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Soul-searching
journey
Two close brushes with death
in volatile Punjab prompted a mind with a seriously scientific temper
to collate his musings in prose and poetry form
Conversations
By Rajeev Nanda.
Frog Books.
Pages 204. Rs 195.
Reviewed by Puneetinder Kaur Sidhu
RAJEEV
Nanda, author of Conversations, has been working in the hi-tech
industry since 1985. He started his career as a software engineer in
India and has worked across many roles and organizations both in India
and US. After spending more than 10 years in the US, he relocated to
Bangalore to help Intel set up their IT group in India.
Municipalities
at crossroads
How India’s Small Towns
Live (or Die)
By Paromita Shastri.
Academic Foundation.
Pages 180. Rs 695.
Reviewed by Amarinder
Sandhu
PUSH
and pull factors are responsible for the rapid urbanisation taking
place in India. It is estimated that within the next two decades,
nearly half a billion of the Indian population will be living in urban
areas. As unabated migration to the towns continues, the
infrastructure of urban areas fails to meet the needs of the growing
population.
Making
sense of irrational mind
The Upside of
Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at
Home
By Dan Ariely.
HarperCollins.
Pages 334. Rs 399.
Reviewed by D. S. Cheema
DAN
Ariely, a social scientist and behavioural economist, is the New
York Times best-selling author of Predictably Irrational.
Only a brave man like Dan, with full-blooded passion for what he
believes in, can produce a path-breaking book like this after
suffering third-degree burns on 70 per cent of his body and spending
three long years in hospital.
Snippets
from life
A Life of Light
By Sumita Misra.
Unistar Books Pvt. Ltd.
Pages 80. Rs 195.
Reviewed by Aditi Garg
THe
journey of life is a medley of experiences. Even the most ordinary
people have stories that are far from mundane. Sumita
Misra has put together her poems in A Light of Life. The
compilation has poems from different facets of life. She is an IAS
officer and lives in Chandigarh with her husband and two daughters.
Moods of Malhar
S.D. Sharma
Artistes talk about the role and relevance of monsoon melody Megh Malhar
Prominent
seasonal ragas which evoke human emotions and sentiments in eloquent and
irresistible ways include the rainy season Raga Megh Malhar, which has
many derivatives and its intrinsic melody and beauty can best be
relished when sung in the months of July and August.
Tête-à-tête
Rooted
creative flights
Nonika Singh
"I
am a very simple artist who
speaks in the language of pigments." This modest refrain of
artist Paramjit Singh may not throw light on his eminence or the
significance of his masterly strokes and splendid landscapes. But
nothing can cloud the fact that the visual vocabulary he creates has
critics lauding and fellow artists gushing, some like Gulam Mohammed
Sheikh dubbing his works as "visual hypnotism."
British Library bids for oldest bound book
Rob Sharp
THE
British Library has launched a campaign to buy the oldest bound book
in Europe, the £9m St Cuthbert Gospel. The library hopes to
raise £2.75m to complete funds already donated by the National
Heritage Memorial Fund and The Art Fund.
Short Takes
Social radicalism and
historiography
Reviewed by Randeep Wadehra
Social radicalism in Urdu literature
by Rajwanti Mann
Manohar.
Pages 253. Rs 750.
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