Sunday, August 17, 2003		Books

Decoding Sikh canon & ciphers anew
Ashok Vohra
Sikh Dynamic Vision
by Nirbhai Singh. Harman ,
New Delhi. Pages. XIX+436. Rs 750.
ONE of the foremost philosophers of the 20th century, Ludwig Wittgenstein, concludes his magnum opus Tractatus Logico Philosophicus by saying "whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must pass over in silence." What he meant was that there is a point where speaking has to give way to showing.

A compilation on water management
Peeyush Agnihotri
Water Resources and Sustainable Development
by Kamta Prasad. Shipra, New Delhi. Pages 468. Rs 900.
ONLY those with parched throat or who have faced the pangs of drought can understand the value of water in true sense of terms. No one spares a thought for this priceless commodity where it flows abundantly.

Looking back at a life less ordinary
Ram Varma
A Variety Of Absences, The Collected Memoirs Of Dom Moraes
Penguin Books, India, Pages 627. Rs 599.
DOM Moraes was a sensation when I was a student and was later teaching English at Jodhpur University. His book Gone Away, published by Heinemann, London, in 1960, had reached India and we used to go into peals of laughter reading it.

Allegory of American imperialism
Manisha Gangahar
You Shall Know Our Velocity
by Dave Eggers. Penguin Books, India. Pages 351. Rs 395.
THE first run of Dave Eggers’s first novel was self-published through McSweeney’s Books, an extension of a journal with the same name, for Eggers believes that "if you care about your writing, then you care about how it makes its way into the world, and self-publishing is one good way to make sure it comes out the way you’d envisioned".

Insights into ‘great game’
G.V. Gupta
Space, Territory and the State: New Readings in International Politics
edited by Ranbir Samaddar. Orient Longman, New Delhi.
Pages 263. Rs 450.
A space invested with power is called territory. Different configurations of these three variables, therefore, create difference in international politics. Power has many facets, including political, cultural, religious and economic. International politics is also not played by nations only.

Pakistan and its politics of terror
Parshotam Mehra
Pakistan: in the Shadow of Jihad and Afghanistan
by Mary Anne Weaver, Viking, New Delhi. Pages 284. Rs 395.
IN the wake of New Delhi’s determined bid to improve relations with its western neighbour and Islamabad’s reasonably positive response, there is a welcome thaw in an age-old hostility.

TGV: A writer of scintillating prose
Darshan Singh Maini
Mr Naipaul’s Round Trip & Other Essays
by T. G. Vaidyanathan. Edited by Pradeep Sebastian and Prasanna Chandrasekhar. Penguin Books. Pages 261. Rs 295.
I have just put down the book under review after a very strenuous bout with it. After perusing the first few pages, I had a somewhat eerie feeling as though I were reading my own "double," or "a secret-sharer," to recall Comrad’s story. The "shock" of discovery or recognition left me awash with amazement—and bewilderment.

Federalisation of Indian politics
Ashutosh Kumar
Political Parties and Party Systems
edited by Ajay K. Mehra, D.D. Khanna and Gert W. Kueck. Sage Publications New Delhi. Pages 420. Rs 850.
THE book draws our attention to two notable developments in the nature of the party system and the polity in India in the past two decades. First, there has been a dramatic change in the social composition of voters and active participants in politics — we are witness to a democratic participatory upsurge among the peripheral masses, whether seen in terms of caste hierarchy, economic class, gender distinction or the rural-urban divide.

Write view
Past retold through timeless parables
Randeep Wadehra
Tales from Shrimad Bhagvata of Ved Vyasa
retold by S.C. Narula. Rupa. Pages x+250. Rs 295.
EVERY culture has its own corpus of myths, parables, allegories etc that reflect its evolution over a period of time. Some myths endure and expand to become epics while some parables and allegories that are based on universal truths transcend the bounds of time, space and civilisations.

• Feng Shui
  by Savreet Kaur. Rising Sun Publication. Pages 104. Rs 100.
  

• Education for a Global Society
  edited by Marmar Mukhopadhyay. Shipra Publications. Pages x+202. Rs 400.
  

Kids’ corner
Amazonian adventures
Deepika Gurdev
City of the Beasts
by Isabel Allende. Publisher Flamingo. Pages 406. $22 (Singapore)
IF you are an armchair adventurer like me, will you like an exciting trip down the Amazon jungle in the comfort your home? If that’s what you’re looking for then Isabel Allende’s City of the Beasts is just the book for you.