Sunday, February 10, 2002		Literature

A touching love story from Azerbaijan
Deepika Gurdev
Of Love in the Face of War
by Ali and Nin by Kurban Said. First published in 1937 and reprinted in 1999. Pages 235. $10-Singapore paperback.
FIRST published in Vienna in 1937, and now back in print after nearly six decades, "Ali and Nino" is a timeless classic of love in the face of war. Kurban Said’s masterpiece is a captivating novel as evocative of the exotic desert landscape as it is of the passion between its two central characters, Ali and Nino.

This is Bin Laden’s story & it is still on
Jaswant Kaur
Bin Laden: Behind the Mask of the Terrorist
by Adam Robinson. Vision Books, New Delhi. Pages 256. Rs 225.
FOR every Gandhi there is a Hitler and for every Lenin a Mussolini. History has proved that for every man who makes the world a better place to live in, there is another who makes for its destruction. Osama bin Laden belongs to the latter category.

A much delayed analysis of Soviet collapse
Rajesh Kathpalia
A Time to Remember: My years in Russia
by Sukirat. Brunel Academic publishers, Middlesex, UK. Pages 151. Rs 160.
THE Indian boy of Marxist parents, who spent a good part of his adolescent years in Russia of the seventies and early eighties returns to it after many years. He is bewildered at the pace and expanse of changes happening in Yeltsin’s Russia.

The science of temple architecture
M.L. Sharma
Pyramid and Temple Vaastu
by Bhojraj Dwivedi. Diamond Pocket Books, New Delhi. Pages 219. Rs 195.
THE eagerness to know vaastu and feng shui is evident from the number of books flooding the market; new publications are coming from abroad as well. The reason for interest in them is to seek remedial measures without repairs and undertaking reconstruction work by just changing the placement of articles in suitable directions and using wind chimes, flutes, amulets and crystals.

BOOK EXTRACT
Mrs. G, Maneka and the Anands
I HAVE Maneka's version, corroborated by her mother. Maneka first met Sanjay Gandhi on 14 December 1973 at a cocktail party given by her uncle Major-General Kapur (the husband of Maneka's father's sister, a renowned beauty of her time) to celebrate their son Veenu Kapur's forthcoming marriage. Sanjay, being a school friend of Veenu, was present.

Chronicles of courage
Ranjita Biswas
"GIRIBALA darted into the palanquin room and picked up the pot of mutton cooked with black beans. She forgot everything ...religion and rituals, wisdom and restraint...she started gulping it down in great haste." In The Saga of South Kamrup, originally called Une Khowa Howda in Assamese, Indira Goswami, Jnanpith Award-winner for the year 2000, for her contribution to Indian literature between 1978 and 1999, chronicles the saga of this widow who, since the death of her husband, had eaten only rice and boiled pulses with some vegetables.

Poet as a conscience-keeper
N.S. Tasneem
Bavrey Bol
By Daljit Singh, Pages 294
THE person who is busy daylong, from the early dawn to the late evening in diagnoses and eye-surgeries of one sort or another is not happy with the present state of affairs. He is disturbed that there is so much squalor, disease and poverty around him. The dawn of freedom, more than five decades ago, has belied the hopes of the masses for a better tomorrow.

When dreams give you a wake-up call
Vinaya Katoch Manhas
Wake up to your dreams,
Joan Hanger, Penguin, Pages 174, Price 200
"THE intellect has assumed an overweening importance in the lives of civilized people. It dries up the fertile mists of our dreams and, in doing so, dries out the imagination. Imagination and creativity feed on unconscious processes. And while the operation of the intellect is one of our most admirable attributes, and essential for the ordering and onward trajectory of our minds and daily lives, the death of the imagination in our culture is a sad thing to behold.