Read. Stunned. Disturbed. Worried.
Enough said.
Rahul Pandita Our Moon has Blood Clots: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits Vintage Books, Random House India. Hb. pp. 260 Rs. 499. Published in association with the New India Foundation.
Lunch with FT: 52 Classic interviews published by the Financial Times and Penguin Books to celebrate 125 years of the paper. It consists of interviews with legendary people who have had lunch with the FT from 1994. Lunch with the FT was conceived by Max Wilkinson, editor of the Weekend FT. He thought the new interview format would provide a ‘ray of sunshine’ in the paper. The rules were straightforward. The guest/interview would choose the restaurant, and the FT would foot the bill. The interviews were conducted by the FT’s global network of columnists and correspondents.
The book consists of interviews with an international list of Who’s Who — Michael Caine, Angelina Jolie, Jeff Bezos, Mo Ibrahim, George Soros, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, Jennifer Paterson, Saif Gaddafi, Angela Merkel, Vaclav Havel, Jacques Attali, Imran Khan and James Watson to name a few. It is the kind of book you dip into, to learn about the human side of a person who happens to be influential in their sphere of work. We tend to put achievers on a pedestal but a freewheeling conversation over a good lunch can make a person reveal aspects of their personality that are otherwise well concealed under their professional demeanour. For instance the conversation with James Watson, the man who discovered DNA, has to be one of the most controversial ones. From the interview, I quote:
” From universal DNA fingerprinting to bizarre manipulations of animal DNA, Watson is prepared to endorse a range of uses for the technology that make make liberals blanch, ‘If everyone’s genetic fingerprint were taken,’ he observes, ‘it would take away from our liberty to commit crime.’
More controversial still, Watson argues that if technology permits it, women should be able to abort homosexual foetuses. ‘Most women want grandchildren and do not say with glee that their son is homosexual,’ he says.
This kind of full frontal assault on political correctness has got Watson into hot water in the past. IT is easy to see how his willingness to discuss the ethical vanishing point of genetics has sometimes obscured a genuinely humanitarian desire to limit human suffering.”
As the interviewer goes on to add, “Watson’s impatience to make genetics practical was heightened by the illness of his son, Rufus, who suffers from autism thought to be epilepsy of the thalamus. It was around the time of his son’s diagnosis in 1986 that Watson was installed as the chief cartographer in charge of mapping the human genome. On the subject of his son, who is now in hospital, the ever-effusive scientist starts to clam up. ‘I do not see the need for immortality. But I do have a sick son in hospital. If we knew enough science we could help him. Fame is irrelevant.’ ”
According to the editor, Lionel Barber some excellent interviews that failed to make the cut. These were Paulo Coelho talking about prostitutes and the Pope with fellow author A.N.Wilson or Roger Waters of Pink Floyd comparing himself to Shakespeare and Woody Guthrie — and ordering a piece of GBP75 piece of gravadlax. To the list I would also add the interview with Robert Silvers, editor, NYRB ( http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/091ba1b6-6576-11e2-a3db-00144feab49a.html#axzz2OfbxeZqs ) that was conducted in Jan 2013. Probably too late to be included in the commemorative volume.
For some more about these lunches read FT columnist Matthew Engel on the 18th anniversary of the lunch: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/930857a0-8d3d-11e1-8b49-00144feab49a.html#axzz2Ol2aaFE8 . In India, the only paper that I know of doing a similar series of interviews is the Hindu.
Verdict: I liked reading this book, probably one of those volumes that will remain in my personal library since it captures a moment in time well. As for instance the interview with a young Jeff Bezos or the conversation with Mo Ibrahim, soon after he had sold his telecom business and was on the verge of setting up the Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership, which awards a $5 million initial payment, and a $200,000 annual payment for life to African heads of state who deliver security, health, education and economic development to their constituents and democratically transfer power to their successors. My only grouse is that there is not a single date printed of when the interview was conducted or published.
2 April 2013
“of mothers and others: stories, essays and poems”
This is a collection of essays, some fiction and some poetry published in support of Save the Children. All by women except for one, which is by Jai Arjun Singh on the mother in cinema. Even the editors of Zubaan, Urvashi and Anita have contributed essays. The other contributors include Kishwar Desai, Shashi Deshpande, Tishani Doshi, Namita Gokhale, Sarita Madanna, Smriti Lamech, Shinie Antony etc. All the women discuss their experiences of motherhood — expecting, crankiness about mothering, time taken away from professional space and intellectual sustenance, adopting children, bereavement, becoming mothers to differently-abled children and on being motherless out of choice. Or being grandmothers, loving your grandchildren, smothering them with affection without having to be responsible for their upbringing and all that comes with the every second to second engagement of rearing a kid as the delightful Bulbul Sharma is to her brood of five grandchildren. But when her descendants complain, “why must you travel so much? All nanis should stay at home.” Bulbul Sharma agrees that at one time the nanis and dadis did stay at home. But now “the new generation of grandmothers work, travel and play golf. They attend board meetings and fight cases. …but they are still grandmothers at heart.”
The other day I met an old college friend after years. She lives abroad and visits India infrequently. She has a daughter who is 13 months older to Sarah. Naturally we were watching our daughters wander through the park, chase butterflies and watch the gorgeous flowers blooming and chatting, you know the conversation which skirts or suddenly revs into top gear with both women talking rapidly at the same time, exchanging information and surprisingly assimilating it too, all the time multi-tasking too. Suddenly my friend says, you know it is incredible what a sense of freedom you get when the kid learns how to clean herself. It is a moment of sheer independence –maybe more for the mother than the kid. As Shashi Deshpande says “what really overwhelmed me was the way my entire life had been taken away from me by the baby and his needs. There was no space left for anything else.” It’s so true!!! Some things never change.
This collection of essays and poems is worth reading. The most powerful essay has to be Manju Kapur grieving for the loss of her 21-year-old daughter in a tragic car accident, twenty years ago. Some of the others are Sarita Madanna’s short story, “the gardener’s daughter” and Shalini Sinha’s essay about the relationship between her mother/nani with her son/grandson who had been born with Down’s syndrome. As always Urvashi Butalia when she writes is very readable. Her essay on being childless dwells upon not having had a biological daughter (and comments upon the relationships other mother-daughter duos have) but she does not mention how as a professional she has/is been a mentor to many, nurtured fledglings much like a mother would do with her offspring.
This book has been making its presence felt given the high profile launch at Jaipur Literature Festival 2013 when well known film actress Shabana Azmi released it. At the Delhi launch of the book, Bollywood actress Nandita Das while holding her son on her hip, released it in Delhi. In today’s day and age having celebrities being associated with a book does wonders for it. But after closing this book (which may I add I read in one sitting) I thought that the contributors raised some very valid questions on the “naturalness” of motherhood and other popular social canards, what left me very concerned was that except for Anita Roy, no one commented upon the importance of nutrition and by extension, the importance of self-preservation of the mom. I say this advisedly since late last year Zubaan co-published a book of essays with a Delhi-based NGO, Cequin. (Cequin amongst many of its activities runs nutrition camps for the urban poor women. A very good initiative since it teaches them how to create a balanced diet within their budgets.) What I found most alarming was that the women were being taught how to stretch a small portion of milk (given its spiraling price )to give maximum nutrition to their families. Maybe a short comment could have been included from the Cequin team too?
Of Mothers and Others: Stories, Essays and Poems (ed. Jaishree Misra). Foreword by Shabana Azmi. (Zubaan, New Delhi, 2013). Hb. pp.286. Rs. 495.
This is a blog post that I have taken as is from the Stree Samya Books blog. The link is: http://stree-samyabooks.blogspot.in/2013/03/why-i-am-not-hindu.html
Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy
Kancha Ilaiah
demy octavo pb 3rd rpt 2009 163pp ISBN 81-85604-82-7
rev. ed. with Afterword Rs 300
‘In Kancha Ilaiah’s conceptual universe, you feel the pain of life. In his ideas, you sense the vulnerability of battling unpredicatable waters. But in his intellectual adventurousness, you also sense the gaiety of robust combat and the fun in the fight.’~~Sagarika Ghose, Outlook
Kancha Ilaiah writes with passionate anger, laced with sarcasm on the caste system and Indian society. He looks at the socio-economic and cultural differences between the Dalitbahujans and Hindus in the contexts of childhood, family life, market relations, power relations, Gods and Goddesses, death and, not least, Hindutva. Synthesizing many of the ideas of Bahujans, he presents their vision of a more just society.
In this second edition, he presents an Afterword that discusses the history of this book, often seen as the manifesto of the downtrodden Dalitbahujans. He talks of its reviews as well of the abuse he has received from its detractors. He reminds us of the need of an ongoing dialogue. As he says, he wrote the book ‘for all who have open minds. My request to Brahmins, Baniya and Neo-Kshatriyas [upper class Sudras] is this; you learnt only what to teach others: the Dalitbahujans. Now in your own interest and in the interest of this great country you must learn to listen and to read what we have to say.’
‘The most gratifying thing for me was that it [this book] was listed as a millennium book [by The Pioneer] along with Dr. B. R. Ambedkar’s Annihilaion of Caste. Moreover, it has been translated into several Indian languages. In a way it has become a weapon in the hands of Dalitbahujan activists.’ [Afterword]
Kancha Ilaiah is professor and director, Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad and an activist in the Dalitbahujan and civil liberties movement.
He is the author of Untouchable God published by Samya in 2012,God as a Political Philosopher:Buddha’s Challenge to Brahminism, and Buffalo Nationalism: A Critique of Spiritual Fascism.
Published By:Samya
Enquiries: 16 Southern Ave, Calcutta 700026 tel:033 2466 0812/ 033 6519 5737
email [email protected] website: www.stree-samyabooks.com
The Reading Promise: 3218 Nights of Reading with My Father is a gently told memoir by 21-year-old Alice Ozma. Her father was a librarian in a kindergarten school. A giant of man standing at over six feet tall is a gentle person who enjoyed his job — passionately. He passed on his love for storytelling to his two daughters, but it was the younger one, Alice who preferred to hear her father read out to her. Her father began to read to Alice when she was nine and continued til her last day at home, before she left for college at the age of eighteen. They read to each other even if they were separated for the night, for instance if Alice was at a friend’s for a sleepover. She made it a point to call her dad before going to bed so that he could read to her for at least ten minutes. It all began as a promise to read to her for a 100 nights, but once that goal was achieved, it became 1000 nights and then it just continued for nine years till it was time for Alice to leave home.
Jim Brozina was a single parent who adored his daughters. His love for reading was a gift from his mother who used to take him and his siblings to the neighbourhood library. She would make them issue two books, one for them to read by themselves and the second one she would read out aloud. Jim too wanted to start a reading streak in his family. He managed it well with Alice. In his preface to the book he says, “the greatest gift you can bestow on your children is your time and undivided attention.” (He is so right!) Once his daughters flew the coop, he continued his passion for storytelling post-retirement by reading out picture books aloud at an old people’s home. “He wasn’t trying to insult them–quite the opposite actually. He was expressing kindness in the form he knew best, and he hoped that they would try to enjoy themselves.”
This book is about the reading streak, the ups and downs, how literature is used to share, communicate and explain. The special relationship that the father and daughter duo shared. In fact Alice went on to create a website dedicated to the reading promise . It is a lovely peep into what reading and sharing books can do for a relationship. There is a small list of books at the end of the book that father and daughter tried to cobble together from what they recalled reading, but it is not the complete list. I enjoyed reading the book.
Alice Ozma The Reading Promise: 3,218 nights of reading with my father Hodder & Stoughton (Hachette), Two Roads, UK, 2011. Pb. pp.280 Rs 399
“Reviewing is often a form of thuggery in Anglophone India, territorial, threatening, a way of roughing somebody up; and the Books pages are a bit like a lawless part of town, from which you have to be thankful to slip away with your writerly life – not to mention your dignity – intact.”
(p.147, Calcutta, 2013, Hamish Hamilton an imprint of Penguin Books)
Title: Calcutta: Two Years in the city
Author: Amit Chaudhuri
Publication details: Hamish Hamilton, an imprint of Penguin Books, New Delhi, 2013. Hb. Pp. 308 Rs. 599
It has been a while since I read a book focused on a city. (The last one that I truly enjoyed was Peter Ackroyd’s London, but that was a biography.) Amit Chaudhuri chose to write in “real time” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/feb/02/amit-chaudhuri-new-perspective-calcutta ) witnessing the ups and downs of the city. It is actually a riveting book. Calcutta is a city that can leave you exhausted with its hustle-bustle, filth and yet is unexpected with its richness.
I have just returned from a brief visit to the city. It was after a gap of seventeen years. Much has changed in the city and yet it seems as if it is in limbo. I noticed the disappearance of many old and beautiful buildings and the stark harsh and posh-looking apartments, check-by-jowl with malls set in cramped spaces—many of which were in ridiculous settings. Old buildings that have had their innards gouged out to be replaced with “modern” spaces and embellished with cheap façades so that as you turn the corner you see the older and decrepit building beneath. So Amit Chaudhuri is spot on when he says, “This city-Kolkata-is neither a shadow of Calcutta, nor a reinvention of it, nor even the same city. Nor does it bear anything more than an outward resemblance to its namesake, Kolkata: the city as it’s always been referred to in Bengali. I myself can’t stand calling it any other name but ‘Calcutta’ when speaking in English; just as I’ll always call it ‘Kolkata’ in Bengali conversation. Is this because we – cities and human being – have contradictory lives that flow in and out of each other? To take away one or the other name is to deprive the city of a dimension that’s coterminous with it, that grew and rose and fell with it, whose meaning, deep in your heart, you know exactly. (p.96)”
The author chose to write about the city at the behest of his agent who wanted a non-fiction book on Calcutta. Amit Chaudhuri did not want to imitate Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City but he wanted to do something original. He opted to write about two years of living in the city, a place he had returned to live after having lived most of his life in Bombay, England and in patches in Calcutta. So he says “Why, in 1999, did I move to it? Because I’d been rehearsing that journey for years; as a child, in trips from Bombay in the summer and the winter; and later—in my continual search for certain kind of a city—in my reading. …Even later, when I finally became a published writer, that city would be given back to me by my readers, from their strange identifications and instants of recognition.” And this is exactly the flavor, of wandering, discovering, analyzing–that comes through the text. It is about the city but also the “associations of ‘home’, ‘away’. ‘return’ [that] are quite hopelessly mixed up in my mind” (p.44). His anecdotes are as is—whether it is a description of the people living on the roadsides, or the Italian chefs or even a description of his family, he captures what happens in the space of those two years. No further information is provided to that which has already been given.
Like Raghubir Singh the photographer about whom he has a short piece Amit Chaudhuri too has become a chronicler of a new terrain, albeit through words. Calcutta is a book that will like Raghubir Singh’s Calcutta: The Home and the Street become a landmark book encapsulating a moment in time of a very historically and culturally rich city.
