No one had ever played tennis quite like Björn Borg. With his incredible athleticism, powerful shot-making and distinctive style, he became a sensation after he burst onto the scene aged just 15. As he ascended to the pinnacle of men’s tennis, Borg experienced unprecedented stardom and success that changed the game forever. Hailed as one of the most talented players to ever step onto a tennis court, Borg collected the game’s highest honours, including eleven Grand Slam titles – with five consecutive Wimbledon titles — establishing himself as one of the greatest of all time. Then he stunned the sporting world by announcing his retirement at the age of 26 and disappeared from tennis. After all these years of silence, Borg is ready to share everything. In this candid memoir, Borg takes us through all the major moments in his career, shares insights into his rivalry with John McEnroe — considered one of the best in the sport’s history — and their legendary 1980 Wimbledon final, and explains his shock retirement. Borg writes candidly about his personal life — for so long kept under wraps – including his childhood, his early stardom and his uncomfortable relationship with fame, alongside all the highs and lows of his unmatched career. For the first time, readers will get Borg’s own account of his career, his choices, and the experiences that shaped him as a person, from his childhood right up to today. This look behind the curtain at an enigmatic player who has fascinated generations of tennis fans, is ultimately a fascinating look at the making of sporting legend and, for readers who know nothing about tennis, a rare glimpse into an extraordinary, compelling life.
Read an extract from the book on Moneycontrol.
Björn Borg is a Swedish former professional tennis player. He was ranked as the world No. 1 in men’s singles for 109 weeks. Borg won 66 singles titles during his career, including 11 majors (six at the French Open and five consecutively at Wimbledon). A teenage sensation at the start of his career, Borg experienced unprecedented stardom and consistent success that helped propel the rising popularity of tennis during the 1970s. His rivalries with Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe became cultural touchstones beyond the world of tennis, with the latter rivalry peaking at the 1980 Wimbledon final, considered one of the greatest matches ever played. This is his first memoir.
Pain is fundamental to our existence, signalling what requires our attention. But while pain is inevitable, suffering does not need to be. Palliative care aims to reduce both the pain and suffering associated with serious illnesses.
In this sensitively written book, award-winning writer, Jerry Pinto delves into the realm of palliative care through intimate stories of patients, families and devoted caregivers. Most likely having been a caregiver himself, he writes with a gentle kindness and a sympathy that only one who has been in that role, can see that which remains mostly invisible to most of our communities. With the portraits and the testimonies that he weaves into A Good Life, Pinto transforms the text into a moving exploration of hope and humanity, making it an essential read.
Jerry Pinto is the author of Em and the Big Hoom (winner of the Hindu Literary Prize and the Crossword Book Award for Fiction) and Helen: The Life and Times of an H-Bomb (winner of the National Award for the Best Book on Cinema).His other works include translations from Marathi of the autobiographies of Daya Pawar (Baluta), Malika Amar Shaikh (I Want to Destroy Myself) and Vandana Mishra (I, the Salt Doll), as well as Sachin Kundalkar’s novel (Cobalt Blue). He has also written two books of poetry. Jerry Pinto was awarded the prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize in 2016.
In this provocative book, The Sensual Self: Explorations of Love, Sex & Romance, bestselling author Shobhaa Dé asks you to ditch the rulebook and ‘abandon good sense’ when it comes to owning your sensuality. It doesn’t matter if you’re twenty or seventy, sensuality has no expiry date. Whether you’re nursing a heartbreak or rejection, dissatisfied with sex in marriage, or are anxious about your waning libido—Dé has got you covered. From thrilling first dates and the aesthetics of a perfect kiss, to the messy world of casual coupling, group sex, kinks, and sexual red flags, Dé strips away the taboos and lays it all bare with her trademark wit and candour. Whether it’s heartbreak, rejection, jealousy, or fidelity, she dives into the chaotic terrain of human desire and sexual complexities. She asks men to roll up their sleeves and put in more effort, be experimental and non-judgemental, and demands that women stop settling for boring dal-chawal sex when life can offer spicy, finger-licking chicken chilli fry. Part manifesto, part guide, The Sensual Self is a fearless exploration of sensuality, love, and desire across every age and stage of life. Bold and unfiltered, The Sensual Self shows how you can embrace your (im)perfect curves, take charge of your sensuality, reclaim your desires, and live, love, and lust, on your own terms.
Shobhaa Dé is a celebrated author, journalist, columnist, and social commentator. She has more than twenty bestselling books to her name. Her works have been extensively translated into a variety of languages, including French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish.
From factories to farms, battlefields to boardrooms, clinics to classrooms―in the years since Independence, modern technology has swept through all corners of Indian life.
But back in 1947, this seemed impossible. Low literacy, poverty and lack of expertise meant that newly independent India was unable to afford the mighty technologies of World War II that were reshaping the globe. Yet, a determined team of far-sighted policymakers and scientists dared to make the impossible possible.
Today, India is home to leading software companies and a world-renowned space programme. For many Indians, modern technology has become part of daily life.
Uncoded: A Technological History of Independent India is a story of one of the greatest technological transformations in the modern world. Blending a unique narrative with illustrations, trivia, anecdotes and an informative timeline, it explores how a nation used science and technology to rebuild itself and reimagine its destiny against all odds.
Meghaa Gupta’s exploits in history are the outcome of an irrepressible urge to contextualize the challenges of the present with the past and make greater sense of the times we live in. She works in children’s publishing and firmly believes that all change begins with getting children to read books that demystify the world and its infinite possibilities. Meghaa has contributed to the history book On this Day (Dorling Kindersley, 2021) and is the author of the widely-acclaimed Unearthed: An Environmental History of Independent India (Puffin, 2020). She curates the children’s and youth section of the Green Lit Fest and the online magazine Sustainability Next.
At 8:15 a.m. on August 6th, 1945, the Japanese port city of Hiroshima was struck by the world’s first atomic bomb. Built in the US by the top-secret Manhattan Project and delivered by a B-29 Superfortress, a revolutionary long-range bomber, the weapon destroyed large swaths of the city, instantly killing tens of thousands. The world would never be the same again.
The Hiroshima Men’s unique narrative recounts the decade-long journey towards this first atomic attack. It charts the race for nuclear technology before, and during the Second World War, as the allies fought the axis powers in Europe, North Africa, China, and across the vastness of the Pacific, and is seen through the experiences of several key characters: General Leslie Groves, leader of the Manhattan Project alongside Robert Oppenheimer; pioneering Army Air Force bomber pilot Colonel Paul Tibbets II; the mayor of Hiroshima, Senkichi Awaya, who would die alongside over eighty-thousand of his fellow citizens; and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist John Hersey, who travelled to post-war Japan to expose the devastation the bomb had inflicted upon the city, and in a historic New Yorker article, described in unflinching detail the dangers posed by its deadly after-effect, radiation poisoning.
This thrilling account takes the reader from the corridors of the White House to the laboratories and test sites of New Mexico; from the air war above Nazi Germany and the savage reconquest of the Pacific to the deadly firebombing air raids across the Japanese Home Islands. The Hiroshima Men also includes Japanese perspectives – a vital aspect often missing from Western narratives – to complete MacGregor’s nuanced, deeply human account of the bombing’s meaning and aftermath.
Fergal Keane, award-winning BBC foreign correspondent and author of Road of Bones: The Siege of Kohima 1944 writes, “I can think of no more important book for our time. Written with moral clarity, tremendous verve, and the ability of a truly great historian to render the immensity of a moment through the smaller voices as well as being faithful to the facts. I recommend this magisterial, haunting book to all generations.”
Giles Milton, author of The Stalin Affair adds further praise for the book saying, “The nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was one of the most iconic moments of the twentieth century. Yet little has been written about the individuals whose actions led to Japan’s unconditional surrender. Iain MacGregor’s The Hiroshima Men is epic in scale yet intimate in detail, its pages filled with mavericks and geniuses who forever changed our world. A meticulously researched and compellingly written tour-de-force.”
Iain MacGregor has been an editor and publisher of nonfiction for thirty years working with esteemed historians such as Simon Schama, Michael Wood and James Barr. He is himself the author of the acclaimed oral history of Cold War Berlin: Checkpoint Charlie and his writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Express, as well as the Spectator and BBC History magazines. As a history student he has visited East Germany, the Baltic and the Soviet Union in the early 1980s and has been captivated by modern history ever since. He has published books on every aspect of the Second World War. Iain is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and lives with his wife and two children in London.
In this diagnosis of contemporary Indian society, with a tinge of dark humour, acclaimed writer Manu Joseph explores why the poor don’t rise in revolt against the rich despite living in one of the most unequal regions of the world.
The poor know how much we spend in a single day, on a single meal, the price of Atlantic salmon and avocados. ‘Why,’ he asks, ‘do they tolerate it? Why don’t they crawl out from their catastrophes and finish us off? Why don’t little men emerge from manholes and attack the cars? Why don’t the maids, who squat like frogs beside kitchen sinks, pull out the hair of their conscientious madams who never give them a day off? Why is there peace?’
Why the Poor Don’t Kill Us shows in pitiless detail just how hypocritical and exploitative people of privilege are, and it also shows how and why they get away with it. It’s a sharp, at times searingly witty, but a very perceptive critique of the many faults of the India we live in.
Why The Poor Don’t Kill Us has also evolved into a stand-up act by Manu Joseph. He prefers to call it ‘stand-up anthropology’.
Manu Joseph is the author of the novels Serious Men, The Illicit Happiness of Other People, and Miss Laila, Armed and Dangerous. He is the winner of the Hindu Literary Prize and the PEN Open Book Award, whose jury described him as ‘…that rare bird who can wildly entertain the reader as forcefully as he moves them’. He has been nominated for several other prizes. He is also the creator of the Netflix series, Decoupled.
He was the editor of Open Magazine and a columnist for the New York Times. This is his first work of non-fiction.
A groundbreaking book about how to harness the power of collaboration and work most effectively in groups – coauthored by Getting Things Done‘s David Allen. It is published by Hachette India.
When Getting Things Done was published in 2001, it was a game-changer. By revealing the principles of healthy high performance at an individual level, it transformed the experience of work and leisure for millions. Twenty years later, it has become clear that the best way to build on that success is at the team level, and one of the most frequently asked questions by dedicated GTD users is how to get an entire team onboard.
By building on the effectiveness of what GTD does for individuals, Team will offer a better way of working in an organisation, while simultaneously nourishing a culture that allows individuals’ skills to flourish. Using case studies from some of the world’s most successful companies, Team shows how the principles of team productivity improve communication, enable effective execution and reduce stress on team members. These principles are increasingly important in the post-pandemic workplace, where the very nature of how people work together has changed so dramatically.
Team is the most significant addition to the GTD canon since the original, and in offering a roadmap for building a culture of sustainable high performance, will be welcomed by readers working in any sized group or organisation.
In Getting Things Done, David Allen revolutionised individual productivity – and now, he and Edward Lamont show us how to transform teams and organisations. This is a masterful guide for any team striving to navigate the complexities of collaboration in today’s fast-paced world — Dorie Clark, bestselling author of The Long Game and executive education faculty, Columbia Business School
Ed Lamont and David Allen have captured the best practices for working with people to produce the best possible results. Team is a no-nonsense manual for doing just that, no matter what your goal is or who you’re working with to achieve it. If you’re invested in making good things happen, and need others to assist, this is a must-read — Arianna Huffington, Founder & CEO, Thrive Global
The world needs this book . . .This is not a book to read once, and extract a few ideas. Team is a guidebook, outlining the step-by-step process to team effectiveness. My advice is that you keep this book on your desk. Use it and re-use it, until Team structures your day-to-day activity as a team . . .and get amazing things done, together — Tony Crabbe, business psychologist, author of Busy
If you regularly get things done with others, here’s your new productivity bible. In Team, David and Edward masterfully break down how the principles of GTD work for all team settings – whether you have a corporate, sports or family team. At its best, working in a team feels effortless. This book helps get you to this magical place, so you can accomplish more with others while actually enjoying the process — Chris Bailey, international bestselling author of Hyperfocus, The Productivity Project, and How to Calm Your Mind
David Allen is an international best-selling author who is widely recognized as the world’s leading expert on personal and organizational productivity. Time Magazine called his flagship book, Getting Things Done “the definitive business self-help book of the decade”.
Edward Lamont is co-founder and Senior Partner of Next Action Associates, the GTD partner for the UK and Ireland. He has over 25 years of experience in executive coaching, training and consulting in the areas of leadership, productivity, and motivation. Since 2009, he has founded and grown the most successful GTD franchises worldwide by using the principles in this book. Before moving into consulting, he worked covering commodities markets, and was a freelancer for the Financial Times.
I interviewed Rahul Pandita on his debut novel, Our Friends in Good Houses (HarperCollins India), for Moneycontrol. It was published on 12 Nov 2025.
Rahul Pandita is a journalist who is known for his reporting from war-torn areas. He is the author of Hello, Bastar: The untold story of India’s Maoist Movement; Our Moon has Blood Clots: A memoir of a lost home in Kashmir; The Lover Boy of Bahawalpur; and the co-author of The Absent State. He was awarded the International Red Cross Award for conflict reporting in 2010. His debut novel, Our Friends in Good Houses, has just been published by HarperCollins India.
Our Friends in Good Houses is about Neel, a journalist drawn to war zones. It’s in these spaces riven by conflict that his sense of dislocation, of not belonging anywhere, drops off him. At all other times, he’s in quest, seeking solid ground: a home. It is a pursuit that takes him halfway across the world to America and back to the urban dystopia of Delhi, headlong into fleeting relationships that glimmer with the promise of shelter.
He is a Yale World Fellow and also the recipient of the New India Foundation Fellowship. He lives in Delhi.
The following interview was conducted via email.
How and why did Our Friends in Good Houses come about? Would you like to elaborate on the title too?
RP: A major part of my journalistic career has been spent at the cusp of journalism and writing, what David Foster Wallace would term as being a “non-journalist journalist.” It means that I wrote in a certain way, to build the narration of a story in a particular way. The idea always was to offer a Denkbild or thought-image to my experiences. But even as I was doing it, I felt an inadequacy in my dispatches, namely that it did not have that additional layer of meaning that, in my view, made it complete. Through Our Friends in Good Houses I think my attempt was to put that additional layer. But it was also an attempt to make sense to myself of so many things I had experienced out there.
The title came to me very organically. Its meanings changed for me at different stages of writing. I’d like the readers to have the chance to derive their own meanings from it.
For most of your professional life, you established your credentials as a memoirist and a narrative nonfiction writer. So, why did you choose to write fiction? How many years did it take to write this novel?
RP: Fiction simply for reasons mentioned earlier. But also, because I felt that there are some truths you come closer to in fiction than in non-fiction. I was telling my editor Dharini Bhaskar the other day that I have no belief in psychoanalysis. But in many ways, this novel is me lying down on a couch, smoking a cigarette, while a psychoanalyst in tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, who, lo and behold, is also me, hears me out. It is like what the Buddhists say: Thought is the thinker.
The first passages of the novel were written in the US in the year 2015. But a majority of it was written between 2022-23.
In a recent panel discussion in Rome, Juan Gabriel Vásquez said that “There is a sense in which we have as novelists that we can say anything, we can discuss anything because the way stories go, seems to make them, seems to enjoy a certain kind of impunity.” Thoughts?
RP: I think what Vásquez calls “impunity” is really the moral latitude of fiction; it is the permission to wander into difficult or uncomfortable territories without the burden of having to declare a position. A novel can explore what is unspeakable in ordinary language because it doesn’t argue; it listens, it witnesses, it imagines. Storytelling allows for that simply because it creates a space where contradictions can coexist without needing to be resolved.
In Our Friends in Good Houses, I found myself drawn to lives caught between belonging and estrangement, love and loss. These are not easy moral terrains, and yet fiction allows you to walk through them without fear of judgment — to feel your way, rather than reason your way, toward understanding. That’s the novelist’s real privilege, perhaps: not impunity in the sense of freedom from consequence, but the deeper freedom to look closely, to stay with the discomfort, and to find in it some trace of truth.
What are the freedoms that fiction enables and empowers a writer with that non-fiction does not?
Fiction gives you the freedom of uncertainty, the freedom to not know and to write anyway. In non-fiction, there is an implicit contract with fact, a responsibility to the verifiable. But fiction allows you to approach truth obliquely, through emotion, through intuition, through invention. You can tell a lie that reveals something profoundly true.
When I’m writing fiction, I’m not accountable to chronology or evidence; I’m accountable to the inner weather of a character, to rhythm, to silence, to the unsaid. Fiction lets you stretch time, blur voices, or inhabit contradictions that reality might resist. It allows for moral complexity without the need for moral clarity.
What is the difference between reportage and fiction? What are the different demands that these writing styles make upon the author?
RP: Reportage and fiction share a common impulse: understanding human experience; but they travel toward it through very different routes. Reportage demands fidelity to the visible world; fiction demands fidelity to the inner one. In reportage, the writer is a witness. The reporter’s task is to see clearly, to document with precision, to stay alert to what is real and verifiable. The discipline is outward: you listen, you observe, you report. Fiction, on the other hand, asks you to surrender certainty.
In this age of migrations and conflicts, the idea of home is very fluid. What is your definition of home?
RP: I wish I could articulate that. But I can tell you this much: it is a sacred space, a hermitage. And it is something that is inseparable from love.
Conflict writing is your forte. Whether as a survivor or as a writer. But this novel describes multiple levels of conflict, even those that exist in domestic spaces. What are the emotional see-saws that you registered while writing?
RP: I’ve spent much of my writing life inside the vocabulary of external conflict. But while writing Our Friends in Good Houses, I had to meditate upon how those same fractures replicate themselves in smaller, quieter rooms. The domestic space can be just as volatile; love can wound as sharply as any shrapnel.
Is it fair to ask an author about the similarities between their life and the fiction that they create?
RP: The writer always draws something from his life or from those around it. Fiction is never hallucination unless one is describing hallucination experienced by a character. Invariably, that experience will also turn out to be that of the writer. Beckett had a heart murmur, so had Murphy. But having said that, a lot of it also bears no similarity. With the first novel, though, the similarities can be much more. As my friend Manu Joseph told me the other day: the real challenge is the second novel. Ha ha ha.
How much war and other types of literature did you read to write Our Friends in Good Houses or was that unnecessary?
RP: I had no need; I have been to enough wars myself.
Chandana Dey studied Modern Indian History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi and International Affairs at the School of International Studies (SAIS), Washington D.C. She has recently published her Russian/Lithuanian Jewish grandmother’s memoir — Kotia to Ketaki: At Home Away from Home. It is published by Writers Workshop India. In fact, Chandana Dey more or less, co-authored the publication by adding a substantial afterword to the original memoir entitled My Life. Ketaki Sarkar was born Kotia Jonas to a middle-class family in Moscow in 1907. She lived through the Russian Revolution, famine and the civil war. The family moved to Switzerland in 1921. Kotya met her husband, Nitai De Sarkar, a medical student. They married in 1930 and came to India in 1934. Kotia learnt Bengali, always wore a sari and made India her home. On one of their visits to Santiniketan, Rabindranath Tagore bestowed the name, Ketaki, on Kotia Jonas. This is the name she retained for the rest of her life. Ketaki made Santiniketan her home and died at the age of ninety-one. Kotia to Ketaki is a slim book but packed with detail – by both grandmother and granddaughter, stretching across time. Truly worth reading!
Here is the interview conducted with Chandana Dey conducted via email.
When and why did your grandmother, Ketaki Sarkar nee Kotia Jonas write this Memoir? Was it all from memory or did she consult any living relatives at the time?
My grandmother has dated the memoir as 1972. My mother typed the manuscript on her portable typewriter. I would imagine that my Dida got the time for reflection and thought after 1971. She retired from the Alliance Francaise and came to live in Santiniketan, in her home, ‘Akanda’ permanently. Before this, she used to visit Santiniketan only on holidays or occasional weekends. My family members who had heard stories of her childhood in Russia kept urging Dida to write her memoir. I don’t think she consulted any family members, although she was in regular touch with her sister, Tina. When I started the research for the book, no one in the extended family knew that such a document existed. The only people who had read the memoir were people in Santiniketan whom my grandmother was close to — among these were Kshitis Ray, (Teacher of English in Patha Bhavan and Tagore researcher), Rani Chanda (artist and Freedom Fighter) and Uma Das Gupta (foremost scholar of the history of Santiniketan and Sriniketan). Part of the reason for not passing around the Memoir much was partly my grandmother’s own diffidence and the fact that the Jonas family members were not comfortable in English. This discomfort with English also affected many potential readers in Santiniketan in my grandmother’s circle.
The memoir reads swimmingly well for a modern reader, even if a little sparse on the historical details. Did you print it in its entirety or is this an abridged version?
It has recently come to my attention that there may have been an original version of the memoir that was written in French. I have never seen such a document. From the 1970s, family members heard of the memoir and each family member was given a typed copy of My Life. This is the entire text that I was given by my mother. I put it and the photographs my mother gave me in a small black suitcase. I think the genesis of Kotia to Ketaki was in my mind for the past 40 years. However, as all precious things are stored away, so was the black bag! When I went to retrieve the contents, I found the black bag empty. My late aunt came to my rescue. As my cousin and I went through her things, we found the copy of My Life. I immediately scanned the single copy and sent a copy to each living family member.
Unfortunately, the memoir ends in 1946. I think we did not pester my grandmother sufficiently to compel her to write about her remaining life history. It was a fascinating one. She was the sole breadwinner of the family. She worked in multiple jobs and made enough money to send my mother to Europe for her higher studies. She also built three houses. I really regret not recording her life and bringing out a companion volume. I also regret not asking her about the memoir in sufficient detail.
Your grandmother was a Lithuanian Jew who had been born and brought up in Russia before and after the Russian Revolution and in parts in Switzerland and France. Her memoir observes a smoothish transition for her to living in British India, especially in Shantiniketan; to the extent she learned Bengali so as to speak to family members. How did she assimilate in the Bengali Bhadra society? Did she have to forego her Judaism?
My grandmother spoke Bangla fluently. She did not manage to learn the language to be able to read or write in Bangla. But she used to listen to poetry, would attend all the functions in the Ashrama. Both my uncle and mother studied in Patha Bhavan and Bengali was spoken at home. My grandparents, however, spoke in French with each other. Perhaps it was my grandfather’s support that enabled such a smooth transition into Bengali society. The story goes thus: once they were settled in Calcutta, Dadu said to Dida, ‘Come, let me take you somewhere you will feel at home’- and this was Santiniketan — where there were many Bengalis married to foreigners. Besides, Rabindranth Tagore was almost singlehandedly responsible for trying to turn Santiniketan into a cosmopolitan place, while retaining its fundamentally Bengali ethos. Yet, it continues to be a mystery as to how Dida adjusted so well to Dadu’s family — a joint family that was extremely hierarchical and patriarchal. My grandmother’s mother-in-law was known to be a stern figure and extremely harsh with her daughters in law. My grandmother became her favourite daughter-in-law — and was given privileges, unheard of at that time. This remains a mystery to me and to everyone else.
A word on the Judaism is required here: my grandmother never had any Jewish artefacts in her home. Not even a menorah. The first menorah was one that my mother’s Jewish friend presented to her during their stay in the US. Nor did my grandmother ever step into a synagogue. Yet, the idea of Israel was very important to her since she felt that the Jews deserved a homeland after the Holocaust. This was a reason for perpetual strife in the family since my late brother was a vehement supporter of the Palestinian cause. The ‘Russianness’ revealed itself through a love of literature, music, language. She never taught Russian but never forgot the language. It was a great help to me when I started learning languages. I think I chose French and Russian so as to be able to speak to Dida.
Depending on the audience they are addressing, women tend to bifurcate their narratives for private or public consumption. You knew Ketaki Sarkar. Do you think her memoir is true to her personality, the person you knew, or did she skip information in writing that she may have told you verbally.
Interesting question. The memoir was written originally for her children — Maya and Nandan. In fact the memoir is addressed to them. Once written, my uncle and my mother persuaded my grandmother that it should be published. Initially reluctant, my grandmother acceded to their wishes. Dida was always very conscious of the lack of educational foundation in her growing years. She felt that she was self-taught to a large degree. In Santiniketan, she was surrounded by literati. But I think she held her own even in these circles. ‘Kotia Mashi’ was much sought after and she remained close to her friends and their children and grandchildren. Santiniketan is still a very small place where most people know each other. It would be natural therefore for Dida to eschew anything critical about the people she met. When she wrote the memoir, the characters in the narrative were all living. Besides, the memoir is a narrative where she looks back forty years. (She is writing in 1970 about what happened in 1930.). She is taking a look at her previous self.
Why did your grandmother’s family move to Switzerland? Were conditions conducive for a Russian/Lithuanian Jewish family to relocate to the fairly newly established country, Switzerland (established 1874)? Did the internal passport issued by the Lithuanian authorities play a key role or was it linked to the Bolshevik Revolution and the ‘threat of communism’?
My great grandfather, David Jonas, had purchased a piece of land in a place called Richielien, near the Lac Leman. Doctors in Moscow had suggested he go and take rest somewhere and since the family traveled widely, he chose Switzerland. This was around 1912. By 1914, the Swiss doctors gave David a clean bill of health and the family returned to Moscow. After the Russian Revolution, famine and civil war, David was keen to leave Russia. This was only possible because of the internal passport, issued by the Ober-Ost government. A large part of Lithuania was then under German rule. If David had been born in Moscow, it would have been impossible for the family to leave Russia after the Revolution. David’s sister, Sonya, lived in Lithuania. Sonya and her husband, Dr Frumkin, helped David get the Lithuanian passports. During my research, a Lithuanian researcher, Elena Borik, found proof of my grandmother’s family’s passports in the Lithuanian archives. My grandmother has written about the large Russian émigré community in Switzerland at the time the Jonas family lived there.
What was your Bengali grandfather doing in Geneva when he met Ketaki at a student dance before they moved to Orsieres as a married couple? Or to put it another way, was Geneva a regular landing spot for Indian/Bengali students going overseas to study and work?
My grandfather was studying medicine at the University of Geneva. He had first tried his luck in Paris (where there were more Indian students) and then moved to Geneva. He studied French and even wrote his thesis in French. Some Swiss friends located his thesis in the University of Geneva archives. This Swiss degree was not really recognized as a proper degree when my grandfather returned to India. He struggled to land a proper job and did not manage to have a very successful practice either. My grandfather came from the Amrita Bazar family. The family consisted of staunch nationalists. My grandfather did not want to go and study in a colonial setting. He therefore chose France, then Switzerland. There were many Indian students in Britain. This was the most popular choice and there was no need to learn a foreign language here.
Your grandmother and you make references to the Yonas family being related to Eliezer Ben Yehuda (ne Perlman), the founder of the modern Hebrew language. How did you verify your grandmother’s account?
My grandmother spoke often of Eliezer Ben Yehuda. When my parents visited Israel (my father was then in the World Bank, therefore travel was possible), they met Dola BenYehuda, Eliezer’s daughter by his second marriage. (Eliezer Ben Yehuda would marry two of the Jonas sisters, first the eldest Devorah, then the youngest, Pola). Dola presented my mother with a copy of Robert St. John’s book, The Tongue of the Prophets: the Story of Eliezer Ben Yehuda. The Ben Yehuda family considered this the authoritative account of their illustrious forefather. I corroborated the account by delving further into the Ben Yehuda family. The genealogical website revealed a lot of information. I cross-checked this with writing to family members and asking them for more information. I watched films on Eliezer Ben Yehuda and read what he had written. I consulted my friend Dr Brenda McSweeney who taught in Brandeis University and asked her to suggest any colleague who might have worked on the role of women in early nineteenth century Palestine. She suggested the name of Margaret Shilo and I read her work and corresponded with her also. I tried all manner of ways to get information on the Jonas children. The two most interesting remain the most undocumented — Boris and Penina. Of course, the person who wrote the most was Eliezer’s second wife —Pola — who took on the name of Hemda. By all accounts, she had a terrific personality. However, I tried to stay clear of hagiographic accounts as much as possible. It was Hemda who stayed in touch with the entire Jonas clan.
Your afterword is packed with historical context to Ketaki Sarkar’s memoir. Why did you feel the need to write this detailed account? Why did you decide to write a separate section, rather than heavily annotate Ketaki’s text?
My mother tried hard to get the memoir published. Everyone she spoke to said it was too short and could not be a standalone volume. Early on, I thought a short historical background was important to buttress the memoir. While working at the Social Science Press as an editor, I had approached Esha Beteille with the idea of the manuscript. She showed great enthusiasm, as did her daughter, Radha. I wrote a first draft but Radha found that the historical part should be more detailed and Esha di felt that something should be written on my grandmother’s siblings as well. I realized this would mean much more secondary research. Eventually, a chance meeting with Anada and Swati Lal at their iconic home at Lake Gardens allowed me to raise the matter with Ananda. He accepted the manuscript without question. I shortened the text to make it more reader-friendly and budget-friendly. Ananda did meticulous editing and this took time also. I started the research in 2017. My father passed away in 2018. My brother passed away earlier this year. I kept urging my brother to look at the various manuscripts, but he said he would wait to read the final book. This did not happen.
What was your research methodology? When did you realise you had sufficient material to put into this book?
I had thought, originally, of writing a very short background to the memoir. I felt that most people knew about Russia’s history, certainly about the Indian National Movement, the Bengal Renaissance and the genesis of Santiniketan. On rereading the memoir after many years, I just had so many questions on the veracity of my grandmother’s story. Surely my great-grandmother could not have ridden on horseback from Siberia to Moscow? I remember seeing her photographs and hearing stories about her. This was just one example. Another question in my mind and one that caused me sleepless nights was —what exactly were my great-grandparents’ political affiliations? Were they card-carrying Bolsheviks? My grandmother did not mention this anywhere. But I know they supported the Revolution. Were they Anarchists? I did not think so. So I went to consult Prof. Hari Vasudevan and he confirmed every single doubt I had. He gave me solid historical evidence to validate my grandmother’s memoir. Prof. Vasudevan passed away from the first round of Covid, leaving me and countless others bereft. I think that the ‘introduction’ developed into a ‘book’ when I found documentary evidence of the burgeoning Jewish ex-mercantilist, educated bourgeoisie and the wealth of secondary material on the Pale of Settlement, the Haskalah (Jewish religious reform movement) and the extent of education for Jewish girls in Russia. When I read about the Haskalah, I thought I was reading about the Brahmo Samaj and the Bengal Renaissance; when I turned to girls’ schools in Palestine or Russia, my thoughts turned to education for girls and women in nineteenth century Bengal. There were so many commonalities that could not be discounted as coincidence. And oh, the wealth of secondary material in English, French and Bengali! A veritable treasure trove. My one regret was that I had completely forgotten my Russian. As I read more and more, sitting in the India International Centre Library, New Delhi, I realized that there was material for a book, and this would be interesting for readers, if I could tie up the history with the narrative covered in the memoir.
What did it mean to you to delve into this history and discover details about your lineage? More importantly, make visible linkages in global movements of the early twentieth century that would have remained hidden from view, but probably continue to have ramifications today.
Global events such as the terrible treatment of migrants and refugees were the constant backdrop to researching and writing this book. I kept asking myself — were the barriers between countries really insignificant in the early twentieth century? It was indeed possible for my Russian grandmother to meet and marry my Bengali grandfather, live and work in Switzerland, and then come back and live in India. Would this story ever happen today? I have tried meeting and corresponding with Jonas/Frumkin/Ben Yehuda family members. It is astonishing how well we seem to ‘commune’, although I have to say that my fluency in French helps immensely. The global movements you speak of became visible during the research. But I think that more needs to be written on the commonalities of different historical events and movements. We should be linked by our common faith in humanity. I think Rabindranath Tagore thought deeply about so many issues and problems of the twentieth century. His answer was establishing Visva-Bharati — the world in one nest. But we who live and breathe Santiniketan have not been successful in taking his message of peace and brotherhood far enough.
This volume marks the fiftieth anniversary of one of the defining moments of Indian history. It examines the Emergency and its aftermath from diverse perspectives – political, historical, legal, economic, philosophical, experiential and cultural, among others. Bringing together leading scholars and writers, it explores how the Emergency transformed Indian polity, and shaped law enforcement and penal practices, the media, student movements, judicial responses, subaltern politics and literary expression, and examines why analysis of the Emergency is still relevant to political discourse in India today.
The extract published on Moneycontrol is from the chapter “Many Meanings of Freedom: The Dandawate Prison Letters” by scholar Gyan Prakash. It is about a set of letters exchanged between the socialist leader Madhu Dandavate (1924–2005) and his wife Pramila Dandavate (1928–2002). 50 Years of the Indian Emergency: Lessons for Democracy is published by Orient Blackswan.
‘. . . a probing and kaleidoscopic reassessment of the origins, . . . the book prompts us to reconsider the multiple dimensions and layers of a compacted historical period and the many frameworks that continue to influence our understanding of it. . . .’ Srinath Raghavan, author of Indira Gandhi and the Years that Transformed India
Peter Ronald deSouza is Senior Research Associate, African Centre for Epistemology and Philosophy of Science (ACEPS), University of Johannesburg, and Trustee of the Institute of Social Studies Trust. He was Director, Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS), Shimla, for two terms (2007–13).
Harsh Sethi worked as Consulting Editor of the monthly Seminar for two decades. Earlier he was with Sage Publications as Acquisitions Editor. He also held positions of Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, and Deputy Director at the Indian Council of Social Science Research.
