The Sanjay Story: From Anand Bhavan to Amethi; by Vinod Mehta.

This book could have been benefited with a newer edition to add information after the famous first ever defeat of congress government in India, because the subject of the book not only died suddenly and accidentally soon after this, but far more happened, much of the events of eighties related to the family and the nation woven intricately together as it then used to, that could have put a lot more in perspective. For reasons perhaps not that obscure, this wasn't done.

Much of what is here was known to most who lived through those times, especially those connected in any way with India, especially those that lived in India, even if press was silent for most part about negatives related to the family. This was so not merely during the emergency when political silence was imposed, but also before and after, when personal details of non exemplary nature were kept off. Indeed that was so until the Times motto, very characteristic of a GWTW English era, of "all news that is fit to be printed" was replaced with another set of values and style, especially in film journalism where gossip and dirt was brought in in seventies and paid news replaced it all parading as all news and thought there could be. In non film journalism and indeed in officialdom people still did and do cater to power, which is perceived as intricately related to this family albeit the winner branch of it rather than the thrown out wife and son of the subject of this book, who remain mostly ignored but for the opposition generosity in giving them space in the party. That the family is for now out of power even as opposition, while opposition is a strong winner and ruling party, has changed only a little of that equation as far as most press and other officialdom go.

Mehta here gives little that is not known, and leaves out much that is known, which he states could have filled another book but was not included for reasons of journalistic integrity, specifically for lack of substantiation - so most of this is a reliving through the known and few unknown details. He mentions the big theft, but leaves out the real mccoy that was change of name due to the incident overseas, and instead claims the subject of his book left the Rolls Royce apprenticeship due to being no longer interested.

What is really interesting is that he leaves the book and the reader, after meticulously cataloguing all the unsavoury details of Sanjay Gandhi's exploits and misdeeds known and less known in detail, is that he makes one question instead if the guy wasn't so much a villain as a character out of place and out of his time, and would have been instead seen as a saviour and unquestionable prince and king benefic and loved by his people if only time and place were different. This may or may not have been his intention - after all his very meticulous balancing of the book might not have been all that merely due to integrity of journalism, but more of a safety precaution, since one couldn't even then have been certain of just how long congress and the family would be not in power. Indeed they were back in two years, except for Sanjay who was no longer quite the unopposed prince and died before he could come back to that position.

This impression, of a man out of his time and place but not intrinsically bad per se as much as
simply lacking the circumstances that could have instead made him look very different, is perhaps all the more stronger if one has just finished reading about the various royal families and persona of Europe, One gets the impression they got away with much including deaths of millions, being not personally responsible for events they presided over as heads of nations, and more.

Indeed the author leaves one with the impression that the one single characteristic of the man was that he was autocratic in his style of thought and decisions, and while he heard and understood others when he did meet or hear them, he gave little importance to what he did not consider worth taking into account. In the process much was discarded that could have benefited him, from school education to the final routing at elections due to not listening to those that knew better.

One might wonder if there was more in this line - after all various despots of many nations did flourish quite long and well under a benevolent eye from a superpower, due to their ability to agree to just that much; that some of them cheated on the agreements successfully and were never punished is yet more evidence that perhaps downfall of this young man, fortuitous for the nation or not, was not all due to his serious flaws as much as due to faults that put him out of ever being supported by a superpower.

Mehta mentions Sanjay's own family but little, makes no mention of death of his father in law and the Sikh problems that the nation and more specifically the family faced after the death of Sanjay Gandhi and especially more so after the events that unfolded post his death. All that of course happened after this book was published, but he has added only a new forward to the book, mentioning only the death of Sanjay Gandhi and no more.

All in all one wonders if the author was all along merely in a fortuitous circumstance as people in higher positions during and post British times tended to be, rather than earning it with merit. One expected much more of the book on this subject, more than this, better than this, due to his name and position of being a well known top journalist and editor of decades of top magazines.

One of the examples where it fails or at least falls very short is the infamous Turkman Gate episode of emergency misdeeds - Mehta describes it as a slum, deserving of being razed to the ground, and only badly done as in human terms: Tavleen Singh, another journalist of excellence, has explained it differently, in her book Durbar. And while Mehta does give a lot of details about the whole operation making one cringe as one reads it, it is the crucial difference in describing it merely as a slum that is a serious discrepancy at the very least if not outright mistake.
......................................................................................



So Mehta wrote the book soon post emergency, and the subject and his mother being still very much then alive, didn't take chances but wrote so meticulously that it comes across as all documentation of what most others either wrote or said until then, or could find easily enough, with - as he very explicitly and pointedly mentions - much withheld. He really hasn't said anything that could help them persecute him legitimately, if and when back in power, which they did come soon enough, even though Sanjay died very soon and suddenly in an accident with a plane he was flying crashing near his home that was the home of his mother, then again the prime minister of India. 

The effect is to make one wonder if he really wished one to take a startled second look at whether the guy was not a villain but a much misunderstood visionary out of time and space and role, with much that was blamed on him being not his fault, much that was his fault not being held up for him to be accountable to but minor stuff, and much that was his accomplishment being lost in the sycophancy during the emergency.

One small detail comes to mind much later post having finished the book and been busy at other stuff, which - the detail - is interesting in its shedding light on the author.

He has made it a point to give details of how he was asked, with no uncertainty, by henchmen of the power during emergency, to give publicity favourable to Sanjay Gandhi via articles and editorials, which other publications did readily enough (he refrains from mentioning the chief publication that stood out against it all, funnily enough!) - which he meticulously mentions he had not until then complied with, and later fortunately didn't have to, due to emergency being lifted.

And therein lies the secret of why he gives detailed description of the circumstances and wedding of the parents, Indira Nehru and Feroze Gandhi, pointing out and specifically mentioning that the ceremony might not have been legal or legitimate, at all. Most people would satisfy themselves using a small one word. But Indian culture being unlike that of west, no such words exist in India for children of parents who might not be married to one another, and the concept of such stigma for children is borrowed or imposed via colonial rules of foreign origin over a millennia, as are the small words.
...........................................................................................................

Matriarch: Queen Mary and the House of Windsor; by Anne Edwards.

The title is slightly misleading, in calling Queen May a matriarch, and then painstakingly being accurate in how she was first and foremost a devoted loyal monarchist - for, being a queen consort and not a Regina, not born to rule, her being a matriarch is halfway at best, and that limited to how she brought up her children and held power over her brood - which was only by setting example they all looked up to and some tried to aspire to, at best. As the author establishes over and over, she was not very maternal, mothering at best at a distance and certainly not when her brood was young, so much so her first two sons suffered as babies at hands of their then nanny and it went undetected for years, enough to perhaps leave a mark that defined them for ever, until the famous abdication by the elder and the suffering of the second in having to take over.

Matriarch is a title that best fits Queen Victoria of course, clear in her role almost at or soon enough after birth, and a Regina, but one that directed the course of European history with her matchmaking between her brood and other royal houses of Europe, and preferably between cousins so the ties of familial loyalty binded them, which did not always succeed as she wished - since familiarity and familial ties can do just the opposite, but succeeded enough that all royal houses of Europe were and are related closely. That few survived as royal is another story.

Queen May, born Princess Victoria Mary of Teck, was none of that, however close a relative of Queen Victoria and however admiring of royalty, or beloved of her people and her descendents. What she certainly was is the queen that defined the monarchy and the British royal family for future generations, The author repeats over and over how royal, how queenly she always was, far more so than those that were more royal. This is more a trait of character of course, and rarely acquired by mere will, or even due to birth and training. May was born in and brought up in an impecunious family, her father being the son of a morganatic marriage and thereby deprived of the benefits of the Teck and other estate holdings, and so at mercy of the greater royal relative Queen Victoria. If May was as royal as, or more royal in her bearing than, Victoria, this was certainly due to her own persona.

What examples she set have survived a few generations, and only Princess Diana was different in ways that were remarked about, in her keeping her children close and showing affection openly in private and public - and this perhaps is one of the few ways where emulation by example of a beloved and revered ancestor and Queen was not always the best idea. Queen May was uncomfortable with babies although she had six, never was close to them until they were adult if then, and this had a negative effect best not discussed - and it isn't, even in this book, albeit one might be given the impression there was no such taboo. One cannot help being oneself, of course, but bringing up babies is vital and leaving it to care of nannies quite so much can and often enough does have effects not possible to countermand later, and one has to reflect how much superior the joint familes of Asia and other older cultures are in this respect where grandparents and other relatives are not far away sporadic visitors but on hand to spare the young mother and babies of the stress. In this case the grandparents of May's children were Prince and Princess of Wales, later King Edward and Queen Alexandra, usually not far away but limited by European or English tradition of not being everyday presence, and thus not able to detect the hurt to the young princes their grandsons.

So there are comparisons, inevitably brought to mind, with more recent royals, and this is perhaps not an accident or unintended effect but even so much as the very purpose of the book - the repeated references to the beauty of Princess and later Queen Alexandra, her identity as the beauty, her vanity, her attachment to her children and especially to her first and second son, are just a tad too often enough to make one wonder if this is yet another attempt by royals to get the people to not quite love and revere the beloved recent Princess of Wales, Diana.

There is more - there are references often and frequent to various women the princes, and especially those who were Prince of Wales at one time or another, played with - and were loyal to, for years; which does make one wonder, is the reader being subliminally suggested to play the game as the people of England then did, accepting and loving the prince no matter what, and more - since Princess of Wales and later Queen Alexandra played her role as required, is the reader suggested to follow the example of the royal family in censuring Princess Diana for not doing so, and instead attempting to live rather than complying and following the example, to be a decorative living fossil in a palace?

Inevitably also the comparison of Edward eighth and his abdication which his mother disapproved of enough to receive him rarely thereafter, and his wife never, is unmistakable with the present circumstances with question about whether succession should pass directly to Diana's son William who inherits his mother's popularity and looks, or is the reader being again subliminally suggested to adhere to English tradition and approve, indeed love, the erring ex husband of Diana, as Edward was even when he abdicated and only visited rarely as Duke of Windsor?

Whatever the truth of that, and those are not small considerations, one does enjoy reading this, due to the times and the scope of the subject, and in that it disappoints in more than one way. - of the most interesting events and persona there is but fleeting reference on the whole, except as it affected the royal family and England. So the world wars first and second are referred to a bit more than the Russian events, latter more in that the then King of England failed to save his cousins and their children, which is blamed conveniently on Lloyd George, and as for India, the longer references are to the royal visits, while the millions starved due to harvests being taken away for soldiers is not mentioned other than as a quirk of India millions dying of famines, Jalianwala is a passing mention, Gandhi is a nuisance (author might have used another word, or not), and independence of India with the hurried and badly done partition resulting in ten million deaths due to British taking flight in a hurry is not mentioned at all.

One does get copious descriptions of clothes and jewellery worn by various persona royal or otherwise, and there are photographs not as satisfactory as found elsewhere, but then perhaps the book was commissioned for the subliminal purposes and might just do the job, of making people accepting substitutes preferred by husbands - Alice Keppel was, would be the royal diktat, and look at how everyone suffered only because Wallis wasn't, would be another subliminal suggestion.

One comparison not mentioned is inevitable though, of the present queen being a lot more like her grandmother in looks and bearing, albeit more like her mother in other respects.

The Patrician" by John Galsworthy.

Beauty of nature, of England and of London, of humans that appreciate it and take it for granted, live it, and imbibe it in different ways in their own lives and their own psyche - and are coming from different castes socially and economically, brought up with, different sets of circumstances, leading to different values and conclusions about life and people - and their interactions that bring joy and pain to more than those that they encounter.

Pure Galsworthy, all of it.

If there is beauty and love and expectation, as is usual in Galsworthy, there is going to be expectation too, and in this the book falls short only in that it stops halfway compared to what one is led to expect if one read Forsyte Chronicles before this. Which a generic reader is likely to have.

But if one has read more than only the superlative Forsyte Chronicles, one is likely also to have realised that that work was probably a more matured, later achievement, while the other works are all leading up to it. This work is probably half way in that it does not lack finesse, but stops short of courage to bring about a satisfactory resolution to the love thwarted by circumstances. Then again, those were the realities of the day and it is probably a good thing to face how it was, even as times were changing. So some were able to go forth in the Forsyte best fashion while others, like even the majority of Forsyte clan, were not quite that fortunate.

One will recognise the various characters here as earlier sketches of what matures in Forsyte Chronicles, but it is nevertheless wonderful to go through this, and of course, the lyrical portrayal of beauty of nature as the characters live through it, walk in it, is always lovely, and never same.

Big Book Of Malice by Khushwant Singh.

In one place Khushwant Singh seems plaintive in complaining about how his freedom to express his views was impinged upon by Bengal being furious about his very negative views about Bengal in general and their specifically having produced no great geniuses, and even more specifically stating that Tagore's poetry and general literary work was nothing much, nor were other great people of stature from Bengal that Bengalis were so proud of.

This might seem naive on his part, and it would be easy to point out that his right to express his opinion is not curtailed by others' disapproval of it, since they have not lost their right to express their opinions of him when he was accorded by the right by the same constitution.

That would be easy, but naive, since he is not a terrible two toddler even though more often than not his attitude is precisely that of one, including much verbal fondling and exposing of his nether equipment. He has been to not merely the most progressive school begun and sponsored in India by Indians, but also colleges and universities across various nations (that since split in two, and then more parts depending on how one counts them) to study, and then to various other places to lecture and more, all without any merit whatsoever if one is to judge by his writing. He is good at reading, observing, listening and then penning down a summary, by standards more applicable to high school.

In reality the baffled reader at his atrociously bad view of a very talented and prolific people might give it up as a bratty idiot's way of making himself noticed, until one comes across the reasons why
the homeland he had to give up at partition split further into two. And then one realises his posturing is merely copy of attitudes of the worst in the erstwhile homeland where he himself states he and his ilk was ignored and never much part of the general majority who drove them away and massacred millions when the said homeland was designated for faith of the majority.

He and his community of those that had to leave northwest for mainland India at independence due to partition have never given up pining for it, and they have clung to attitudes reflecting those of their lost neighbours no matter how atrocious those attitudes, how racist, perhaps from a perverse loyalty in hope that they might one day be accepted back. That they know this is not likely, and if it were there just might be yet another genocide by the same faith that drove them away, does not deter them in this attitude albeit it makes them silent as to the reasons for the loyalty, and for continuing racism on lines of pak attitudes.

'71 war for independence of Bangladesh was due chiefly to the pak attitudes of racism and denigration of their larger half of nation - larger by populace count - with very frank discriminatory speech that still continues about how the Bengal people are dark, short, unlike the tall and fair and hefty Northwest, and how they are poor and frugal. That the pak leadership was responsible for the poverty is conveniently forgotten - they fleeced the nation and allocated the largest share to Punjab alone, chiefly to capital and to military and a few political leaders, leaving all Bengal then and all the rest then and now in dire poverty - and even post losing half the nation, the same fleecing is applied to other parts of the nation, fleecing of Baluchistan going on since six decades although that part never joined willingly, and of other provinces.

What was worse, and still continues in parts still under occupation by pak military such as Baluchistan and more, was genocide. East Bengal had massacre of three million people of all ages across genders by pak military in the single year of '71 after the cyclones and subsequent famine had claimed a large number already, and this was not all. UN had to open abortion clinics to deal with half a million women of east Bengal raped by pak military, and that was just for vengeance. For use, they had fifty thousand or so women kept chained and naked so they could not escape or drown themselves in any river in the land full of water so much so it is colloquially nicknamed "Jol Baangla" - literally, Water Bengal.

This does not end the list of horrors perpetrated - Dhaka university had a separate genocide perpetrated by the pak military, to finish off a huge number of intelligentsia of Bengal that prides itself on flowering of intellect in every field. Notably, even now the pak attitude is of denigration about Bangladesh expressed in a dismissive "it was only intellectuals, a few of them, who wanted independence". It would be easy to remind them the new nation has been free to rejoin the pak union during the four decades since. Easy, but futile, since they know they are lying to cover up their atrocities.

And Khushwant Singh and his ilk have hearts bleeding for the rapist, massacring brethren of theirs who once did it to their own, before they did it to east Bengal. So their solution is to join in denigrating all Bengal and all geniuses of Bengal. In Khushwant Singh's own favourite imagery, it is a contest of how far can he write his name in sands of his lost homeland.
.....................................................................................................


There are readable pieces of course, and often information one is unaware of about people one has known a bit about or famous ones in any case. More often it is about denigrating those respected and defending some atrocious person or event or action.

One example that comes to mind is about a very respected film producer and director, Chetan Anand, whom this author knew in college in Lahore and was enamoured much of - he never fails to mention his good looks, his fair complexion, and other qualities he was impressed with. One would already conclude he was in love with Chetan Anand, if it were not for the prolific mention of how he took trouble to watch women as and when he could without being caught, including women whom he would normally not get a look even at the face of such as those from household of Nawab of Bhopal (Pataudi?) as they bathed in a spot they thought was secluded.

Even in the first mention of Chetan Anand he takes care to denigrate him with a careless mention of how he became a producer and never amounted to much. In this he mentions meeting him in Mumbai and abusing him thoroughly in public, before his very young and beautiful inamorata the ethereal Priya Rajvansh, too - which one can be sure he took special delight in doing, for the show rather than for any real feeling of injury at being ignored by the man he had probably cherished unknown to the object of cherishing.

One of course can be very sure he never gave this treatment to anyone from across the northwest border post independence, however atrocious their behaviour, but that is obvious. With them it is a slave-like devotion he exhibits even when they are hanged and deserve it for the genocide if nothing else.

Reality is, Chetan Anand was much respected for his eclectic productions, and for his direction of films, in the few chosen ones he worked with, usually under his own banner. He was not prolific in numbers like his two younger brothers, but his work offers some assurance of not being merely for commerce, and his brothers as his colleagues respected him for it, and quite rightly too. His most famous brother kept some of that quality in his own productions, while the middle one was very good making success of a venture in market. When two of the three worked together, it was gold.

But then, Khushwant Singh was in all probability either jealous or was reacting like a lover rejected in favour of a beautiful woman that Chetan Anand chose instead - quite possible, the latter, too, since his extraordinarily prolific discussions about women and nether parts cross all possible borders of decency and even of disgusting and become tedious to the point of boring, not that different from effect of looking out of a train window around early morning in India in overpopulated parts - perhaps he is merely protesting too much, since his faith in all probability won't allow him to acknowledge the real object of his passion, and the faith of his masters would likely stone him to death after having used him to his satisfaction.
.....................................................................................................
.....................................................................................................

Monday, June 15, 2015.
.....................................................................................................


(Re Maneka Gandhi, Younger daughter in law of Indira Gandhi. Khushwant Singh describes her being thrown out of her marital home after she lost her husband and was made to sign away her rights to her husband's share of property as a condition of her being allowed to stay. Most witnesses and friends including Maneka herself exculpate Indira Gandhi of blame, all agreeing that she needed her elder son and he would have been made to leave his mother if Maneka had not been thrown out without a penny.)


Khushwant was as frank in labeling his malice as he was about copious descriptions of his and other people's nether parts, or his watching various women in various stages of undressing, or worse. A good deal of it is simply provoking by a puck, if one is provoked he has victory and if not he is willing to go to lower levels of disgusting.

But honest or real journalist he was not and if he heard would probably say he did not claim it, and was frank he merely gossiped on strength of his familiarity with so called high society. In this too however, he is as circumspect as any social climber, unlike Tavleen Singh who managed to maintain decency and courage and journalistic ethos and more.

When emergency was declared in mid seventies Khushwant Singh couldn't stop praising not only the then newly dictator but also her younger son and his very young wife, Maneka Anand who was a new addition to the Nehru dynasty of Indira Gandhi family. That this praise might render him slightly ridiculous seems to have bothered him far less than a possible incarceration like others of the time who were honest in disapproval of the times and political measures.

In the series of books with malice in titles where various pieces of gossip about society are collected, there is at least one piece about the finale of the chapter of the young couple, Sanjay and Maneka. This was written post Sanjay's death and he was eyewitness to the events as they unfolded around the exit of Maneka from the home of her mother in law where she had arrived as a bride and lived until then.

There are others who wrote or spoke about it. Pupul Jayakar mentions the event in her biography of Indira Gandhi and it is a very open, honest account of the conversation the two friends had. Maneka herself speaks of this and of her married life until then, in a conversation with the ever elegant Simi Garewal. But this account by Khushwant Singh is notable for a flavour missing from other accounts.

By any standard applicable to the situation, this exit of a poor young woman who had been made to sign away any and every right to share of property due to her husband as a condition to her staying in the home with her son, was a despicable act on part of the in-laws. Both Pupul Jayakar and Maneka herself exculpate the mother in law who was fragile with the loss of support of the younger son that was her chief support at family and in politics, and was dependent on the elder son who never wanted politics and had a wife who was supposedly against it all, their friends all either western or high society or both. Indira Gandhi is quoted by Pupul Jayakar as saying, what could she do, she needed her son. Maneka puts the blame squarely on her sole sister in law for having her thrown out of the home where the two women had an equal right morally, traditionally, and in every other way possible.

Khushwant Singh cannot deny any of it, but would rather play it safe, and most people in the situation remain silent as the party did. Not he - he has an extra point to prove, to claim that in spite of sharing a communal tie and of his having specialised as an academic by translating religious texts of his faith, he was not exactly on side of the young woman thrown out penniless from her marital home.

So he resorts to gossipy account of how she did not go quietly, how she let loose verbally and insisted on having dinner before leaving. All to indicate that she was not pathetic but a fighter, and to perhaps allow a reader to speculate that her character was unpleasant and was responsible for her losing family, rights to property, et al. Total bs of course.

One wonders if he needed to cover up so strenuously only because he was of the same community that Maneka belonged to, or was he afraid he would be targeted by the elder sister in law and mafia to boot, or was it worse? Who knows.

It is always easy to blame a victim, especially a young widow who has signed away her rights to share of wealth, and has a small son to bring up to boot. She is expected to beg and placate others, with the one in power at marital home in position of making her a social outcast.

One expects better of those supposedly brought up in high society with a decent education, however. In this respect as probably in all others the three women - Pupul Jayakar, Simi Garewal and Tavleen Singh - fare far above.

Perhaps courage is a feminine virtue after all. .....................................................................................................

Wednesday, June 24, 2015.
..................................................................................................... 

Society, Gossip, Khushwant Singh, Malice, Et Al

Khushwant was as frank in labeling his malice as he was about copious descriptions of his and other people's nether parts, or his watching various women in various stages of undressing, or worse. A good deal of it is simply provoking by a puck, if one is provoked he has victory and if not he is willing to go to lower levels of disgusting.

But honest or real journalist he was not and if he heard would probably say he did not claim it, and was frank he merely gossiped on strength of his familiarity with so called high society. In this too however, he is as circumspect as any social climber, unlike Tavleen Singh who managed to maintain decency and courage and journalistic ethos and more.

When emergency was declared in mid seventies Khushwant Singh couldn't stop praising not only the then newly dictator but also her younger son and his very young wife, Maneka Anand who was a new addition to the Nehru dynasty of Indira Gandhi family. That this praise might render him slightly ridiculous seems to have bothered him far less than a possible incarceration like others of the time who were honest in disapproval of the times and political measures.

In the series of books with malice in titles where various pieces of gossip about society are collected, there is at least one piece about the finale of the chapter of the young couple, Sanjay and Maneka. This was written post Sanjay's death and he was eyewitness to the events as they unfolded around the exit of Maneka from the home of her mother in law where she had arrived as a bride and lived until then.

There are others who wrote or spoke about it. Pupul Jayakar mentions the event in her biography of Indira Gandhi and it is a very open, honest account of the conversation the two friends had. Maneka herself speaks of this and of her married life until then, in a conversation with the ever elegant Simi Garewal. But this account by Khushwant Singh is notable for a flavour missing from other accounts.

By any standard applicable to the situation, this exit of a poor young woman who had been made to sign away any and every right to share of property due to her husband as a condition to her staying in the home with her son, was a despicable act on part of the in-laws. Both Pupul Jayakar and Maneka herself exculpate the mother in law who was fragile with the loss of support of the younger son that was her chief support at family and in politics, and was dependent on the elder son who never wanted politics and had a wife who was supposedly against it all, their friends all either western or high society or both. Indira Gandhi is quoted by Pupul Jayakar as saying, what could she do, she needed her son. Maneka puts the blame squarely on her sole sister in law for having her thrown out of the home where the two women had an equal right morally, traditionally, and in every other way possible.

Khushwant Singh cannot deny any of it, but would rather play it safe, and most people in the situation remain silent as the party did. Not he - he has an extra point to prove, to claim that in spite of sharing a communal tie and of his having specialised as an academic by translating religious texts of his faith, he was not exactly on side of the young woman thrown out penniless from her marital home.

So he resorts to gossipy account of how she did not go quietly, how she let loose verbally and insisted on having dinner before leaving. All to indicate that she was not pathetic but a fighter, and to perhaps
allow a reader to speculate that her character was unpleasant and was responsible for her losing family, rights to property, et al. Total bs of course.

One wonders if he needed to cover up so strenuously only because he was of the same community that Maneka belonged to, or was he afraid he would be targeted by the elder sister in law and mafia to boot, or was it worse? Who knows.

It is always easy to blame a victim, especially a young widow who has signed away her rights to share of wealth, and has a small son to bring up to boot. She is expected to beg and placate others, with the one in power at marital home in position of making her a social outcast.

One expects better of those supposedly brought up in high society with a decent education, however. In this respect as probably in all others the three women - Pupul Jayakar, Simi Garewal and Tavleen Singh - fare far above.

Perhaps courage is a feminine virtue after all.

Khushwant Singh's Big Book of Malice; by Khushwant Singh.

In one place Khushwant Singh seems plaintive in complaining about how his freedom to express his views was impinged upon by Bengal being furious about his very negative views about Bengal in general and their specifically having produced no great geniuses, and even more specifically stating that Tagore's poetry and general literary work was nothing much, nor were other great people of stature from Bengal that Bengalis were so proud of.

This might seem naive on his part, and it would be easy to point out that his right to express his opinion is not curtailed by others' disapproval of it, since they have not lost their right to express their opinions of him when he was accorded by the right by the same constitution.

That would be easy, but naive, since he is not a terrible two toddler even though more often than not his attitude is precisely that of one, including much verbal fondling and exposing of his nether equipment. He has been to not merely the most progressive school begun and sponsored in India by Indians, but also colleges and universities across various nations (that since split in two, and then more parts depending on how one counts them) to study, and then to various other places to lecture and more, all without any merit whatsoever if one is to judge by his writing. He is good at reading, observing, listening and then penning down a summary, by standards more applicable to high school.

In reality the baffled reader at his atrociously bad view of a very talented and prolific people might give it up as a bratty idiot's way of making himself noticed, until one comes across the reasons why
the homeland he had to give up at partition split further into two. And then one realises his posturing is merely copy of attitudes of the worst in the erstwhile homeland where he himself states he and his ilk was ignored and never much part of the general majority who drove them away and massacred millions when the said homeland was designated for faith of the majority.

He and his community of those that had to leave northwest for mainland India at independence due to partition have never given up pining for it, and they have clung to attitudes reflecting those of their lost neighbours no matter how atrocious those attitudes, how racist, perhaps from a perverse loyalty in hope that they might one day be accepted back. That they know this is not likely, and if it were there just might be yet another genocide by the same faith that drove them away, does not deter them in this attitude albeit it makes them silent as to the reasons for the loyalty, and for continuing racism on lines of pak attitudes.

'71 war for independence of Bangladesh was due chiefly to the pak attitudes of racism and denigration of their larger half of nation - larger by populace count - with very frank discriminatory speech that still continues about how the Bengal people are dark, short, unlike the tall and fair and hefty Northwest, and how they are poor and frugal. That the pak leadership was responsible for the poverty is conveniently forgotten - they fleeced the nation and allocated the largest share to Punjab alone, chiefly to capital and to military and a few political leaders, leaving all Bengal then and all the rest then and now in dire poverty - and even post losing half the nation, the same fleecing is applied to other parts of the nation, fleecing of Baluchistan going on since six decades although that part never joined willingly, and of other provinces.

What was worse, and still continues in parts still under occupation by pak military such as Baluchistan and more, was genocide. East Bengal had massacre of three million people of all ages across genders by pak military in the single year of '71 after the cyclones and subsequent famine had claimed a large number already, and this was not all. UN had to open abortion clinics to deal with half a million women of east Bengal raped by pak military, and that was just for vengeance. For use, they had fifty thousand or so women kept chained and naked so they could not escape or drown themselves in any river in the land full of water so much so it is colloquially nicknamed "Jol Baangla" - literally, Water Bengal.

This does not end the list of horrors perpetrated - Dhaka university had a separate genocide perpetrated by the pak military, to finish off a huge number of intelligentsia of Bengal that prides itself on flowering of intellect in every field. Notably, even now the pak attitude is of denigration about Bangladesh expressed in a dismissive "it was only intellectuals, a few of them, who wanted independence". It would be easy to remind them the new nation has been free to rejoin the pak union during the four decades since. Easy, but futile, since they know they are lying to cover up their atrocities.

And Khushwant Singh and his ilk have hearts bleeding for the rapist, massacring brethren of theirs who once did it to their own, before they did it to east Bengal. So their solution is to join in denigrating all Bengal and all geniuses of Bengal. In Khushwant Singh's own favourite imagery, it is a contest of how far can he write his name in sands of his lost homeland.
.....................................................................................................


There are readable pieces of course, and often information one is unaware of about people one has known a bit about or famous ones in any case. More often it is about denigrating those respected and defending some atrocious person or event or action.

One example that comes to mind is about a very respected film producer and director, Chetan Anand, whom this author knew in college in Lahore and was enamoured much of - he never fails to mention his good looks, his fair complexion, and other qualities he was impressed with. One would already conclude he was in love with Chetan Anand, if it were not for the prolific mention of how he took trouble to watch women as and when he could without being caught, including women whom he would normally not get a look even at the face of such as those from household of Nawab of Bhopal (Pataudi?) as they bathed in a spot they thought was secluded.

Even in the first mention of Chetan Anand he takes care to denigrate him with a careless mention of how he became a producer and never amounted to much. In this he mentions meeting him in Mumbai and abusing him thoroughly in public, before his very young and beautiful inamorata the ethereal Priya Rajvansh, too - which one can be sure he took special delight in doing, for the show rather than for any real feeling of injury at being ignored by the man he had probably cherished unknown to the object of cherishing.

One of course can be very sure he never gave this treatment to anyone from across the northwest border post independence, however atrocious their behaviour, but that is obvious. With them it is a slave-like devotion he exhibits even when they are hanged and deserve it for the genocide if nothing else.

Reality is, Chetan Anand was much respected for his eclectic productions, and for his direction of films, in the few chosen ones he worked with, usually under his own banner. He was not prolific in numbers like his two younger brothers, but his work offers some assurance of not being merely for commerce, and his brothers as his colleagues respected him for it, and quite rightly too. His most famous brother kept some of that quality in his own productions, while the middle one was very good making success of a venture in market. When two of the three worked together, it was gold.

But then, Khushwant Singh was in all probability either jealous or was reacting like a lover rejected in favour of a beautiful woman that Chetan Anand chose instead - quite possible, the latter, too, since his extraordinarily prolific discussions about women and nether parts cross all possible borders of decency and even of disgusting and become tedious to the point of boring, not that different from effect of looking out of a train window around early morning in India in overpopulated parts - perhaps he is merely protesting too much, since his faith in all probability won't allow him to acknowledge the real object of his passion, and the faith of his masters would likely stone him to death after having used him to his satisfaction.
.....................................................................................................
.....................................................................................................

Monday, June 15, 2015.
.....................................................................................................


(Re Maneka Gandhi, Younger daughter in law of Indira Gandhi. Khushwant Singh describes her being thrown out of her marital home after she lost her husband and was made to sign away her rights to her husband's share of property as a condition of her being allowed to stay. Most witnesses and friends including Maneka herself exculpate Indira Gandhi of blame, all agreeing that she needed her elder son and he would have been made to leave his mother if Maneka had not been thrown out without a penny.)


Khushwant was as frank in labeling his malice as he was about copious descriptions of his and other people's nether parts, or his watching various women in various stages of undressing, or worse. A good deal of it is simply provoking by a puck, if one is provoked he has victory and if not he is willing to go to lower levels of disgusting.

But honest or real journalist he was not and if he heard would probably say he did not claim it, and was frank he merely gossiped on strength of his familiarity with so called high society. In this too however, he is as circumspect as any social climber, unlike Tavleen Singh who managed to maintain decency and courage and journalistic ethos and more.

When emergency was declared in mid seventies Khushwant Singh couldn't stop praising not only the then newly dictator but also her younger son and his very young wife, Maneka Anand who was a new addition to the Nehru dynasty of Indira Gandhi family. That this praise might render him slightly ridiculous seems to have bothered him far less than a possible incarceration like others of the time who were honest in disapproval of the times and political measures.

In the series of books with malice in titles where various pieces of gossip about society are collected, there is at least one piece about the finale of the chapter of the young couple, Sanjay and Maneka. This was written post Sanjay's death and he was eyewitness to the events as they unfolded around the exit of Maneka from the home of her mother in law where she had arrived as a bride and lived until then.

There are others who wrote or spoke about it. Pupul Jayakar mentions the event in her biography of Indira Gandhi and it is a very open, honest account of the conversation the two friends had. Maneka herself speaks of this and of her married life until then, in a conversation with the ever elegant Simi Garewal. But this account by Khushwant Singh is notable for a flavour missing from other accounts.

By any standard applicable to the situation, this exit of a poor young woman who had been made to sign away any and every right to share of property due to her husband as a condition to her staying in the home with her son, was a despicable act on part of the in-laws. Both Pupul Jayakar and Maneka herself exculpate the mother in law who was fragile with the loss of support of the younger son that was her chief support at family and in politics, and was dependent on the elder son who never wanted politics and had a wife who was supposedly against it all, their friends all either western or high society or both. Indira Gandhi is quoted by Pupul Jayakar as saying, what could she do, she needed her son. Maneka puts the blame squarely on her sole sister in law for having her thrown out of the home where the two women had an equal right morally, traditionally, and in every other way possible.

Khushwant Singh cannot deny any of it, but would rather play it safe, and most people in the situation remain silent as the party did. Not he - he has an extra point to prove, to claim that in spite of sharing a communal tie and of his having specialised as an academic by translating religious texts of his faith, he was not exactly on side of the young woman thrown out penniless from her marital home.

So he resorts to gossipy account of how she did not go quietly, how she let loose verbally and insisted on having dinner before leaving. All to indicate that she was not pathetic but a fighter, and to perhaps allow a reader to speculate that her character was unpleasant and was responsible for her losing family, rights to property, et al. Total bs of course.

One wonders if he needed to cover up so strenuously only because he was of the same community that Maneka belonged to, or was he afraid he would be targeted by the elder sister in law and mafia to boot, or was it worse? Who knows.

It is always easy to blame a victim, especially a young widow who has signed away her rights to share of wealth, and has a small son to bring up to boot. She is expected to beg and placate others, with the one in power at marital home in position of making her a social outcast.

One expects better of those supposedly brought up in high society with a decent education, however. In this respect as probably in all others the three women - Pupul Jayakar, Simi Garewal and Tavleen Singh - fare far above.

Perhaps courage is a feminine virtue after all. .....................................................................................................

Wednesday, June 24, 2015.
..................................................................................................... 

More Malicious Gossip: by Khushwant Singh.

More of the same, in more than one way, as the Malicious Gossip before this, with some new parts. There is a part with description of places and there are reviews in another one.

Khushwant reviews Nirad Chaudhary's book in one piece, for example, abusing Hinduism and India generally, with a lazy glee. Lazy because he gives excerpts and little if anything else. Glee is obvious in how very copiously he quotes the abusive, negative, and so forth.

Both of these guys being completely ignorant of their nation of origin, and dismissive of most of anything not taught in their curriculum designed by Macaulay's program to manufacture brown sahibs that would smash India to bits without Brits having to do it, pretty much like the Madras corps used to defeat Indian freedom fighters and Indian soldiers and policemen to subdue Asia so that pretty much all Asia hated Indians, this piece offers anything new only in that these two should be quite so thoroughly ignorant of nation of their origin and culture thereof, but then again this simply means that the two of them either ignored their own roots or disparaged them at heart, preferring to follow the paleface (as natives of another continent called them) invaders. Most Indian know better.

One clue to this author is in another piece where he describes Syria generally and Damascus to begin with. He takes care to point at the locals looking very like Europeans, being quite specific about their golden hair and light skins and so forth. This is very typical of his own origin of deep in region now in Pakistan and bringing up surrounded mostly by Muslim local neighbours, which inculcated values in him more of Muslim than Indian original culture.

Still, there are some interesting bits, from his sheer accessibility to hoi polloi, not because they are interesting by themselves or their inaccessibility makes them so, but because often connections emerge that one was unaware of.

And more than anything else these pieces are strong evidence of how women are maligned generally for no reason other than that they are women and convenient to attack - this guy gossips, and how!

Why I Supported the Emergency: Essays and Profiles; by Khushwant Singh, Sheela Reddy (Introduction).

If it were limited to what he wrote as short pieces that are collected in this and in various other books, it would be a questionably good read, most of the part anyway - he does have some sort of germ in his head so to speak in language familiar to him, in that he is not happy giving intelligent commentary and rare beautiful descriptions of people and places; he absolutely must disgust the reader in general, possibly delighting a few, by copious and explicit references either to nether parts of his own or other people; or worse, explicit description leaving the reader in no uncertainty how he viewed the other half of humanity only as a package to contain those parts.

In this he is far from content to merely insult all people with higher sensibilities or all women, including his own family. In a forward to one such collection by one of the many the young protegies of his who met him some time when she was young and he far from that, she mentions how he spoke explicitly humiliating a Nobel prize winning much revered poet of his nation and how he delighted in insulting and provoking a whole people, and one can only surmise from his copious references to various other poets from parts that separated from the motherland depriving him of home he had to forever hanker after, that this was his revenge on the motherland that gave him refuge, revenge for having been deprived of his home by those that threw out all other communities that they could not live with and demanded a separate nation via breaking up the motherland with threats of massacre executed before and during the partition.

His own parents lived in the capital, and his bringing up was in many places including the capital, but he was in tears when visiting his childhood village where he spent his early years with his grandmother, and where he is very aware of the community that surrounded them was always keeping away from them, no matter how friendly he or his community or even those in majority in the nation as a whole were, then or since. And his response is to be friendly with them, visit them, regret how they are not responding generally, and insult those that gave him not merely home but positions and honour despite not quite proven merit.

The pieces themselves are readable, no more and no less, in most part. If one misses them it is no big deal. And this can be said about all such collections of pieces by this author, perhaps even by all that he wrote.
................................................................................................


That is even more true about this book, judging by the very first piece that provides the title for the book.

Emergency was a traumatic period of history in India post independence, and that is saying something about a nation that was beset by various problems and is only now emerging a little out but not by far. There had been famines before that, riots provoked by those that thrived politically only due to lack of harmony in communal scenario and depended on vote bank politics, and wars due to attacks by nations across the borders. Emergency was traumatic, and that was not merely for the western educated upper and middle class and political elite, or intelligentsia alone - if that were so it would hardly provide a wavelet in a nation that survived a millennium of various marauders and invaders and colonial rules.

Emergency was traumatic to the nation as a whole, because democracy was and is seriously ingrained in the very fabric of the nation where even faith is a matter of personal choice and family, community fabric, not enforced with threats of hell. This, apart from diversity of every other sort - languages, dress, food, cuisine, not to mention the geographical and climatic diversity, is essential to the nation's  very soul.

Emergency was imposed when a high court ruled that the election of the then prime minister was illegal due to a person in administrative office being used in political work - not that this is unusual, it was only that it was carelessly done in that it could be proved in court. Various political persona and intelligentsia suspected of freedom of thought and likelihood of not complying and obeying the ruling party diktats were summarily thrown in jail, and some suffered great deal due to health and age. This author was not one of them, and was free to support it for stupid reasons as many then did.

One wishes his reasons were some profound secrets now exposed, so one could sympathise at the very least. But no, the reasons were simple - a matter of law and order, which he says is more paramount than question of security and liberty of individuals that was suspended during the time, which the nation was uncertain for how long, or whether it was going to be forever, with democracy forever gone.

There were many others who spoke in accord with this sentiment about preferring law and order, and this is very reminiscent of those that praised Germany during pre WWII era, for trains running on time. This author went part of the way to support it for those reasons and describes how his publication was suspended for a few weeks, until it was pointed out that the ruling dictatorship could not care less, when he began publication. Perhaps that is to win back approval.

Yes, it is important to maintain law and order, to have trains run on time and streets clean. But at the expense of life and liberty of populace as a whole, no it is not. When people had their homes bulldozed summarily and young people lost chance to have a family without their consent to the process, people simmered with disapproval, and India was fortunate enough in being able to exercise her democratic rights and show the world and the stunned prime minister and her party that the people did care, and used their rights to protect, for democracy.

This author on the other hand had during those years gone on to praise not only the dictator and her action but did - and in various pieces included in various collections - praise the younger son who was, it is believed across India for credible reasons, responsible for the emergency and various actions that wreaked havoc during the time. He however did not limit himself to that, and went ridiculously further.

Now one finds why - his own background is responsible for some part of that. He came from roots that were built on much wealth and much much more bestowed on people due to favours from rulers, rather than achievements of one's own in academic and other fields, and this favoured status brought forth not merely wealth and title and upper class life with all the other privileges that one can see naturally going with it - social connections with other upper class and political persona and hoi polloi generally, including various foreign diplomats and others - but also grants and positions that more deserving candidates ought to have had, and would have done more justice to.

So naturally he saw nothing amiss with praising in national publications young people who had power to back them up in whatever they wished to do and very little qualifications - and if he had praised them in a judicious manner being familiar with them personally, that would be excusable, but no, he had to cross limits of ridiculous where it became apparent it was a court jester perhaps doing a clown act for fear of life and liberty and more, of his wealth and titles and future.

One would see that as the reason and excuse him as India does anyone helpless with fear for family welfare, but here he goes and includes the first piece that mentions law and order as the reason for disapproval of freedom of individuals and democracy in general, and even more, goes on to say he disapproved of a person whose life and work followed that of the so called father of the nation, in opposing a dictatorial rule in peaceful ways of civil disobedience.

Of course, his own privileged and bestowed status being due to bestowal by the colonial rulers who were questionably worse, and his love for the people who broke up the nation and his forever hankering after that broken off piece and the people who were with those that massacred innocents, at cost of insulting and humiliating people of high culture and more, is all in accord with the justification of emergency and praise for the young in power who had done little in way of achievement.

But none of that can be called fair or just or anything remotely of that sort. Then again, he gave up his career in law, had never done well academically, and frankly states that he took up writing about his community as a means to make a career by specialising in something. In that too, he began by translating prayers of his faith, and then went on to denounce all religions and spirituality in general and those that he was not afraid to attack in particular. Attacking Bengal is not as expensive as attacking those across the Northwest border post partition, and their culture or faith. He refrained from indulging in this. It all comes to childhood taboos in his case, and caste as practised everywhere other than India.
................................................................................................

MALICIOUS GOSSIP: by Khushwant Singh.

If it were limited to what he wrote as short pieces that are collected in this and in various other books, it would be a questionably good read, most of the part anyway - he does have some sort of germ in his head so to speak in language familiar to him, in that he is not happy giving intelligent commentary and rare beautiful descriptions of people and places; he absolutely must disgust the reader in general, possibly delighting a few, by copious and explicit references either to nether parts of his own or other people; or worse, explicit description leaving the reader in no uncertainty how he viewed the other half of humanity only as a package to contain those parts.

In this he is far from content to merely insult all people with higher sensibilities or all women, including his own family. In a forward to one such collection by one of the many the young protegies of his who met him some time when she was young and he far from that, she mentions how he spoke explicitly humiliating a Nobel prize winning much revered poet of his nation and how he delighted in insulting and provoking a whole people, and one can only surmise from his copious references to various other poets from parts that separated from the motherland depriving him of home he had to forever hanker after, that this was his revenge on the motherland that gave him refuge, revenge for having been deprived of his home by those that threw out all other communities that they could not live with and demanded a separate nation via breaking up the motherland with threats of massacre executed before and during the partition.

His own parents lived in the capital, and his bringing up was in many places including the capital, but he was in tears when visiting his childhood village where he spent his early years with his grandmother, and where he is very aware of the community that surrounded them was always keeping away from them, no matter how friendly he or his community or even those in majority in the nation as a whole were, then or since. And his response is to be friendly with them, visit them, regret how they are not responding generally, and insult those that gave him not merely home but positions and honour despite not quite proven merit.

The pieces themselves are readable, no more and no less, in most part. If one misses them it is no big deal. And this can be said about all such collections of pieces by this author, perhaps even by all that he wrote.

Truth, Love & A Little Malice; by Khushwant Singh

Surprisingly for an author who was not only funded by various universities and other prestigious institutions of US, UK and India, and edited several books and several periodicals, this autobiography has inexplicable typos or spelling mistakes of trivial sort - and very noticeably so.

If one is put off by copious references and more copious descriptions of nether equipment of various characters including the author, and lacks the patience and determination to go past it to see why this person was so famous and had such status, this book is not what one ought to take up.

At that it is uncertain if one should even if one does possess the virtues needed to go through it - rewards are very few, say one reference to a charmed moonlit night with nightingale, and another to magnolias (which he does not seem to have noticed blossom in Europe too, and in India in cooler places, albeit another variety - golden from cream to gold-saffron shades, in relatively less cool places too).

Other than this, one repents having read it, especially if one is not interested in gossip and malice and huge egomania of the author, especially when it is against good people, or when he seems not to notice he is criticising those that share his most severe faults. For instance he complains about a fellow author who was more interested in precisely what he himself describes copiously, rather than blossoming fields of saffron or other beauties of India he was shown - and fails to notice the irony of the complaint (or was that a deliberate devilish act, complaining against someone else who does it, just so one says "oh, but you know, you are doing it too" and he has his laughter about how naughty he has been both ways?).

What happened when I proceeded to begin this review was almost surrealistically as if KGB knew I was going to write negatively about a small tool of their infamous boss, and proceeded to undo various settings for security of my pc - sites inviting me to buy horrendous unwanted stuff would not go away, and advertisements pretending to be chat sites where supposedly young attractive blond females kept plaguing the pages of shelfari and reappearing. When I managed to remove it all, my computer informed me they had changed the dangerous settings I had installed, and the filth reappeared. It was almost a premonition about this book, except it was after reading it and before being able to begin writing this review.

It is unlikely this guy was a tool of stalin, but you never know, after all there would not be a label to the effect would there, except he was more likely working for the other side, what with his various prestigious assignments from US mentioned extensively here - from Rockefeller foundation funding his writing about history of his people (which he assures us is the only reason he maintained his hair and dressing style for, not religion but communal identification), to teaching at various universities including Princeton. All this would point at his being a great mind and a scholar, if not for reading this book or other pieces elsewhere, where such a calibre is notable by its absence. And if he wished to hide it for sake of appearing a buffoon only so his hidden career would go unnoticed, then the various prestigious scholarly assignments and copious funding thereof by various institutions of the world is completely baffling.

The author is a product of what might transpire if the much maligned caste systems of India or even England and Europe generally - although the latter two are different from that of India, and were practised in colonies very differently when it came to local people - are demolished with no other system to take their place. The author was born into a family that was placed by sheer luck in way of destiny, in that his father was one of the builders given contract to build New Delhi, built a major part of it (and his own palatial homes in centre of the new city, with "leftover" material and labour), was knighted for the trouble apart from the wealth made on this project, and thus the family was in high circles of politics and hoi polloi of the city and the nation, with contacts that were therefore not merely local or national but international, and various prestigious assignments one after another as he himself went on giving up job after job deciding it did not suit him, having proved no merit for either the next assignment or the past one, and definitely not of the level he kept on getting more and more of.

This basically is society as it gets if all old caste systems with breeding and training in family and society is done away with - money buys everything through social contacts if not directly, while poor with real and far superior talent go begging.

Various refugees and migrants of various lands one has known over decades share this, with one another largely and specifically with this author, that they hate having had to leave for survival, they grieve and mourn those that they left, they attempt to befriend then over life just so they themselves are not guilty of having left for just reason, and they turn their grief and pain of separation into a subtle or open tool of disdain and derision against precisely the land, the nation that gave them a life, a refuge, honour and more.

This author is honest in admitting and declaring how unfriendly the people of the homeland he was separated from were, but he is not merely attempting to befriend them lifelong, he is forever denying the nation they created is doing anything wrong, even when it is all too obvious; and he disdains and more, generally and specifically, the people who made his final homeland possible at all. It is as if the freedom, the possibility of learning and achieving a social status, is all merely his due, as is destroying all sorts of people who were on the whole beyond good, while befriending dictators and worse of his earlier home.

And having done his worst in all of this he proceeds to complain about the visitor who notices filth more than beauty shown him by the author.

Why does one read this, one might ask. Apart from a wish not to be put off by his deliberate filth in the first few pages, one might wish to know more about the history of the nation told in an intimate view - his father built New Delhi, he lived amongst the hoi polloi of the land and knew people of wealth and power in Delhi over the lifetime of his long life - and one might have read another, far more interesting and better written account by another, younger, author. The aims of reading if limited to this fail, however. He is there to expose anyone of quality with a view of their backside exposed so to speak figuratively, as long as they are of majority of India. Or anything respected by the said majority.

For example he congratulates himself about having saved Penguin India by pointing at an extremely offensive part of Ginsberg's book describing all Goddesses of India as prostitutes, final result being the book was published in India without the said offensive part but elsewhere with it, with no protest from either India or majority of India, but he stands by ban on Salman Rushdie in India, with no comment in that context about freedom of speech or authors.

One wonders if the hypocrisy is deliberately exposed by him here, just to see if he could set fire to majority of India by informing them of Ginsberg's offensive remarks, or if he wished to see if they read him at all and reacted if they did. Wonder if it was a disappointment, in that so far there seems to have been no protest against Ginsberg in India.

If one does not read this, one has lost very little.

Our Moon Has Blood Clots: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits; by Rahul Pandita

Once it was a political play between various empires, England and Russia and Turkey and France, to control what they variously named Near East, Levant, or otherwise. The objective of the so called Great Game was to control the landmass from Mediterranean to India - that is, India as it had always been understood since antiquity  until 1947, before it was "partitioned" to suit "religious" fanatics who could not live with "others" but insisted anyway on occupying others' lands and then killing them.

This was especially important to England for not losing the so called Jewel in the Crown that was India. So they played it better than others, divided the various lands, and India too before they had to leave. This last bit meant creating a new "nation" that was in no way different from India except it was given over to the fanatics who would kill thousands in name of faith, with really the lust for killing and theft driving them more than anything else, by carving up India and thereby encouraging the killings. India the new, truncated land found it hard to come together but she did, and the thorns or bullets were various pieces dominated by the fanatics either because a ruler was of them (even if majority in that state was not), or else because a good proportion but not necessarily majority was of them (those states where majority were of them were already given to the new carved out portion, whether they wished or not, for example the Frontier Province, now renamed Waziristan, as most parts in the carved out piece are often redivided and at the very least renamed, just so no one could without confusion refer to them).

And this became an immediate danger to newly independent India, what with so called "tribals" revolt in Kashmir, which in reality was nothing but tribals from outside Kashmir - from the newly carved piece of India - being sent along with military support, to destabilise India in every way, beginning with attacks on Hindu populace to continue, after a million or so killed so more could be induced to leave and the new "nation" was limited to one religion.

Kashmir however had a monarch who saw finally the wisdom of accepting India instead of his wish to be separate as a nation, and once accession was signed Indian military could protect Kashmir. This, the new nation of Pakistan understood, could only be changed by the usual tactics of old since a millennia - attack, lie, propaganda, massacres, deny attacks - rather than the new civil ways of UN and appeals.

Kashmir had been at the receiving end of attacks and massacres by muslims from north and west as long as rest of India had, and populations had been massacred and converted at sword point for that millennia and more. And now the case for "majority" of population in Kashmir was made by Pakistan, with no thought to the question of what if India used the same thinking and insisted only majority live in India.

This book is the documented tale of the most recent decades and the horrors suffered by Hindu populations in Kashmir at hands of terrorists, armed with money and weapons provided freely by US that were meant for throwing out USSR from Afghanistan (never mind the reality of the invitation to USSR by the then Afghan ruler to help him control just such Islamic terror in his nation), with false propaganda and more. False, because most Hindus of the northwest and north, or east, were thrown out and had to relocate to India as refugees, only due to massacres they suffered at hands of such terrorists who changed locals, their neighbours and friends, into beasts of horror more often than humanitarian helpers (yes, the latter happened too, and this author acknowledges it as much as any other Indian, including refugees who had to flee for life). If not for such horrors, not only Kashmir but both Pakistan and Bangladesh would not be as devoid of people of other religions as they now are. India has people of more religions than perhaps even the rest of the world and so would have been both these pieces carved out of India.

The horrors faced by Kashmiri Hindus match those of Germany during and before WWII in every way, and the only difference apparent is of organisation - Germans were more organised than anyone else as they always are at everything material; and the terrorists entering Kashmir whether locals converted via sojourn into pakistan for the purpose of terror indoctrination or total strangers from as far as Levant and Africa arriving to wreak havoc on hapless peaceful intellectuals, farmers and people of other such occupations, these terrorists were all too primitive and without any shame about their main purpose being kill, rape, loot.

Importance of this work is of documentation, of these horrors they faced in their homeland in Kashmir, at hands of neighbours and strangers, and also of documentation of the superb history of the Hindu populace of Kashmir and their achievements in realms of knowledge and more.

What is also a horror is how these people's travails were ignored for the two decades that saw propaganda against Hindus in another part of India, and against persecution of muslims of Bosnia. It is as if Hindu were of least importance, not only in an era when US became supreme and Russia lost the great game finally on world stage, but also in their own homeland.

That India is secular is merely due to precisely this characteristic being an integral part of Hindu religion where any path to Divine is considered as good as any other, and conversion an unnecessary idiocy. Fact remains that even if India is officially secular and the only officially Hindu nation is the tiny Nepal, over a billion Hindus of India and diaspora across the world has no other homeland other than India. So this second class citizenship in one's own homeland politically, in fact albeit not de jure, via the rule of past decades and due media falling in step with powers behind on world stage, only makes it a subdued horror for the whole populace on a level that Kashmir Hindus suffered for a long time on a far more open level.

One ought to thank whatever powers made it possible for the author to document this tale, if one cares about such matters as truth, over and above the propaganda and powers and swords dangling at throats if one so cares.

Arranged Marriage: by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni.

Even without checking with the date of publication, this seems to be an early work by the author, going by content and the raw quality, and the germs of later works of hers one finds here. At that, the themes she explores later with a more wide canvas in other works are worth it, and some others one wishes as one reads she would revisit and explore more. The latter fits for example the separations and self discoveries that women come through, which might be a description of more than one or two of these stories.

Here she is looking at lives of women from India living in US, either having arrived as brides unfamiliar with all but rudimentary level of familiarity with English language and west and US generally, or a later generation culturally if not in time of women who are living in US as students, pursuing an academic life, and not quite separated from mainstream life there either, as the brides are.

The readership she might have found uncertain, in that most readers from US would find this only marginally interesting if that, since India in general and Indian culture in particular are baffling to most west and a facile attitude of derision or outright hostility are often easier for those not quite brought up to see good in others even if unfamiliar. Readership from India might have been equally questionable, on the whole, since the author is so courageous in exploring lives of women from India living in US, and dealing with intimate details of life. Few are really bothered or willing to see reality of these concerns, and most would call it a few names and leave it at that. So courage it must have been for the author to be open in writing about lives of women and their concerns, without objectifying them, as most people do in every corner of the globe.

One is glad she did have such courage and wrote.

Mightier than the Sword; by Jeffrey Archer.

The Clifton Chronicles: Book 5, Mightier than the Sword (2015) by Jeffrey Archer

Clifton Chronicles have had readers hanging for the next chapter from the beginning, and book 4 was no exception. Book 5 deviates from the series slightly - someone might have pointed out to the author that clear definitions of good people separated from bad is not quite considered literature by elite, and confusion or at least grey shades must be stroked in. So he has gone major in the adorable little boy who has grown up, unlike his adopted sister and in reality half sister of his mom (if not of both his parents) who got killed in the earlier one, and takes the pick for being shaded grey. He is good, but feels the need to prove himself adequate as a man in providing for his life on his own, and strays from being perfect on a level understood by all good people, albeit within law. This provides the shading, while the major themes are Virginia Fenwick, Major Fisher and co championing vendetta against Barringtons for being good, trying to destroy them, not quite succeeding yet but not quite failed completely either, nor quite vanquished themselves - that is left for the book 6, surprisingly, since initially readers were promised only five books in the series. Since readers are hooked, more the better, and the series could go on as long as the author lives.

This one introduces a new factor, that of cold war and suppression of authors in particular and intelligentsia in general by former Soviet regime; one is reminded of various real life figures who suffered this in the figure of Babakov whose book about Uncle Joe has been all but completely destroyed and has only Harry Clifton for a possible saviour, since not only he champions his cause, using his own status as an author célébré, but also uses his status as a peripheral diplomat to travel to USSR to get a hidden copy out, and has other arrows to his bow when caught. It would be delightful if Archer did not make officials of USSR look quite so stupid, apart from smug, but then he is looking at the world from English point of view, only slightly less obvious than US and France - and of course, Germany - in its derogatory view of the world in general and anyone opposing the west in particular.

Giles Barrington's new involvement meanwhile comes as a surprise, it is all too facile, and while he is sincere and his object d'amour not yet obvious about whether she is indeed involved or is a weapon used by east block to trap a member of parliament of England. It could be both, and then one would have the wait to see which way she finally steps.

Oh, and the ship did not sink - nor was there loss of life, unlike promised at the end of the last book. But the miscreants escaped, for the most part, including and especially the south american rich villain Martinez. So threats to Barringtons, while dormant, continue, apart from the Fenwick. Perhaps the two are to be brought together in the next book or one after that? Readers of course hope the Barringtons survive and the good win.

Fraternity: by John Galsworthy.

Galsworthy does not cease to amaze. This work is perhaps more amazing in some ways, even when compared to his most famous Forsyte series.

Fraternity begins almost as an afterthought of a yawn, with a small gathering of various persona at an English uppercaste but not quite aristocrat family, two couples where two sisters are married to two brothers and the father of the sisters lives with one of the couples, while the other has a daughter almost engaged to a cousin on her mother's side who is serious about helping the poor. The father, Stone, is writing a book titled Universal Brotherhood of Man, and is dead serious about the whole thought of how humanity is a fraternity. And then the other half he has included not quite explicitly emerges to be a serious omission in terms of thought.

Stone is living with the daughter who is an artist and proud and sensitive - and has lost love of her life, her husband, by expecting much and not letting him know but wait, and baffle him. She is a painter and the young model she used lately needs help, employment, guidance, and more. So the young model is set up as a help for Stone's project to help him copy his fresh works everyday. She lives renting a room in proximity with the seamstress who is employed by the sisters, and the brutish husband of the seamstress begins to be proprietory about the model, and his dark brooding about her occupation in the family and possible connection with the husband of the artist is the beginning of the trouble.

In a society where decency is above all, progressive thought conflicts with old tradition and fraternity of humanity is not in accord with castes where a low caste poor young woman could only be a servant of one sort or another to an upper caste male. The gentleman is sympathetic, and would rather help the young woman, since she has no other guardian, but he fails to see the various complications such innocent help sets in motion - her dependence on him, his being attracted, the jealousy of the poor brute married to the seamstress, the disturbing of balance in his marriage, and more.

Galsworthy takes it to critical planes with some home truths via the young daughter of the family visiting the poor in company of her suitor, and a couple of small and not so small events. Before one knows it is all at a critical stage, and one wonders how it could have come so far with such decent people merely being sympathetic to poor. Decency of people involved does not help any, however, when it comes to it - what does help is the old tradition, caste, where a gentleman may not consort with a woman of low caste. He is not acting on tradition however, he has instincts too finicky, and there is no other way of defining them than in terms of what is called caste.

Much told and many questions but all in the almost impressionistic tradition of words painting a Monet in literature, where one sees only a gentle mist and not much of strong lines, but a picture of a society in churning of times where empire is graduating to a commonwealth of republics and caste is giving way, with tragedies of dire sort in the turmoil depicted with force that hit one and one wonders how the mist overlaying could have hidden it all so - and that is Galsworthy.