeing the tc series which I saw only accidentally once. Not because the series has any defects but because in a visual medium one does rather focus on looks. And this work is not about surface attractions.

Gracie: A Love Story; by George Burns.

I remember living alone, far away from anyone I knew, and being relatively free after a few years of stress, buying a television - my first, and a very good one for that time, with facilites that the company normally offered only in larger models - and discovering the Burns and Allen show one late night when looking for something to relieve stress.

Thereafter it was a routine, being awake every night until late to watch the reruns of the show, and what a blessing it was watching it, laughing, forgetting all stress and worry and so forth for just that short while.

When I discovered the book, it was a sort of combination of a memory of the show relived and a whole new delight as well, with the book adding a few details to the life of the couple one had come to love.

"My uncle bent steel rods with his teeth until they bent"

"He must have been very strong"

"Yes, but he looked funny with bent teeth"

- And unless one sees the incomparable, unique Gracie one would think this is not very funny. At least not as much as when she says it.

Fatherhood; by Bill Cosby.

Truly delightful - some of this was familiar, since it had been incorporated in the first episode of the Bill Cosby show, but a good deal was either new or familiar through everyone's life.

Favourites, many.

Children love to share, especially sharing the siblings's arms ...

Bill Cosby's father told him how he walked to school in snow, "uphill both ways" ..

"I brought you in this world and I can take you out" ....

"Dad, can I -" ....

And many more.

Karma, Cola; by Gita Mehta.

In some sense this was written when the meeting of east and west, especially of India and west (Europe and US) was in its third stage, second being of the colonial era and first that before.

At this stage there was much renewed charm in each for other, much that was new, and some truly interesting encounters. The value of this work is in writing up the very well chosen ones where something new came through such an encounter every time.

There is the old percussionist from India used only to classical music of India who went to a club in New York and had them play to his rhythm - and he spoke no English at all.

There is the westerner who learned to his surprise that the old bike of the Indian in Goa taunting him was in fact far more powerful than his own brand new shiny one - because it had an engine he could not have imagined existed, a royal Enfield, and that the Indian did know what he was talking about.

There is much along these lines, and some interesting information as well. The French official informed the author at a casual encounter that there were as of that date some twenty thousand French nationals "lost" in India, and the only way the officials would know is when they wished to return and contacted the French authorities.

It was a standard practice for those of the west that were not only charmed with a touristic view of India as strangers but moreover completely comfortable with living a life in India, to throw away the passports or sell them, or even simply vanish in the huge country. If they were into meditation, often they even were fed by the poor of the rural areas of India who would feed any such meditating person traditionally.

Ravishankar and Ray, Beatles and Maharshi Mahesh Yogi were the stars of these east west encounters - distant and shiny - as were Nehru and Kennedys in some sense, but that was only a very tiny part of the whole picture, which consisted of thousands and thousands of such people. By the time this was written hippies were not news in the west, but they were just turning from a trickle to a stream in India. So were probably the NRI in US and elsewhere.

A very interesting book, evocative of much more than it mentions explicitly.

How He Lied To Her Husband; by George Bernard Shaw.

This play is one of the most delightful ones penned by the writer and it is completely unlike anything anyone (outside old British social life) might imagine. One of the most wonderful plays by Mr. Shaw, full of quite unexpected turns when one is in the world of literature but quite normal in real life, which is what makes it hilarious and sobering.

A very talented and romantic poet who is in love with a beautiful woman, who wishes nothing as much as seeing her every evening for a session of theatre and dinner or at least reading poetry to her that is written for her, in praise of her exquisite beauty, and is ever ready to do anything his love might demand of him.

Only, she is married, and to a very rich man who gives her everything she could wish for materially and socially but is no romantic poet, or at any rate not a man of words. On the other hand he is not stingy about providing her with an expensive social lifestyle with dinners, parties, artists invited and theatre and carriages, jewellery. And so on. Still, he is no poet. Is he literate, is hard to remember from the play. Does he appreciate her beauty more than in terms of his own pleasure, one doubts to begin with.

There is the whole setting - the very beautiful and wealthy Aurora who is married to a common businessman although able to have a social life of consorting with various artists and so forth.

And then the play begins to unfold. The husband, the very practical and very much bourgois man who has provided his wife with everything she could ever wish for in terms of wealth and social life, has now rumoured to have found out about the poet and the wife. Someone has told the husband about the poet's writing extensive poetry every day about the wife, and the love (still platonic in fact) that is the soil for the poetry to grow from, and so on. And the wife has come to know about the husband having been informed, and she is frantic in worry about what will happen.

The poet who is in love with her, writing poems to her, willing to do anything for her, whether taking her our to theatre every evening or stay in and amuse her or be shot by her husband or elope with her, whatever destiny might have in store for the love of his very exilarated heights of romance. The poet is willing to do anything she wishes, while his own noble instinct is to accept the blame and confront the husband with the truth and walk off into the sunset with his beloved beautiful Aurora.

What comes next is the typical Shaw sequence of twists and turns that leaves one helpless in hilarious laughter while totally in sympathy with the poor poet. I have no intention of spoiling the delight of reading further by saying another word about what comes next, for those that have not read this yet. Any attempt to describe it will spoil it for the reader, so I shall desist.

The Complete Yes Minister; by Jonathan Lynn, Antony Jay.

On one hand a political comparative novice with reasonably lofty ideals and some political necessities; on the other hand the master of art and craft of administration and his skills of rising and staying at the top - and being in charge which the political master would rather take over; and then the third, the rather nice and naive secretary who has to satisfy two masters just to keep his job and yet keep a semblance of self respect as well.

What a delight the series and what a consistent education the printed version - one might think one's own life or political situation of one's own country has little or nothing to do with this, but if one thought that one would be wrong. The difference would only be in nitty gritty details, really. The stereotypes exist, everywhere, but the larger picture is the principles, the situations, and they apply to far lesser situations than a minisiter of a previously huge, world wide and globe girdling empire.

Much illuminating material - one that comes immediately to mind for instance about Salami Tactics, unless that is in the sequel.

On the whole very educating.

Not to forget hilarious.

The Complete Yes Prime Minister; by Jonathan Lynn, Antony Jay.

Once a young nephew remarked about how stupid the one and how smart the other. I pointed out that the one who was naive was one with dreams for the country, naivete about the world in general, some innocence but also good intentions, necessary for the world - while the one that seemed master of all art of governance and manipulation is also the one who cares only about his own stability in power and rise - and controlling power to that effect above all.

Ideally one should get both, the ideals and the smartness, the good will and the expertise, in one. Or all, or many at least. Usually however there are too many of Humphreys controlling the world, the media, the affairs in general - and the Hackers of the world are left bewildered at best, targetted with much maligned poison tipped shafts at worst.

If only it could be otherwise, in that the well meaning ones were not so easily those to lose ....

This is probably the one with "allies", and perhaps the one about Salami Tactics, - very educating all in all. Not to forget hilarious.

Falling Over Backwards: An Essay on Reservations and on Judicial Populism, India; by Arun Shourie.

Most people, whether individually or as social groups, communities, have two very distinct, very separate needs, often but not always necessarily, conflicting.

One is for more of wealth, more of power, stability of well being, security, and so forth. This is of course well understood and often used for a hold over the person or group as a leverage to use them.

Another is of the sort that might begin to border on higher ideal - of a rise in terms of things other than those considered worldly needs.

However, when the two conflict, often people free to choose will go for the worldly needs rather than higher ideals. And then resent those that do not, or cannot, for whatever reason.

Hence the effort to portray one's community as higher if that gives a rise in status and all out efforts to prove it so, and on the other hand the opposite if that pays in terms of economic security.

Given a chance - that is, if the two do not conflict - most people would prefer the higher ideal and rise in terms of other than worldly criteria.

It is a pity that such chances are withdrawn and instead there is an incentive to downgrade one's roots in order to secure a better economic status.

Five Point Someone: What Not to Do at IIT; by Chetan Bhagat.

One reads it with some sympathy, a good deal of sheer disbelief and growing amazement - because this is a populist casual write up bordering on caricature or outright spoof, about an institution that is not only elite in terms of education, but the elite quality comes from the intellectual strength required to get in at all, in the first place. And in a nation like India, of a huge population with an intellectual tradition and history of knowledge, that is no small achievement to begin with.

One wonders if this is an alumni's attempt to clown for entertainment of his class of whatever year, or a revenge on the institution that had far brighter pass through its portals and distinguish themselves in ways other than seducing the professor's virgin daughter - if at all this did happen and was not a wishful dream.

One Night @t the Call Centre; by Chetan Bhagat.

This was a comparatively serious attempt by the author to write about a contemporary situation and its not so well known realities, but he mixed a few things up.

When this book came or at least when I saw it on bookshelves in popular bookstores, media was speaking out about the various stresses the workers in the much celebrated new phenomena of economic rise of India were going through, what with the work hours disrupting the biological rhythm - having to work hours when the clients in the various countries around the globe would be awake and receptive - and the racist abuse they had to take from those that they connected on phone to.

This work gives the strange and the weird, the silly and the abusive - in short. It mentions the other, the life the call centre workers live on the whole, whether at work or away from it.

There is some truth to every story of the lives he mentions, in all likelihood, but on the whole if you like to know about how those call centre workers live, what they think and feel, perhaps this is neither comprehensive nor typical of most.

On the other hand, these characters could very well be out there and their stories too - in a nation of over a billion with a few million in this line of work, anything might be possible.

All one can say is much does not ring true here and it seems more like an assembly of specific ingredients to titillate the reader.

Bhagat with a little effort, a lot of restraint and some aspiration could be a lot better, although one would never suspect it from his other works. Here, too, he cannot avoid the temptation to be glib instead and provide a mash of much from here and there.

The 3 Mistakes of My Life; by Chetan Bhagat.

It is not clear if the aim was a booker or a film or some such ultimate catch - since it seems to be constructed with much input of diverse ingredients that can exist in life and reality, but while it has a feel of reality in a few patches it lacks the flow or raw feel of reality as a whole, or even something one had to write because it was what came through, and instead has rather a feel of a varnished and scrambled assembled piece instead that nevertheless lacks a feel of a one piece - has rather a patchwork feel at the end of it all.

The book begins well enough, or at any rate not too badly, with an intriguing call from a depressed suicidal youth to the author across an ocean and a smart work of detection by his wife to discover who and where, saving the life of the caller.

It improves for a while with a very real portrayal of poor to middle class youth, on brink of life, with their backgrounds and capabilities and so forth, and the very absorbing description of the city not usually described in works of literature outside the state, given with some love that comes through in spite of the much affected urbane attitude sported by the author.

There is a fascinating description of the scrawny poor youth who is a fantastic talent at the favourite sport of the nation and the commonwealth, but has a difference that makes him a medical curiosity and an object of study.

The enterprising protagonist with his friends and their support of the boy begins to make it a very interesting tale.

Until it degenerates into a usual bundle of titillating assembly of flights and dives, specialty of this writer, only with more far flung stuff this time.

The usual seduction (on an open terrace, in daylight, no locks or latches!!! don't want to know if this is real) and this time a pregnancy scare (so young readers are not encouraged this time????) is by now familiar enough to get one merely raising an eyebrow and saying, mhm.

The free trip to Australia (!!) and the offer of the settling - refused by the boy on grounds of wishing to play only for India, while not impossible, one would like to know if it happened or is this an attempt to evoke national pride. If the latter it ought to have been done better, the crudeness of the storyteller's lack of quality takes away from any possibility of making this into an ideal and risks making this into a borderline ridiculous story.

Then it gets worse, with a portrayal of events in Gujarat that seems like one of those "now you can paint Van Gogh's sunflowers too" sort of fill-in-those-prescribed-colours-by-the-number picture of the events. Someone must have told him, it is ok to mention the burnt train but paint the other side so gory it would be forgotten this was a riot and it would seem a one way massacre. There is no mention of history of communal riots in the state that took place every now and then, at a time there were elections looming - and the fact that this time there was containment, with a comparable number dead in police action on either side. There is of course no mention whatsoever of the ever looming threat to the nation from weapons and so forth being brought in, supplied by no one needs to guess who and who.

I don't know if the idea was to get a pat on the back from some dominating political powers or straightaway aim for a booker or something. It is so much a patchwork of events and description that clash without creating a new harmony or any sort of an understanding of events, one wonders if there was a reason to write this particular story or bunch of stories tied up together in one thread, such as someone told him a story and he decided this was too good to miss an opportunity to tell. It certainly needed to be told better - this one is a bit like telling about history of last century on a tabloid format, to give one extreme example, or a musical of the good old British style, to give another.

Much in the way of horror stories has come through news media that cannot be denied and one cannot but recoil with disgust at those that did perpetrate any of it - that much goes without saying. But how it began on the whole has not been mentioned, except as retaliation or fury about a trainload of people burnt alive, locked in and unable to escape.

Riots in Mumbai, then still called Bombay in English officially (though it was always and equally officially Mumbai in the local language and Bambaee in the national language) began with police station (one or more, don't know at this point in time) being attacked by a mob (or mobs) as retaliation for the events clear across a thousand or so miles away in the ancient temple vs less ancient mosque arguement.

I know of no country, so far, that allows mobs to attack police stations with arms and instead of a police action merely deals with tolerance with a view of not inciting criticism from "others". Then again, one may compare US border patrol and their policies (anyone dare say it is communal? No?) with that in India dealing with illegal migrants with the very porous border that is every day poured through, by not only those in need of work and unable to do well in their homelands and might really be pathetic and harmless, but also those with other, far different and very specific intentions.

Migrants across political boundaries of nationhood go in more than one or two forms, of course. Humans as every other species has always traveled to find means of survival across and around the globe, with one difference - humans are the one species that can be insincere about this, and also are the one species that go about exterminaitng their own, either for the purpose of survival or often for sheer pleasure of it. Migration of humans is often masked as aggression - and other forms. It happens nevertheless for sake of finding means of survival, but some migrate without the sincerity of their purpose clear, and instead of coming to other lands as those in need of survival they arrive as traders - honest enough a purpose - or as marauders, aggressors, would be empire builders, with swords on horseback or cannons and ships, and sometimes even as spies or worse, stealthy hidden ones who would do much damage as and when they can, by being willing to be used for the purpose, often well trained and single minded in the purpose.

I have met people in India, those that belong to India in every way, not political sort of people at all, and in fact not too happy about having to live in India (ancestors having been forced to migrate over half a century ago at partition, and leave much wealth behind, for sake of saving their lives) but resigned to it as something they cannot help, often very nostalgic about the lands they left behind that grow rosier with years in memory, and inevitably they blame the leaders that did not accept the alternative demands of those who demanded partition, or at the very least disdain the land that they came as refugees to, although that epithet has been long forgotten and was always temporary, and the nations is theirs too. They retain familiarity with the lands they left, the culture and the speech, and consequently these are people who can detect the migrants - though it should be said it is clear to anyone from states along borders who is from which side, by various signs obvious and clear. It is only political opportunists that outright deny this phenomena completely, although by this time it is no longer a question of a few thousand here and there.

A book I picked up and skimmed through in a local book shop, comparatively recent publication, about a "foreigner" (the possibly journalist author) meeting various people and writing very verbatim of the encounters (that was the reason I did not buy - it contained much details of the sort one is put off by, dealing with nether areas); this book specifically mentions authentic information, very casually, about what sort of weapons are already in the country. Missiles included.

There is an unacknowledged proxy war, and winking or closing one's eyes wouldn't make it go away. Nor would killing any innocents, goes without saying.

And meanwhile there is another war, that of the sort carried out in media. There is a persistent denouncing of certain parties and factions, and in fact it is as if very faiths or beliefs or the whole wealth of culture and knowldedge of India is condenmned without trial, by the would-be-western (or at the very least approved by the masters on other shores) sort of remote control driven media.

One wonders why the denounciations lack mentions of a history, of not only riots of those places but of many, many others across the country, and in facts the whole scale and well planned one way massacres that took place in some places since '46 - for, those that would persistently demand an outcry against the two states where it was riots and not massacres never ever mention, or even admit when questioned, the horrors of "action day" in Calcutta in '46 when thousands were butchered with knives, Lahore in '47 when it was repeated with escalation, Delhi in '84 and so forth. The much self congratulatory tabloids that have successfully used hidden cameras to get small fry or really questionable "evidence" against people known for honesty and sincere self dedication in politics have not - ever - stepped across this unmarked boundary and found out about any of these happenings, got any admissions or even dared to question the known perpetrators, or even go after the missing millions in funds that were spoken of in whispers a few decades ago in coffers of known party and people. In fact when those in authority in Soviet Russia recently admitted to giving those bribes for non legitimate purposes the counterparts, those that received the funds on this end stoutly called them liars - and the media let them be, just like that. And as to the generous funds streaming in from elsewhere for whatever purposes (of ultimately wiping out the nation and culture, one way or another - or both) it is as if it is not to be mentioned on par with morning pre bathing rituals.

One wonders why the two said states and the indigenous parties are marked out for denouncing - is it because unlike the other events ('46 Calcutta, '47 Lahore, '84 Delhi) they were not one way massacres begun and finished by perpetrators but instead were riots where those that began them got whipped instead? Would these clamouring for the condemnation rather have seen the two prosperous states wiped out like the World Trade Centre of New York - as indeed the three were symbols of the respective people doing well, and this was intolerable to those that attacked in the first place? WTC was a one way massacre too, of innocents. Was that destiny preferred for the two states for riots, by those that do not mention other far worse happenings of one way massacres by those in power, forget investigative journalism of any sort?

It begins to sound like the few of the many Germans we met (not all) that went on about the allied bombing and destruction of beautiful German cities with old architecture and culture, not to mention the thousands of people that died. They admitted, when we did not respond, that of course their own side had done some bad things too. Then another, a young woman - not so young she would not understand what is what - complained about some Jewish people she met who stopped talking to her when they found out she was German, "even though she was young and was not guilty personally".

The culture of forgiving the guilty and condemning those that fight back or resist being wiped out and massacred - now it is at the level of not only mainstream media but even supposedly personal - whether between complete strangers or supposedly friends - conversations, and it always goes with an insistence on a hurry to condemn (or else one stands to be denounced as "right wing", the words having lost the real meaning) one particular set of people, parties, culture, with no context of similar or worse events or anything else taken into account at all. One wonders if those massacred in holocaust were denounced in the same way, with propaganda carried out for centuries against them relentlessly, for the crime of having produced one man that was worth worship. Certainly the fact that such propaganda was carried out in places of worship came as a shock to us when we heard it - but it was information casually given by another German - a pious one - who was apologetic about the people and the nation and as such mentioned the larger context of how it had gone on across much of central and eastern Europe at the very least, so that the people looked less gullible to criminal behaviour induced by a handful of goons. No, it had been far deeper, inculcated long, and in places of worship too, so the people had received the poison for long before they acted in such stupor and frenzy to commit genocide or condone it.

One wonders if the next target is this nation, this culture, this ancient wealth of a tradition. Any resistance to this wiping out is much cried out against, and any one way massacres are dismissed with talks of forgiveness or an accusatory "why recall that" or worse, a complete rewriting of those as either valid (it was for demand of another nation) or non happenings. So was information about concentration camps dismissed by those that could have saved a few million with a "these people are always wailing" casually while the trains to the the death camps continued. Perhaps the real crime of the present would be indicted is not being wiped out as intended by powers on other shores.

One nation lost wars two millenia ago, and wandered through the world finding refuge temporarily here and there, but with no rights even of buying land much less settling or citizenship - and there are others across the globe, nations and cultures and people, that are slaves in all but official word in their own land occupied by those that call it by other names.

Gandhi won without bloodshed (though the refugees silently angered at this much expressed sentiment, wondering if the blood of their kith and kin was not counted as blood, shed at the time) but even he recognised, openly, that if he were opposed to another sort of regime, the sort British had to fight no matter how much they tried to avoid it, he would certainly not have succeeded with his ways. And it was independence of India that was the goal.

British and French tried to avoid need of war, by making treaties the other had no intention of keeping, and even browbeating Czechoslovakia into submitting to a walkover without a fight. That was a worthy attempt but of course not any sort of rightness about the sacrifice of Czechoslovakia, and yet it did not avoid the horrendous war, since those they were placating had no intention of being placated.

French gave up too soon, and made it difficult for the British, then sole remaining hope for the world and civilisation. US would not have come in except for Japan making a mistake, and the same is true of the other side of the world. One admires the nation that did not give up in face of the huge threat, the possibility of extinction, and fought on with quiet resolve and much suffered in ways of deprivations. Light would be extinguished, perhaps forever, if they had not fought and made treaty at that point instead.

Wars have changed since then and some nations including India, as other nations too lately, know this.

Spare the innocent their lives and peace - and remember the "innocent until proven guilty", which does not mean proven with media propaganda or labeling.

It might be difficult, when it comes to it, to avoid the temptation of making easy sacrifices for one's own safety, which is like offering a lamb, then the dog and then the neighbour's child, to the wolf, hoping that your own would be safe and the wolf might love you by being fed. But the wolf will return for the food you get it used to and your own are only a step away from being eaten with the policy of feeding others' to the wolf.

Sophie's Choice was not easy - but she missed the one option she needed to take, that of not choosing which child she would give up for death in gas chambers, hoping the other would thereby - might, with no guarantees from the mass murderers - be safe. When she chose to give up her daughter in favour of her son, hoping he would live, she took the guilt of the murder forever on herself, in her own heart whether or not in fact.

There is riot, there is massacres - often by rulers - and there is wars conducted without declaration; and there is fighting fire by fire.

And then there is the option for the wise, not to judge when one does not really know all that is necessary to know. Any behaviour otherwise is mob hysteria or jungle rule. Meanwhile, hold on to principles and despise those that act ignobly - and don't make a principle of hatred, either, or targetting easy and soft targets.

Curiously another book I read recently gives a more journalistic background on Gujarat long before these events in one chapter - and since it is by Mark Tully, it should be no problem for anyone to credit it with authenticity. It is called NO Full Stops In India. He does discuss the riots preceding his interview (- they always existed, and the recent last ones that are being clamoured against were neither the worst nor the only ones but had another distinction, of being contained successfully by law enforcers -) with the poor women, and their lives as a whole.

You Never Can Tell; by George Bernard Shaw.

Often when one lets it go, rather than pursue the question, the answer quietly steals into awareness, and so it happened with this play. It took some time to try to remember what this title was related to - I was sure I had read and liked it, but no clue of any sort of a connection to a story from the title in memory. Until suddenly I remembered a play, and I think this is the one.

If I am right this is about the unexpected reconciliation of a family of an emancipated woman who took away her children when the husband - their father - whipping the eldest one, a little girl, was an immediate prospect.

The reconciliation happens when the eldest is a grown up young woman on verge of womanhood who is unsure of herself, and the other daughter a cheeky self confident youngster who has no qualms about putting any adult off balance with her astute observations, which the brother achieves in other ways.

Much hilarity, heartwarming and sometimes a little heartbreaking ensues while the unexpected encounter, subsequent meetings and very carefully arranged reconciliation happens.

For a special Shaw touch, there is the waiter, everyone's beloved confidante, who has a son at the bar.

Come to think of it the name is entirely apt - how could this play have any other name?!! Unless it was something as prosaic and yet uncommon as Sophronia's Family.

Remo - Unarmed and Dangerous; by Warren Murphy, Richard Sapir.

Superlatives are getting common in my reviews, but then often it is those books that deserve it that one is likely to remember, without having made a list or a catalogue for one's own reference, ofter decades of reading them.

This book is about a normal man in US going through abnormal circumstances and being given up for dead, and coming back to another life, quite different from what he is used to, and learning, gaining a whole new life in the process. One learns in terms of mind and attitude along with him, while he is learning with all his facilities.

In that it is far better to read it first and see the film it was written from later, since action in the film or the book is the fruit of the tree of consciousness (with its roots in a whole culture) that is shown here in all it growth with luxurious detail, though the details of the roots - the culture - are sparse and hidden. As roots mostly are.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat & Other Clinical Tales; by Oliver W. Sacks.

This book is written so simply often one forgets it is written by a professional about his clinical experience with his clients and cases.

In fact one might be excused for thinking it was either a hilarious comedy or a tale of torture of a wife, going by the title. I am glad I bought it, and it turned out to be one of the best ones I ever bought - it tells one so much about humanity one does not often get to know.

Apart from the title story, one that stands out in memory is that of the triplet (or twin? it is about two decades since I read it!) brothers who could not only count 111 matchsticks as soon as they fell on the floor accidentally but immediately factor them, and their delight in exchanging higher and higher primes, and the cleverness of Sacks in getting their attention by giving them much larger digit prime numbers to ponder - which he succeeded for a minute while they got the idea and smiled at him in pleasure and then promptly began exchanging far higher digit primes.

Then there was the patient who did not realise he was tilting, and how that was corrected by the doctor with a clever trick or preliminary engineering.

An amazing read for anyone.

No Full Stops in India; by Mark Tully.

It is amusing to see the other side of the dilemma of writers who are straddling two separate cultures and while they belong to one they cannot let go of the other, the more dominant one.

If one reads the writings of Mark Tully one would not suspect ninety nine out of a hundred times that he was not from India, or that he did not belong to India, in fact more than ninety nine times out of hundred - it is probably close to once in a few thousand times that one gets a little clue of the sort.

But often the clue is almost as if was necessary for a card carrying person to prove his membership for some reason other than his heart or mind or spirit, and that is the amusing part.

One reads the Kumbha Melaa chapter (spelling changed here for correct pronounciation for those that are not from India) and one is put off by the strictly "outsider" look he strives to maintain, and one wonders if he would be equally aloof or dispassionate writing about Lourdes or Vatican (that word is too close to Vatika, garden, to be a coincidence; it probably is not one) and so forth, or is it a difference of what attitude one employs towards faith of those that dominate the world and those that do not.

One reads the chapter on cultural exchange, and he is amazingly witty in giving you the precise impression he formed without a word against the fraud going on, the exploitation or the worry about general erosion or danger of loss of a precious tradition of art.

And then in a moment of mentioning a small thing of his feeling he gives away his heart open to the reader that can read between the lines. One knows where his heart, his spirit belongs, all the rest - history and colonial heritage and clubbing and society notwithstanding.

Least one can say about his writing, at least about this one, is that it is easy to read, informative, and brings home the atmosphere as if one is there with him in his stories, going through it all oneself Which is not always pleasant, what with western penchant for going into unpleasant details, often quite unnecessarily.

But then again this is what their style is - I remember German tourists going on and on photographing Harlem before it was cleaned up and our German neighbours doing their best to ridicule and disdain our visit to London ("it is so dirty, it took a week for my daughter to wash off the pollution out of her hair, did you see the Queen?" and so forth).

But, as I said, that is the least one can say. There is much more that one can say about his writing that would be generally favourable, and one could go on praising it to the sky without giving a clue of its worth. It is better to read it than read about it or write about it.

He mentions his early years being spent in India and his sense of belonging carefully, and then refrains from wearing his heart on his sleeve since that would be perhaps considered less than a reasonable attitude, and he is hiding much of it carefully behind an urbane and carefully maintained exterior, lest anyone see his heart, although those that can read have no reason to be fooled.

Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy; by Peter Schweizer.

Seems to consist mostly of pointing fingers at various public figures that are not republican, and saying "look who has stock (or money or property)".

The said figures are the targets because they dare to speak in a different voice on behalf of what might be good for the people who are not major stockholders or property owners, and the danger is it might come to pass if more people heard this.

It might not be possible to have another affairgate, and some way of throwing sand about to create a storm and make people shield their eyes had to be found.
......................

It might be informative to read of some of the details, and even disheartening, to find out about various public figures who tried to do good for people and spoke out on behalf of them, to find out that White water consisted of middle class and poor getting a raw deal bordering on cheating and Pelosi owns expensive resorts with no one allowed to join unions, to find out how Soros played with economies of various nations and how Streisand does not pay happy wages. To find how few of them employ any minorities, any other races or cultures, or even women.

But only if one thinks that this book gives all the information there is to give on any of those, with no context spared, and no mitigating circumstance left out.

Let us give benefit of doubt and say the writer is sincere, and not merely throwing mud at people who are likely to be good for the people of US who are not the top rich people.

But then one looks at his conclusions towards the end and sees the agenda clearly. Their practices are completely right and justified while it is their thinking and speaking and general public stance that is wrong, he states emphatically. They employ only "white" males because they want the best, and he does not blame them, he concludes.

To begin with humans are not, ever, "white" - except as an exaggeration or a euphemism. Cows, dogs, cats, horses, various birds and flowers are or can be white, but no human ever looked naked while wearing white clothes, of any shape or size. If there were such a risk no white clothing would be allowed in public much less formal occasions.

That aside, to conclude that employment of males of a certain origin implies that they are the best, is to go with a logic much like rich making money because they are rich - by being given positions and higher pay packets and market tips and club memberships where real deals are struck and expensive gifts worth millions that they don't need.

Or one could conclude that any conqueror was always right, which is why the attack succeded - whether Attila the Hun or any of those that managed to attack various western nations, including their own parts.

Shocking? Yes, it is - and so it is to conclude that "white" males get all the well paid jobs only because they and no one else is good enough.

The real agenda of the writer is not even for the men and women who can do it, as it was of Ayn Rand, but it is of rich white men ruling because they according to the writer are the only competent ones.
............

If such conclusions along his logic were warranted, let us see where it can take us.

Schweitzer says that people who speak for the poor and against malpractices of stocks and business should not indulge in stock. If they do, it is because their practices are good and their speeches are fraud.

Would he say Roman church consisting of bishops indulging in paedophilia and other unsavoury activities amounts to their theory being no good and paedophilia being good?

He says Streisand and others lobbying for fair pay and hours are fraud because they do not practice it. And he further says this proves their theory is wrong, since they cannot live it.

Would he admit that any male MD or otherwise medical professional practicing in ob-gyn is deficient in knowledge by definition, since they their professional activities have nothing to do with their own personal experiences? Would he condemn them for fraud?

Would a lawyer be fraudulent in practicing defense or prosecution of murder accused without having experienced murder? Should an actor die in process of portrayal of death?

According to his logic, no male, much less a celebate institution, should have any right to say a word about pregnancy or anything related to it.

In fact no celebate person should have anything to do with a marriage, much less proclaim rights and wrongs of one, or performing the ceremony.
..............

That was a few of the natural conclusions arising from stretching the logic of his concluding chapter and applying it to other fields of life where it might make more sense, such as male ob-gyn or celebate males dictating rules of marriage and reproduction.

He could just as easily have left it at a more natural conclusion, which is that while these people preach much lofty sounding stuff they practice another. But that had the danger of people merely holding them on par with the fallen bishops who have after all not all been automatically ex-communicated.

In fact one parallel with his logic and conclusion about practice of left wing being better than their theory applied to the paedophile bishops would be to say that it is priesthood that is wrong while porn and paedophilia is the only right thing to do. Shocking, right? But it is his logic and his conclusion, only shifted from those who speak for people and do not practice their theory in their life in perfection, to those who uphold celebacy of their own as superior to others while practicing otherwise in private and preaching compulsory childbearing to all married people and almost all women.
............

He goes into another plane of vitriol when dealing with Steinem, and wishes to know what she expected to find at playboy if not sexism.

Fact is the said sexism was not only about women prancing about in impossible, silly, unhealthy gear for fancy of well fed males - that much is visible from outside the building for any decent person to be disgusted with.

Her working there for investigative jounalism was on one level about exposing how little the pay and how tough the work, unlike the advertisements about fun and glamour and good pay, and how discriminatory the employers towards the women employed compared to male employees, in various terms.

On another level it is about making those women seem less objects and more human to the casually dismissive Schweitzers of this world if possible, by telling their story, even if through one person.

One might as well question Memoirs of a Geisha or indeed all literature with the same Schweitzer question of "what did they expect" of anyone in trouble. One might question what a woman "expected" if her husband murdered her or if her brand new date raped and butchered her. One does not, because one expects more humanity from humanity.
................

He mentions about women who did not marry due to listening to Steinem and are now left alone and forgotten. He blames it on her.

But isn't the idea in west that one marries for love, that love is all, that one should not marry except for love no matter what?

If those women had found love they would have never been alone, married or not; and if they did marry what guarantee did Schweitzer have that they were not divorced, left alone and forgotten after a few or even many years of a marriage? Has it not been happening in his culture, his nation? All too frequently, at that?

His words blaming Steinem indeed belie the notion that west marries for and only for love. While they do not have a system that takes care of a woman finding a home, a husband, security, and is not "left alone and forgotten", they also do not have any social system that would guarantee an equal opportunity to them of a life otherwise, whether socially or professionally. So they are left at the mercy of men who might or might not offer marriage and there are the Schweitzers of the world to blame them for letting go of "opportunities of marriage", in a twisted logic that forgets conveniently about love in blaming the women in every way.

Is love merely a convenient word for the husband of a few or several years divorcing the older wife for a younger toy trophy?

Or is it all just blame the women, blame even more the women who speak - and denounce marriages of any other cultures because they work, with no control by Schweitzer's capitalist system?
...........

Schweitzer would be doing fine if only he refrained from commenting or drawing conclusions, if he merely documented the gaps between practice and speech by various public figures, and it might help if he were not discriminatory in picking on the Streisands and Clintons and Steinems and so forth while leaving alone the paedophile bishops of Roman faith and other goons on the side he claims is honest if thugs.

The Longest Day; by Cornelius Ryan.

It needs to be kept as a book on shelf to read more than once - one might read it, and see the film, and yet the the overwhelming character of the subject along with the exhuasting detailed research and writing leaves one submerged. One is glad to raise one's eyes and see one is not actually there, fighting for life and death for oneself as well as the human civilisation, and silently thanks those that did it before we came.

Where did you go? Out What did you do? Nothing; by Smith Robert Paul,

A very endearing reminder of yesteryear that we remember, of days before cheap or expensive toys of recent times that fill houses and leave little for the child's imagination - the role taken up at a later date today by other commercially provided occupations, such as malls, unlike those years when people had time and more basic, natural, imaginative ways.

Feynman played with radios then and had his scientific questioning mind kept sharp and fresh, Asimov read, others wrote poetry, and so on.

Perhaps today the internet has replaced the neighbourhoods as meeting places and it is once again a space of mind for people to explore. Still, the years of when one could do infinitely many things with spools (who has now heard of them, in more consumeristic nations?)are past. Not all that good.

The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography; by Simon Singh.

It is rare one comes across a book of this calibre written for lay readers, so very informative and so good in its level of intelligence that borders on testing.

In discussing codes he goes into history and discusses various codes used historically until one reaches Enigma and realises why it was so prized as to have British intelligence and government risk loss of many lives rather than allow the enemy to suspect that they had in fact cracked it or obtained a key, a variation of each having happened during the war.

Then there is the part about Elizabeth I obtaining incontrovertible proof of Mary, Queen of Scots involving herself in plots to murder her and subsequently the ordering of execution of the latter of necessity, unlike the popular misconceptions about the reasons.

A must read for anyone even remotely interested in any topic touching - whether practical application today or historical significance or simply an intellectual challenge. ”

The Guide: A Novel; by R. K. Narayan.

He was a tourist guide who happened to be a resident of a town close to a cave complex in mountains nearby, with amazing paintings and sculptures, and his street smartness in acquiring a smattering of all languages possible that he might need so he can conduct tours with commentary in the language his clients require (and this is no joke, often people in India who look poor and illiterate do have this amazing achievement as one of their many, the ability with well over a dozen languages or even more acquired with enough vocabulary to take care of whatever few conversations they might need to have with clients) has made a comfortable living for him. Until she arrives in town.

She was a danceuse by not only training since childhood but also from ancestral profession over generations of women who were artists and performers. Her mother, however, did not wish that life for the daughter and got her married to the best candidate she could find so she could have a respectable life, unlike her ancestors.

But art was in her very blood, and the life that required her to wait for the staid husband - an archeologist busy with his research - had her desperate with boredom.

This is the story of the two, who met and it changed their lives. He helped her leave the husband and go back to her art while he promoted her in a profession to its pinnacles. Only, she couldn't care less for the fame and money she commanded - and his double role as her manager and her lover was demeaning in both by being both. She is just as bored with his "connections" that are after all due to her, and she would rather spend time with poor artists he cannot comprehend her wanting to be with.

A fateful moment, a mistake of a decision to hide from her the book and the jewellery sent by her husband - in fear she might melt and go back to him - lands him in jail for fraud, for the signature that is not hers and is easily so recognised by the husband.

When out finally he does not know where he could go to show his face with dignity, the mother who left him due to the bad woman ow the woman who did not testify on his behalf so he could escape going to jail. He walks away and keeps on walking, and is mistaken for a spiritual man since one such had covered him in his own covering while he was asleep, to protect him against cold wind.

The simple villagers and their simple problems that he solves and their sincere faith, and the tremendous calamity facing the region in the draught that he casually mentions "used to be solved once upon a time by spiritually achieved men by their fasting and prayers" - it all lands him in a position he never had thought of going to, that of fasting till either his death or rains that might solve the famine problem. And with the faithful villagers and increasingly more visitors of the region and beyond that always surround him, to take care of him, there is no possibility of cheating.

For the first time it is a struggle he never thought he would come to - that of his higher self and his lower, of bodily hunger and the inability to break hearts of the simple villagers with their faith.

Devdas; By Saratchandra Chattopaadhyaay.

A decent young man and a caring, but self respecting, young woman - and a feudal society where he has no means of supporting her if his family would not have it, and so lacks courage to elope with the woman he loves, so he does the decent thing and instead tells her he never saw her as a lover, a mistake he repents forever while throwing away his life.

Wealth comes but is too late, and is of little use when love is lost.

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Paro, the love of his life, sees her loss when she sees him throwing himself away in drink and dissipation, sheer depression and inability to get past loss of her, pretty much a boat that has lost its sails and sailor and is at mercy of all winds and waves, and hears him telling her that if only she had been there she could have taken care of him and his household, his home, his mother who is at mercy of the other - the only now that he is alone - daughter in law, and he would have been free to not worry.

She reflects on the irony of caring for the widower she married, along with his grown up children who have come to respect and admire her for her virtues of patience and caring and selflessness, and all the while letting the people she cared for be left to mercy of fate.

She makes him promise he will come to visit her marital home - it is large enough to accomodate any number of relatives, servants and guests, as old well to do homes did - so she could care for him. One has to admire the sheer certaintly of her virtue she has, that there is no concern about anyone holding her in suspicion if this ever came to pass, and indeed she had established her own persona, her virtue and her clear conscience in her home by her life there being one of faultless exalted kind that even her much older husband respects her for.

But life takes its own course and she is immersed more and more in the day to day affaires of the household, and with no news of her older concerns they are sort of veiled and remain behind her everyday awareness. When he does arrive at her doorstep, finally, to fullfill his promise to her - he could have come earlier but has his self respect too, about being ill in her home and recovering, so he would rather throw away his life until it is too late to recover and the promise is fulfilled only in name - he is then too ill, dying on her doorstep outside the gates.

It has a haunting quality, the last few hours of his life when he is lying there, dying, and she keeps on waking up, hearing in her sleep her name he keeps of whispering and and going to the terrace wondering who is calling her. She keeps on being disturbed through the morning until she accidentally hears about the details of the guy who died outside the gate - it is too late then, to see him, even though she tries, running in desperation and throwing the household in turmoil to see her sedate usual self behaving in sounusual a manner. The villgers outside the gate have already taken him away for cremation.

..................................

It is almost as if the writer was unconscious of what came through while he merely wrote the tale of an unfortunate man. For it is not just about loss of love that might mean loss of a future, a life that could have been, loss of the persons that were separated. Which is tragedy enough.

The last few hours of Devdas's life while he whispers her name again and again and she wakes up from her sleep hearing someone calling her, but is unaware of what might be going on right outside her own gate, has the quality of a truth of a higher plane. Thus might one lose one's own soul while one got busy with worldly care and lost track of that which one had brought with one's birth from above.

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I have heard many quote the facile summing up of Devdas, about comparison that men easily might make between the two women in his life. And I find it short sighted. This is not a story about ego vs love, one woman losing the latter for the former and the other the reverse.

Paro took much from her love of childhood as her parents did from his wealthy parents, the neighbours in village they lived in, but being told by him that his parents were right about not wishing to step down in matters of forming relations with a lower class family - not a serious caste difference but one of class, that is, of money, which came to replace the older and more benevolent system in that it was more snobbish and had no values to go with it - could finally not overcome the slight to her parents, her family by her love.

By the time he arrived to repent and offered to make it work, it was too late, and he assumed all he had to do was to express his wish to her parents - which was the last straw and she boiled over with indignation. She told him off, in no uncertain words, that her parents knew better than to leave her at mercy of so weak a character, and they mattered, and their submission to his will was by no means a guarantee as he assumed. And moreover they had prestige of their own too, she informed him, indignant at his remark in his letter about their lowering their status by this marriage. As a matter of fact they had easily found her a match far wealthier than his family, which was only a proof in her eyes that her family had no reason to feel low in comparison.

Self respect, not ego, was what this was about, when she told him off. That he could have in spite of that tried to make her parents and his agree to their marriage escaped his notice, and he satisfied his injured ego with hurting her, and giving up rather than carrying out his promise of a sincere attempt to make the two families see reason in the matter and make it happen. His love was sacrificed at the alter of his class and the ensuing ego of the family that he shared - and his temper.

...............................

The other woman did not, could not have had an ego, in the profession that she was in, due to whatever circumstance - she and others in her profession have it hard enough to have self respect, or indeed even a sense of self, if they are not of a low consciousness, and this woman was awakened from her stupor of everyday life into her self by the disdain this man of clear conscience made clear to her. She longed for his respect and love and in the process her life is cleansed of the muck her profession throws at her. She transformed herself, but was not above setting up shop again when needed to find him when he was lost, and that did not bind her again to the profession either - she gave up all to live in a small village in a very simple lifestyle earning much respect from the villagers that knew her for her true self.

In the final hours Devdas confused her face with his mother's in his unconscious state, and becoming aware of that fact, did not think it was incongrous to confuse the two supposed extremes, a revered mother and a common courtesan. This, for the culture this story belongs to, where mother is an extremely revered persona and the Divine is seen as The Mother, is testimony indeed to the clear souls and the relationships.

Adventures of Tom Sawyer; by Mark Twain II.

It is very unlikely anyone over ten needs an introduction to Tom Sawyer and his adventures - and especially the way he got his friends to paint the fence for him, clamouring for the privilege, while he took it easy.

Mark Twain was no simpleton, at that, and managed to teach a lesson in that story about fence painting, about how capitalism and enterprise works - it is about getting others enthusiastic about manual hard work, by some spiel or other, while one then has time to manage, invent, profit, and so forth.

The introduction to his autobiography was unforgettable.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and Other Pieces; by James Thurber.

Thurber writes about a norman average guy in this one, one who is not a hero but secretly wishes he were one, and it is touching more than hilarious - while it does bring a smile that stays for the duration of reading.

Other pieces are his usual good quality too; very worth keeping.

Golden Straw; by Catherine Cookson.

A young woman victimised by a well to do man and the consequences that she has to pay all her life, but more, the next generation too, his as well, and not only hers.

The Outsider; by Albert Camus.

About a person who is emotionally untouched by much that is expected to touch one deeply, such as funerals in the family.

One wonders if the shock and novelty of this then new admission gave way to a whole cult whereby men were supposed to be untouched by emotions and uninvolved in anything in their lives of the nature that was relegated to women, unless it was about their sons, and less often, fathers.

Certainly the images that have come to prevail in west, especially west from Europe in US, and have come to be prescribed as the appropriate behaviour for the human male have been sort of unnatural, as has been the division of emotional responses deemed appropriate.

Women falling in love with the first or every man who looks at them or the babies they give birth to is as likely to not happen at all as is the emotional blankness of men about women they are involved with or married to, or their own children and parents. Often men can be caring and loving, and just as often women are likely to not have experienced emotion or have been overwhelmed by expectations as the protagonist of this work.

Subliminal Seduction; by Wilson Bryan Dey.

This book is not only worth reading but should be made compulsory, so people get some idea of the manipulation they are subjected to in and by various forms of media and advertisements. In fact news media is not exactly immune either - only perhaps more subtle.

There might be books later and even more extensive on the subject, but this one is really a good one. In a slightly off context, Naomi Wolf's Beaty Myth connects to it - and quite thouroughly well, too.

Endless Night; by Agatha Christie.

A man has more than one chance, of doing well and taking the higher path, and is free to do so at every opportunity presented. Some, however, do not do so - hence the title.

Title taken from a well known poem - while there is murder and mystery all right, this time it is more about human faults and depravations than about a detective solving a murder, though solved it is - by a fortuitous accident rather than anyone intelligent applying mind to the clues. The solution is presented finally by the killer, with readers left wondering about their own prowess as riddle solvers.

Sons and Lovers; by DH Lawrence.

This belongs to an era when women still had little choices and had rarely any control over their persona or their lives, and frequently little in way of any connection with the men in their lives - husbands, that is - except being used in carnal way, and receiving what sustenance was provided to maintain the home and children.

Many - many more than otherwise - women still have such lives, fairy tales of love or not.

When such women are well to do due to the wealth of the husband or otherwise inheritance, it is another story, with perhaps other women in similar circumstances for company. But a woman who is also poor - she has only one hope for a secure connection and an ultimate security or emotional and otherwise sort, and any chance of an ascendence to power at all, and that is with her sons. If she is fortunate enough that not only she is emotionally connected to them but they are connected to her as well, then she is secure, free of worry, they will fulfill the needs their fathers left unsatisfied - which is, every other but carnal.

And yet, there is the one person (per son) who can threaten this bond - the woman who awakens love in the heart, not merely the nether region, of the son. The latter can be managed, will be manageable. The former is a formidable competition, and too an opponent. There is no tolerating her when the mother needs her son dependent on her emotionally, seeing her as the epitome of womanhood as he always has done while he grew up. That love cannot be allowed.

Some sons escape, and some are caught, their lives thrown in directions they did not necessarily aspire to.

My World-and Welcome to It; by James Thurber.

It is hard not to relax, smile and then start laughing some time later, even completely uncontrollably, when one reads Thurber. His writings are all of a piece, generally giving you a window into his life - or so you come to feel, at home and in a rocker, feet up - and laughing uncontrollably. And it is difficult to remember which story is in which book.

I have a fair certainty that some of my early favourites are in this one, but am not sure which ones. It is worth discovering again though - no matter how many times one has read it.

For instance I think the Great Run, due to a mistaken rumour about a dam broken and the natural consequent flood scare, is part of this book. Only Thurber could make it that funny. And then there is the aunt that went about screwing light bulbs into empty sockets and very certain she was plugging up the leaking electricity. Perhaps this one also has the story of Roy informing his father that the engine had fallen out, using kitchen pots and pans and so on to create a frightening scare.

But even if they are all in another book by Thurber, what I am sure of is having read it and loved it.

The Black Candle; by Catherine Cookson.

Human psychology takes you on a roller coaster ride as the fates of two sisters involved with another family and the children thereafter unfold before you like a forest tangled and growing towards light.

The Rag Nymph; by Catherine Cookson.

Story of trials and tribulations of an orphan with unusual looks as she is prey to men around, and has to grow up from a little girl to a young woman with fragile dreams and a grown up with romantic illusions gone before she finds love and security.

As usual Cookson excells in the atmosphere of times and place and people coming alive.

The Third Eye; by Lobsang Rampa.

Even after so many years after reading it, a little over three decades, a few details remain etched in memory from this book.

The little boy who grew up to be the Lama that wrote this story of his life and times and experiences and all he saw, liked to play within the remote plains of Tibet - and what could he have played with, it was not only not a rich place (still very poor, Tibetans, and since occupation the light of free smile is gone too) in terms of money, it is also the large expanse that is often named roof of the world for good reason. It is at a great height, the highest in the world. very remote from most other human settlements since it is very large too, and devoid of most greenery of nature.

Little grows there, and so the games and play that is available to most little children in rural India for example - playing in trees, swinging, and games devised around ability to climb up a root of the Banyan tree (the roots off a grown up tree come down from branches to root themselves and spring up new trees around, so that often there is a mile around a tree and its descendent trees around it, all thriving and growing more around in turn) - a variation on the old chasing game.

But little grows in Tibet, no trees certainly, and to devise play for little children would take some ingenuity - which fortunately all children do have until their culture deprives them by filling their space with toys and limiting their imagination.

This little boy - the picture is as vivid as if I saw it - liked to walk on stilts and so once while he did that crossing a river, a grown up man looked at the little boy walking and decided the river had to be very shallow and so walked in - and fell in way over his expectation, to his surprise, and got angry.

He was destined for a life as a Lama and so joined the lamasery quite early as they do, and grew up with the other Lamas to for his family for rest of his life, to guide and care and console him those early days when he missed his earthly family. There was education too, which involved more than learning from texts and other normally understood parts of learning. There was meditation and opening of the inner parts, and therein comes the title.

In India the third eye is very well known and understood but it is something of an inner vision, developed or opened with yogic discipline. I had never heard of a physical operation performed to open the third eye, and this is described on the book.

Subsequently he saw people's auras and was educated by his teachers in deciphering them. He could see that the Indian mission to Tibet was trustworthy but the Chinese could not be trusted, and more.

The book is much more than all this that I remember after well over three decades after reading it.

The Tide of Life; by Catherine Cookson.

A young woman, barely out of girlhood yet, poor, in need of care and support herself - takes life and responsibility for her fragile younger sister, and works hard to support the two of them, and face life as best as she can. And the world is no fairy land - she has to face much, and overcome it too, irrespective of her ability - since it is a question of survival.

Catherine Cookson at her best, with northern rural England brought alive from a century ago, the poor and the not so poor, the noble and the ignoble, the honest and the cheats.

The Bridges of Madison County; by Robert James Waller.

According to an inside tip, by a colleague of the creator of the film that was subsequently written up as the book, the two went and saw Parama, a bilingual film by Aparna Sen.

The points copied are clear but this one goes far more into sex and misses out on the rich texture of the other that was partly contextual and partly in the artists that created it.

Also, since the story was taken to the other side of the world in more than one way, it had to be changed enough to make sense and romance from another perspective since it was being planted in another culture, where an extra marital affair might not be such a thrill or a sin in social terms of today either. And while the original was about an identity that was lost in the everyday life of the woman and she found it - accidentally as it were - when someone out of her circle loved her for herself, that again was not going to be a new thing either, since that has pretty much been a theme of women's movement since the sixties in west.

So it was then pared down to an intense love story that began with sex and very soon changed into a love that remained faithful but unrequited, with the two neither meeting nor every forgetting one another. The self discovery of the woman and the guilt imposed by society were both thrown out, reducing the complexity and making it less her story and more of the tryst that became a romance. In the original the man is a catalyst, the copy made him a partner and a lover till his death.

Some features were retained - the photographer who travels around the world who meets a seemingly ordinary housewife and falls in love with her, the talk of traveling around the world, the dreaming, and so on, with her rediscovering beauty and romance that she did not have in her own life much.

A haunting love story, worth reading, almost of another era if you don't know where it came from - and it is, of another ethos.