All that ails J&K
Harbans Singh
Kashmir: Insurgency and After
by Balraj Puri.
Orient Longman Private Limited.
Pages 158. Rs 215.
For those who are used to seeing ‘Kashmir in turmoil’, it must have come as a surprise to also see ‘Jammu in turmoil’ over an issue that had earlier rocked Kashmir to such an extent that not only the political parties of the Valley but also the separatist groups came together on one platform. Same issue, contrary reasons, and once again Jammu and Kashmir has regressed to the early 50s!

Chasing dreams
Aditi Garg
With the Tiger
by Inez Baranay. HarperCollins. Pages 105. Rs 295.
Having loved and lost, is it really better than not having loved at all? Everyone would have a different take on this one. But one thing that everyone would agree to is the distress that unrequited love can cause. Your days with a person you feel can give you a better life than with the person who you really love depends on how you define happiness. And then again, there could be any amount of argument on the viability of loving someone of your own sex. But love is not always about right and wrong; who you love and why could have any number of reasons or none at all. Trying to find reason in love is futile.

Hard look at health concerns
Rajesh Kumar Aggarwal
Strategic Issues and Challenges in Health Management
Eds. K.V. Ramani, Dileep Mavalankar and Dipti Govil.
Sage Publications, New Delhi, and IIM, Ahmedabad. Pages 228. Rs 495.
MANY studies have pointed out strong connection of health with human resource development, productivity and economic growth, as health influences the overall quality of life and economic performance of a nation. Mortality, morbidity and malnourishment are serious barriers to the productivity and, therefore, act as constraints on economic performance.

Passionate witch
Manmeet Sodhi
Brida
by PauloCoelho.
HarperCollins. Pages 266. Rs 295.
Witches are often depicted as wicked old women with wrinkled skin and pointy hats, clothed in black or purple, with warts on their noses and long claws like fingernails. They typically ride through the air on a broomstick as in the Harry Porter universe and are supposed to have dealings with the Devil or evil spirits. On the contrary, Paulo Coelho, a celebrated Brazilian author in his mesmerising novel Brida, attempts to portray witches as essentially good humans of normal appearance, whereas witchcraft as one way of being close to the supreme wisdom.

Bollywood masala
Kamaldeep Kaur
The Girl with the Golden Parasol
by Uday Prakash.
Trans. by Jason Grunebaum.
Penguin. Pages 208. Rs 250.
This is a very ambitious novel because it touches upon a host of issues plaguing our country, like communalism, globalisation, glocalisation, caste-based university politics, moral degradation, corruption, consumerism, the Naxalite movement. The novel also replicates a Bollywood potboiler as it has a poor-boy-meets-rich-girl love story, replete with a generous sprinkling of songs from Hindi films. It is much like the present-day mall culture—everything under one roof.

Bhojpuri in the Caribbean
Shubha Singh
Jahajin
by Peggy Mohan.
HarperCollins. Rs 295.
About 130,000 Indians travelled to Trinidad as indentured migrants in the 19th and 20th centuries. The early migrants went from villages in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh and spoke variations of Bhojpuri, Khari Boli, Braj Bhasha, Bundelkhandi, Urdu and Hindi.

SHORT TAKES
A brush with real-life dons
Randeep Wadehra
Khallas
by J. Dey. Jaico.
Pages: viii+207. Rs 275.
Tere marne se main jeu to tu mar ja (if your death ensures that I live then you die) — this phrase attributed to the mafia don Dawood Ibrahim has become a credo of sorts for Mumbai’s gangsters, indicating that the denizens of the underworld have to be wary not only of the police but also have to watch their backs against fellow criminals. Barring a few exceptions, most of them meet violent deaths.

Solzhenitsyn’s last interview
Rebel, prisoner, poet and hero: half a century since they were published, Solzhenitsyn’s searing accounts of Stalin’s labour camps remain among the most profound works of modern literature. Last summer, as his health began to fail, he looked back on his extraordinary life with Christian Neef and Matthias Schepp

Copernicus’ first edition fetches $ 2.2m
A first edition of the book in which Nicolaus Copernicus presented his earthshaking theory of the cosmos has fetched more than $ 2.2 million at a New York auction, nearly doubling the expected price.

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