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Tangles
of conflict
Himmat Singh Gill
Holy Warriors
by Edna Fernandes.
Penguin/Viking. Pages 332. Rs 450.
Often
it takes an outsider to
tell us Indians a simple home truth. Journalist Edna Fernandes, of
Indian origin and brought up in London, journeys into the heart of
Indian fundamentalism, as she terms it, and comes out with a long list
of intolerance and radicalism that has gripped large segments of the
Hindu, Muslim, Christian and Sikh population.
Right stuff
Joy to read
Sridhar K Chari
John Wright’s Indian Summers
With Sharda Ugra and Paul Thomas
Penguin Viking, New Delhi, 2006.
Pgs 243. Rs 495.
Given
the kind of pre-launch build up
that John Wright’s Indian Summers has had, you could be forgiven for
thinking that the former India cricket coach’s book was one of those peevish
"tell-all" type of chronicles that takes advantage of inside
knowledge to wreak revenge on detractors, unfold a few
"it-was-not-my-faults", recount "sensational" anecdotes and
generally slam "the system." |
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Song
Divine
Rekha Jhanji
The Gita Govinda of Sri Jaidev
by A.K. Tripathy and P.C. Tripathy
Publication Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting,
Government of India, 2006.
Pages 187. Rs 450.
The
two authors of this new book on Gita Govinda are
researchers from Orissa. Gita Govinda is a well known poetic
work from medieval Indian Sanskrit literature which has been
translated and commented upon by several writers in Hindi and English.
This new version of this famous text is very interesting because apart
from the English translation it has several chapters that delineate
its philosophy, history, music, religious practices and legends
associated with it.
A
story of grit
Puneetinder Kaur Sidhu
Chasing Daylight: How
my Forthcoming Death Transformed my Life
by Eugene O’Kelly. Tata McGraw-Hill.
Pages 179. Rs 250.
Eugene
O’Kelly died this day, last year. Who was he? Eugene
O’Kelly was the Chairman and CEO of KPMG, one of the largest
accounting firms in the US. With giant companies such as Citigroup and
General Electric as clients, he was a man on the go driven entirely by
business. Here was a man who once flew across the world, took a
connecting flight, and seated himself beside an equally busy business
prospect, so that he could pitch a sale. Needless to add, he clinched
the deal.
A
wordsmith at work
Shalini Rawat
Pursuit of Meaning
by Rakshat Puri.
Sterling Publishers Pvt Ltd.
Pages 188. Rs 300.
"Poetry is an ascetic art of doing without, rather than doing
with indulgence". R.
Parthasarthy
In
the cold desert nights of
the mind, a fire rages within. Seated in front, it is a poet with a
hooked pen. His fingers move nimbly, gathering a word-stitch from an
earlier word-stitch, going over the meanings, sounds and silences over
and over again, crocheting the before and the now, the clouds, the
wind and the moon together, till a poem-pattern emerges.
Divided
opinions
Kanwalpreet
Punjab Politics-1 January 1944-3 March 1947. Last Years of the
Ministries, Governor’s Fortnightly Reports
and other Key Documents
Compiled and edited by Lionel Carter.
Manohar. Pages 392. Rs.950.
India’s
struggle for Freedom
passed through various phases. Right from the formation of the Indian
National Congress (hereafter INC) in 1885, the Movement was dominated
by the Moderates in the earlier phase and then by the Extremists. With
the emergence of Mahatma Gandhi, the Movement became a people’s
movement. Various thinkers and researchers have delved into the
various phases of the Indian National Movement and thrown light on the
important events.
Wages
of a spurned vision
G.S. Bhargava
JP on Jammu & Kashmir
by Balraj Puri. Gyan Publishing House.
Pages 276. Rs 690
Jayaprakash
Narayan, JP to most
people, once described himself as a champion of lost causes. That was
when he favoured Ayub Khan’s ‘basic democracy’ to the
Westminster system mechanically imported into India and advocated
settlement of the border dispute with China by exchanging the Aksai
Chin plateau for Sikkim, Arunachal and adjacent eastern areas.
Labour
of Love
Amy Joyce
A
little bit heaven, a little bit
hell. That sums up the world of work. And it sums up National
Geographic’s "Work: The World in Photographs," a panoramic
journey celebrating how we make a living. Just
in time for Labor Day, the hefty volume features commentary by art
critic Ferdinand Protzman and spans more than a century of toil. It
focuses on the workers, from fishermen and stock market gurus, to a
blacksmith in Illinois and a baker in Egypt.
Last of the titans
Nobel
Laureate Naguib Mahfouz,
who passed away recently, was the best-known writer of the Arab world. He
earned the Arabic novel respect and popularity and his literary career mapped
the changes in Egyptian history
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