It is often said cancer is not fatal. It is the fear of cancer that kills because it comes in the way of detection and treatment. Logically, this makes perfectly good sense. The sooner you diagnose an illness, the better your chances of recovery. But as in so many things in life, logic doesn’t always work. Most people opt for the ‘ignorance-is-bliss’ therapy. We would rather not know – or at least postpone knowing. We would also rather not talk about it, and if we do, only in hushed whispers. B. Ketan Rajaram hits all this pussy-footing and timorous pretence for a six in a remarkable book paradoxically titled ‘Not a Cancer Survivor’.

Ketan says he is not a cancer survivor perhaps because ‘survivor’ suggests one who is somehow eking out a precarious existence. He would, instead, like to live life to the full and do all the things he was accustomed to while continuing his job as a communications professional. The clinical tone of the book is admirable. Even while dealing with medical conditions most people would do their best to forget, Ketan is as matter-of-fact as a general planning a military operation, confident of eventual victory.

The book interleaves medical science with spiritualism, yoga, mind-healing and a lot more. In the anecdotal style favoured by many self-help gurus, the book is rich in references to a wide arc of disciplines. There are illuminating extracts, for instance, from the teachings of Ramana Maharishi on overcoming pain. When asked whether he felt any pain while undergoing an operation without anesthesia, the sage is supposed to have replied: ‘It hurt my body, not me.’

From Ramana Maharishi we move to famed Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl to Maharashtra’s saint-poet Sant Tukaram to an unlikely source – viz., leadership lessons from the US Navy SEALs. Obviously, a lot of research has gone into the book. Equally obvious, there is no single line of treatment that is touted. When the stakes are so high, we do not have the luxury of a single right answer.

There are no simple solutions, no miracle cures being peddled. Instead, Bondre suggests that the road ahead is hard but the journey is worth the effort. The message of the book extends beyond cancer to all those facing extreme situations. In a perceptive foreword, Member of Parliament Dr. Vinay Sahasrabhuddhe says that the book tells us ‘not just how to survive but why to survive’. That indeed is the core of the story.

The language of the narrative could have been sharper and the proliferation of the definite articles ought to have been curbed. Also, a little more attention to proof-reading would have helped. I saw Lord Curzon described as ‘Voice-roy’, and came across ‘full-proof’. But these are human blemishes in a book valiantly written by an author as he is battling extreme pain.

In its honesty, courage and its central message of hope triumphing over adversity, this is a book that holds out a beacon of light for all those who find themselves having to confront extreme situations. It reminds us once again of something we tend to forget: some of life’s biggest battles are fought and won through some of our oldest virtues – faith, optimism and steely resolve.

Title: Not a Cancer Survivor

Publisher: HiranyaReta Publishers

Pages: 120

Price: Rs 349

The remarkable thing about Capt. Krishnan Nair of Leela Hotels was not that he dreamt opulently but that he also dreamt sequentially. When one dream began to lose its shine, he turned to another and yet another. It wasn’t a walk in the park, of course, for in between turning grandiose plans into lavish reality, Nair ran smack into setbacks – sometimes acts of God and sometimes acts of bureaucrats (as omnipotent as the almighty in certain respects). But Nair saw them all off, and lived to tell the tale. That tale is now told to us by columnist, author and literary curator Bachi Karkaria in Capture the Dream.

As in every rags-to-riches story, our hero was born into humble circumstances in a village near Kannur, north Kerala. But there was something about the man from Malabar that set him apart. All through his life, he was the right man at the right place at the right time. It happened so often it couldn’t be coincidence. Obviously, Capt. Nair could make serendipity do his bidding. With Lady Luck as his unfailing consort, he re-invented himself as a freedom fighter, soldier (twice over) and garments entrepreneur before pushing himself at age 65 to the front ranks of India’s hoteliers. It could all have been a fairytale except that debt and overreach made the sunset less than roseate.

Karkaria captures Capt. Nair’s many-splendoured life in her signature, genre-defying style. Conventional corporate biographies are expected to be mandatorily boring. Bachi – much like her subject in this book – tells convention to take a walk. To the usual sedate, somewhat somnolent notes of the Gregorian chant, she adds some foot-tapping folk to make what could have been a sepia-toned documentary into a trendy south Indian hit, replete with colour and spectacle.

And what’s a Bachi book without puns? You expect wordplay from her the way you expect controversy when Kangana Ranaut opens her mouth. So, when the garments exported by the Nairs help Gloria Vanderbilt with their jeans, she can’t help saying: ‘no ifs or buts – only butts’. And when a yesteryear Hollywood celebrity buys Leela’s furnishings, the chapter is titled: ‘Curtains for Gregory Peck’.

In the book, she acknowledges that writing non-fiction is like working at an archaeological site. If you dig deep, you come up gems. Some of the factoids she has dug up are widely known, others less so: Capt. Nair played a part in giving Kannur its airport (well known); much earlier he had paved the way for the old subway near the town’s railway station (less known); he introduced appam to Mumbai (it has since been copied by many Mumbai restaurants and sadly become an anaemic shadow of its original fluffy self). Many pages open up the mouth-watering world of Malayali cuisine. (Only thing Bachi, the accompaniment to a meal is not koottan but kootaan).

Biographies come in many hues. Some deal up close with the blood, sweat and tears that form the subtext of many success stories. But Bachi is determined to look on the bright side. Her book doesn’t go where the subject wouldn’t want to enter. When Walter Isaacson completed his authorised biography of Steve Jobs, the ailing computer visionary asked him if the book contained anything that he would not be happy to read. When Isaacson truthfully said it did, Jobs nodded and said: ‘Good, then it won’t look like an in-house job.’ ‘Capture the Dream’ would not pass the Isaacson filter for it has nothing that the Capt.’s sons Vivek or Dinesh would not like to read. But then Bachi sees herself as a chronicler of good cheer rather an investigator of the inconvenient.

This feel-good biography may not make it to the best business books of the year or be studied as a manual on the perils of debt. Instead, it serves a more useful purpose for most readers – it shows how positive thinking works in real life situations. So, if you want a racy read on how to overcome obstacles with ebullience and turn joi-de-vivre into a competitive advantage, this book is a must-read.

Title: Capture the Dream – The Many Lives of Capt. C.P. Krishnan Nair

Publisher: Juggernaut

Pages: 253

Price: Rs 799

William Neuman, who had spent four years from 2012 to 2016 as The New York Times correspondent in Caracas during the peak of the Venezuelan crisis, has diagnosed correctly the reason for the Venezuelan political and economic collapse. He says, “It’s not so much that Venezuela produced oil; it’s that oil produced Venezuela.” Oil has played not only an economic role but has also shaped the politics and culture of Venezuelans, which has led to the current crisis.

Before the discovery of oil in 1914, the country was relatively obscure except for the fact that it was the land of Simon Bolivar, the liberator of South America. By 1928, Venezuela was the world’s top oil exporter and the second-biggest oil producer, after the US. Since then, the Venezuelans lived off oil and have neglected other areas. The country has so much of fertile land, mineral resources, hydroelectric potential, beautiful beaches and pleasant climate. These resources are sufficient to be a prosperous nation, even without oil.

But when the easy money from oil started coming, the Venezuelans abandoned all the other resources and started living exclusively on oil income. During high oil prices, middle-class Venezuelans used to go for shopping to Miami and freak out on purchase of luxury goods. At the same time, the government also went on a spending spree and borrowed money recklessly from international capital markets. The corrupt politicians cleaned up the treasury and took money abroad in collusion with businesspeople.

When the oil prices went down, the governments struggled to pay foreign debt, cut down developmental and welfare budgets and imposed austerity. At these times, people rose in protest, leading to change of governments through elections or coups. Even Hugo Chavez repeated the same cycle and got the country into a large Chinese debt trap. He and his successor, Nicolás Maduro, mismanaged the economy, causing chaos with hyperinflation, currency changes and exchange value depreciations.

Neuman has visited many parts of the country and interviewed ordinary Venezuelans from different walks of life. He has filled up most pages of his new book—Things Are Never So Bad That They Can't Get Worse: Inside the Collapse of Venezuela—with the tragic stories of the misery and suffering from poverty, shortage of essential items, electric power cuts, crime, violence and corruption. These are, of course, well known at the macro level. Neuman has given names and faces to the victims of the Chavista misrule and mismanagement.

But Neuman gives new details on the self-proclamation of Juan Guaido as interim president and Guaido's involvement in the attempt to invade Venezuela from the sea with a bunch of mercenaries in 2019.

According to Neuman, Guaido’s proclamation as president was not based on the consensus of the opposition groups nor was it done properly. It was done by one of the opposition groups in a hasty collusion with the American officials. The proclamation should have been done in the National Assembly after proper notification. But it was done as a surprise in an outdoor event. Some of the lawmakers were taken by surprise and asked, “Why hadn’t the swearing-in been discussed and approved in advance by the full assembly? Why was it done on the fly, in the street instead of in the legislature?”

Within minutes of Guaido’s swearing himself in, the White House issued a statement from president Donald Trump, recognising Guaido as interim president. President Ivan Duque of Colombia, President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, and Chrystia Freeland, the Canadian foreign minister, were at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland; they called an impromptu news conference and, together, recognised Guaido as Venezuela’s president. A South American diplomat told Neuman that Washington’s insistence on going first put its Latin American allies in a bind, exposing them to criticism that they were doing the White House’s bidding when they recognised Guaido. The diplomat said, “People are going to say that they led us by the nose”. Guaido wrote in an op-ed in The New York Times a week later, “It was not of my own accord that I assumed the function of president that day, but in adherence to the Constitution.” But that argument failed to acknowledge the intense debate within the opposition about what to do and that there were other options under consideration, which were ignored under pressure from the neocon elements of Washington DC.

Neuman has interviewed US officials and Venezuelan opposition leaders and brings out details of the invasion attempt to overthrow President Maduro. According to him, the coup leaders signed a contract on October 16, 2019, to invade Venezuela. According to the contract, Silvercorp, a security company of an American mercenary, would be paid $213 million “to capture/detain/remove Nicolas Maduro” and, in his place, “install the recognized Venezuelan President Juan Guaido”. The contract—which was kept secret at the time—spelled out rules of engagement and identified targets (Maduro and others) that could be “neutralized”. It required foreign fighters to wear Venezuelan uniforms and cover their faces “to protect the face of the project as Venezuelan only”. The contract was signed by Goudreau, an American mercenary, and Rendon, a Venezuelan who was identified as the high presidential commissioner for general strategy and crisis management, as well as a Venezuelan legislator close to Guaido named Sergio Vergara, who had been working with Rendon. It was also signed by Guaido.

Goudreau made an audio recording of a videoconference he had with Guaido, in which they discussed signing the contract. In the recording, Goudreau asked Guaido if he had any concerns. Guaido gave a nervous laugh and responded, in English, “A lot of concerns, but we’re doing the right thing for our country.” There was discussion of the need to sign two copies of the document, in its English and Spanish versions, and to scan and send the signed contracts. At the end of the recording, Guaido has denied signing the contract. But it was negotiated and signed by his representatives and it would have had no validity without his signature—he is the only person named in the document as a party to the contract (his name appears twice).

But shortly after it was signed, the deal fell apart. The contract required the Guaido government to pay Silvercorp a $1.5 million retainer within five days of signing. They never paid it. Goudreau insisted on being paid. Rendon said that he gave Goudreau $50,000 to string him along. Finally, in early November, there was a blowup. Rendon said that he met with Goudreau and presented him with a letter cancelling the agreement. (It’s worth asking why the contract needed to be cancelled if Guaido had never signed it.) He said that Goudreau refused to sign the letter and stormed out. Goudreau accused Guaido and Rendon of backing out of their deal and he went public, providing images of the contract, with Guaido’s signature, to a Miami-based Venezuelan journalist named Patricia Poleo, who posted them online.

While Neuman has given a full account of the omissions and commissions of Chavez, he has ignored the fact that Chavez was a creation of his predecessors and opposition leaders. During the election campaign in 1998, Chavez asked, “Venezuela is a rich country thanks to oil. Why are so many millions… poor?” The poor voted for him and the middle class also supported him, desiring change.

The two large, traditional oligarchic political parties, which were in power for about fifty years, were routed completely. Thereafter, the opposition boycotted the elections, fearing certain defeat and getting discredited. This enabled Chavez to get a majority in the assembly, change the constitution and get away with so many authoritarian decrees and decisions, in the absence of effective opposition. The opposition ran away from electorally challenging Chavez and instead tried all kinds of unconstitutional and undemocratic means and conspiracies to overthrow Chavez in collusion with the local oligarchy and Americans.

In 2002, the opposition carried out a massive strike, stopping the production and exports of oil, endangering the vital oil revenue for the government and causing shortage of petrol and diesel. Chavez retaliated by sacking over 15,000 PDVSA staff and filled the position with loyal Chavistas. The opposition succeeded in removing Chavez from power through a coup in 2002. Many businessmen and oil company executives supported the coup. But the coup plotters mismanaged the post-coup settlement and cut out the military from the share of the spoils. So some of the generals did a counter-coup and brought Chavez back to power, releasing him from the island jail where he was imprisoned.

Chavez went on a spree of revenge. He started systematic destruction of industries and businesses and imposed controls and restrictions to teach a lesson to the business community. He placed military officers in civilian positions and allowed them to make money. The military became an accomplice and a stakeholder in the Chavista regime of chaos, corruption and control. When Chavez died of cancer, the Cubans influenced him to appoint Maduro as president. Maduro, who had political training in Cuba during his youth, was considered as a controllable asset by the Cubans. Maduro had no charisma or grassroots support. He could not control the different Chavista and military factions who were more powerful than him. So he could not take decisions or implement any policies effectively. This led to economic disaster with hyperinflation and devaluation of currency.

Juan Guaido has lost credibility now. He and his friends, along with American lawyers and lobbyists, have helped themselves to hundreds of millions of dollars of the Venezuelan government funds in the US banks seized by the US government. The American attempts for regime change have completely failed. Their ruthless illegal economic sanctions have worsened the suffering of Venezuelan people. The US government has even announced a bounty (ridiculous and outrageous even by American standards of arrogance and bullying) on the heads of President Maduro and other political leaders and military officials. But the Cubans have trained and helped the Venezuelans on how to survive the Yankee sanctions and isolation and CIA conspiracy attempts. Some of the western governments have started resuming dealings with the Maduro government and even the US sent an official delegation recently to Caracas for loosening of the oil embargo since the high oil prices have hurt US consumers.

The Venezuelan economy has turned the corner. The hyperinflation has come down to manageable proportions. The IMF has projected a 1.5 per cent GDP growth in 2022, after consecutive GDP contractions from 2014 to 2021.

So I believe that the worst is over. Venezuelans can expect improvement in their situation in the coming years. Of course, Venezuela needs a better government and that should be elected by the people themselves, and not imposed by Gringos or their lackeys.

The author is an expert in Latin American affairs.

Tarika Roy and Soumya Gupta are both bureaucrats, the former with the Indian Railway Accounts Service, the latter in the Indian Foreign Service. Together, they've brought out the essence of everyday India in this book. Just about every urban idiosyncrasy gets a chapter here. There is one on how “adjusting'' Indians are, and another on how to identify a married Indian lady. The thalis of India and the turbans of India. Stereotyping people and mainstreaming bribing.

Each chapter is not more than two or three pages and rather complete in itself. Which makes this book an easy read. You can open onto any chapter and pick up reading. An ideal book to take along on a journey, specially an Indian one, given that so much of the book is dedicated to Indian travel behaviour.

The Indian reader will find the everydayness of the book rather appealing, a coming home to kind of feeling. The foreign backpacker will get an understanding of the chaos around. Why are random men addressed to as bhaiyya for instance. It could also help them navigate through the complexities of Indian food, which make up several funny chapters.

Title: Mad(e) in India

Authors: Tarika Roy and Soumya Gupta

Publisher: Om Books International

Pages: 261

In the 1962 Lok Sabha elections, the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, the progenitor of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was itself a nascent party. A flour mill owner Suraj Lal Verma approached Jan Sangh leaders in Lucknow for a ticket from the Sitapur constituency. Asked why he wanted to contest the elections, he said an astrologer had predicted his victory in the polls.

The party leaders burst into laughter, but later agreed to give Verma the ticket if he contributed five jeeps and Rs 25,000 in cash to five assembly candidates. The party needed a candidate from Sitapur to contest against Congress' Dinesh Pratap Singh, the Raja of Kasmanda. It also needed funds and resources. But the Jan Sangh failed to check Verma's claim about his assets. After all, he only owned a modest flour mill. Angry party workers snatched Verma's jeep and gave him a mild beating. A rattled Verma went into hiding in Lucknow while the Jan Sangh campaigned for him, often referring to his surname while seeking votes. The Congress ignored Verma as an unimportant candidate, but the people wanted someone from their midst and not a 'Raja'. Verma won by 3,377 votes!

The anecdote is rich in the elements that elections in India are made up of – the reasons for which a person can hope to get a ticket, the importance of caste and community, the voter having the power to belittle the high and mighty and the reliance on astrological predictions.

This is one of the numerous stories narrated by authors Anil Maheshwari and Vipul Maheshwari as they write on the humungous topic of elections in India in their book The Power Of The Ballot – Travail And Triumph In The Elections.

Another example of using an anecdote to bring out the peculiarities of elections in India is the description of the practice in Haryana to weigh candidates against coins. By the 1980s, every candidate, including independents with little chance of winning, was getting weighed against coins. Most of the shows were stage-managed, meant to hoodwink the electorate. An innovative candidate went a step further and got himself weighed against country liquor, which was later served among the audience. Another candidate was weighed against laddoos, which were also distributed amongst the gathering. And a senior minister in the Bansi Lal government is said to have been weighed against stones by angry voters in a village.

The book brings out the colour and the drama involved in Indian elections even as it provides a comprehensive look at the various issues concerning polls in the country – the problem of criminalisation, the role played by money, the doubts expressed about electronic voting machines and the need for electoral reforms.

The Power Of The Ballot – Travail and Triumph In The Elections

By Anil Maheshwari and Vipul Maheshwari

Published by Bloomsbury

Price Rs 699

Pages 381

IT industry pioneer Harish Mehta fills his memoir The Maverick Effect with anecdotes from the early days of the seventies and eighties (to the present) when the software industry took its first steps — gingerly, yet purposefully. And how the great Indian red tape was there at every corner of the way, putting a spanner in the works. Even with this mammoth creature that is never a dearth for irony, one incident particularly stands out.

“A customs officer (once) told me that I needed to leave samples of what I was exporting with him. I was forced to leave the floppy disk of the software with him. The diligent officer immediately planted a stapler pin through the floppy disk and attached it to the form, thereby destroying the media and rendering it unreadable.”

Beyond being funny or ironic, the import of Mehta’s book is that it throws light on the early days and subsequent trajectory of India’s software boom, now notching at around 200 billion dollars in annual exports. It reminds us how all was not hunky dory, and the glory days have quite a back story to tell.

It’s a story that needs to be heard, and Mehta does a decent job of throwing light on those uncertain days — when getting through the licence raj and bureaucratic obstinacy were greater breakthroughs than bagging a client or succeeding in a project, when computers were either an esoteric term you came across in sci-fi or something kept in (pre-Covid era) sanitised rooms with air-conditioning on in full blast, and the word ‘code’ referred to something dashing secret agents passed around rather than dorky dudes who dabbled in data.

Mind you, Mehta, who chucked up a nice-paying job in (can’t-get-whiter-than) Connecticut to return to India to set up a business and eventually became one of the early evangelists of the ensuing software boom, does not claim anywhere, nor is it, that this is that one all-encompassing go-to for a peek-in on the evolution of Indian IT. But, by being at the right place at the right time, and by organising the early software companies into a unified organisation NASSCOM (National Association of Software & Service Companies) that became much more than a lobbying force, Mehta got not just a ringside view, but a seat right at the podium of ceremonies.

Perhaps that makes this book all the more endearing. Nowhere does it get pedantic or complexed out with too many details — the narrative remaining historical, yet personalised enough to be empathised with. Mehta sticks to his life story; just that it coincides with a historical trajectory.

“A life mirrors the time it is lived in and the people it is lived with,” Mehta writes early on, and while he starts off the story with his birth during the partition riots following India’s independence, this saga acquires its groove only once he and his family decides to leave US, and then all that follows - setting up a business, his focus on Indian IT, the setting up of NASSCOM, the initial hesitant days of the swadeshi software surge, the Bangalore boom, the Dewang Mehta days, even the Satyam fiasco (which he calls NASSCOM’s ‘finest hour’) and the tech startup ecosystem we see in full bloom all round us right now.

But at the heart of it all, this is a story of what India can. Mehta’s may not be the name at the top in a list of India’s IT icons, but by ensuring that it became an industry of peers who innovated individually, and together, to set Indian software up on there as a global force to reckon with, Harish Mehta’s is a presence that cannot be denied its due. This book tells you why.

Title: The Maverick Effect

Author: Harish Mehta

Publisher: Harper Business

Pages: 274

Price: Rs 699 (Hardback)

Election strategist Prashant Kishor is credited with designing West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's strategy for the Assembly elections in the eastern state in 2021. However, her initial thoughts about engaging Kishor to help with the Trinamool Congress' electoral plan would not have been music to the poll pundit's ears, according to a new book.

Veteran journalist Jayanta Ghosal, who has tracked Mamata's rise in politics over the years, writes in his book 'Mamata Beyond 2021' that the first time the Trinamool supremo met Kishor was in Patna and the occasion was the formation of the government of the Mahagathbandhan that comprised the JD(U), the RJD and the Congress in 2015.

The book, originally written in Bengali, has been translated into English by Arunava Sinha.

“On the day of Nitish Kumar's tea party, Kishor and Mamata had their first personal discussion on the sidelines, seated in white throne-like chairs wrapped in velvet. That night, however, Mamata said: 'It's all very well to talk to him, but we have never engaged an organisation commercially. Trinamool is a party of the poor.''”

However, Mamata's nephew and Trinamool general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, who is regarded as number two in the party, later discussed with Kishor. “Having lived in Delhi a long time and studied there, Abhishek is closely aware of political strategies at the national level. He felt Trinamool would have to use the same weapons as its opponents to defeat them. The rest, as they say, is history,” writes Ghosal.

In Ghosal's assessment, it was with Kishor's help that Mamata built a clear strategy to counteract the BJP's thrust in the Assembly elections. “Just as the perception of Mahatma Gandhi that existed in his time would not have been possible without his particular attire, Mamata Banerjee too built a brand equity of being the daughter of Bengal with her rubber sandals and her humble living quarter,” he writes.

The book, as its title suggests, looks at Mamata's plans beyond the 2021 poll victory in West Bengal. According to Ghosal, while Mamata is keen on expanding outside her home state, her prime focus would be to wrest back the 18 out of the 42 seats that the BJP had won in the state in the Lok Sabha elections in 2019.

Also, the Trinamool is not expected to continue with party veteran Mukuk Roy's earlier ambitious programme of expanding everywhere in the country. “Instead of going into large states like Uttar Pradesh, as Mukul Roy had done, Abhishek Banerjee is taking small steps in states like Goa, Tripura and, later, Assam. Instead of a euphoric and unrealistic expansion plan for Trinamool, the focus is on gradually making Mamata Banerjee acceptable as a national alternative to Narendra Modi,” writes Ghosal.

According to him, Mamata will go on tours in various states, but not necessarily to conduct political rallies. Instead, she will participate in civil society conclaves, meet public intellectuals, engage with students and join programmes conducted by the industrial society, he writes.

Title: Mamata Beyond 2021

Author: Jayanta Ghosal

Publisher: Harper Collins

Price: Rs 599

Pages: 233

I bought the book instinctively when I saw a quote of Gabriel Garcia Marquez (one of my favourite Latin American writers) in the author’s introduction, “I told Karunanidhi I was using Gerald Martin’s biography of Gabriel Garcia Marquez as a model. I shared with him what Marquez told the biographer: ‘Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life and a secret life. What Márquez meant to Martin is what Karunanidhi means to me”.

As a journalist, Panneerselvan had interacted with Karunanidhi and those close to him from the family and party. He had worked on the book off and on for about 20 years.

The book gives a glimpse of the life and achievements of Karunanidhi whose talents and achievements are admirable. He is a rare combination of a creative writer with extraordinary oratorical talents, visionary leadership, political instincts, organisational skills and administrative competence. It is even more amazing in the light of the fact that he did not complete school education after having failed repeatedly in the final year school examination.

Karunanidhi was a prolific writer. He has written scripts for 67 films starting with Rajakumari in 2011 and Ponnar Sankar in 2011. He has authored 46 short stories, 13 plays, 10 novels, 2 novellas and 7000 letters he wrote daily in Murasoli newspaper. He also wrote literary pieces and lyrics for some film songs. He had even acted in some of the plays. His autobiography nenjikku needhi (justice to the Conscience) runs into several volumes. He edited newspapers and magazines. An early riser, he used to finish most of his writing before breakfast and before the arrival of party cadres. The combination of prodigious talent, strict discipline and a work ethic was the secret of Karunanidhi’s prolific output as a writer.

 He was a mesmerising orator with a unique style of poetic expressions, inimitable humour, witty wordplay and inspiring ideas. I remember how I was moved to cry while listening to his eulogy in radio when Annadurai died in 1969.There is no other Tamil political leader who could match Karunanidhi’s speeches.

Karunanidhi was chief minister of Tamil Nadu for five terms and leader of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) for over five decades. He has a record of victory in all the 13 times he stood for elections. He was a star campaigner and strategist for DMK party. He got more ministerial posts in the coalition governments in Delhi and got more than the due share of the state from the central governments through skillful negotiations.

The author has put Karunanidhi’s life’s events in the context of the larger political developments in the state, the country and in the world. One such larger issue was the anti-Brahmin movement in the state and Karunanidhi’s promotion of Tamil language and non-Brahmins.  The author cites an incident in one of the Thiagaraja Aradhana music festivals in Thiruvaiyaru. The musicians who participated in the festival used to sing only in Sanskrit and Telugu and not in Tamil. The reason for this was the fact that the Trinity of Composers of Carnatic music comprising Thyagaraja, Muthuswami Dikshitar and Syama Sastri had composed only in Telugu and Sanskrit. Many of the Brahmin singers and composers looked down on Tamil considering it as a language of the lower castes. For them, Sanskrit was the divine language. During an annual festival, one of the singers rendered a Tamil song at the end of his performance in honour of Tyagaraja. The next singer refused to sing till the place was ‘purified’ as it had been polluted with a Tamil song. The organizers immediately called for priests to perform a special puja to purify the place; they cleaned the concert stage with holy water and then invited the next singer to perform.

Reacting to this Karunanidhi had said, “‘My music classes were in reality my first political class. I learnt about the subjugation of human beings based on their caste; I could witness the glee with which some people could humiliate others as well as the self-righteousness of others in practising their customs without even realizing that they are ill-treating a vast majority of the people”.

While the author has covered the achievements of Karunanidhi, he has not gone into the failures, mistakes, electoral defeats of the party, corruption allegations and dynastic politics.

The author is an expert in Latin American affairs

Subhash Chandra Garg promises that he will write a tell-all on his life in the Indian Administrative Service (IAS). And in particular, one on his time in the finance ministry, a tumultuous period where he hit headlines for locking horns with the present dispensation (read: finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman).

In his new book The $10 Trillion Dream which hits bookstores on Monday, Garg only teases about the time after Modi’s landslide victory in the 2019 general elections and Nirmala Sitharaman joined as the new finance minister. “My world changed drastically after the new finance minister joined,” he writes, but doesn’t offer much else. Those curious to know the backroom truth on what really went catastrophically wrong between the then finance secretary (who took early retirement soon after) and his feisty new lady boss may have to wait, for Garg says that second book “will be out later this year.”

Not that it should divert your attention from this debut book in any way. The veteran bureaucrat, who has since his retirement in 2019 turned into a prolific economic policy think-tank, has channelled his 36-year long experience, including stints as secretary in departments of finance, economic affairs as well as power (besides being finance secretary of Rajasthan before that), into this tribute to Indian economy, and the crucial role that public policy makes.

Or ‘breaks.’

“This book's focus is on the centrality of policy (making) in economic growth (which leads to) the general well-being of citizens,” he said, but added, “Expenditure decisions by the government are reflective of people’s choices. But unfortunately, when you convert people’s choices into that of (political) parties, that objective is not often (met).”

PM Modi may have settled down to a rhetoric of India hitting a $5 trillion economy by 2025, but Garg had a vision long before that — it was he, then at the helm in the finance ministry, who drafted the interim 2019 budget which first spoke of a ‘$10 trillion’ target.

The powers-that-be may have revised their target with one eye on the next general elections, but Garg, now not obliged to service rules after his voluntary retirement and switching over to become a strident critic of the government’s economic policies, sticks to his overarching vision.

Not just that, in this exhaustive resource point of a book, Garg presents a wide-angled and comprehensive view of the state of the Indian economy — surprisingly (for a book) updated right up to developments as late as this month.

Garg’s knowledge and grasp stemming from his years being right at the heart of economic policy drafting comes through as he takes the reader through how India’s macro economic policy, and real status, evolved since independence. Not just that, it zeroes in on various important sectors, right from the traditional agrarian reforms to the digital sector. Through the journey, he also focuses on pivotal moments and trends, ranging from the 1991 liberalisation to the 2020 Farm Bills. Garg seals the deal with the final section where he gives his own blueprint to achieve the target of a ten trillion dollar economy by 2035, complete with the reforms needed anywhere from labour to industrial policy and taxation.

True to his crucial years at the Centre, Garg barely brushes over the needed transformations in health and education, a state subject, despite it being something India doesn’t seem to have learned even after the Covid-19 pandemic. Bedside reading, this 700-page giant of a book may not be. But a great reference go-to any time you want to write, read and talk knowledgeably about the Indian economy, it certainly is.

The $10 Trillion Dream: The State of the Indian Economy and the Policy Reforms Agenda

By Subhash Chandra Garg

Publisher: Penguin Random House India

Pages: 700

Price: Rs 999 (Hardback)

“The explosion was loud. It raised a cloud of black smoke. Guess how far the body parts flew? As far as the saffron fields,” said an eye witness of the deadliest terror strike on security forces on February 14, 2019, that killed forty CRPF personnel in Pulwama district of Kashmir .

In the last three years, there have been many narratives built around the Pulwama strike but on the third anniversary of the terror attack, serving Indian Police Officer Danesh Rana, belonging to the Jammu and Kashmir cadre, decided to piece together the real happenings through personal interviews with the protagonists , police charge sheets and other evidence in his book As Far as the Saffron Fields: The Pulwama Conspiracy.

Rana’s attempt is a rare instance of a serving officer narrating the story of a single terror attack and its links in Pakistan. It was 11.30am on February 14 when Shakir Bashir Magrey, an Over-Ground Worker (OGW) of Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed was driving on the national highway to reach his sawmill. It had snowed and sporadic patches of snow were left, which made it possible for traffic to ply on it. The CRPF convoy may arrive later that day. He immediately called up Umar Farooq Alvi, the mastermind of the terror attack to convey the piece of news. The ghastly task was assigned to Adil Dar, the young local who rammed the vehicle full of explosives into the ill-fated CRPF bus that day.

Dar lay on the carpet in Shakir’s house that morning, not knowing these would be the last few hours of his life. The book grips the readers taking them back to the time when Adil’s suicide mission was still in the works. For the IPS officer, it is a tribute to the CRPF bravehearts but for readers it is an exclusive, eye opening and heart wrenching account of the current reality of militancy in Kashmir . The National Investigation Agency has managed to crack the case. But Rana's revelations take us beyond the conspiracy—to the time when Shakir was finally shown Umar’s photograph and he admitted that Umar was a Pakistani national known to him as Idrees Bhai. The book explains how painstaking investigation and fate finally helped sleuths establish the identity of Idrees as Umar Farooq Alvi, the nephew of none other than Maulana Masood Azhar, founder of Jaish-e-Mohammed and mastermind of the 1999 Kandahar hijack case.

“This is an account that would negate many narratives built around the deadly Pulwama attack. The book also highlights the involvement of proscribed outfits sponsored by Pakistan and their role in creating an eco-system for terrorism to flourish,” said Rana.

The author has also broken down the modern face of militancy in Kashmir fuelled by highly radicalised young Kashmiris who are playing in the hands of terrorist organisations. “The fact that it is written by a serving IPS officer lends great credibility to the account,” said Swati Chopra, Executive Editor, HarperCollins India. The book is a must read for those keen to understand the existing challenges of militancy in Kashmir, the planning of the Pulwama attack and the nitty-gritty of the entire terror conspiracy. By far, it is the most definitive book, the one that gives the full story .

Book: As Far as the Saffron Fields: The Pulwama Conspiracy

Author: Danesh Rana

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India

Price : Rs 599

Addressing the several questions that have followed the Chinese intrusions in Ladakh in April 2020, and the unresolved standoff that continues, military and strategic affairs commentator Maroof Raza’s latest offering, aptly titled ‘Contested Lands’, has all the details of how their differing boundary claims are the basis of Sino-Indian boundary disputes. The hallmark of Maroof’s books is his depth of research and his ability to put across facts in a logical manner by connecting all the dots and looking at issues from a different perspective.

The differing claims of India and China over Aksai Chin, explains the author, are the outcome of earlier military expeditions and surveys in the eastern reaches of Ladakh, driven by the ambitions of Maharajas and the British Empires strategic consideration of keeping Russia away. This led to three sets of lines drawn by the British in the north namely the Johnson Line in 1865, the Johnson-Ardgah Line in 1897 and the McCartney MacDonald Line in 1899 – that are the basis of disagreements even now.

And, it was the British desire to define the boundaries of Tibet with China and India at the Simla conference(s) of 1913-14, that led to the McMahon Line, and is the basis of India’s claims over the Arunachal front in India’s northeast. How this came to be, after extensive negotiations with the Tibetan and a reluctant Chinese representative, have been wonderfully covered, in this book. And how eventually the conveners of the Simla conference, Sir Henry McMahon, fearing a collapse of the talks, with much ceremony, drew the line with a thick-nib marker on a small scale map, to define what became known as the McMahon Line, on which India’s claims from east Bhutan to north Myanmar. China hasn’t quite accepted it yet!

And these are two key issues on which the Sino-Indian disputes are based. This led eventually to the Sino-Indian conflict of 1962, and the author goes into all the strategic errors that were made; from ignoring the Chinese buildup in Aksai Chin – that an army patrol reported in 1952 to the air photographs by a bold IAF pilot – and then the select band of sycophants that Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Krishna Menon chose to guide their one-sided assessments of the Chinese intent, this book has riveting details of that Himalayan conflict, where Indian Army were ill-led and not allowed to fight, for fear of angering the Chinese further! And it was for this reason that India’s air force wasn’t used either, despite the IAF being well positioned to alter the course of the war, that Raza calls only a conflict. More troops were used in the Kargil conflict, than in the ‘1962 war’, says the author, which was the result of Delhi blunders, not only of India’s generals.

No wonder the Henderson Brooks report remains classified, even though its findings have been greatly implemented, as the author explains by looking at incidents at Nathu La and Jelep La of 1967 and the contrasting approaches by the army’s commanders in Sikkim. Then the next time India responded was in 1986-87 at Sumdrong Chu when General Sunderji quickly mobilised forces at the McMahon Line, following Chinese intrusions. This led to China’s leaders developing new respect for India, and the invitations to PMs starting with Rajiv Gandhi, then Narasimha Rao and A.B. Vajpayee. This led the Border Peace and Tranquility Agreement in 1993 and an agreement to avoid the use of force even though the Chinese transgressions have not ceased as we witnessed in 2020. The brutal fighting in the Galwan valley that followed had shown that the India of 2020 was not the India of 1962.

Could another Himalayan conflict follow if tensions spiral out of control and how things could then pan out between the two Asian giants? This book offers answers. It will surely be among the most valued books on the subject and its attendant complexities.

Book: Contested Lands: India, China and the boundary dispute

Author: Maroof Raza

Pages: 208

Publisher: Westland

Price: Rs 699

The book is based on two real stories that came out from Kashmir in the 1990s - one that got local attention and the other received global attention.

The first was about the rivalry between two bad men who had once served in the BSF, and turned renegades. One was a Muslim, Manzur, who joined the Hizbul Mujahideen. The other was a Hindu, Ram Kumar, once a pal of Manzur, then an informer to the security forces and finally a renegade brigand leader. The story about their rivalry was reported briefly in Kashmir papers in 1996.

The other story, the one that the world heard, was about the abduction of six western tourists in Kashmir in 1995 - two British, two American, a German and a Norwegian - by a till-then unknown militant group called Al Faran.

The author has fictionalised the two real-life stories and melded them into one racy novel which gives a gripping account of the commandos' hunt for abductors, as also a vivid picture of the life of a militant in the mountains. If he has relied on his own first-hand experience for the former, he has relied on the accounts given by the captured militants themselves for the latter. Yes, the author himself is a former Special Forces commando who has served not only on the Kashmir mountains but also in the jungles of Sri Lanka in the IPKF mission, and in the northeast. At times he draws from these varied experiences to even tell the reader about the differences in the nature of terrain and the operations between Kashmir and Sri Lanka.

As in real life, one of the hostages, an American, escapes on his own from the clutches of the militants. The Norwegian is beheaded (his body was found with his chest inscribed with the words 'Al Faran'), and the rest were never rescued. It is believed that the militants killed them once it became clear that India was not going to agree to the militants' demand to free two of their leaders. (It is another matter that one of the leaders, Masood Azhar, would later be freed by the government in return for the lives of the Indian Airlines passengers who were hijacked to Kandahar in 1999.)

The best thing about the book is that it is not an attempt to simply glorify the army or the special forces. On the contrary, the author even gives the reader a peep into the interrogation rooms where third-degree measures are employed to extract information from the captured militants.

The book, the third from the author, is one of the few attempts in India to write war or military fiction, a best-selling genre in the west. To that extent and more, the author deserves a big pat on his sturdy shoulder.

Book: The Savage Hills

Written by: Abhay Narayan Sapru

Published by: Chlorophyll

Price: Rs 295

In Isabel Allende’s latest novel, Violeta, the eponymous protagonist is born at the time of the Spanish Flu in 1920 and dies during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. Her final thought: “It is a strange symmetry that I was born in one pandemic and will die during another.”

Allende starts the book with the Spanish Flu which “brought first a terrible chill from beyond the grave, which nothing could quell, followed by fevered shivering, a pounding headache, a blazing fire behind the eyes and in the throat, and deliriums, with terrifying hallucinations of death lurking steps away. The person’s skin turned a purplish-blue colour that soon darkened until the feet and hands were black; a cough impeded breathing as a bloody foam flooded the lungs, the victim moaned and writhed in agony, and the end arrived by asphyxiation. The most fortunate ones were dead in just a few hours”.

The Chilean government responded to the crisis with “a stay-at-home order to curb the spread, but since no one heeded it, the president decreed a state of emergency, a nightly curfew, and a ban on free circulation of the civil population without due cause, under penalty of fine, arrest, and, in many cases, beatings. Schools were closed, as well as shops, parks and other places where people typically congregated.”

In her 100 years of life, Violeta witnesses extraordinary events and historical changes in the world, in her native country Chile and in her personal life. The Great Depression causes bankruptcy of her father’s business and he commits suicide. The family, evicted from their large mansion in the capital city Santiago, moves to Nahuel, the remote Patagonian part of the country in the south “a landscape of vast cold forests, snowy volcanoes, emerald lakes and raging rivers”.

Violeta comes of age surviving and working in the primitive and tough conditions of the rural life among the native Mapuche Indians. She learns to fish, trap rabbits, milk cows, saddle a horse, smoke cheeses, meats, fish and hams in the circular mud hut where a pile of embers perpetually glowed. When she was fourteen, the local Mapuche Indian chief asks for her hand in marriage, either for himself or one of his sons. He offers his best horse as payment for the bride.

The major event that upends her life and leaves a scar in the country’s history is the violent overthrow of the socialist president Allende by the military coup in 1973. Her son, a leftist militant student, escapes to Argentina and eventually gets asylum in Norway. Some of her relatives and friends are killed, tortured and jailed by the regime. Her second husband, a pilot with private aircraft, makes money by collaborating with the military regime and the CIA. Her daughter dies of drug addiction in the United States. Her grandson Camilo, a rebellious young man, decides to become a priest and devotes himself to the service of the poor.

Allende has narrated the story of Violeta as a series of letters to her grandson Camilo, in which the 100-year-old grandmother wants to leave a testimony of her life.

Allende had conceived her first novel House of Spirits (1982) when she received news that her 100-year-old grandfather was dying. She began to write him a letter that ultimately became the manuscript of the novel. It was influenced by Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.

The only difference between her first novel and the latest is that magical realism is now missing. The story of Violeta is narrated without fantasies and fables, miracles and mysteries.

Allende said in an interview, “All fiction is ultimately autobiographical. I write about love and violence, about death and redemption, about strong women and absent fathers, about survival. My life is about pain, loss, love and memory. Most of my characters are outsiders, people who are not sheltered by society, who are unconventional, irreverent, defiant. Struggle, loss, confusion, memory—these are the raw materials of my writing.”

These are clearly evident in the story of Violeta who is a strong independent woman who defies the matriarchal Chilean society of the first half of the 20th century and goes through three marriages.

This is similar to the real-life story of Allende, who has also married three times, the last one at the ripe age of 77 in 2019 with a New York lawyer Roger Cukras, of the same age.

Violeta’s experience of turbulence, exile and grief are not much different from Allende’s real-life suffering, as she had to go into exile to Venezuela during the Chilean military regime. Violeta’s grief over the death of her young daughter is similar to the untimely death of Allende’s own daughter Paula at the age of 29. Allende’s novel Paula is based on the life story of her own daughter.

I have read most of Isabel Allende’s books and enjoyed her epic storytelling. Reading her books is like taking a long journey filled with poignant moments and recollections of memories. 

I like and admire even more Allende’s own life story of adventures and romance. She describes her personal life with fantastic wit and self-deprecating humour.  She had suffered terrible personal tragedies from which she has come out with her strong-willed spirit. Even now at her advanced age of 80 years, she lives a free-spirited California life with a full-blooded Chilean passion.

Allende has certainly enriched the world of literature with more than 20 memorable books which have been translated into 40 languages and sold over 70 million copies. I believe that she is due for a Nobel Prize.

The author is an expert in Latin American affairs.

The Night Will Be Long (sera largo la noche) is a story about the rise of evangelical churches in Colombia and Latin America. 

Fabinho Henriquez, a poor orphan from Minas Gerais state of Brazil, becomes a mining entrepreneur in Amazon. He establishes an evangelical church celebrating his own miraculous transformation and to give moral support to other poor souls living and working in the jungles. He gets a Colombian business partner Fritz Almayer, who had escaped to Brazilian amazon after harassment, extortion and threat from FARC guerillas in Colombia. The Colombian steals the money and wife of Henriquez and runs back to his country and starts his own evangelical group. The Brazilian pastor tries to kill the Colombian. Investigation of this assassination attempt by Colombian authorities and a journalist is the main narrative in the novel.

Santiago Gamboa has narrated the emergence of evangelical faith in the context of Colombia’s background of FARC guerillas, paramilitaries, drug trafficking, violence and crime. He has focused on the post-Peace Accord times of rehabilitation of ex-guerillas and victims of the violence. He describes in detail the way the evangelical churches operate. The Brazilian and Colombian pastors in the novel are themselves children of poverty and violence and had suffered the worst. They are naturally able to relate to the struggles of the poor masses and the victims of violence. This is in contrast to the Catholic clergy most of whom are out of touch with the reality of the poor and marginaliSed.

The evangelical pastors exploit the believers by making them share a portion of their income as tithe. They use the churches for money laundering, making use of their privileged exemption from taxes and accountability. They network with the rich and powerful for mutual enrichment and gains. They have their own TV networks and other business ventures. Politicians provide protection to the pastors who return the favour with votes of their followers. The pro-evangelical politicians promote the agenda of the pastors in legislatures and governments.

Latin America used to be the largest catholic region and Brazil was the largest catholic country in the world. But in the last five decades, millions of Catholics have joined the evangelical churches. In Brazil, the number of Pentecostals have increased to 46.7 million in 2020 (out of the total population of 210 million) from 6.8 million in in 1970. In the same period, Guatemala saw the Pentecostal strength reaching 2.9 million from 196,000.  Seven countries in the region including Uruguay, the Dominican Republic and the five in Central America have non-catholics in the majority.

This is the third novel of Gamboa I have read. The first two were: Return to the Dark Valley and Night Prayers. I like his profound analysis of the social and political issues of Colombia while narrating stories of murders and investigations filled with suspense, thrill and mystery.

The author is an expert in Latin American affairs

New-borns, children, young and aged, some slipper-clad, while some barefooted, bags of belongings, days of fighting and surviving the rain, wind, sun and the coronavirus—this is a small gist of the homeward exodus of around 11.4 million migrant workers in India in 2020. This is the journey in Homebound.

Home sweet home—a privilege that is repeatedly made aware as one reads the fictional debut Homebound by award-winning journalist Puja Changoiwala. A pandemic literature, this book is the reminiscence of the reality of many and the not-so-reality of the others. The writing is an account of the plight of India’s migrant workers during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The journey was not a choice; it was the last resort when one can see nothing but a bleak present and future of unemployment, starvation, homelessness and death in the ominous lockdown.

The images of the dreadful journey of the migrants were splashed across the media at the time, yet the raw reality was obscured in the mainstream. The book is a homage to the millions who trudged miles to the safety of their homes.

The multiverse of Dharavi is a pot of gold for 15-year-old Meher. Hailing from a small village Balhaar in Rajasthan, she finds “home” in the alien ghetto. Dharavi is the “factory of human spirit” and “embodies the essences of evolution”. An epistolary novel, the accounts are addressed to Ms Farah, a journalist. Beginning on April 16, 2020, the entries of the behemoth transition are recounted across 11 letters. The journey is documented sequentially, often interspersed with flashbacks and thoughts and opinions of the protagonist.

A dystopian journey that one never wishes to be a part of, Meher and her family face many heart-wrenching hurdles in their travel. The agonising description of the migrants being drenched in bleach, their blood splattered on the railway lines, the hungry feasting of the dead dog’s flesh, the exhaustion that made them breathe their last, the inhumane stigma that forced others to quarantine them in public toilets, and the loss of silver lining that turned them to murder--all point to the deeply ingrained lack of education and the ignorance of the authorities.

Myriad issues are tackled in the book and are at times overwhelming. From the bygone beliefs and rituals, the contrast of the haves and have-nots, religious fanaticism, communal hate, abrogation of articles 370 and 35A, child marriage, human sacrifice, to the decay of the nation’s system are all confronted by Meher.

The instances of humour are the out-of-the-box names of the characters: proton uncle, electron aunty and neutron Sameer, and the comparisons like a conductor and insulator policemen. Changoiwala uses ample allegories. For instance, she draws a parallel between their journey and the salt march of Gandhi, though, unlike the latter, they plan to move veiled in the camouflage of the darkness. The intellectual debates of the young girl are indeed compelling questions. Sample this: “It’s not only about Saleha and her family,’ I said, voicing a discontent that has just started sprouting in me, and yet, had overpowered my being. ‘It’s about this whole exodus. When did we become so vulnerable? I never felt it my whole life. But now, it’s like they’re grabbing me by my neck, telling me that my life is insignificant, that I could die any moment, and that my death too would be as insignificant. Hundreds like us have died on their way home. Hundreds. Women turned widows, children turned orphans, fathers turned pallbearers, and mothers turned to stone.”

The book, though written in the Indian context, can be a universal symbol for the saga of the resilience of migrants. The book reminded me of the journey of Offred from her dystopian reality in Margret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale besides owing to the recent dilemma of migrants in Greece, France, Mexico to name a few.

Many of the migrants reached their homes while many others departed on the way. The book points to the need for effective mobility infrastructure and to view fellow humans with dignity and empathy. Blessed with the comfort of home, the story was efficacious in making me guilty and aware of the privilege of the security that one takes for granted. The migrants are also humans. And as the author pens “to forget them again would be treason”. True.

Book: Homebound

Written by: Puja Changoiwala

Published by: HarperCollins

“Dekhta hoon tujhe…” those three ominous words were uttered by Uttar Pradesh’s then newly appointed chief minister Yogi Adityanath to Kafeel Khan, the junior most lecturer at the Department of Pediatrics at the Baba Raghav Das Medical College in Gorakhpur on August 13, 2017.

(In the book the three words are translated to ‘I will see it’, but the more apt version would be ‘I will see you’)

In what was then and has been since a widely reported news story, the supply of piped liquid oxygen to the medical college, ran out late evening on August 10. When supply was finally restored on 2.15 am on August 13, 63 infants and 18 adults had perished. The government has since maintained that no deaths happened due to lack of oxygen. It was a statement that would be made again in 2021, during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Gorakhpur Hospital Tragedy: A Doctor’s Memoir of a Deadly Medical Crisis written by Khan comes close on the heels of his termination from services in November 2021, after being suspended twice by the government. He was the only one so punished for the catastrophe.

The book offers a detailed look at what happened on the two nights and in their aftermath. The first is a tragedy common to medical crisis in our country, the second an unfortunate coming together of political targeting, media trial and administrative apathy. In both, there is no answer to the question: who must bear responsibility.

On August 10, Khan was on leave but chose to rush to the hospital when the message ‘There is no oxygen supply in NICU” (neonatal intensive care unit) beeped on a college WhatsApp group. The college’s principal was away on duly granted leave. The head of the paediatrics department and the acting principal, whom Khan contacted on the way to the hospital responded with “I will see” when he asked for their presence in the hospital to defuse the crisis. Over the night, other senior doctors would not receive phone calls or answer similarly.

Khan meanwhile made efforts to procure jumbo oxygen cylinders from private hospitals. He even persuaded the local unit of the Sashastra Seema Bal to loan a truck and jawans so that the maximum number of cylinders could be picked up from wherever these were available. He even paid from his pocket for these, and at one point handed over his ATM card for money to be withdrawn to pay for cylinders and to drivers of trucks. All these personal endeavours were to prove his undoing. So would a single statement he made on the stalled oxygen supply to the the media while running inside the NICU. It was perceived as drawing too much attention to himself.

Oxygen supply to the medical college, which serves eastern UP, and also receives patients from Bihar and Nepal had run out because payments to the vendor had not been made. The said vendor had sent reminders to the college to pay up, and in turn the college had requested the state government to release funds for the same but that had not happened. The funds that had been released had lapsed due to what would later be attributed to a ‘clerical error’. The manner of the oxygen supply itself was circuitous- with the medical college not procuring it directly from a producer but going through a third agency.

The government and the local administration were focused more on managing the perception of the crisis, as local media had got wind of it in the morning of August 11. This cover-up of the crisis included an unfortunate address to the media by the then state’s health minister which started with, “August mein har saal bachche marte hain” (children die in August every year)- referring to the mortality rate of children in a month when the number of encephalitis cases in the region went up.

In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, Khan went from being hero to villain, with certain sections of the media pointing out that he had been part of the corruption that had held back the payment for the oxygen supply. The greater question raised on his heroics was the number of lives he could have saved by arranging just four or five cylinders. The truth was that he had arranged around 500 cylinders in 55 hours. Without these the tragedy could have been worse.

Khan’s description of the crisis is like a gut punch, despite many of its details being known. He uses dialogue to simple but deep effect, clarifying in his notes that they are “reconstructed” to the best of his abilities. He also puts a face to the parents who lived through those harrowing nights. A couple who had children after 13 years of marriage, another who had a daughter after four sons.

The questions that the harried parents asked then-“Can you bring back my child? Are you doctors or demons?...Who is responsible for my child’s death”- have remained unanswered.

On September 2, Khan was arrested by the state’s Special Task Force. He spent eight months in prison before being granted bail by the High Court. Twenty days later he was re-arrested-—this time for forcibly entering a hospital to treat patients and criticising the state government whose employ he was. On January 29, 2020 he was arrested yet again for a speech given at the Aligarh Muslim University on the charge that it would disrupt communal harmony. In the interim, he was suspended twice for medical negligence, corruption and dereliction of duty. Six inquiries absolved him of the charges. One committee held him guilty of private practice—which he had carried out only before joining the BRD Medical College.

The other chunk of Khan’s book chronicles his life inside prison, a grim picture which is given some levity by the description of fellow inmates, one a ‘mantri ji’ imprisoned for his role in the murder of a young poet.

At one point in the book Khan laments how he, a doctor who had told parents to be observant of milestone events in the lives of their children, himself missed out on these events in his daughter’s life. It is a poignant observation.

Throughout he writes about his family’s support for him, but also lets in a glimpse of how frustrating it was for them. He records moments of conflict on how to proceed—must one tell one’s version of events to the public or remain silent? At one point, his family was pushed to selling off household items to meet everyday and legal expenses. His younger brother was shot at in Gorakhpur- an event that was then described by some media persons as ‘staged’.

This is an important book, not only for the light it sheds at one event but for its focus on the country’s health system. It must be translated into various languages, with a sharper eye on editorial consistencies such as the listing of sources.

After his release from jail, Khan offered his services voluntarily in multiple states- from Assam to Kerala, noticing many common strands from the absence of routine medicines to the acceptance of preventable diseases among children. To many of us it might seem strange, as it indeed would have been to Khan who describes himself as “a relatively privileged, nonchalant person” who could not go without an air conditioner on most occasions.

It also calls into question the role of the ‘majoritarian’ media hungry for government approval which made much of Khan being a Muslim and thus a potential terrorist and wrongdoer. As it does the role of seculars who expressed their outrage at his victimisation because of his religion. Khan himself maintains that he would have been treated in the same way, no matter what his surname.

“I would have incurred the wrath of the authorities for actions which were thought to draw too much attention to the tragic events at the BRD Medical College…The outrage over my religion being the reason for my persecution managed to distract from the negligence and the corruption that were coming to light”, he writes.

That those lines could have been written for any medical tragedy anywhere in the country, is as distressing as it is illuminating.

Book: The Gorakhpur Hospital Tragedy: A Doctor's Memoir of a Deadly Medical Crisis

Author: Kafeel Khan

Pages: 300

Publisher: Pan Macmillan India

Globe-trotting journalist Pallavi Aiyar’s latest, Orienting: An Indian in Japan, is a travelogue and social commentary rolled into one, and gives a peek into life in Japan.

From socialising norms in the country to tourism, and food etiquette to commentary on the bromance between former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe and Narendra Modi, from breezy accounts of her struggle to master the language to the tale of her lost wallet returning intact, Aiyar's accounts will make you laugh, chuckle and grimace. Sample this: Aiyar recalls in shock how she saw a child scream silently when he fell off the swing. She recounts how when she lamented to a friend on perfecting the grammar, her friend simply replied that the bigger problem would be learning to talk softly! And when she showed interest at a bank to apply for a credit card - an opportunity most banks would jump at - the bank politely told her that taking a credit card with them would be inconvenient for her and instead recommended a western bank!

She also touches upon kintsugi or the method of repairing broken ceramics with golden lacquer and wabi-sabi or acceptance of imperfection.

It prepares the Indian traveller for the Japanese hesitancy towards human interaction; how they are sticklers for cleanliness and are, essentially, a hierarchical society. Their penchant for minimalism and disinclination to foreigners notwithstanding, the Japanese were thankful when 'Parabi-san' (Pallavi) liked authentic Japanese food and wasn’t like other foreigners.

The book offers a look into Japan beyond cliches, and tries to be as intrinsic as possible in its take on Japanese culture. If you plan to head to the 'land of the rising sun', or are merely curious about it, this one's for you.

Title: Orientation: An Indian in Japan

Author: Pallavi Aiyar

Publisher: HarperCollins

Pages: 290

Price: Rs 399

The latest World Inequality Report tells us what we had long suspected – that the rich are getting richer, and the poor poorer. The report informs us that the top 10 per cent in India accounts for 57 per cent of the national income. What it doesn’t say is that the rich don’t rest content atop their mountains of moolah. They want more, they want to add another zero to their zillions. Some succeed in their ambitions without eyebrows or red flags being raised. It’s the ones who fail who form the riveting subject of The Meltdown by the husband-wife duo of Dev and Sudha Chatterjee.

At this stage, a personal disclaimer is in order. Not being a rich man, and with no immediate prospect of becoming one, I must confess to getting a kick out of reading how the rich are thwarted in their plans to batten themselves. Yes, it sounds like retribution porn but I can’t help saying ‘serves ‘em right’.

The Meltdown unlocks a large gallery, and the rogues (for want of a better word) in it cover a wide arc. It has the garishly flamboyant Vijay Mallya whose luscious beach parties in Goa must have melted the scruples of the most conscientious bank official. At the other end of the scale, there is IL&FS reclusive Ravi Parthasarthy who kept a low profile and quietly orchestrated the biggest bankruptcy in India Inc’s history. If there are first generation fraudsters, there are also young scions who must have learnt the tricks of the trade when still in the nappies.

Every chapter covers an implosion fuelled by avarice, the jettisoning of ethics and sometimes bad luck. Nirav Modi is on centre-stage. Also featured are Videocon’s luckless Venugopal Dhoot – at one time hailed as the head of India’s largest homegrown multinational. Then there is the combative Chanda Kochhar who, as a professional banker heading ICICI, disproved the widely held theory that it is only in family-run businesses that corporate governance is reduced to an option.

Nobody is innocent in the world that The Meltdown depicts. For a price, bank officials will opt for negligence over diligence, and auditors as well as rating agencies will happily fall in line. If anything, it’s the Modi government that comes off with full honours. In the epilogue, the Chatterjees say that it was with the Insolvency & Bankruptcy Code enacted in 2016 that the cleaning of the Augean stables began.

Senior journalist Dev Chatterjee brings the immediacy of reportage to the book. Barring the odd confidential document, the information is largely based on documents in the public domain. That could be an opportunity lost and those seeking explosive revelations could be disappointed. But the narrative speeds along with the Chatterjees at the wheel. There are certainly more scamsters around than the dozen odd talked about in this book, and they could form material for Meltdown 2.0. Till then, for all those who want to relive the scams of the last few years, this book provides the traditional rags-to-riches story in reverse.

PS: The Middle Class’s schadenfreude must perforce be curtailed. Few of the guilty go where they deserve to be – behind bars. At the end, Anil Ambani is still gamely looking for escape routes, and the chapter on R.Comm concludes with the cryptic ‘He is down but is he out?’ That could well be true for many of the others.

Title: The Meltdown

Author: Dev Chatterjee with Sudha Pai Chatterjee

Publisher: Rupa

Pages: 186

Price: Rs 495

There have been very few debuts that have been endorsed unanimously by all three heavyweights writers in one go—Shobha De, Shashi Tharoor and Chita Divakaruni. Even fewer live up to the high praise, but Shivani Sibal does—and—more so admirably. 

Very much a one-gulp book, Equations quickly pulls readers into the Sikand family as Parul and Aahan Sikand as they leave the grand house built in 1946 by Rai Bahadur Manohar Krishnan Sikand. The house has been acquired by a builder and Aahan has to move out to a flat before he moves back into a diminished version of his ancestral home. The story of his changed social status is contrasted with that of Rajesh, the son of Laxman Kumar, the family driver. Rajesh is born on a rainy night in a missionary hospital late in the evening to which his mother had gone in a rickshaw so that she didn’t “soil’’ the family car. 

Rajesh's mother Babita, becomes the nanny, quickly bringing both the boys up—but makes sure to impart the lessons that Rajesh must always learn—subservience. It was a lesson that Rajesh learnt soon enough. It is a story told many times before—often in Bollywood—but what makes Sibal’s version remarkable is her ability to capture the difference—the snobbery, the inbuilt asymmetry—with freshness, a lightness of touch and compassion. 

In a powerful scene set when Rajesh was a child, he accompanied Aahan to a birthday party and got caught up in musical chairs. The competition was intense. There were only three left. Aahan, Rajesh and another boy. When the music stopped, Rajesh lunged forward to remain in the game beating Aahan. Babita wiped Aahan’s tears. The game was over soon and Rajesh lost and walked to his mother dejected only to be greeted with a stinging slap. 

"Rajesh absorbed his subservience to Aahan at a cellular level, his mother had communicated the benefits of this behaviour like a lesser animal might teach his young how to hunt or forage. He had known from an early age that his mother would put him down and pick up Aahan if he wanted; that he would always get to pick up which toy to play with second.’’ 

Growing up close to privilege, but always an outsider, Rajesh soon finds his feet in Delhi University getting absorbed in the world of politics. It is a shifting world where Rajesh finds himself climbing up the ladder--becoming powerful, while the earlier order of privilege and elitism is on the decline.

Equations is goes back and forth in time—the book captures the lives of the Sikands, a sort of new-age Delhi Downton Abbey—with the upstairs and downstairs kind of story. Sharply observed, it is almost as if Sibal spent years notebook in hand taking notes carefully chronicling the change. Her characters—of the rich and powerful recognisable in Delhi drawing room—Nooriya, the interior designer who lives in a tiny-barsati who left her first husband and then, the object of affection of Aahan’s father, his mother, who turns a blind eye to her husband’s affair drowning her sorrows in whiskey and Maha-Maharajji, the guru of the powerful. 

A Delhi novel, Sibal captures the change in the city—and the country—across the 90s and into 2016. It is also very a metaphor for a changing India. Sibal captures the class dynamics perfectly. The changing dynamics of power—of money—of politics, of class and ambition. A novel with the feel of a thriller and sweep of a family saga, Sibal’s book is fast-paced, almost breezy, yet, it chooses to tackle a difficult subject. 

One of the best books of the year, grab it.

Equations by Shivani Sibal 

Publishers: Harper Collins, 

195 pages

Rs 299