Three Cups Of Tea; by Greg Mortenson, David Oliver Relin.

Strangely enough the jacket shows girls who look far too dark to be from the regions described in the book as those where the whole story is taking place, Kashmir and Afghanistan, while the writers not only notice but painstakingly mention the people with light eyes and often with light hair as well; this shows a dual racism, that of noticing such colours and then putting out a book with a cover showing people far too dark to be of this region but complying with expectations of west from other (assumed lesser) people who could not possibly be shown in their true colours.

And while in regions close to the equator people do acquire a sunburn, the picture on the book cover shows skin that is not dark merely due to sunburn but began with a dark gold hue if not darker, either from east Africa or closer to Indonesia. People of Kashmir and central Asia are much fairer, in fact the name of the race of fair skin is Caucasian. And before a further racist discriminatory classification was put in place in US people of Asia east of China - that is, including India - were classified as Caucasian. Which in fact is perfectly true, a sunburn being acquired through life depending on circumstances and fast.

Such a false cover is not unique here, it is on more than one book about India and neighbourhood, and in fact a painting in Amsterdam with a very dark male is named "An Arab .." which I remember pointing out as a false picturisation. The then host I remember had said it did not matter since the picture was artistic, which I thought an exaggeration in the latter part - the painting is mediocre at best - and atrocious as to former sentiment. Truth always matters.

Greg Mortenson has done good work to repay the people he came into contact with during his mountaineering days, carrying on the tradition established by Edmund Hillary in Nepal, helping regions that are under Pakistan administration (legally or by force) and without schools and hospitals by establishing them at a record speed and without strings attached. That he is nominated for Nobel peace prize twice already is not entirely undeserved.

Irony is that Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi who was largely responsible for British being able to leave India without being butchered (it cannot be said people of India had the same privilege, what with Dyer and his ilk, and later partition bloodbath), who established the way to independence without violence around the world by achieving it in India, was never given this honour. This is a shame for the world, for the Nobel peace prize and for those powers that allowed this travesty to happen thus reducing it to a political recognition depending on whim of those in power.

Irony also is that of the nation of Pakistan being unable to provide its citizens with even primary schooling, while one of the oldest universities of the world is in the region that is now called Pakistan post partition of India. The clue here is that these oldest universities of the world belonged to the ancient land named India throughout history by those not of India, and India was as famous for her traditions of knowledge and teaching of intellectual and spiritual matters as she was for her manufacture of goods from silk to metal and more; which is why the trade routes bothered to take the trouble to include India, not easy even in the difficult old days of caravans through central Asia trading from China to Arabia. But centuries of Islamic pillage and plunder included hitting at precisely the excellent traditions until education became limited to home schooling, universities were gone as were schools for general population, and this Islamic tradition is what Pakistan took up the flag for. Hence the dismal state of education for its poor while education thrives in India even as Pakistan officials taunts India on television for her poverty, and for India helping Afghanistan in spite of the said poverty. Pakistan would prefer to control Afghanistan, and makes no bones about saying so to US, insisting all aid to Afghanistan be channeled through Pakistan. And we all know what happens to such money channeled through Pakistan.

Mortenson's persona as his work being good and honest, beyond any possible doubts, nevertheless his politics is that of a blinkered horse in need of a clear vision for running his path through fire; it is molded by his childhood, his life, his work, and his limitations. Relin's, on the other hand, is that of a chef attempting to serve a rotten fish covered with a fancy sauce. Moretnson's life work is the sauce, and the politics that aims to target India with everything from false accusations to distortions of history to being wiped out is the rotten fish served in this dish of Relin's .

Just one example - they remark that Bangladesh women are better off in education, compared to those in Pakistan. They choose not to recognise that these are parts of India torn off only comparatively recently, even as they remind the reader that Bangladesh used to be east Pakistan; but the latter fact is merely political and the former reality (of the two being parts of India torn for political gain of a few) is an ancient unity of culture and tradition.

Bangladesh is better off for education and general status of women partly because Islamic rule was far more hard hitting in northern parts of India, and northwest part that separated to become Pakistan was where the assaults came from - the Khyber pass in fact being the route of aggressors arriving for lawless and limitless plundering and murdering in India. Naturally that was the part where all ancient civilisation was rooted out and wiped out, the last vestiges being driven out with the bloodbath at the partition.

But the larger picture is that India has a strong tradition of worship of divine in its forms of Durga, Saraswatie, Laxmie, forms of Divine that are symbols for Divine Victory, Learning and Education, and Wealth in its true form, respectively; and this worship of Goddesses is strong in Bengal as it is in rest of India. Bangladesh is rooted in culture that is ancient and deep, and while worship of Durga, Kaalie (symbol of the Divine power in its aspect of destruction of evil), Saraswatie and Laxmie is officially out of question and superficially eradicated, the respect for women and Divine Mother is deeper in psyche, and as such the Islamic-nazi creed of limiting women to physical and low slave roles is not as strong in Bangladesh as it is in Pakistan with its Islamic rule to prove its credentials to west Asia.

Imposed faiths do not succeed in eradication of culture, else Europe would be full of Jesus figures instead of Nazis, pogroms or colonial conquistadores destroying and plundering the continents of the world, imposing a new set of nations on land "discovered" across Atlantic - never mind it was well populated and had various ancient civilisations of great stature - and even wiping out the names of the continents so "discovered", and instead Europe would be preaching peace and turning the other cheek to the world.

Fortunately for Bangladesh faith imposed in that part of India with conversion and killing was as superficial as the faith claimed by Rome in name of the king of Jews executed by Rome, and hence the deep rooted traditional values of India surviving in Bangladesh that help education of women there. Ignoring such truths and questioning the differences of why two parts of the erstwhile Pakistan are so different is merely a central blindness to the truth of India, the fact that it is all parts of what was always India.

But Relin's vision is blinded to the central reality that is India the whole land with her culture, her traditions, her knowledge and and her spiritual heights, much like someone with a detached retina he can only see the peripheral lands and wave his weapons at the centre in fear of that which he is incapable of seeing or comprehending.

Or it could be merely a republican and evangelical zealot comfortable with yet another faith that would convert, plunder, kill, until nothing is left on earth; uncomfortable with knowledge, peace, light, life itself.

Greg Mortenson is by now known through US and I suspect through central Asia as well, or at any rate through the nations that have governments, elected or otherwise, that failed their citizens and have no intention of hiding it or trying better.

This to a large extent describes Afghanistan; and all the more so Pakistan, a piece torn out of India so India as it was until then could never get up and be well ever again, what with a guaranteed strife with a determined enemy biting it from both ends and India unable to do anything about it without giving up ways of Gandhi, and being a ridicule.

This did succeed to a considerable extent, in that Pakistan did attack India almost immediately even as bloodbath in western Pakistan left that part almost completely free of all those that were not Muslims, they were either killed or driven out, women kidnapped, raped, forced into conversion, and children butchered. This bloodbath of well over half a million was not enough, not for the demons let loose by demanding and getting a nation simply by butchering a few thousand people in one city (Calcutta, 1946), in one day named and declared "action day" by Pakistan's later to be declared founder; so, to add to all the bloodbath with butchered Hindus and Sikhs and all other non Muslims, Pakistan ordered armies into Kashmir.

Kashmir was a royal state until then, a state which was uncertain like many other such states about whether to join India or stay as an independent state under British protection, a choice for all royals states in India. But it was a decision made easy for Kashmir - and one suspects most others as well - when Pakistan armies attacked Kashmir, which speedily resolved the issue, and the state indeed joined India officially, pleading for defence of the state against the attackers pillaging and raping and plundering.

Pakistan did not admit to being in control of the attack, of course, pretending they were tribals of northern parts of the state unwilling to live under a Hindu rule, and had nuns in Kashmir raped and murdered by the said army pretending to be tribals. Indian army then went in and routed the attackers, but were not allowed to finish the job once for all and to throw them out as they could then have done, and were instead stopped halfway, making a mess for ever for India and for people of Kashmir, and for others just as unwilling to live in Pakistan too.

This defence of Kashmir by India stopped halfway due to the single fact of the then prime minister of India then being not Patel the iron man but Nehru who was truly, genuinely, a friendly man of intellect and heart, who would rather have a round table talks with gentlemen to convince them of the legality of Kashmir belonging to India.

Since then in India Kashmir along with the rest of India has had several elections, and several dire situations with Pakistan attempting to take it all one way or another, any mutual accords being only good enough to have India bound to her word but not Pakistan so.

What is more, India has had to deal with a rising tide of refugees from both sides - Pakistan and now Bangladesh - who either arrive with tales of torture, by Pakistan in the then east Pakistan or now by Taliban in northern Pakistan; and a few hundred thousand arrive on a visitor's visa and simply vanish into the woodwork, what Germany would derisively call "economic refugees", since the situation in India has always been better with democracy and hence a possibility of using hard work and talent to do well, while in Pakistan the only possibility of doing well is in being a Punjabi (so one is not oppressed as lesser sort, as all non Punjabi residents of Pakistan are) and either being well connected or being in the top echelons of the military, preferably the army.

Yet, with all the demands of Pakistan being met, the piece torn off Mother India has never been happy, never done well, and is reduced to a being a nation that is a beggar with a grenade, siphoning off billions of US dollars from US in name of aid and arms for helping Afghanistan while bulging pockets of those that could steal out of that money and meanwhile striking India with terrorism fully intended and deliberate, denying it when US intelligence is as fully aware of it as India is. And to top it all browbeating US publicly when questioned by US about the missing billions of dollars unaccounted for. And telling off the US authorities at state level to not ask for accounts but instead give the latest weapons, drones, to Pakistan. US is not as unaware of the purpose of this demand as to not know that it will save a few terrorists from Pakistan having to enter India to butcher more people - during last few years, say two decades or so, the number of Indians killed in various terrorist attacks including that on the Parliament and on Taj, various city markets in various cities and trains in Mumbai, and so on, is well over fifty thousand. Drones given by US to Pakistan will simply make it easier for Pakistan to murder more people in India. All this butchering is simply so Pakistan can prove its Muslimhood by competing with Nadir Shah (hundred thousand killed in Delhi till the river ran red for over a month) and Changez Khan and others. Or else, people of the world might still remember that Pakistan after all was a part of India torn arbitrarily off to satisfy the demand of some people about not living with those of other religions.

All this is without even beginning to account for the Hindus butchered in Kashmir, driven out with instructions given over loudspeakers to either leave or be killed, till the valley is emptied of all Hindus and Sikhs that lived there and had been historically more a part of Kashmir than the Muslims who often can and do trace their ancestry to marauding central Asian or Mongolian hordes including Changez - spelt Genghis in English mistakenly - Khan. So the Hindus and others from Kashmir are refugees in their own nation, with no recognition from the world - say UN - since they have not crossed an international border, which is sort of salt rubbed in wounds; the refugees from Kashmir in their own nation would like recognition, they are not holding a begging bowl to the world thank you very much.

As for the legitimacy of Kashmir belonging to India, the state was signed over by its ruler before India assumed responsibility of it as of any other part that joined India; but Pakistan claiming that people of Kashmir would elect to join them is a double fraud.

Double, since the northwestern frontier regions that were included in Pakistan by the British never did wish to be part of Pakistan, they were livid at being not a part of India, angry at British and Pakistan equally. Which means that if Pakistan questions the legitimacy of Kashmir being a part of India on basis of "the will of the people of the state" then Pakistan ought to have begun by allowing the regions included in Pakistan to vote on the question of whether they wished to join India rather than Pakistan.

And as for Kashmir, those Kashmiris that are fooled by Pakistan still have no intention of joining them, but instead have a dream of being a Switzerland of Asia, an impossible dream where a neighbour to the west and another to the east is ever ready to use all means to swallow them (China has occupied a part of Kashmir after occupying Tibet, and attacked India in 1962 on a quest of wrestling away more of India and proving China's power in the region as in the rest of the world).

Reality is, that not only a Kashmiri, but a person from Pakistan or Bangladesh can live in India and expect a fair deal, but not so in Pakistan or Bangladesh, often not even their own citizens. Those people of Kashmir that do live in Pakistan due to Pakistan occupying part of the state, such as Chitral or Baltistan or Hunza or other parts of northwestern Kashmir (northeastern part being under Chinese occupation), are not treated on par with Punjabis of Pakistan any more than are the Sindhi, Baluchi, or any other of the citizens.

Badshah Khan of NWFP was respected and honoured in India both before and after partition, but was imprisoned in Pakistan for major part of his life with no respect for his role in fight for independence from British - after all, Muslim League had collaborated with British rulers all along while the struggle for independence had gone on with the freedom fighters (who were mostly the non-Muslim League) suffering imprisonments and fastings and taking beatings without hitting back in Gandhian struggle with determination.

If today Pakistan government is, as they claim often, indeed unable to control the nation and the fanatic element therein, the fault is entirely in the initial building of the nation on the premise that merely plundering India will be enough, there is no need of any other ideology or principle of building and governing a nation except that of Muslims not willing to live with others constituting a nation. But in India Kashmir is only a small part of the Muslim population still living in security and equal opportunity with the rest as indeed do any other people of various faiths, including those that now exist only or majorly in India - Parsi (called Zorostrian by west) and Jewish and Tibetan, Jain and Sikh and many, many others.

It is strange that Pakistan being a beggar, rogue, blackmailing, terrorist nation is a matter of shame for India, as it was when west Pakistan was butchering its eastern part after losing an election and the new president who happened to be eastern rightly demanding that his language, his people be recognised as equals; it takes a thicker hide to pains of others to forget that women of east Pakistan were jailed and bound by chains with not a stitch of clothing - so they could not escape or drown themselves for honour - by army of western part for use of the army men. Refugees that poured into India from east were not then Hindu alone, although with the new nation of Bangladesh becoming more and more fanatically Islamic and proving its legitimacy by torturing their own Hindu citizens till they were driven out came later.

And all this, any of it happening anywhere in what is called a subcontinent in what is an obvious falsehood but is in reality India as it used to be known from borders of Persia to Himaalaya to the oceans, any of this wrong behaviour by any of these new pieces of India is a shame for the mainland that chose to bear the name of India, simply because it is a shame to the land of such ancient rich tradition of knowledge and spiritual heights, of wealth generated and not merely mined, of rule of law and fair behaviour even in war. The torn pieces much like wayward teenagers on drug are waving guns and begging bowls at the world, giving up the rich traditions of the land they are part of including hygiene (west thinks Indians bathe only because it is hot or because it is a superstition, and I have experienced church instructing its flock in India to not bathe except on Sunday since bathing every morning before beginning a day is considered Hindu and so must be discouraged!) only in order to be taught be the west to bathe, to use some criteria of cleanliness and so to have children not die of disease. And while this gives a proof to west of how Pakistan is poor and in need of basics such as elementary schools, hospitals, and people being taught to keep clean, it is for anyone with slightest measure of non blinkered vision a matter of evidence of what damage the over a thousand years of destruction of Hindu even basic traditions has done to the country and its pieces.
.............................


Some of the small but important mistakes by the authors of this work include such seeming trivia - seeming because ultimately it all builds up and is far more difficult to correct - is, for example, when they explain that Tara means star in Urdu. There are two mistakes there, one obvious and the other of assumption.

The obvious one is, Tara is a word from Sanskrt, meaning star, and as such is so understood in most Indian languages, of which Urdu is but one of many; Urdu is born and grown in India, and while in Pakistan officially the language is supposed to be Urdu with a strong suppression of all other languages except that of Punjab (which was divided into the two nations, a part being in Pakistan and rest in India), reality is that not only Urdu speakers are from area mostly between Delhi and Lucknow (pronounced Lakhnau) but those of the Muslims that are in fact Urdu speaking and migrated to Pakistan were an object of not only derision and hostility unofficially but discrimination when it came to life's needs, as are those that speak Sindhi or Baluchi or Pashto or any other language. Officially Pakistan suppresses all other regional languages in name of Urdu, but in reality the dominance is of Punjabi over Urdu.

Urdu was born in India under the various Islamic rules in northern parts through centuries with court languages varying between Farsi (from Persia), Turkic and Arabic, while the people spoke Indian languages, so the lower echelons of court spoke a mix with Indian foundation of language and words from the court languages imposed thereon. Tara is a word from Sanskrt, and in Urdu in India (where the language originates) the word used in Urdu for star is sitara. As has been known in learned circles in west for a couple of centuries or more now, Sanskrt is the mother language of most Indo-European languages, and in fact I used to have an atlas of History that showed even semitic languages as originating from Sanskrt. Finnish, Basque, and Hungarian perhaps do not, I don't recollect at the moment.
.................................


Most such mistakes in the book, whether deliberate or otherwise, help the politics of an anti Indian stance that won't help anyone, whether the reader or the world; for, when you find a wolf at the door feeding it with your sheep (or billions of dollars for free in name of aid) or the neighbour's children (or the people of India) won't appease or tame the wolf, it will merely whet its appetite, and it is certain to return for your children next. To deliberately encourage the wolf to devour the children of neighbours while you wait to deal with it says something about you as a partner of the wolf in killing the neighbours' children.
...............................


There is no doubt that good people live everywhere, including Pakistan or Germany (under a nazi regime or its more obvious revival of today) or anywhere else; that people of Kashmir living under Pakistan rule need help and more, having little redress in the nation that claims them; that same is true of Afghanistan, and that good people can have a dialogue across borders and it helps to a large extent. But a dirty politics, say targeting India under a pretext of helping poor of Pakistan or targeting Jewish people anywhere under a cloak of sympathy to Germany or to any other antisemitics, is dirty politics.

And again, while Mortenson's work being good and his intentions being entirely honest and his persona good, honest, noble, cannot be doubted - this much comes through clear in spite of the dirty politics clouding the book - the fact of this dirty politics of targeting India obscuring the goodness described herein is just as obvious to those that can see.
...................................

The China I Knew; by Pearl S. Buck.

Pearl S. Buck grew up in China, returned after her marriage and would have lived in China if circumstances and times had allowed; her love and understanding of China is no less than her love and understanding of her own country, US, or perhaps greater. Several such people came to belong to the countries they lived in and loved those countries, those people, far more.

Unfortunately the times were harsher and the China she knew changed mercurially and more than once too. It is rather a touching story of how she came to relive her own mother's fear and placating an offended and ferocious Chinese man in the
incident when her own child, small and playful, did something akin to what she had done when she was a child, in pulling a Chinese man's hair - although when she had to placate the man offended by her own child hair were shorter and I forget what the offence was. These were small incidents but telling of times, of days to come. The China she had known was gone forever and perhaps it was never there in the first place, it was only a facade to fool foreign devils as the Chinese call people of European ancestry - that is, when they are not calling them barbarians.

Pearl Buck wrote and wrote about the country of her heart, and in this perhaps she got over the heartache of separation and relived the love of her country of childhood, her memories, her identity of growing up in a place so far away across the world and across the largest ocean on earth. At any rate, the reader benefits enormously in reading this and other works of hers, and in more than one way too.
For one gets to know her and the China she knew, the world she lived in.

My Brother's Keeper; by Marsha Davenport.

Amazing and complex story of human behaviour and relationships based on a true story of a family in New York, about two brothers that grew up under a cruel person intent on destroying spirit who victimised their parents and them with the usual weapon then and often even now - money coupled with a character that likes power over people and likes to see them break.

The two brothers go on to become the two most predictable characters that can grow from this, one molded to the manipulating power user character that he might not have become had he a different upbringing, and the other a gentle character that won't be this no matter what. They love the same woman, too, and are tortured by not knowing who she loved, who is the father of her child. She is sane enough to leave them, and when the two brothers - who always lived together till they were found dead, with those that discovered them having to tunnel through stacks of old and never thrown away newspapers to find them - are found dead, their will declares the child heir with the requirement that the identity of the father be disclosed albeit the inheritance does not depend upon the identity, merely that it be disclosed. This, the child now grown into a commendable man, and his mother, both refuse to do, even though the inheritance is not inconsiderable.

The harder brother stays with one as the tortured one no matter he made life difficult for those around, and the gentler one is the stronger one in his serenity finally.

Perhaps this is true of all humans. Those that would manipulate, torture, have and use power over others psychologically are the weak, the tortured, the pathetic and not merely despicable; those that would hold on to gentle part of oneself and noble code of conduct, and not battle the lesser on their own levels are the stronger no matter what the appearances.

The Lion; by Joseph Kessel.

A story that has to be lived to be believed unless one is slightly familiar with the concept that life can be very different from what one expects as normal in one's own surroundings, since what one calls normal and what one expects is conditioned by one's own life.

A young girl that cuddles with a full grown lion, not one without claws or teeth but a natural friend of this girl for reasons they know best, and naturally make others around rather uncomfortable, is the central theme in this story set in Africa. Combine that with the local custom of a young male needing to prove his arrival at manhood by killing a lion in combat without modern weapons, practically wrestling with the lion, and some jealousy between various males centred on the girl - not of African ancestry, incidentally, but of Europeans stock, settler colonisers - and one has the picture of the complex, volatile story. Who survives, who does not, is what one needs to read the book to discover, apart from other virtues of the book such as mesmerising descriptions of Africa.

Bobby

Bobby, the Robert F. Kennedy Story - The Man & His Dream


I remember a book by a woman author that I read about fifteen years ago, which it might be this one guessing from from the title, and it had then made a great impression that still remains. The book was about the ideas, the dreams, the ideology and the achievements of the Kennedy administration, including the emancipation steps forward, the southern obstructions and opposition to equal rights hammered at resolutely, - according to this writer Bobby was the man behind it all while Jack had the credit, which is not to say Jack was a figurehead much less opposed but merely that while he was gentler Bobby was the force behind that was needed to make it happen.


I remember the description of her personal reaction to Bobby's death as given by the author, something along the lines of "when Jack died we mourned terribly but we still had Martin Luther King Jr., and when he too was murdered we mourned but we still had Bobby; but when Bobby was gone we wept, we had no one, no more hope, and we were lost".

That is not an exact quote of course, merely as well as I can now remember after this long.

Such Devoted Sisters; by Eileen Goudge.

I distinctly remember a story about a mid-teenager saving herself and her half sister from a nasty stepfather by running away to hide at their aunt's, helping out at the aunt's business in shop and delivery while sending her sister to school, and putting her budding romance with a young restaurant manager (owner?) on hold while she went to Paris to learn to create chocolates and could open her own business, no longer a burden on her aunt. The younger sister however is in love with the elder sister's young beau, never giving a thought to the possibility that he was her sister's beau, and going out to get him with all the innocence of the young and those that have generally always been taken care of and loved.

I have always wondered how not only the young sister - which is bad enough - but others including the author manage to make the younger one seem like the rightful owner of the young man and his attentions - never mind the fact that he was definitely interested in the sister closer to his age and to his persona in being entrepreneur while taking responsibility for the younger one, never mind he was sort of secretly engaged to the elder one, until the elder one heard the younger one seem to accuse him when questioned by the elder one about her pregnancy. They all suddenly seem to gang up on the protective elder one and make the younger one into the rightful owner of the young man's suddenly turned switch loyalty, with the elder one seeming always lost, as is the man married to one and desiring the other and suspected by his wife ever after.

I suppose the woman had to be punished for having done so much all by herself - saving her own self and her sister from a child abuser, surviving and supporting herself and her sister, her initiative in her aunt's business and going all the way to learn to make chocolates and creating a new one, oh no she couldn't win the man too, it had to be the protected pampered one who would turn and accuse the elder one of all sorts of things - and the elder one couldn't turn around and say, look, this is mine, and you better be grateful for all you have had and not had. So the punishments for the one who did and could, until she learns to be second to suit her gender.

I wonder if it was a real life tale that had to be written the way it was, so full of pain for one sister and so much of everything win win for the younger; or is it the corporate requirement to turn it this way, as shows and films have been on and on during the backlash years in US (even as Thatcher regularly put various heads of governments in their place bluntly) described by various authors. No matter.

The story stays with one, even if I am unsure if this indeed is the title of the story I have been describing.

Venetian Mask; by Rosalind Laker.

"Two friends who were resident pupils in a convent in Venice and had more spirit than could be tamed by the convent begin in this story by going to the festivities using masks, which everyone does of course, so they are not detected, and thus begins this story, a story of friendship of the two for life, while they find love and marriage - not necessarily always found together - and challenges in life that they face with courage and always manage to overcome with help of each other. Sounds glib, but the story is quite serious, and one gets very close to the characters, especially the two women, going through their travails with them as one reads this."

Night of The Hunter; by Davis Grubb.

A stupendous courage and sharp intelligence, not to mention the responsible way of behaviour, is stamped on the story in the way a little boy of hardly ten saves his own and his sister's life from the man that has arrived supposedly with a message from their father and supposedly a friend of his, but in fact with a clear and definite intention of taking the treasure he suspects them of hiding and killing them. The stranger does manage to fool the mother of the two children he has met as a fried of her husband into marrying him, and the little girl is all too credulous of the love of a father figure since she is missing her own loving father. But the boy - boy oh boy - he is perceptive, sharp, careful, naturally suspicious of the predator, and again, courageous and responsible, in the way he manages to save himself and his sister against all odds from being killed by the vicious stranger.

The Eagle Has Landed; by Jack Higgins.

A clever plot to kidnap Churchill during wwII goes to its culmination via various roundabouts through human follies; based on a collection of historical factors brought together in this that were in fact very separate.

Dunbar's Cove; by Borden Deal.

The story about the family in US (Tenessee?) when dams were new, hydroelectric power was new, federal projects were new, and engineers were enthusiastic but had to convince the farmers about the land they needed to give, even if they were offered a larger piece elsewhere.

Today we know more about ill effects of dams, but there is no denying the change they brought in around the world. Now, Himaalaya is in danger due to dams in Tibet constructed by China and since the locale is very fragile, very volatile geologically, perhaps a little less development around the world would have been a better example. Hind sight is perfect of course.

And the book is nice.

Early days of nation building in US, with new techniques of engineering and new source of energy, electricity, not to mention irrigation ideas - all this makes dams and canals an imperative; but then the farmers that own and depend on the land that is needed for the dam cannot be just herded off (especially when they are not natives of the land but the right sort of immigrants, the sort that the government consists of till recently) so they have to be convinced with the right sort of arguments, and that too before the deadline for beginning the building of the dam.

It becomes slightly more complex when the engineer is in love with the farmer's daughter. And the problem is solved miraculously by finding the right sort of solutions and replacements.

Mistress of Mellyn; by Victoria Holt.

Young art expert on assignment to a house in remote village in Scotland - as she works assessing objets de art in the house, she finds the house and surrounding more than worth notice, with attraction and romance and mystery and puzzling references to past; is she going to find love, family, romance? Or merely lose even her job, having broken a valuable antique handling it without care on the job?

Mistress, incidentally, was in usage as equivalent of master until almost a century ago, and used for women of above certain social and economical status irrespective of marital status, while the latter discrimination between three or more words that all stemmed from this one word, discrimination depending on sexual status, is comparatively recent. Such little pointers lead one to believe that in many respects last two centuries went backwards even as in most others humanity leaped ahead.

The Salamander; by Morris West.

A phoenix rises out of the ashes alive. But a salamander stays alive through the hottest fire.

Politics and society and church in Italy, and a young official caught in the midst of the whole thing coming out alive by sheer presence of mind and power of thinking, of seeing things and people for what they are, perhaps losing a little of the credulity of the youth but not the essentials needed for trust.

The Waltz KingsJohann Strauss, Father & Son, and Their Romantic Age; by Hans Fatel.

Very moving tale, true story, of a talented music composer who invented the then immediately enormously popular waltz, composed waltzes and polkas and more, but had a troubled life in that he left his family and lived with another woman, far more serious in those days in Europe for someone in middle class; and then the son, even more talented, inherited far more talent and too some of his father's emotional troubles with love life.

The son wrote The Beautiful Blue Danube, which was at first rejected and he threw it out into trash, only his live in lover knew its worth and not only saved it but put in amongst the pieces to be played at a key performance, and he played it in spite of being angry at her for this. The rest - of fame of the piece and immortality of the composer thereby - is history.

Most moving is how his death was conveyed to a gathering by his conductor with a playing of Blue Danube in very slow tempo, and they understood, and left without a word after the performance, silently.

Sunbird; by Wilbur Smith.

Based on an archeological expedition's findings of ruins and remains in southern parts of Africa, of what they surmised was a Carthaginian colony, implying that when Carthaginians were driven out and massacred they did not all immediately perish but some fled with ships to Africa sailing down along coasts of the land and finally coming to find this place a refuge and building a colony, a civilisation there, until a few centuries later they perished due to local circumstances.

This book incorporates all of this theory and has a story of romance, betrayal, reincarnation and archeological finds built around it.

Taking of Pelham One Two Three; by John Godey.

It would be thrilling enough a suspense, now; it was all the more so when the book was relatively new, what with hijacking of a train that the authorities could do nothing about; fortunately it ended well, and one could breathe.

Waiting For Willa; by Dorothy Eden.

Mystery about disappearance of her cousin Willa who has written in code of a shout for help brings the protagonist to Scandinavia and then more north into remote regions of the land, attempting to discover if Willa is safe or even alive - the police see no reason to panic, but the cousin knows better, they had a code set up long ago.

Colourful mystery and suspense. With romance as well.

In This House of Brede; by Rumer Godden.

About a successful career woman who takes her vacations in an abbey and joins it as a nun at an age that is neither young nor quite retirement, but at what might be at or close to pinnacle of success in her career.

My Life With Martin Luther King Jr.; by Coretta Scott King.

An inspiring era of history of and a major figure of US history and his life story by someone who knew him more intimately than others.

Small things remain when they are not within logic until they are explained, often.

It was perplexing why someone had to convert to another branch of what ought to be considered the same religion, and to undergo baptism by immersion as if her own baptism by sprinkling were not good enough. This obviously leads one to see that while a religion is presented to outsiders as a united phalanx, fissures within are quite deep and divisions irreconciliable.

Once Upon An Island; by David Conover.

A couple with a fresh vision for life goes to find a new life on an island, with little help from outside if any, and have to find their own strength and their own resources, refreshing their inner lives in the process. Refreshing read for the reader too.

Green Darkness; by Anya Seton.

Love that is from soul to soul survives the boundaries of time, social strife, difficulties not only external but also those that stem from superficial parts of the persona such as nature - even though triumph of love might take a few more lives before those that so loved come together to find one another.

Hotel; By Arthur Hailey.

The seemingly effortless smiling hospitality industry and all that can and does go wrong behind the facade, especially when the hotel is in New Orleans and it is post wwII, and a doctor at a convention turns out to be of the race that is not admitted by policy, and there is a problem with the kitchen, and then there is a hostile takeover, and meanwhile there is a guest, old and ill, who has been visiting several years and seems indigent, and alone ...

A great deal goes into making it all look effortless while the hotel smiles at you and makes your stay comfortable. Or safe for that matter, in terms of health and more. One would have hoped that the sort of racist incident described here has no likelihood of occurring now, post all the years since then - but it was less than a decade ago and more likely less than five years ago that an African visiting dignitary was taken into custody and treated like a criminal all because he happened to go out of his official five star hotel for a walk in the morning as he has been used to for health, and if New Orleans or the police or the state of Louisiana or any official part of US has ever apologised to the said dignitary (who was in US for a diplomatic multinational conference and by invitation too) it is a secret well kept from the media.

Also interesting is the high society loneliness of a child that grows up too fast for her own good, however sophisticated at an early age; and the tour of New Orleans that includes the cemetery as a chief interesting feature, with its over the surface rather than under the earth graves, due to the level of water too close to surface in this city situated between the Gulf and the Lake Pontchartrain.

The Shoes Of The Fisherman; by Morris L. West.

Informative about inner workings of Vatican especially about the change of Bishop of Rome, that is, election of a new pope after death of a current one, and educational about the role politics - of world and church - plays in the workings.

Madam Curie; by Eve Curie.

Superlatives fail to describe this story of a woman driven by her thirst for knowledge, her driving herself hard to discover secrets of universe, her good fortune in meeting someone able to see her worth and love her for herself and join in her quest realising her work was worth, the tireless hard labour of years and trials and tribulations before success sparkles in the radium achieved in the laboratory at night, and the recognition that comes in time.

Nobel prizes are valued and rightly, too; Nobel prize winners in science fill a hall of fame - but it is noteworthy that this family has five Nobel prizes between four members including a son in law, and Marie Curie received it twice. The biography is written simply and beautifully by the other daughter. For this we ought to be grateful to her.

Youngblood Hawke; by Herman Wouk.

A young man full of vigour in more than one way, of mind and body and creative facility, shot to fame with his first book published and for good reason, and he has not only more ideas but elaborate plans of many many books he sets out to write. But he is innocent in ways of the world and learns at a cost to his health and creativity, to his heart and to his whole being.

The publisher, the agent, the high society that takes him up including the wealthy married woman who has him in her sights and soon in her claws, and he is an observer of the whole process as much as a pawn and a player learning to do better.

Very moving about the protagonist and very educating about the world out to devour him.

Collision Course; by Alvin Moscow.

The Classic Story of the Collision of the Andrea Doria and the Stockholm.

True story of a collision of two ships - which often almost happens, or used to before global positioning and satellites and computers. Andrea Doria was the pride of Italy, while the Swedes were equally and justifiably proud of their own competence of boat building and navigating. The Swedish boat that Andrea Doria happened to ram into was in fact correct in its course and maneuvers when they realised they were too close while Andrea Doria turning towards land rather than as would have been correct to her left was a natural mistake, human tendency to turn to land when in danger.

With all the horrifying details what remains most prominent in memory is the little girl whom the other boat took - cot, bed, and all - clean out on its own deck as it sliced through her cabin. She woke up with no idea of what had happened, safe on the other boat, while her family perished.

And with all the possible care they can take with GPS and so forth, planes still do get too close for comfort sometimes - I remember reading a story about a near mishap of this sort avoided due to a persistent feeling of something wrong in the pilot's mind, an inexplicable intuition that pilots have come to respect by experience. This particular one after fiddling with everything and checking on all possible details realised he was a few feet away from his designated altitude, corrected it, and a few minutes later froze as a plane approached on a direct collision course - or what would have been one if he had not corrected the altitude.

This book also mentions towards the end another such encounter of two ships almost colliding and passing with a far too little margin finally in dark, emerging out of fog, some time after the Andrea Doria collision. And that this is not uncommon - too close a passing for comfort or safety, that is.

One has to admire Heathrow for the precision with which they manage the thick traffic without incident, and through London weather, too.

Mrs. 'Arris Goes To Paris; by Paul Gallico.

Charming tale of a charwoman with a gentle dream - of owning and wearing a Paris original model. How it comes true and what happens along the way and subsequently is the gist of this lovely story with magic woven by Gallico.

The Northern Light; by A. J. Cronin.

Northern Light is the name of a newspaper in a small town up north (- in UK, that means anywhere not within a couple of commuting hours of London). This story is about keeping that paper alive, through the difficult times of a big one trying to take over.

It is all the more relevant today when huge corporates have invaded all sorts of unimaginable areas of life personal and social, beyond the small business and small towns and street corner businesses. Keeping alive in face of this road roller and having an identity of one's own is as much a struggle for a person dressing up every day as it is for a culture, a nation, a society or a family. Or a couple trying to navigate labyrinths of love for that matter. Or a matter of what films one watches, what one thinks.

Crusader's Tomb; by A. J. Cronin.

Beauty in its true high realm of spirit is what Hilton always writes about, with a soul coming across an experience and holding on to it in face of all impossibility in this world, what with the need to compromise in order to get along with society. Hilton's people are those that stay true to the spirit and the high realms of Beauty, no matter what life and society hits them with.

The artist, painter, Stephen Desmonde of England in this book - published also under the name A Thing Of Beauty, later - tells the story of how a visionary of art faces society condemning his work, his vision, the beauty of his work, all due to his being ahead of times while mediocrity would be safer for him to stick to and acquire fame and wealth. As it is he faces destruction of his work and court cases and poverty, with few supports for his spirit and his life apart from his work. The one constant support is his wife, of less noble a birth and bringing up than him but someone who not only loves him, someone who also comprehends the greatness and beauty of his work. Her dignity in the face of his fame after his death is one of the most moving memories that stay in mind after reading this.

Letter From Peking; by Pearl S. Buck.

Back home in US the wife gets a letter from her half Chinese husband - he loves her, but has to live in his other homeland, and to prove his loyalty he has to take a Chinese wife. These are times of turmoil.

The story of three generations of people of US involved with land and people of China a world away, on various levels, with love and friendship, ancestry and difficulty of facing prejudices, marrying with or without love, marriages for reasons other than love, and coming to terms with life's complexities.

It needs someone with stature of awareness and consciousness of Pearl Buck to write so much so succinctly and yet convey so much touching heart while widening mind of a reader.

Beyond This Place; by A. J. Cronin.

A young man who discovered that his mother is in fact not a widow, she pretended to be one so her son could grow with no trauma. and that his father is serving for life for murder - and he knows in his heart that it could not be true, and sets out to find what is an old case but not quite forgotten in the small town where it happened, where his father is imprisoned nearby.

His father did always protest his innocence, and had no way of proving his innocence, but was a less powerful person than those that could and did not help. The son however has determination and a fresh youth on his side.

This is only an introduction - no way to sum up the writing of Cronin.

No Comebacks; by Frederick Forsyth.

The unforgettable - No Snakes in Ireland - and other equally good ones one has come to expect from Forsyth.

No snakes in Ireland especially remains in memory due to its twists and turns on a story of a person ridiculed and humiliated beyond endurance planning and executing a scheme to frighten and humiliate someone much larger, stronger and a bully in his own land, with a surprise and a fright; the surprise however is an element that weaves its own course what with a live being involved, and while the scheme goes out of hand the outcome is beyond all expectation.

The Devil's Alternative; by Frederick Forsyth.

USSR cannot allow their people to starve, leading to riots and disintegration; allowing US to know the desperate need of grains due to shortage yet not known might lead to high concessions, unacceptable; while dealing with all this is urgent, nor can loss of face for nation in letting go of two men caught in terror and murder in a cause against state oppression of minorities be allowed. And yet there is a small matter of a threat to the world if the two are not allowed to go free.

From Moscow to UK to Turkey to Washington, statesmen and intelligence and diplomats and politicians, power struggle and love story of a different kind, men dedicated to national causes of unrecognised nations, it is all the usual terse and brilliant treatment of a story one expects from Forsyth.

The Cry And The Covenant; by Morton Thompson.

It is a shock and a surprise to realise that hygiene was so low in Europe, that doctors did not wash hands after dealing with dead bodies (what else and who else also did not wash hands after what other activities is left to imagination) and the one person who did realise that washing hands after other activities and before treating the next patient - especially the women in childbirth that died regularly and those deaths were treated as if normal and expected occurrence - this one person who not only realised it but proved it with his own experience in insisting people working with him wash hands before touching the patients and saw deaths drop drastically, was ridiculed.

A few decades ago a colleague from Bavaria ridiculed people who bathed or showered every day, with a "they must be from a dirty country, we don't need to shower more than once a month" - and a landlord in UK waved away a shower not working as a non sequitur with a "oh, we don't shower that often". Hopefully the people working in medicine or in food preparation and service industry do wash hands as often as we expect or wish them to!

Pratham Pratishruti; By Ashapurna Devi.

This is the first part of a trilogy, about three generations of women at various stages of liberty of personhood.

This one is about the first generation well taught with education and values given by her father. Satyavatie has been taught by her father before she was married off. She dreamt of carrying on the dream of blossoming of mind, of education, in her family, her children. She is married and has children of her own and they include a daughter, a piece of her own heart - she wishes to educate her as she was, give her all she can.

But this was well over a century ago and the families had different ideas often, and laws were archaic.

This is the era when British rule was in the process of taking over from various other Islamic and Hindu rulers in India. Ancient Indian social systems were demolished during Islamic occupation through centuries of strife against the Indian systems, and the education system had changed from Ashram school system of yore to one of parents educating children to the best of their own abilities.

This amongst other things had an implication that is universal across time, space, geography and culture - namely, women's education had suffered in terms of reading and writing (recall how recent it was that Harvard admitted women, and this is only because Vietnam war reduced the male student population) - although to be fair reading and writing was but a small part of Indian education where sheer memorisation of various subjects and treatises was the tradition, and also women in their normal course of life were expected to be well versed with all aspects of caring for famiily including medicine.

And too the social system had families make decisions for their children and women, so any head of a household whether man or woman could decide for their own children and dependents. Thus the education Satyavatie received from her father, which was neither unique in India nor universal.

And to make matters worse, child marriages were not only prevalent, they had been the rule since Islamic rule over most of the nation made it extremely risky to have a grown up daughter, or transport a young bride to the bridegroom's home. It had been safer for a few centuries to marry off young girls, before they were anywhere near puberty. The new rule by British had not changed that.

Satyavatie, however, had a great awareness and a mind of her own, and dreamt of bringing light to her own family, her household and children. This dream took a leap into blossoming when her daughter was born, and she intended to educate her daughter properly at a school and not marry her off early.

Satyavatie's daughter, Suvarnalataa, was five, and Satyavatie had already made it clear she would not tolerate any talk of the child being married off until she was grown up and well educated, as she herself had been.

But Satyavatie's mother in law foiled it neatly by taking her daughter Suvarnalata for a holiday to stay with grandparent. The mother-in-law tricked Satyavatie - when the child was on a holiday visiting the grandparents she was married off before the mother could arrive and prevent it.

Satyavatie was not able to break this up, she arrived too late and marriage was a fate accompli; moreover Hindu marriages have no break, no divorce in religion and in any case no possibility of another marriage for the girl, not then anyway. (Law has changed much since then, which is different from religion, as any catholic knows too - church excommunicates divorced people, especially women, everywhere in the world.)

The child, Suvarnalata, was small and it was not abnormal socially, so the trauma for her began only when she was then dispatched off with the new relatives to her own in-laws home, and separated from her own mother - who arrived too late to stop the wedding but early enough to see her daughter married - by force, and then on Suvarnalata had to live with them and take the lifelong taunts from them about her mother and her strange behaviour. As any woman of superior achievements and a mind of her own is likely to suffer in any society across time and space an geography and culture.

Satyavatie fought back in her own way, which might not seem much like a fighting back today but was a great shocker for her day. She according to her name went in search of truth (Satyavatie means One Who Has Truth).

The daughter, Suvarnalata, is the next volume in the series, in many ways the one who battled more and with courage and strength she had inherited from her own mother - even though she had so little a time with her and no education to speak of. She carried the mother's dream forth, with resolve, fighting not only her own mother-in-law and the rest of society, but even her own sons, who were on the side of social norms about marrying off the youngest - the third woman in the series.

It is really hard to put a value on the series, practically a chronicle of generations of women, though the pattern was not same for every family where India is concerned - it never is, in India.

Fortunately. Because that is what makes progress and evolution not only possible but easier, with no central authority conducting inquisition.
..................

A River Ran Out Of Eden; by James Vance Marshall.

Charming and decent tale of a boy protecting a golden seal from a hunter, with the latter threatening his parents and home. The book is unequivocal about the cunning and menace of the hunter unlike the film Golden Seal based on the book, which rather equivocates about the virtues of the hunter and the father. I remember the mother of the boy threatened in the book while the film leaves those parts out too. But the film is visually rather a pleasure.

Algebra of Infinite Justice; Arundhati Roy.

The title refers to the article Roy published during the furor of demonstrations by a few city intellectuals defending the rights of villagers and tribals affected by building of dams destroying forests, human and wildlife habitats, natural balance of ecology, and more.

It was published as a long article in a periodical before being brought out as a book, and I thought it brought up and presented to general public many points that might have been known to scientists and authorities but certainly not to those people that were not dealing with any of the factors directly affected by the dams.

The article explained much, including far flung issues - for example the insurgency in Punjab that had taken most population of India by surprise. It obviously had a great deal to do with poverty and unemployment in rural areas and yet Pujab had been the most prosperous state, the most fertile, the famed land of happy well fed and very patriotic people, for as long as we can remember.

This work of Roy explained the root of the inexplicable opposite - when one put it together with the other part of the picture, the disfrachisement of tenant farmers and other poor landless farm workers by the much heralded machinary such as tractors that was ubiquitous in Punjab since a few decades, driving much of the population into a silent but desperate poverty.

Naturally the unemployed, especially those that were young and therefore were far more vulnerable to propaganda and other - well funded, including ablity to provide arms - attempts from those that would be happy to see India permanently in turmoil, or worse.

Much of Punjab has suffered in all this since then, much blood shed and it was all unnecessary, starting from innocent dreams of prosperity for all by using dams to generate power and provide irrigation by canals to all.

But it is neither so simple nor without price to disturb Earth and ecosystesm, and the ill effects have been seen not only in India but in US as well, in many ways. This work goes into it all and is well written for a layperson, writer as well as readership - not that any professionals will not benefit by reading it, too.

It is high time humans stopped in tracks of arrogance of controlling nature and doing anything to any part of nature they can think of - but such awareness is not prevalent and there is far more of a resistance from those that would benefit more directly, whether it is about red meat industry or about dams or industrial pollution affecting rivers and air.

And dams are still being constructed, without regard to the fragility of Earth and its ecosystems, or even effect on human lives.

Incidentally, what Roy has against algebra is not clear, since she was trained in a scientific discipline.

Scarlett; by Alexandra Ripley.

Everyone would have had a different way of imagining how to extend the popular story, and so the heirs appointed someone of choice, and while the first few pages disappoint in style and substance - Margaret Mitchell's Scarlett was fire and spirit, she might lose but did not take humiliations like a woman is expected to, meekly - the later parts do very well in both ways.

The original told about the civil war and reconstruction in Georgia, both rural and Atlanta, where this sequel takes off and goes into neighbouring states where Scarlett has relatives, and her experience of the reconstruction years there and her spirited dealings with people. Then it shifts to her ancestral Ireland and to Tara, which her childhood home was named after, and deals with history happening there, with Scarlett playing multiple roles.

Ripley is victim to the recent decades of misogynistic pervading atmosphere of her nation (and the world for that matter, but one does get to be led to expect better of US) in general, and the relentless vilification of Scarlett O'Hara in particular, never mind she worked hard to nurse and feed people she need not have taken responsibility of at all, never mind she endangered her own life in attempting to run a business successfully where men failed more than not. Ripley has her thrown out of her own house - left to her by her first husband and the father of her son - by a woman who has survived on her charity basically for years while vilifying her, and the fact that Scarlett did not throw this in her face in public or even think of it is only a small part of her natural nobility that goes unnoticed (except by Melanie in GWTW who is dead when this book begins) even as Ripley proceeds along the lines of Mitchell (who had Scarlett disinvest in the mills that were a symbol of her own achievement to her) in having Scarlett proceed to spend all her own earnings through the years of occupation, danger, strife, on charity to the Wilkes clan, even as she is abused and ill used by Miss Wilkes - who, as Melanie pointed out uncannily correctly, hates Scarlett due to her own being never married and not likely to marry as she is over twenty five and not attractive. Scarlett takes all this abuse, proceeds to set up a dual charity to support the Wilkeses, before leaving town.

This is basically Ripley catering to the hatred that such an achiever and a noble woman as Scarlett invokes in the hearts of ordinary women full of ill will that rule the gossip circles of public, since the expectation was that women - and the gossiping, back biting women at that - will form the basic readership of this book. So they had to be catered to by having the noble spirited Scarlett be treated horribly and taking it in a noble cause of charity to the Wilkeses.

If you wish to know about her love life, read this for yourself.

Bridges of Madison County; by Robert James Waller.

According to an inside tip, by a colleague from India, a friend of his and of the creator of the film that was subsequently written up as the book were in midwest at university together when the two went and saw Parama, a bilingual film by Aparna Sen, at a time when Parama was a new film and a sensational one. The two were impressed, and the one perhaps new to Indian films subsequently went on to make Bridges of Madison County. No credit is or ever was given to the source of the inspiration, as far as we know.

The points copied from Parama in this work are clear to anyone familiar with both, but this one goes far more into sex, and thereby 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, this 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.

God of Small Things; by Arundhati Roy

First and foremost it is a good read and a racy one, and a good piece of writing too. That much is obvious (- it won the Booker prize, after all!). It was a sensation when it arrived, not the least because it was already portrayed as a sensation on distant shores, slated to go win much - and it did win the booker, giving generally many people, those of people of India that are (to some extent or more or less) English reading (- and, too, much of others that are aware of outside world sort) people of India - an elation. One from amongst us won their prize over their people, was the general euphoria in the country and amongst countrymen (or women) living abroad too.

In Roy's own country, India, though, there were opinions as diverse as could be, with the praise abroad contributing to much awe in the country in those that either always look to west for approval or even what to think what to wear what to feel et al, or on a more normal level due to an impression of a world appreciation with prizes much prized making average people proud. On the other hand most innocent detractors were truthfully pointing out that writers in India had written much greater stuff, and while this one was good it was hardly the best of Indian writing, or even representative of India either in social terms or in quality of India's best.

At one small gathering of friends at our place it was suggested that we should do something, make efforts at social and national levels, to bring out best of our literature to the notice of those that were holding up this as our best. While I don't think there is anything to be said against such an effort I thought it was not a "should" - it could be done but was rather of questionable relevance.

It was only those of India that gave importance out of all proportion to bookers and oscars and other "foreign" fame and notice and acknowledgement forms of recognition of worth, that were disturbed by the phenomena that this book had become, I thought (and said) - if "they" like rock, and India has great music of Bhimsen Joshi and Jasraj and Amir Khan and Hirabai Badodekar, "them" not noticing India's best does not change the fact of Indian classical being superior, unless India has a psychological need of approval from "them" to certify her rich heritage in its superiority.

Now remembering the distant memory - it was a storm in a teacup really, so ten years or so is a lot - one can see another side of it, too.

Pather Panchali was a much heralded film, with awards galore, and fame that went on and on. Part of it was due to its being more accessible to a sensibility that was linear and strictly of mind level, while more complex sensibilities are perhaps of Indian preference, with inputs from the worlds of heart and music and earth's or world's visual spectacular bounty, and dance. For a while there was a distinct divide - with those that preferred Ray considering themselves superior and those that preferred average Indian cinema apologetic or uncaring. Now, India has come to terms with her own rich tradition. And meanwhile there has been in India all along every kind of cinema in between, too.

So why was Ray the heralded one in west, while India ignored the phenomenal and much - very much - deserved popularity of Awara in Russian, east European and much of other parts of the world? The latter film had to do with India's colonial past still shadowing the psyche of most of Indians looking west in their need of approval, now a past. The former film (based on a far superior book by Bibhutibhushan Bandopaadhyaay) is another story and connects to the booker prize of Roy in a distant link.

Awara was a beautiful film with a story and appeal that were universal in nature, applicable to any society with injustice against women in suspecting them of fall from virtue and discarding them while innocent, and the consequent social ills. It touched hearts and won them - Russians could sing the theme en masse, and did when they gave a thundering ovation to the star director - and even today Russia knows India by his name more than anything, as casual visitors testify time and again, with their being given friendly smiles and help with the name of India to which they respond with "Raj Kapoor, Awara".

Pather Panchali in all its truths on the other hand could be applied to the poor of any country, anywhere, but is visually very much identifiable with India, and so is a story of only India identified solely and conveniently, even glibly, as a poor nation in the western psyche, a story of poverty that is usually India identified with. That there is such poverty in their own backyards in west (East End of London, Harlem of New York that Germans were always photographing more than anything, rural poverty of depression era, Scottish and Irish poor sent to colonies with prison being the only option, British poor and unemployed sent with free passage after wwII to Australia that was a penal colony until then) is swept under the rug, and this stark film is comfortable in their view for applauding. It is only India, and does not remind them of anything nearby, after all the people in this film are not wearing tailored clothes but are in thin cloth wrapped around, so it is only India that needs to look like this and have a problem of poverty, goes the subconscious of the viewer making them feel comforted, safe, kind and superior in charitable mood. And it is easier to deal with, being much more if not exclusively on level of a subconscious level of mind rather than of a more integral perception.

The parallels are hardly anywhere near exact. Roy's work is on more levels than merely mind, and both the virtue of this work as well as the truth of there being better works even then in Indian (and therefore inaccessible to west) languages (- I have met Europeans, with all their colonial past of ruling half the world, that did not know India had languages, much less literature, and some thought people of India all speak English! -); fact is this one in its value of literary virtue as well as sensational stuff that could be a silent pointing finger at India was more comfortable for rewarding with a much valued prize.

There is no denying this is good work. Only, readers from elsewhere are likely to take it as representative of not only a specific story of a place and people or even some of society, but of all India. Which is not the writer's fault really. Roy wrote what came with a flow to write itself as a story and one cannot, should not, always be writing with an effort towards making the ignorant or prejudiced understand all aspects of the background. If someone did that (and many do, at that), that way of approach to writing would definitely make for a work with a "them" in mind as readers, stilted and catering.

Roy is brilliant and fearless and has gone on to do superior work, which has gone unnoticed comparatively. Dams are still being built, never mind Algebra of Infinite Justice.

I am afraid (the last phrase and the last word can be taken literally only by disassociating it from the subject of the verb, in that everyone should be afraid of such a possibility) that major disasters of far more than environmental and ecological nature are likely.

This is all the more so when sensitive parts of Earth such as Himaalaya and other tectonic dynamic are being played with - without thought of anything other than power and profits. So volatile an ecology as Himaalaya being played with for economic gain or political power by an occupying power, Amazon forests being cleared with no likelihood of profiteers replacing Earth's forests any time soon, and trawlers scraping off ocean floors and killing all life and ecology only to have much of the fish so brought in rot - none of this is good for any of us, any more than the plastic garbage island the size of Texas floating in Pacific since US garbage has to go somewhere.

Lady Susan; by Jane Austen.

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

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

Lady Susan; by Jane Austen.

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

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

If one never knew anyone of this sort, one would think the character is entirely invented. At that it is not that uncommon to come across men who deal with their own children, especially daughters, this cruelly or worse, but they are excused or even pressured to be this cruel and admired for it in various cultures (not excepting west or US for that matter) while women are usually this cruel with children of other women, say a lover's wife or a sister in law. But the character therefore is entirely possible, especially in an era when a woman could only obtain wealth and consequence by marriages her own and her relatives'; and the only area she could use her mind however sharp was in fields related to intrigues of social sort, marriages, love affaires, and so on, especially gossip and vile gossip about other women. This unfortunately is what far too many women and even men use their minds for, even now, for sport and not for want of subjects that could use the sharp minds. Sometimes it is the heart of such a gossiper and mud thrower that is at fault seriously in that destroying another person is the pleasure, and use of mind and other facilities is merely a means. Lady Susan comes as a surprise therefore not because of the subject but the author who chose to write it, since Jane Austen usually is as clear as a sunny day in desert about virtues and vices, and condemning not only the latter but even faults of character that might seem only human today but do lead to follies or tragedies even today often enough unquestionably. Here Austen chooses the letter form prevalent in her time, and avoids commentary, except in letters of another character, giving equal voice to two opposite characters as it were. The story ends well as all Austen tales do to reward virtue, protect innocent and punish vice or folly only in measure. A window as always to her time, and informative in that as well.

July 05, 2010. 

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

Yayaati; by Vi. Sa. Khaandekar

Begun in the war between Gods and their opposite side the Asuras, this tale - as most parts of Mahaabhaarata do - continues with effects and consequences into human society at more than one level and more than one generation. Unlike the common misconception (story of lust) this story is about pain suffered for no fault of ones own, resulting loss of sweetness, ego, desperation for love, revenge and repentance, lightness of spirit and pride, and so forth - interplays of various human faults and travails.

Kacha came to Shukra Muni (Muni - sage, great learned teacher, someone with knowledge devoted to knowledge and spiritual matters), to learn from him the knowledge that Gods needed to defeat Asuras, but he had to be disguised as a Braahmana - if he admitted to the truth of his being a Kschatriya, he would be refused by the great teacher who belonged to the Asura side, since the knowledge would then be certain of being used against Asuras.

The young and vulnerable daughter of Shukra Muni, Devayaanie, fell in love with him and Kacha played along so as to not rock the boat prematurely. When he spurned her after being found out (since he was discovered to be too tough and resilient physically to be a Braahmana) she was devastated. Her close friend, princess Sharmischtha, perhaps unaware of how hurt she was, played a prank on her along with her friends and Devayaanie was left in water without any clothes on shore after their bathing together, the friends having left with laughter and her clothes.

A king of the realm, Yayaati, arrived soon after on the scene and helped her out, having heard her cry for help; she then informed him that since he had taken her hand under the circumstances and according to the code of chivalry in India then observed, he was obliged to marry her, and he agreed, with no shortage of pleasure since she was attractive and spirited.

Father of Shramischtha, the king of the region, on the other hand, was obliged to make amends for his daughter's thoughtless folly in putting Devayaanie in this predicament - all the more since it need not have ended as well as it did. Devayaanie asked that the princess be given to her as a personal servant for life, not free to have a life of her own until Devayaanie so pleased. This was done, Sharmischtha repentent and her father only relieved the punishment or amends was this easy. (If it were his kingdom or his daughter's life that were asked for, he would have to comply according to the code of conduct.)

Yayaati the easy going king, Devayaanie the proud and upright queen who was a Braahmana woman and hence unused to the Kschtriya easier life and mindset, and the ever watchful Shukramuni to see that his daughter was not ever disrespected again - this did not exactly make for domestic felicity and when Yayaati happened to see the servant, Sharmischtha, who was not only beautiful and well behaved as a princess born and brought up but also softer due to her repentence and status, he fell in love, as did she.

The queen never discovered this until she saw the proof of their liaison, a child. Her wrath brought her father and he cursed Yayaati the adulterer with untimely old age forever. When repentence of the guilty male was enough to melt his heart, he was given one solution - if any young man were willing to exchange his youth with the king's old age, this was possible as long as the king wished to enjoy youth.

Devayaanie's sons along with all other men refused, unwilling. The only young male willing to agree with all his being to such an exchange was Pururawaa, the son of Sharmischthaa. And having enjoyed youth for long Yayaati gave it back to him, with much more - all his love and his heat's blessings, which Pururawaa proceeded to make good use of. According to the code, he was judged the best candidate to inherit the responsibility of his father's kingdom and became the king. (Kingship was not necessarily bestowed on sons, either, but on the best person for the role, chosen by king and - or - agreed generally by the people of the realm.)

"Yayaati" is One (male) Who Has Suffered Pains. The word is related to Yati, which means One (male) Who Goes Through Pains Of His Own Willing Decision, For Sake Of Spiritual Achievement. (The latter word has been used wrongly by western observers and travellers for sightings of unidentified human like creatures in Himaalayaa who have characteristics human but are most likely to vanish when sighted; this characteristic fits very well the possiblity that they in fact are men meditating in regions where they are unlikely to be disturbed by lesser humans.)

Shukra Muni was the one who in wrath called Yayaati "a man who went astray in his lust"; but it is far more complex than that, and he realised this too, which is why he gave a way out of his curse at all.

Pururawaa went on to be one of the great kings in the Mahaabhaarata tradition, an ancestor of the princes of the main story.

Persuasion; by Jane Austen

The most gentle love story from Austen repertoire, with the usual cache of gentle women and men following a normal course of life for their day while falling into easy traps of faults or follies and realising their mistakes and generally rising above, with their counterpart of men and women of small follies or serious faults of character providing examples of how not to be or behave. Someone (name escapes me, having read this long ago, two decades or more) had once pointed out that in Austen nothing happens page after page and yet one reads it with great interest, and to that one might only add, time after time again and again with the interest not diminished at all. And the most interesting are those of her tales that have the gentlest of stories, characters, et al.

July 4, 2010. 

My Single Friend; by Jane Costello

This book would be really good without the conscious strewing about of some off things that seems these days to be something perhaps publishers and editors insist on having every otherwise readable book sprinkled with like decorative sprays of red pepper on a dish - but they ought to recall red pepper does not belong in every cup of tea or milk. Other than that it is a bit long or just unable to hold the reader.

Just after this I started on an Austen work, which belongs to early eighteenth century as for the time period the book describes, and is comparatively far less eventful. And yet it holds the reader unlike Costello's contrived fast paced and twisted tale, which was a bit of hard work to finish.

Austen was a young woman when she wrote, so why couldn't writers of

Theodore Boone; by John Grisham

Very good piece of work - as one has come to expect from Grisham - with some familiar ground and yet different from others before. Courtroom, murder, killer likely to get away and all this saved by a school child, but the menace stays in the background albeit not too far away, and normal life goes on, a la Painted House.