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Welcome guide to
effective parenting
Aditi Garg
If it's tough being a child in today's competitive environment, it is tougher raising children without stress and anxiety. Two books can help hassled parents to negotiate their way through parenting
Childhood is touted as the most
stress-free period of anyone's life. Try being a child in today's world and
you shall do a double take. Unrealistic parental expectations, mounting peer
pressure, competitive school curriculums and a race to surpass everyone, are
taking their toll on the children. They are plagued by problems unknown to
occur at this age.
Tete-a-tete
In search of the ultimate
Nonika Singh
Classical vocalist Sanjeev Abhyankar believes that though rigidity has no place in music, one has to be well-equipped in its rudiments to be able to traverse its vast expanse
If on stage his musical brilliance belies his youth, off stage his deep philosophy of
life and music leaves you wonderstruck. Gifted vocalist Sanjeev
Abhyankar, once hailed as a child prodigy, has over the years not only matured in music but also in understanding of life. Life, he says, is all about making choices about looking at the glass half
full or half empty.
A footloose rootless, rake
The Flying Man
By Roopa Farooki. Hachette. Pages 338. Rs 499.
Reviewed by Aradhika Sharma
A true moralist would detest the hero (he is as non-heroic as a hero can be). But a person who loves people that books create and replicate, can't help loving
Maqil, the protagonist of The Flying Man. You can actually hear the author, Roopa Farooki chortle as she creates this character who the reader hates to love. And that's the strength of the book. Lighthearted, it may appear, but
Farooki, who has modelled the hero on her own father, takes him rather seriously, spending a lot of time and attention on this character, whose rootlessness is his distinguishing feature.
Novel that charms, till the dagger strikes
Fear in the Sunlight
By Nicola Upson
Faber Pages 432. £12.99
Nicola Upson's Josephine Tey
mysteries are a class above the usual crime fiction. They shimmer with a love
for their prewar setting and the artistic circles Tey, a real-life detective
novelist, frequented. Her choice of sleuth was a masterstroke of literary
theft: Tey was a shadowy, stubbornly private writer. Like Georgette Heyer, she
shunned the celebrity trappings enjoyed by their contemporary, Agatha
Christie. As a result she was ripe for imaginative speculation, of which Upson
has plenty.
The power behind the throne
Reviewed by Balwinder Kaur
The Twentieth Wife
By Indu Sundaresan
HarperCollins.
Pages 375. Rs 399
When tales are told about empires and kingdoms, they are usually about kings. But The Twentieth Wife by Indu Sundaresan is about
Mehr-un-Nissa, better known as Nur Jahan. This is the story of a woman who reached through the bars of her gilded cage and governed a nation. The author brings to life this unforgettable and enigmatic figure who occupies a unique place in history.
Mehrunnisa, as she is known in the book, was the daughter of refugees Ghias Beg and
Asmat; blessed with both beauty and intelligence. Through the potent combination of determination and destiny, she went on to marry Jahangir and ruled the entire Mughal Empire in his stead.
Yuba City gets Punjabi museum
A multi-media museum celebrating
more than 100 years of the Punjabi community in the US opened in the
community-dominated Yuba City in California recently. A brainchild of the
Punjabi American Heritage Society (PAHS), the multimedia museum, the first of
its kind in the US, highlights the contribution of the Punjabi community to
the social fabric of their adopted land. "The museum is a multi-media
record of the challenges and successes of generations of Punjabi Americans. It
documents the hardships they faced on their arrival in California in the early
twentieth century and their journey to 'Becoming American'," according to
prominent community leader Jasbir Kang.
Taking poetry to India's young
readers
Madhusree Chatterjee
Prose has for long edged poetry to the margins of contemporary Indian literature. It is only natural that the new reader is not familiar with the late Kamala Das or her bold feminist oeuvre of poetry and short story that gave her cult status in India like Sylvia Plath in the West.
Now a new series to promote contemporary Indian poetry by publisher Harper Collins-India has begun with a celebration of the
Kerala-born bilingual poetess with a “small documentary” on her life and a panel discussion about her relevance on her birthday last month. “This is the first of the promotion series to take poetry to young readers. We will publish three volumes of poetry every year,” said
V.K. Karthika, publisher and chief editor of Harper Collins.
Ruskin Bond returns with Rusty
Indo-Anglian writer Ruskin Bond’s lovable
character "Rusty" is set for a comeback after 15 years with Ek
Tha Rusty-2 ready to hit the small screen. Rusty, the fictional avatar
created by the Mussoorie-based writer to impersonate himself in his stories,
will come to Doordarshan in a 52-episode serial, Ek Tha Rusty-2, after
its successful run in the mid-1990s.
Historians
spar over Hitler
Richard J Evans, Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University and author of several books about Hitler's Germany, wrote a scathing review of A N Wilson's biography of the Fuhrer, saying that the book was littered with factual errors and was "absolutely valueless".
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