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Portrait of the hinterland
Reviewed by Kanwalpreet
The Other Country, Dispatches From The Mofussil
By Mrinal Pande. Penguin. Pages 212. Rs 350
Bharat exists along with India
shining. Mrinal Pande explores the divide between the two. Each essay
takes the reader to an India whose bright as well as morbid side exists
only in the movies, melas and the media. The citizens living in
the urban areas are too busy with their lives and when some tragic
incident is reported it is looked down upon with disgust, discussed and
brushed aside.
The learning curve
Reviewed by Aditi Garg
Whispers in the Classroom, Voices in the Field — Stories of School, Friends and Life
Ed. Richa Jha, Illustrated by Priya Kurian. Wisdom Tree. Pages 360. Rs 345
Anyone who has been to school will
agree that it is one of the most important learning experiences of your
life. It teaches you how to be resilient, how to make friends, how to
keep them for life and, among other thing, imparts education.
Life
in times of graft
Reviewed by B. S. Thaur
Corruption and Human Rights in India
By C. Raj Kumar. Oxford University Press.
Pages 234. Rs 550
With A foreword from Justice V.R.
Krishna Iyer, former Judge of Supreme Court and authored by Dr. C. Raj
Kumar Vice-Chancellor, O.P. Jindal Global University, this book
elaborately examines the menace of corruption from all the angles.
Corruption impedes access to justice, deprives the deserving of their
due in the economic, educational and social areas. The author, giving
altogether a new dimension to fight the monster of corruption, notes
that since Independence all attempts by the government have failed to
reduce corruption not to speak of its elimination which denotes the
government’s utter lack of political will.
Comic-book collection sells for $3.5m
A treasure-trove of comics bought by an American enthusiast when he was a boy has fetched $3.5m at auction in New York.
Book reading redefined
Ritusmita Biswas
takes a look at the changing habits of young readers
Akansha Patra, 7, loves to read
her interactive Fisher Price story book. For tech savvy Nirav Mahapatra,
an IIM grad who is a self-proclaimed techie, book reading is all about
buying relevant e-books from Amazon and reading them on his laptop in
his leisure time. Prtayasha Mahani, a New York-based banker, prefers
carrying her Kindle with her, so that she can read her books on her way
to work.
From same IIT Delhi room springs another writer
Madhusree Chatterjee
It might just be haunted by the ghost of a
writer! For, NB 24 at Kumaon Hostel of the Indian Institute of
Technology (IIT), Delhi, is the very room that planted the writing bug
in two "old boys" — popular mass fiction writer Chetan
Bhagat and his senior S.V. Divvaakar.
Tale of two Putins
Reviewed Mary Dejevsky
The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin
By Masha Gessen. Granta. Pages 314. £20.
This book is one of a crop of histories and biographies commissioned to appear as Vladimir Putin prepared either to bow out of, or back in to, the Russian presidency, following next month’s elections. And Masha Gessen, like most of her fellow authors, was wrong-footed. Not in her judgement of Putin—his decision to stand for the presidency chimes well with her generally negative analysis—but in her assessment of Russia. The negative response of many Russians to Putin’s announcement, and the street protests that erupted after parliamentary elections in December, showed that whether Putin returns to the Kremlin or not, the Russia he presides over will be different from the one he led as President between 2000 and 2008, and require him to change, too—if he can.
In quest of musical gems
Nonika Singh
Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma is a name
synonymous with santoor which he has single-handedly put on the map of
classical music and who has en route his six-decade-long musical journey
picked many honours, including the prestigious Padma Vibushan, the
honorary citizen for the City of Baltimore, USA, Sangeet Natak Academy
Award et al. Now, what can be his inspiration today when he has achieved
it all?
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