Pingalwara’s miracle man
Roopinder Singh
The Living Saint: Bhagat Puran Singh
by Harish Dhillon. Unistar. Pages 112. Rs 150.
Bhagat Puran Singh is an unlikely icon in this modern age. He was the person who gave respect and dignity to those who had slipped through the gaps in the social fabric and had been reduced to being non-persons. The Indian civilization, like other societies, has in it the ability to reduce into invisibility anyone it does not want to deal with.

Durbar reopened
Raj Chatterjee
I have read several very entertaining novels and biographies of Anglo-Indian life written by foreigners who knew the country well by having spent a part of their lives here or have come across for an extensive stay in order to familiarise themselves with Indian names, religions and customs. Names like Kipling, Louis Bromfield, Paul Scott, M.M. Kaye and Rumer Godden readily come to mind.

Revolt of the cannon fodder
M. Rajivlochan
The Garrison State: the Military, Government and Society in Colonial Punjab 1849–1947
by Tan Tai Yong. Sage, New Delhi. Pages 333. Rs 640.
"FOR God’s sake, don’t come, don’t come, don’t come to this war in Europe. Write and tell me if you and your regiment are coming or not. I am in a state of great anxiety, and tell my brother… for God’s sake not to enlist. If you have any relatives, my advice is do not let them enlist."

Fascinating tales, fine narrative
Rajdeep Bains
Spicy tales: The Rupa Book of Wicked Stories
Ed: Ruskin Bond. Rupa. Pages 190. Rs 95.
RUPA merits praise for persuading Ruskin Bond to compile some of its recent collections — The Rupa Book of Great Crime Stories, …Book of Scary Stories and … Laughter Omnibus, all edited by Bond, to name a few. The latest in this series is The Rupa Book of Wicked Stories, with an introduction by him.

Dribbling highs and lows
Anil Bhat
Triumphs and Tragedies of Indian Hockey
by Kishin R Wadhwaney. Siddharth Publications. Pages 500. Rs 600.
Having watched Indian Hockey Federation matches in the capital during my school days in the 1960s, some of the high points in life have been congratulating the great Major Dhyan Chand at the NDMC ground (now known as Shivaji Stadium) and later being involved in the game for three decades of training and service in the Army.

Compassion personified
Priyanka Singh
Baba Amte, a biography
by Anita Kainthla. Viva Books. Pages 192. Rs 195.
HOW this book came about is rather interesting. Anita happened to read about Baba Amte in a newspaper article in 2002. She read how a chance encounter with a maggot-infested leper had turned around the life of Baba Amte, who until such time, was a young man given to the niceties of life, including fast cars and smoking.

A case for economic ties
Kanwalpreet
Rethinking India: An Indo- US Partnership Concord, Changing Hearts and Mindsets.
by Vinay Rai. RF Publications, New Delhi. Pages 358. Rs 295
INDIA and the United States are both democracies believing in liberty, equality, fraternity and justice, yet none was ready to recognise each other’s potential till recently. If one is rich in human resources, the other is an economic giant. Why has it taken them so many years to extend cooperation to each other?

Spreading Urdu in the West
N.K. Singh
A Wilderness Of Possibilities: Urdu Studies In Transnational Perspective
Ed Kathryn Hansen And David Lelyveld. OUP. Pages 303. Rs 645
IT is an edited compilation of papers read at a conference of Professor Naim, who pioneered research teaching and writing of Urdu and other allied languages in the US. It is shocking to learn that little was known about Urdu or its poetry in the West before 1962.

'Dictator, writer are natural enemies'
WINNER of the inaugural Man Booker International literary prize, Albanian writer Ismail Kadaré, fought off a distinguished list of authors from around the world to land the £ 60,000 prize, the new global cousin of the prestigious Man Booker prize for fiction.

Back of the book

• Lifeless
  by Mark Billingham. Little, Brown. Pages:375. £ 5.99
  

• Armies of Hanuman
  by Ashok K. Banker. Penguin. Pages 457. Rs 350
  

• Brunelleschi’s Dome: The Story of the Great Cathedral in Florence
  by Ross King. Pimlico. Pages: 184. £ 4.75