My Father: The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man

My Father: The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man by Arvind Panagariya. HarperCollins. Pages 210. Rs599

Advertisement

Arvind Panagariya set out to write his autobiography, but soon realised it was turning out to be his father’s biography. Born in a Rajasthan village in the 1920s, Baloo Lal’s family could not scrape together two full meals a day. The village lacked even a primary school. Yet, he completed his education, went on to serve with distinction as a civil servant in Rajasthan and, after retirement, wrote the first definitive book on the history of the freedom movement in Rajasthan. In a way, Baloo Lal’s journey from Suwana to Jaipur was a long and arduous one, much more so than that of his own son from Jaipur to Washington, DC. This is his story, as told by the son, an economist. The book is an ode to ordinary citizens who can provide a window to the social, cultural and political echoes of their times.

The Best Short Stories Ever Edited by Terry O’Brien. Westland. Pages 266. Rs199

They say short stories are tiny windows into other worlds and minds and other dreams. Academician-turned-writer Terry O’Brien gathers his list of the best short stories ever in this book. In their time, these 41 stories challenged the staid. There is variety in style and the range of subjects is enormous, but the thread that ties them all together is the quality of writing. Every writer in this collection is a master of the form: from American poet-writer Edger Allan Poe to Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway, English authors Somerset Maugham and Virginia Woolf to French naturalist and writer Guy de Maupassant. Then there are the horror and fantasy writer MR James and ‘Jungle Book’ writer Rudyard Kipling sharing story space with Russian playwright Anton Chekov and Colombian contemporary author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, to name a few.

Write Me a Love Story by Ravinder Singh. HarperCollins. Pages 346. Rs250

This is author Ravinder Singh’s 11th novel and his boldest ever. His first novel, ‘I Too Had A Love Story’, was inspired by a personal tragedy. Over the next few years, he delved into wholesome mush, ‘bromance’ and now this, his latest one, is a modern, erotic romance. A publishing house, looking for their next bestselling author, set their sights on Abhimanyu Razdan, the golden boy of Indian publishing and a romance writer with millions of fans. But Abhimanyu ends up running into the literary editor of the publishing house before his first meeting with them, and they get into an argument. Abhimanyu and Asmita are as different as can be, but despite their differences, fate has something else in store for them and they soon find that there is no running away from love.

The Anger of Saintly Men by Anubha Yadav. Bee Books. Pages 192. Rs399

‘The Anger of Saintly Men’ explores how little boys are turned into ‘men’ in Indian households. It follows the story of three brothers, Sonu, Anu and Vicky, growing up in the 1990s. A new decade has started and the men have just moved to their new, first and last, home which they name Chuhedani. The book delves deep into issues of masculinity, caste, class, homophobia and shame. Written by Anubha Yadav, also an academician and filmmaker, it questions systems which have crushed men’s expectations, desires and hopes for centuries. An important novel that compels us to think about how we raise men and patriarchy’s deep grip on men’s life, it is a story of sexual awakening, heartbreak and growing up under the shadow of India’s first wave of liberalisation.