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Seeds that don’t sprout
Rajnish Wattas
Magic Seeds
by V. S. Naipaul. Picador. Pages 294. Rs 495.
Naipaul’s magic with elegant prose never fails, but
his ‘"seeds" of social revolutions can falter. This time, he
wields the wand to confront the questions of individual identities and
convulsions of half-made societies in realising the ideal.
Selective
tales of power play
Shastri Ramachandaran
Through the Corridors of Power
by P C Alexander. Harper Collins, Delhi. Pages 480. Rs 500.
IT
is a truism that bureaucrats are time-servers, and the successful ones
more so. What sets P C Alexander apart from the run-of-the-mill
bureaucrat is that he manages to come out on top even when times change
and change again.
Op
Bluestar: Questions remain
Himmat Singh Gill
WHEN
former Principal Secretary to Indira Gandhi PC Alexander remarks in his
book Through the Corridors of Power, "Indira Gandhi did not
consider Operation Bluestar a mistake. The mistake was in the manner of
implementing the decision and not the decision itself", it becomes
necessary, I believe, to put in perspective the implementation and
aftermath of a highly botched up and unnecessary operation launched
during his time.
Colours
of identity
The World Unseen
by Shamim Sarif. Review
Books, Headline Book Publishing, London. Pages
344. £ 7.99
WHEN
Hari Kunzru was awarded the Betty Trask prize of £ 8000 for his first
novel The Impressionist, in 2002, on the same podium was another young
author, Shamim Sarif. She got the 4000-sterling prize for her novel, The
World Unseen.
John
Gould, a rare bird indeed
Baljit Singh
The Bird Man
by Isabella Tree. Ebury Press, Rupa &
Co. Pages 324, £ 4.55.
JUST
as a believer does not feel fulfilled until he beholds whatever be his
Mecca, similar is the pull with lovers of nature to simply hold the
first edition or any book by John Gould. His books comprised full-page
illustrations of a bird or a mammal so incredibly life-like and with
such vibrant colours that you anticipate it would fly off the page any
moment.
The
lunatic fringe
Jaswant Singh
Gods on Trial and Other
Stories
by Gulzar Singh Sandhu. Translated from
Punjabi by Khushwant Singh, Manmohan
Singh and D. R. Goyal. Fiction
House, Delhi. Pages 176. Rs 95.
Sahitya
Akademi Award winner Gulzar Singh Sandhu has witnessed the horrors of
Partition, the turmoil of India-Pakistan war and the communal riots
consequent to the assassination of Indira Gandhi. It is a coincidence
that I, too, have gone through all these horrid experiences. The bouquet
of 25 stories is presented in a lucid, yet succinct manner.
Stories
with a difference
Aditya Sharma
Rage, Revelry and Romance
by Uday Prakash. Translated by Robert A. Hueckstedt. Srishti. Pages 216.
Rs 145.
PENNED
by noted Hindi writer Uday Prakash and translated into English by
Robert. A. Hueckstedt, who teaches Hindi and Sanskrit at University of
Virginia, USA, the book is a collection of short stories. The common
thread that runs through these narratives is the element of realism with
which they have been recounted.
short takes
Fun with science
Randeep Wadehra
Science Time-Pass
by Dilip M. Salwi. Rupa & Co. Pages 196. Rs 195
AS a student one perceives the classroom as the
repository of boredom. When the subject happens to be science, and
teaching unimaginative, then misery can actually be overwhelming. To
make lectures interesting it is important to pepper these with
fascinating and relevant anecdotes, supplementary information, including
trivia.
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