Witness to an era
Reviewed by Balwinder Kaur
In The Name Of The People
Reflections on Democracy, Freedom and Development
By K.R. Narayanan. Penguin/Viking.
Pages 264. Rs 599.
The highest office in the country places a man on a pedestal. The public knows K.R. Narayanan as the President of the nation, but few have a real understanding of who he was both as a man and a leader. What better way is there to get the sense of a man than through his words and deeds. In The Name Of The People is a collection of articles, speeches and various other writings by K.R. Narayanan penned over 47 years, allowing the readers to form their own opinion of the man; to judge his decisions and actions having seen their consequences. These are the words of a statesman; chronicling his rise from journalist to civil servant and from politician to President.

Book Excerpt
On road to self discovery in Bhutan
Pavan Varma
Excerpted from When Loss Is Gain by Pavan Verma.
Raintree, an imprint of Rupa. Pages 208. Rs 395
Chimi had arranged a comfortable Prado and driver for us and packed a flask of coffee, fruits, hardboiled eggs and sandwiches in a basket. Tara arrived punctually at eight as promised. She was wearing jeans with a casual blue shirt open at the neck, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and feroza earrings and matching pendant. Here indeed was a gorgeous looking nun, I thought to myself. I had never seen her so early in the morning. With her hair pulled tightly back, her face looked fresh as a pearl, and fortunately—as always the giveaway—her eyes were shining. I silently thanked the good Lord above for Chimi’s great idea and even more for Tara’s acceptance. And then we were off.

The mystery behind writer Nayana Currimbhoy’s inspiration
Reviewed by Harsh Desai
Miss Timmins’ School for Girls
By Nayana Currimbhoy.
HarperCollins. Pages 506. Rs 369.
They were all there. Miss Nelson, the Principal of the Timmins School. Usha Raswani, the Hindi teacher. Charulata Apte, the English teacher. Moira Prince, the sports teacher. Merch was there. Nandita, Akila and Ramona were there. Three or four boys from another boarding school were there. Shanker, the handyman of the school was there. Probably there was a ghost or two doing the rounds. The only person who was not there was Inspector Wagle (Woggle), who had been in Panchgani for 18 years and was justifiably proud of the fact that no murder or serious crime had occurred at the quiet hill station under his watch. All that, of course, changed on that fateful night in Panchgani, when the rains stopped and the full moon shone brightly in the inky sky.

Candid account
Reviewed by Harbans Singh
Lucknow Boy A Memoir
By Vinod Mehta. Penguin/Viking; Pages 325. 499
Vinod Mehta's "Lucknow Boy A Memoir' is an extraordinary story of a Punjabi, growing and being moulded by the culture of Lucknow, passing B.A. in third division travelling to England for further studies but who returns to India, wiser by the experiences of Her Majesty's country making transition to the new world of the Beatles, but without acquiring any formal qualification in any discipline and then rising to be a very successful editor.

Striking the right note
Reviewed by Aditi Garg
Euphoria: The Story of Palash Sen
By Ashish Kate.
HarperCollins. Pages 249. Rs 499.
Music is manna for the soul. It makes you dance, moves you to cry and even makes you happy. It transforms you to its own world like nothing else can. People who create music are a rare breed who have this gift of being able to think up music and give it a structure that makes it enjoyable.

CLOSING THE KNOW-DO GAP
Reviewed by Jayanti Roy
The Knowledge Translation Toolkit
Ed Gavin Bennett and Nasreen Jessani. Sage. Pages 253. Rs 495
Library shelves are creaking with the weight of tomes of research work. Research theses, publications and reports gather dust as nobody turns the pages and valuable findings gradually become useless data. This is both a sad and unfortunate situation that the knowledge gained after spending money, time and energy in research is seldom applied, hardly used to guide any policy and rarely getting translated into action. The implication of this gap is immense as it means that precious findings remain buried in papery graves while people suffer due to the want of application of this knowledge. Areas like health and education where a sound evidence based policy has the potential to bring about real changes can benefit hugely from bridging of the know-do gap.

Tete-a-tete
Life for theatre’s sake
Neena Tiwana, the pioneering theatre person, has the distinction of being the first woman from Punjab to join the NSD. She talks of her life on stage to Nonika Singh
The Sangeet Natak Akademi may have taken its own sweet time to bestow the honour upon theatre thespian Neena Tiwana but nothing can take away the fact that she is a pioneer in more ways than one. She was the first woman from Punjab to join the National School of Drama (NSD) and, along with her other half late Harpal Tiwana, was instrumental in bringing professionalism to Punjabi theatre. On getting the Akademi Award rather late (this year) even after some of her students have got it, all she says is, "What can I comment?" But she does share that when she filled in the performa (for the award) about her students (and as celebrity names such as Om Puri, Gurdas Maan and others) figured in it, she did feel a bit odd. Better late than never, is her take. She received the Shiromani Adakara award by the Languages Department, way back in 1990s and does believe that awards do motivate an artist.

Short takes
Contentment, pursuit and ambition
Reviewed by Randeep Wadehra
Realization
By Venu Sanon
Recherché Books. Pages: xv+131. Rs 480
If poetry is, "A criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty" as Mathew Arnold says, its beauty lies in the flight of imagination that creates a world that is fantastic and utterly riveting, as epitomized in The Tale of Princess Naina in this anthology. Yet, Sanon is clearly not a fantast. This book has ten sections dealing with various aspects of nature and human existence. In the section on nature she shows great understanding of the various elements as is clear from the empathetic On Behalf of Trees. The section on positive thinking has some excellent poems for our youth, especially those prone to bouts of pessimism. My personal favourites in this section are The Song of Life and Hues. Even in the section on refinement there is an optimistic poem, In Praise of the Loser.

Out of the blue
By Aakash Chopra.
Harper Sport. Pages: xi+262. Rs 299

The secret letters of the monk who sold his Ferrari
By Robin Sharma
Jaico. Pages 223. Rs 250

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