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Idea of Hinduism
Satish K. Kapoor
Understanding India Relevance of Hinduism
Ed. Subhash C. Kashyap and Abhaya Kashyap. Vitasta Publishing, New
Delhi.
Pages 536. Price not stated.
Hinduism
defies definition, for it is as vast and complex as life itself.
Definitions constrict and circumscribe and cannot truly project an
ever-growing, ever-evolving and non-dogmatic tradition like Hinduism
which has multi-dimensional aspects to it. Hinduism
is the embodiment of the total consciousness of the inhabitants of
India—the crystallisation of their ideas, beliefs, values,
intellectual activities, aesthetic sensibilities, and socio-cultural and
economic perceptions through the course of time. Hinduism may be said to
have a pentagonal character.
Tribute
to a thespian
Aradhika Sharma
Vijay Tendulkar Omnibus
Ed. Makrand Sathe. Arvind Kumar Publishers, Gurgaon. Pages 345. Rs 495.
Vijay
Tendulkar’s credo is: "My role is that of a seeker who
believes in life, and tries to seek it honestly as a writer and as a
common man." He has written prolifically for over 50 years and is
one of the significant contributors to post-Independence literature,
both as a writer and as a dramatist. To attempt to compile an omnibus of
this great writer’s works, and sift his works for what is most
significant, is no easy task. Yet, the editor Makarand Sathe has
attempted to do it.
A
glorious collection
Priyanka Singh
Neither Night Nor Day
Ed. Rakshanda Jalil. HarperCollins. Pages 191. Rs 250.
You
have to give it to Pakistan women writers. Their narrative is so
high on honest portrayal that the characters come alive in a real world
that conjures up at the same instant. Think Tehima Durrani’s My
Feudal Lord or Bapsi Sidhwa. Neither
Night Nor Day strings together
13 stories by Pakistan women writers. Rakshanda feels not all Pakistan
women writers are unfeigned.
The
value of doing nothing
Harbir K. Singh
Retired but not Tired
by B. K. Trehan and Indu Trehan. Roli Books. Pages 304. Rs 295.
This
book is like a guiding star, showing the way to all senior
citizens to make life more fruitful, productive, active, healthy,
purposeful and inspiring after retirement. By this time, you are almost
free of all responsibilities of educating and settling children. Though
retirement can be very emotionally upsetting after leading an active
life, with little planning it can be the golden phase of your
life—most satisfying and productive.
Frank
view of frozen heights
Harbans Singh
Heights of Madness: One
Woman’s Journey in Pursuit of a Secret War
by Myra MacDonald. Rupa & Co. Pages 242. Rs 395.
This
book by Myra MacDonald is remarkable not just because it is
‘One Woman’s Journey in Pursuit of a Secret War’, as the title
says, or that "it is the first account of the Siachen war to be
told from both the Indian and the Pakistani points of view", though
both, in themselves are of considerable significance. It is remarkable
because it has been reconstructed by keeping the human beings as the
focus of the story.
More
than a diplomat’s diary
Sridhar K Chari
Words, Words, Words
Adventures in Diplomacy
T.P. Sreenivasan Pearson Longman. Pages 253. Rs 600
TP
Sreenivasan draws upon
the rich material of his diplomatic career to come up with a
fascinating, easy-reading, insider account of the curious world of the
Foreign Service bureaucrats, where the mundane, the trivial and the
enormously consequential, all co-exist in a heady mix.
Lockerbie
tale
Juval
Aviv, a former Israeli secret agent and the writer of the book
that inspired Steven Spielberg’s award-winning 2005 film Munich,
is now working on a fiction about the Lockerbie disaster of December
1988 that claimed about 270 lives. The former Mossad agent’s book will
blame Iran, instead of Libya, for the atrocity. Aviv hopes that
Spielberg will turn his new project, dubbed Flight 103, into a
hit movie. The book, which alleges that the Iranians and the American
secret services were complicit in the atrocity, is scheduled for
publication early next year.
Secrets
of teen slang
All
those puzzled parents struggling to understand their teenage
kids’ slang language can now take a breather, for a dictionary has
been written to shed light on the strange mumbo-jumbo of teenagers’
talk. The book The A-Z of Teen Talk has been written by
13-year-old Lucy van Amerongen for the benefit of an increasingly
bewildered adult generation.
Novel
way to go
What should you do if you want
to get your first novel published? Boyd Tonkin, Literary Editor of The
Independent answers all that first-time novelists always wanted to know
but were afraid to ask
Former
retail manager Catherine O’Flynn from Birmingham has won the
Costa First Novel Award for her fiction debut, What Was Lost,
after the manuscript was rejected by 14 literary agents. The novel, set
in the kind of Midlands mall where she worked, also reached the
longlists of the Orange and Man Booker prizes. Her victory will revive
the hopes of the thousands of wannabe novelists who, in spite of the
huge odds stacked against them, bombard agents and publishers with their
creative offspring.
BACK
OF THE BOOK
The Unwaba Revelations: Part
Three of the GameWorld trilogy
by Samit Basu. Penguin Books. Pages 508. Rs 295
Under
the all seeing eyes of the assembled gods, armies are on the
move. The Game has begun. And when it ends, the world will end too ...
In The Unwaba Revelations, the third and concluding part of the
GameWorld trilogy, a way must be found to save the world; to defeat the
gods at their own game. A daunting prospect under any circumstances,
made worse by the fact that the gods, who control all the heroes, are
blatantly cheating by following only one rule — that they cannot be
defeated by their own creations.
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