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The Ugly Duckling
mirrors his life
Things
one never gets used to, do exist. Like the privilege of being able to
read Hans Christian Andersen in his original language. The Danes are a
small population, but how exclusively lucky.
OFF THE SHELF
Jinnah lauded, Gandhi
assailed
V.N. Datta
Jinnah: A Corrective
Reading of Indian History
by Dr Asiananda, Open University Press, New Delhi. Pages XIV+ 438.
The
title of the book under review gives the impression that it contains a
full-scale biography of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan,
but that is not to be. The subtitle of the book suggests that the
author’s intention, seemingly laudable, is to set right the
distortions that have vitiated and polluted the contents of historical
studies.
Authorspeak
Gurbani’s appeal is
universal
Roopinder Singh
As
you make your way to the address given by V. Bhanumurti, you can’t but
be aware that you are driving into one of the posh areas of Delhi. Yet
his first-floor apartment is spartan. Books and papers everywhere, a
warm welcome from the lady of the house, Suryamanikyam, and you are
ushered into a room full of… more books.
Fiction
Spy who thrilled me
Rajdeep Bains
Operation Karakoram
by Arvind Nayar. Rupa. Pages
360. Rs 195.
Inspired
by Fredrick Forsyth, Robert Ludlum and Jeffrey Archer, according to the
author, but also with shades of Shashi Tharoor—Operation Karakoram
is a political thriller set in 1995 against the backdrop of the volatile
situation existing between India and Pakistan.
Voice of the underdog
Kuldip Dhiman
Naresh Pandit is at
the forefront of modern Hindi writing from the region
Even
after 30-odd years, the nightmare still haunts him. It started with a
shootout on a cold winter night in the late seventies in Chandigarh’s
Sector 15 market. The violent brawl ended with the loss of three or four
lives. But that night, a writer was born.
The canons of warfare
Vijay Oberoi
Indian Army Doctrine
by Headquarters Army
Training Command. Pages:123
The
book is a two-part document; the main part is unclassified and in the
public domain, while the second is the classified adjunct, for
restricted circulation. This review is only of the unclassified portion.
Doctrine as a concept is not widely
understood. Many have confused it, wrongly, with military operations and
plans.
The truth about lies
Harbans Singh
Tell Me No Lies
Ed. John Pilger. Jonathan Cape, London. Pages 626. £12.50.
Disobedience
may or may not be the original virtue, though Oscar Wilde claimed it
was, but it has down the ages motivated individuals to pursue a path,
the importance of which is revealed many years later. Among those
endowed with this virtue are a select few who have opted to be
journalists and whose second nature is to believe a thing only when it
is officially denied.
Sense of Sen
Saibal Chatterjee
Always Being Born: A
Memoir
by Mrinal Sen
Stellar Publishers. 310 pages
This
book is much like an early Mrinal Sen film. Provocative, non-linear,
constantly moving forward and backward in time, tilting at imagined and
real sacred cows and flitting in and out of an introspective mode, it
pulsates with energy and is packed with wonderful vignettes of a life
well lived. But the ultimate effect that this "something like an
autobiography" has on the reader is more akin to what the more
composed films of his later years had on their viewers.
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