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Diagnosis of dualisms
Ash Narain Roy
The Future of India: Economics, Politics and
Governance
by Bimal Jalan. Viking. Pages: 212. Rs 350.
Astrology of power is fast becoming a discipline in
its own right. Experts of geopolitics, market and corporate gurus,
political analysts, technology advisors, trend-spotters and advocacy
groups are all busy trying to penetrate the future. Writing about India
as a future power has lately become fashionable. Triumphalism is
becoming second nature to Indians.
Paradoxes of education
Kavita Soni-Sharma
Political Agenda of Education: A Study of Colonialist
and Nationalist Ideas
by Krishna Kumar, Sage, Delhi.
Pages 223. Rs. 295.
"WE don’t need no education. / We don’t need
no thought control. / No dark sarcasm in the classroom. / Teacher leave
the kids alone" thus went the complaint by Roger Waters of the Pink
Floyd group in that cult song of the 1980s. Those were the days when
teachers provided education and it was up to the students to receive it.
Much has changed in pedagogy since then.
Talking about Shriver
Louise Jury
AN author who has enjoyed critical but not mass acclaim
for nearly 20 years has finally hit the big time by winning the £30,000
Orange Prize for fiction with her story of a high-school massacre.
At a ceremony in London, Lionel Shriver took the award
for We Need to Talk About Kevin, in which a mother considers her
shortcomings as a parent after her son, 15, kills seven fellow pupils.
Bonds apart
Meeta Rajivlochan
Blended Boundaries: Caste, Class and
Shifting Faces of Hinduness in a North Indian City
by Kathinka Frøystad. Oxford. Pages 304. Rs 595.
Social distinctions among the upper-caste Hindus
during the turbulent 1990s is the subject of this book. Once you remove
the unnecessary, repetitive and boring academic scaffolding, it turns
out to be an interesting field report interspersed with anthropological
insights. I found it to be one of the best thick descriptions of Indian
society in recent times.
Continuing crusade
Ivninderpal Singh
Corruption: How to Deal With its Impact on Business
and Society
by Godfrey Harris. Viva, New Delhi. Pages 148. Rs 150.
Corruption in simple terms may be termed "an act
of bribery" but in reality, it is much beyond that. Corruption is
not only concerned with big financial deals or demanding money for doing
something which is part of one’s duty, but also it’s a kind of
behaviour in our daily life where we look for personal gains at other
person’s expense.
A rewarding walk
Aradhika Sekhon
Roads to Mussoorie
by Ruskin Bond. Rupa. Pages 125 Rs 95.
ANOTHER delightful little gem from the pen of the
storyteller of the hills — Ruskin Bond. The choices that Bond made in
life and the experiences that have ensued thereof have resulted in a
series of books, Roads to Mussoorie being the latest. Indeed, Bond’s Mussoorie teems with activity.
Buddha demystified
Arun Gaur
A Spoke in the Wheel
by Amita Kanekar. Harper Collins, New Delhi. Pages
448. Rs 395
"Influenced by all!" said Mahanta. "Upali’s
Buddha is a confused fool parroting whatever was said around him!"
"That’s not true," protested Upali. "Perhaps it is not
deliberate," conceded Mahanta. "Perhaps it is only your
stupidity." He turned to the others. "But just imagine,
brothers, if everybody started this kind of imaginative interpretation,
what will happen to the legacy so carefully protected this far?
Distinctive strokes
Punam Khaira Sidhu
Nanak: The Guru
by Mala Dayal. Illustrations by Arpana Caur. Rupa.
Pages 48. Rs 195.
AS a parent of one teenager and one tweenie (pre-teen),
I am often concerned by their lack of interest in reading books.
Television and video games dominate their leisure time. If this
generation is to be weaned away from their plasma screens and I-pods,
the subject has to be a visual treat strong enough to grab their
eyeballs and the text has be pithy and brief.
Wife was the Lady
THE affair around which D.H. Lawrence weaved his novel ‘Lady
Chatterley’s Lover’ was inspired by a relationship between the
writer’s wife and an Italian soldier, claims a recent biography of the
writer. John Worthen’s biography of Lawrence, The Life of
An Outsider, published recently, says, "Lawrence wrote the
novel when he was suffering from tuberculosis while his wife Frieda was
getting involved with Angelo Ravagli."
Short Takes
Snapshots of years gone by
Randeep Wadehra
Riding Piggyback
by Rajinder Kaur (Translation: Komal Saini Pathak
& Clifton Ivan Marques) Kunmun Publications, Chandigarh. Pages:
x+225+vii. Rs 195.
Rajinder Kaur’s book fetes nostalgia. She was born
in a village exactly when the 10 pm train was passing by. Since there
were no clocks/watches around, it was assumed that the train was on
time. Her birth was celebrated by distributing shakkar. There are
anecdotes of how, as an infant, she survived a fall from the rooftop;
and as a school-going kid almost died due to drowning.
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