Media under the scanner
Reviewed by Sarbjit Dhaliwal
Troubled Reflections: Reporting Violence — Media’s Symbiotic Relationship with Violence, Ethnic Violence, Terrorism and War
By Gobind Thukral.
Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla.
Pages 214. Rs 495.
BE it terrorism, war or ethnic conflict, violence has become a world phenomenon. From AK-47s to bomb blasts, to mid-air hijackings and human bombs, the world has seen rapidly changing phases and faces of terrorism that has become a central issue across the globe.

Books received: english

A peep into woman’s psyche
Reviewed by Aradhika Sharma
Love from the Sidelines
By Mayank Anand.
Frog Books.
Pages 347. Rs 350.
THIS is a girly book—chick lit, as it is known as in the day’s parlance. It speaks the language of women, it speaks of the concerns of women, and it’s about, for, in and out of women. "So, what’s the big deal you may ask? Isn’t that what chick lit is all about anyway?"

Spooky tales of yore
Reviewed by Amarinder Sandhu
The Phantom Rickshaw and other Eerie Tales
By Rudyard Kipling.
Pages 170. Rs 199.
OLD British towns, an abandoned cottage, a silent dak bunglow and cemeteries—all have their own apparitions. A good writer can spin many a yarn around buildings and ghosts. Kipling may have enthralled us with the antics of Mowgli and introduced us to Kim, but he is at his writing best when he presents these ghost tales.

Journey inwards
Reviewed by Ashok Kumar Yadav
Maya: A Novel
By Dr Ruby Gupta. 
Pilgrims Publishing.
Pages 272. Rs 350.
THIS book fictionalises an enigmatic belief that this world is nothing but an illusion in itself. Alluding to the main tenet of Hindu philosophy, Ruby Gupta has succeeded in wrapping the entire concept in a fascinating tenor. Even the title page is topical and signifies the delusion the book is all about.

Window to cybernetics
Reviewed by Akshay Kumar
Cyburbia: The Dangerous Idea that’s Changing how we Live and who we are
By James Harkin.
Little, Brown, London.
Pages 274. Rs 495.
TODAY, as a barrage of information highways penetrate through the unconscious of human mind, each one of us is willy-nilly turned into a traveller or a jockey in the "cyburbia". Electronic inter-activism has generated a vision or rather a mirage of unprecedented global integration.

The monk who told things literary
Humra Quraishi
The Sun Will Rise Again: Selected Poems 
by Acharya Mahaprajna 
Translated by Sudhamahi Regunathan. 
Penguin-Viking.
Pages 97. Rs 250.
Whilst going through Khushwant Singh’s essay On Religion, I was pleasantly surprised to read these particular lines: "It was only in the sixties when I had to teach a course in comparative religion at Princeton University and later, at Swarthmore College and the University of Hawaii that I read books on Jainism in order to pass on the information to my American students.

Urdu book review
A poet for all reasons
Amar Nath Wadehra
Aks-e-rukh-e-gulbadan 
by Kashmiri Lal Zakir.
Edited by Mahender Pratap Chand
Educational Publishing House.
Pages 160. Rs 140
Jahan raks kartee hai ruh-e-tamanna
Uss hadd-e-manzil pey main aa gaya hoon
Khuda bakshey meri nigaahon ko himmat
Qayamat sey main aaj takraa gayaa hoon
(I have reached those bounds of the destination where the soul’s desires dance; may God bestow courage upon me for today, I have taken on the apocalypse itself).

Mask mystique
Navneet Kaur
Masks are an integral part of the mukh-bhaona performances of Majuli Island in Assam
MAJULI Island is one of the most wonderful places God created on the earth. It is the world’s largest river island in the Assam state of India. It came into the prominence in the 16th century with Sankaradeva propagating a new form of Vaishnavism. Sankaradeva’s Vaishnavism was simpler and less ritualistic than the Hindu religion. It was rooted in faith and prayer.

Loser’s lament
Madhusree Chatterjee
Failure stays with everyone and is a wonderful subject to write about, says newspaper editor and novelist Soumya Bhattacharya, whose new novel If I Could Tell You has just hit the stands.

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