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Looking back at varied facets of life
Randeep Wadehra

The facets of Human Life
by Niranjan Singh Tasneem. Indian Publishers Distributors, Delhi. Pages x+302. Rs 495.

FROM infancy to old age life reveals its myriad facets. Each facet is steeped in countless colours of variegated shades and tints. After experiencing life’s navarasas, one looks back in wonder. Was that really I tackling the highs and lows of life? Did all those dreadful and wonderful things actually happen to me? The roller coaster journey through agony, ecstasy and tranquility! In one’s autumn years one reflects on all such happenings with a rational, insightful and erudite detachment that accompanies maturity. It’s like watching someone else’s biopic.

Tasneem (misspelt Tanseem on the cover) is a noted bilingual writer from this region. He writes both in Punjabi and English and has been honoured with Shiromani Sahitkar Puraskar Award in 1995 and Sahitya Akademi Award in 1999. Essayist, novelist and critic, he summons his lifelong experience to come up with this thought-provoking collection of 100 essays.

He takes a look at the changing mindsets and moral values of the 20^th century that qualitatively affected literary creativity in the country. Sparrows become metaphors for girls — caged, exploited and meant to lay ‘white eggs’ (male child?) in captivity. Talking of ‘exasperating experiences of life’ Tasneem feels that scholars’ individualistic exertions should bestow collective gains on the society. Taking the argument against individualism further, the author mulls over the problems of indifference, loneliness and aloneness. Indifference is a result of a dehumanising process while loneliness leads to estrangement. However, he commends aloneness for it "leads ultimately to craving for togetherness".

With profound insight and sensitivity, Tasneem deals with everyday happenings like watching television serials, reading Urdu verses etc, and succeeds in revealing polychromatic attitudes. The reader would recognise some of the situations and empathise with the narrative. Worth a leisurely, reflective read.

Ancient Healing Secrets
by Dian Dincin Buchman. Orient Paperbacks, Delhi. Pages 192. Rs 70.

HEALTH consciousness is on the increase. Thanks to the info-explosion people are becoming aware of the hazards of allopathic drugs. According to a report emanating from the UK and carried by The Tribune on October 8, 2003, antibiotics may become completely useless over the next decade or so because human bodies are becoming resistant to these drugs. This might prove as fatal as an AIDS epidemic, warn the experts. It is precisely such reports that encourage the search for alternate medicine. Often the ancient therapeutic system begins to shine brighter on the medical horizon.

The spurt in the interest in traditional medicine has become more perceptible in the last few years. This volume is one more example of this phenomenon. It claims to help increase one’s knowledge of traditional remedies that "may relieve health problems in some cases". Anxiety, arthritis, asthma, boils, bone problems, constipation, cystitis, assorted infections, inflammation etc have been explained, and remedies suggested.

The book reminds one of granny’s homemade medicaments. However, the author cautions against self-medication and suggests that one should take proper medical advice before resorting to the remedies suggested in this volume. A valuable reference book for one and all.

Quest for Freedom
by Surjit Singh Barnala. Natraj, Dehradun. Pages 276. Rs 295.

BARRING a few honorable exceptions, like Mahatma Gandhi’s My Experiments With Truth, autobiographies are generally less than honest accounts of one’s life and times. The desire to paint oneself as a paragon of assorted virtues and one’s opponents as incarnates of evil predominates. While reading a politician’s self-portrayal fistfuls of salt always come in handy. Barnala is one of our relatively non-controversial politicians, even though a non-controversial politician sounds an oxymoron in our polity.

In a rather exciting account Barnala, in the guise of a youthful peasant, escapes from the protective cordon of his security guards at midnight, gives a slip to his family and clambers on to Kaku Singh’s Indore-bound truck to "get in touch with real people again". In subsequent chapters he talks of the Emergency, his arrest and his experiences as a detenue. Thereafter, he deals with such subjects as the post-Emergency political scenario where the Akali Dal was on the winning side at the Center, and swept polls in the state too. This book also has a chapter on India’s Independence, and his as well as the Akali Dal’s roles therein.

The chapters are not in chronological order, yet these will keep the reader absorbed. I personally enjoyed the accounts of his interaction with common folks, especially his life in the open in Kaku-the-truck-driver’s company. One chuckles at the description of his attending to the nature’s call (jungle paani in the Punjabi rustics’ lingo) in the fields. He brings out starkly the image problem that Punjabis have within and outside the country. The hotel waiter’s surprise at a Sikh (Barnala) ordering only vegetarian dishes sans liquor is a case in point. The image of the big eating, hard drinking Sardar is accepted more readily than of a pious abstemious vegetarian. For this notion, you can blame partly the writings of the likes of Khushwant Singh and partly the Punjabis’ characteristic ardour for machismo.

Barnala has written with candour and verve – so rare among the politicians of today. An eminently readable book.

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