India-Pakistan war in 1971 concluded with the liberation of East Pakistan and the birth of Bangladesh, but 3,843 Indian soldiers were killed and 9,851 wounded in the 13-day-long war. It also resulted in the dismemberment of Pakistan, with the loss of its eastern wing and capture of 93,000 Pakistani prisoners of war- the highest number since World War II. Pakistan army was not only outwitted but also outmaneuvered- and it collapsed. India's victory was a result of meticulous planned and troops were told to wrap up the war before the Americans and the Chinese could intervene.

While the nation is celebrating golden jubilee of 1971 India-Pakistan war, several books are coming out on the occasion.

1971: Stories of Grit and Glory from the Indo-Pak War by Ian Cardozo and Remembered Glory- True Stories from 1971 War, are in the series of books to commemorate the event and keep the public memory alive.

Major General Cardozo, India’s first war-disabled military officer to head a brigade and a battalion, has come out the new book titled 1971 Stories of Grit and Glory from the Indo-Pak War. He has dedicated it to the men and women of the Indian armed forces, the Mukti Bahini and the people of India and Bangladesh, who stood together in this moment of trial and ultimately tasted victory in war.

The book is based on true stories on personal experiences of participation, on oral and written narratives, and on historical facts and recorded interviews of officers and soldiers of both sides, conducted after the was was ended.

The inspiring stories like the hunt for India's aircraft carrier INS Vikrant, Long shot at Longewala, Mission Karachi, A Bullet for breakfast and the gates of Rattoke, the book has all the elements for the reader.

The officers from the Indian Army led from the front in the war, and therefore, the casualty rate of officers is very high in terms of percentage. Even Maj Gen Cardozo's 4th Battalion of the 5th Gorkha Rifles, entered the 1971 war with 18 officers, but at the end of the war, four were killed and seven badly injured. Only seven were left unscathed or with minor injuries.

From the tragedy of the INS Khukri and its courageous Captain, who went down with his ship, and to the moral courage of a Commanding Officer of Gorkha battalion who stood up to his seniors and rejected their plan to capture an enemy, the book is the collection of stories pieced together through interviews with survivors and their families.

Touching stories like how Maj Gen Cardozo was transported by helicopter to a battlefront in Sylhet, deep inside East Pakistan territory find their way into the book. After stepping on a Pakistani minefield, Maj Gen Cardozo injured his leg, and had to use his own khukri (a curved blade) to amputate his own leg.

While talking about the book, former army chief General V.P. Malik said that he has never learnt about a war through such vivid, personalised and humane stories. And admiral Arun Prakash, former Navy chief, who himself had participated in the 1971 war calls it a must read for every Indian especially Gen X and millennials.

Remembered Glory- True stories from 1971 War is an anecdotal narration of stories by who were there and witnessed events unfolding in front of their eyes. And the contributors are now free from the limitations that get imposed both by the service regulations and impact of events that may have happened in the recent past. It is written by Milind Manohar Wagle and Colonel Ajay K Raina. Milind is a sports commentator, who has covered not only 25 Olympic sports but also multiple military events including President's Fleet Review. Col Raina is a veteran gunner. The gallantry awardee of Rashtriya Rifles, has authored 10 books as well. They have interviewed as many as 200 war heroes of the 1971 war and have compiled almost 50 true stories about war from the men who have seen events unfolding in front of their eyes and have participated in these heroic acts of bravery.

The book has the story on India's first surgical strike. Described by the then 2Lt Baljit Singh Gill, who was commanding 31 JAT, tasked to carry out the deep strike mission into Chittagong Hill tracts in East Pakistan, days before the outbreak of war between India and Pakistan. Besides, India's first surgical strike, the book has 44 narrative stories.

Title: 1971-Stories of Grit and Glory from the Indo-Pak War by Ian Cardozo

Author: Ian Cardozo

Publisher: Ebury Press by Penguin Random House India

Pages:347

Price: Rs. 399

Title: Remembered Glory- True stories from 1971 War

Author: Milind Manohar Wagle and Colonel Ajay K Raina

Publisher: Military History Research Foundation

Pages: 213

Price: Rs. 399

Many writers have their favourite words. Oscar Wilde, it was said, loved the word ‘importance’ – hence perhaps, ‘The Importance of Being Earnest. With journalist, writer and TV personality, Vir Sanghvi, I can bet the most preferred word would be ‘rude’. His food column was called ‘Rude Food’, followed by ‘Rude Music’, and true to form, we now have his memoirs titled ‘A Rude Life’. Why ‘rude’? Sanghvi himself dismisses it as a ‘silly name’ but does not explain why he then keeps choosing it. A rude dude, shall we say? Well, let such eccentricities not distract us, for here is an enthralling book that gives us front row seats to the reality show of Indian politics.

Sanghvi’s credentials are intimidating enough to make your average newsman consider alternative careers. He was the youngest editor in the country, and when still wet behind the ears, was appointed Editorial Director by Business Press. He is perhaps the only journalist who has been associated with three major newspaper houses at close to the apex levels, and he has breathed josh and meaning into publications that were assumed to be awaiting their turn on death row. He runs parallel careers in print and television. And the icing on the cake (no pun intended) is that he is also a food writer. This means that he can, with equal aplomb, talk to Mrs Sonia Gandhi about her prospects in a by-election as tell us about Hyderabadi Biryani losing its authenticity when it gets to Andhra.

If you are in any way connected with the media, A Rude Life will give you the backstories of many familiar figures. Not many would know that the Nobel Prize-winning VS Naipaul could turn viciously racist when he was drunk. Or that Dom Moraes – arguably India’s finest poet – considered research a menial chore, and had written a book called Bombay for the prestigious Time-Life publications, which was more about himself than the city. No publication is spared.

Decades ago, Sanghvi told K.K. Birla that his mass-selling publication is the only ‘English language newspaper in the world to be written entirely in Punjabi!’ If you don’t care for the media, you can still enjoy the book for its fluid narration and Sanghvi’s trademark ability, to sum up, a character in a few telling lines. Sample these: ‘I had the sense that it did not matter which party (Sharad) Pawar was in, he would always be in it for himself and would know how to get people to follow him.’ Film personalities feature in the book too. Raj Kapoor tells him that Satyajit Ray was overrated. Sanghvi’s take: ‘I have met lots of movie figures… but Raj Kapoor was different. He was the 'Last Mogul’. Having interviewed the supremo of the Shiv Sena on many occasions, he summarises: ‘The thing about Thackeray is that he never lied. No matter how outrageous his answer was, he gave it.’ Prime Minister Narasimha Rao has been described as a ‘small-time manipulator masquerading as a statesman’. Then there is L.K. Advani who, some said, looked ike the ‘Common Man’ in R.K. Laxman’s cartoons. As for Morarji Desai, he could clam up suddenly during an interview and let his facial features be ‘set in amgrim position that suggested a sanyasi suffering for the nation.’

Ever since the Greeks started the trend, heroes have had their fatal flaws. I won’t go into what Sanghvi’s flaw is but the interlude with PR agent Niira Radia was a moment of monumental misjudgment. Late in 2010, he was accused of leveraging journalism to try and fix cabinet appointments. He was also repeating Radia’s handout word for word without quoting the source. In the book, Sanghvi defends himself manfully and tells us that he has been cleared by the courts. Alas, the public has neither the time nor the patience to get into the legal fine print. It went by the tried and trusted ‘no smoke without fire’ principle, and pronounced its verdict. It has taken much time and gallons of ink to clear his name and that of Barkha Dutt.

You can open any page of 'A Rude Life' and find something to engage you. That tells you about the kind of people who populate the book and the author’s uncanny ability to draw information from them. For all this, I don’t think Sanghvi has attained the right age for memoir writing. There should be more to follow, and perhaps by the time the next edition of his memoirs comes out, he will have got over his obsession with ‘rude’.

Book: A Rude Life – The Memoir

Publisher: Penguin Random House

Pages: 416

Price: Rs 699

Seven years may not be a long time in a country's life, but it is enough time to gauge the direction it intends to take—even if the results may take a while to be discernible on the ground. As the Modi government completed seven years in office, it was faced with the biggest challenge of a century—the COVID-19 pandemic. Though the virus threatened to derail India economic progress, the government has not shied away from taking bold steps as it pushes forward its reform agenda. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's policies are dissected with intensity on both sides of the political divide. Is the government pro-poor, as it would like the country to believe with its welfare programs, or pro-corporate as it pushes for the private sector to take charge. The question is played out daily from street to television studios, from corporate boardrooms to protest sites in the country. 

Bureaucrat-turned-politician, K.J. Alphons, former Tourism minister, and currently BJP's Rajya Sabha MP offers an explanation. “Is he a hardcore Keynesian or an ardent follower of Friedman? The truth is that he is a combination of many things: a big dose of Keynes, a bit of Friedman, a tiny bit of libertarian Hayek and a lot of innovative Modiconomics, built around the strong belief that everybody, the poor and the rich, have the right to live [with] dignity."

"He has built basic foundations for the poor to live a dignified life; now he has to work to take off from there, and where they would have decent jobs so that it becomes possible to live a sustainable dignified life. In the long run, they cannot live on handouts from the government alone.”

Alphons sums up Modi's governance outlook. He has backed with empirical analysis from the practitioners who have domain knowledge in different fields. Alphons has picked up 25 topics to present Modi's interventions as they are aimed at changing the country. Accelerating India: 7 Years of Modi Government is the new book edited by Alphons. He has got former civil servants to present the changed governance paradigm in the last seven years. The 338-page-book published by Oakbridge is priced at Rs 795.

The book encapsulates the Modi government's policies in sectors like internal security, defence, digital governance, education, agriculture, environment, economy, highways, social justice, Covid response, health, and Triple Talaq. The book is a good resource of material, and arguments to understand Modi's governance model. It adds to the debate around the issue presenting the government's side, authoritatively.

Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan has a written a scholarly essay on the issue of triple talaq quoting various Islamic theologians. He narrated his personal experience on the subject after he decided to bring the issue to the notice of Prime Minister Modi. He wrote a six-page letter to Modi on October 6, 2017, apprising PM about violation of apex court verdict on talaq, and a need for legislation. The next day he received a call from PMO asking him to discuss the issue with Modi and was granted audience the day after. “I have understood whole thing, now you need not approach anyone, instead they would approach you,” Khan wrote quoting Modi. On October 9, officers from the Law ministry sought a meeting where Khan gave them documents showing developments in foreign countries in outlawing triple talaq. A few weeks later, the government introduced the bill in parliament.

“How positively this move will impact the lives of Muslim women cannot be assessed in realistic terms today, but I am sure that future historians will view this law profoundly lasting impact on the promotion of gender justice in India,” Khan says.

Alphons, who has written two chapters in the book, highlighted the immense progress made in the highways and digital sectors. When Modi took over in 2014, there were only two mobile phone manufacturing units in India. As the Modi government changed the duty structure, India emerged as the second-largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world with over 200 mobile phone, components and accessories manufacturing units. 

Writing on India's Covid response, Sanjeev Sanyal, principal economic advisor, says, “India opted for a “barbell” strategy that combined hedging against worst-case outcomes on one hand, and step-by-step responses driven by a Bayesian updating of information on the other. This is why India did the full national lockdown despite obvious economic costs; it was just hedging for the worst-case scenario. It bought time to gather information and create capacity in order to have sensible response...”

Defending the redevelopment of the central vista, former civil servant OP Agarwal says the country's central administrative area needs increased capacity and significant modernisation given the technologies. “During the pandemic, there is an urgent need to create jobs. The central must spend all its resources to ensure purchasing power reaches people. There is no better way to do it than through jobs. This is exactly what the central vista project does: create lots of jobs.”

The book is a valuable addition to literature on the Modi government's intent and the work it has done so far. It, though, stops short of talking about the challenges ahead, and the work which still needs to be done. It will serve well the students, researchers, policymakers, historians, public policy practitioners.    

Book: Accelerating India: 7 Years of Modi Government 

Publisher: Oakbridge 

Pages: 338

Price: Rs 795

Religious revivalism takes many forms. Inside the no-holds-barred akhada of politics, it has seen the rise and rise of muscular ideologies, which have gone on to reshape public discourse. In the less-gritty, somewhat gentler world of popular literature, it has played midwife to the success of keen-eyed writers who read the market right.

Culling pages from revered epics, they did research of a fashion, and dramatised ancient stories to emerge with modern-day best-sellers. The country’s English language book readers, starved of such stuff for as long as they could remember, kept asking for more.

Society’s renewed interest in knowing more about a faith, which most of us had thought needed only to be practised, not propagated from the rooftops, has also led to an increasing number of authors training their sights on the book that lies at the heart of it all: the Gita. This is the most sublime battlefield dispatch ever. The life lessons it offers come not from the quiet recesses of a cave or an eerie mountain top but from ground zero, with conch shells proclaiming that battle will soon be joined.

As it turns out, the D Day message is richly layered and couched in Sanskrit—not the most widely spoken of languages of our time (according to Wendy Doniger, it always was an exclusive and elitist tongue). The result has been that across history, the floodgates have opened to a number of interpretations of the hallowed text. Into this noisy, contentious world steps Richa Tilokani with The Teachings of Bhagavad Gita.

Tilokani is self-confessedly not an authority on the subject—which is the equivalent of declaring herself a non-combatant in the heated battle between scholars who often turn rowdy when questioned by their peers. Hers is a quieter voice than the others we have heard. It is probably because her ambitions are limited to introducing the text to those who have been intimidated by the philosophical heft of the book. She confines herself to talking to us about each chapter and drawing the appropriate lessons from it. Passages are followed by a bulleted summary of what the reader could learn and an instructive paragraph on the benefits that would accrue.

It is almost like a tutorial for the soul, and you can’t ask for anything simpler. Tilokani’s main purpose is undoubtedly served, but in her hands, the ‘Song Celestial’, as Sir Edwin Arnold described it, seems in imminent danger of descending into a primer. As everyone knows, such entry-level tutorials leave no room for aesthetics or the compelling imagery for which the 18 chapters and 1,400 lines of verse have been widely hailed.

So if you prefer the message without the magic, the teachings minus the grandeur of thought, The Teachings of Bhagavad Gita would be a handy book to have.

Book: The Teachings of Bhagavad Gita

Publisher: Hay House

Pages: 226

Price: Rs 399

There is a never-ending curiosity about the reasons behind the souring of relations between the Gandhis and the Bachchans, who were more like family than friends before the bond between the two families broke. A book by veteran journalist and former M.P. Santosh Bhartiya seeks to dispel the mystery and claims that an incident related to the payment of college fees of Rahul Gandhi, who was then studying abroad, could have taken matters to a point of no return.

According to Bhartiya's book V P Singh, Chandrashekhar, Sonia Gandhi Aur Main, which was released recently, and which is a chronicling of important political events concerning the three leaders, Sonia Gandhi was extremely hurt when she found Amitabh Bachchan to be less than forthcoming in helping her out in the matter of payment of the college fees of Rahul after her husband Rajiv Gandhi's death.

Bhartiya writes in a chapter dedicated to the Bollywood superstar that Sonia had one day discussed with Amitabh the issue of payment of Rahul's college fees and urged him to arrange for it.

Amitabh, the book claims, replied: “The money has all being messed up by Lalit Suri and Satish Sharma. There is nothing left. But I will do something.”

Two days later, according to Bhartiya, Amitabh sent a cheque of $1,000 to Sonia. However, she returned the cheque to him, he writes: “Sonia Gandhi could never forget this incident and taking it to be an insult, she removed Amitabh from her life forever,” Bhartiya recollects in the book written in Hindi.

Bhartiya also writes about certain incidents that preceded the above event, and which had in an incremental manner built up the bitterness and mistrust between the Gandhis and the Bachchans.

According to him, Amitabh had asked Sanjay Gandhi to lend him Rs 20 lakh, but the request was declined. Bachchan had after the incident started distancing himself from Sanjay.

Problems had also crept up when V.P. Singh, finance minister in Rajiv Gandhi's cabinet, was perceived as a targeting Amitabh and his businessman brother Ajitabh. Rajiv, a childhood friend of Amitabh, was also uneasy about Singh's proactiveness in scrutinising the business interests of the Bachchans since an attack on Amitabh would be construed as an attack on him. Amitabh had crashed Rajiv's vacation in the Andamans in December 1986, after which Singh was moved out of the Finance Ministry.

In the wake of the allegations of financial irregularities against him, Amitabh, according to the book, wanted to resign from the Lok Sabha. But Rajiv felt it would be imprudent since Singh would then have contested the bye-election from Allahabad and won easily. As Rajiv tried to convince Amitabh not to resign, as per Bhartiya, one day, he came to meet him with his mother Teji Bachchan, who said that her son would not quit provided that he was made the foreign minister. Rajiv, writes Bhartiya, was stunned and just kept looking at the faces of Amitabh and Teji.

After Singh became prime minister and Rajiv moved to Ten, Janpath, Amitabh came to meet him. The meeting, writes Bhartiya, lasted barely ten minutes, and after Amitabh left, Rajiv said: “He is a snake.”

V P Singh, Chandrashekhar, Sonia Gandhi Aur Main

Santosh Bhartiya

Warriors Victory Publishing House

Price Rs 999; Pages 475

...The elders of the two households pronounced:

“Now, the boy and the girl may speak alone.” “Alone?”

“Yes… that means, in private…they must have something to say to each other… after all, things are not like they were in our day.”

“That is indeed true. Now let us leave them to it. What role do we have in here, in a private conversation?”

As both parties continued the celebrations in the background, the boy and the girl found themselves alone in the room. Raising her head which had until now been kept lowered with deliberate practice, the girl looked up at the boy. In his low- waist jeans and tight-fitting shirt, the boy looked rather stylish. Very slowly and with a great deal of trepidation, the girl asked:

“I…I have only one thing to ask you…may I?”

“Sure, why not. Ask right away," said the boy.

He had of course come prepared and was expecting a number of such questions. After a brief pause and a moment’s hesitance, the girl asked:

“How is your personal hygiene? I mean… bathing? Brushing? Change of clothes? What is your routine when it comes to these things?”

The boy was taken aback from this sudden question which came completely out of the syllabus.

“Please do not take this the wrong way…but this is all I want to know…I am adamant that the person marrying me must be someone with good personal hygiene…”

On hearing this bold response, the boy’s jaw dropped. And the girl, unable to bear the stench that came out of his open mouth, fell to the floor, unconscious. 

This is an excerpt from a short story written by Dr. Silvikutty, a writer from Kottayam in Kerala who served as a faculty of Malayalam in various government colleges in Kerala for over three decades. The story is ably translated by Jomy Thomas, a student of English literature for a book which is an interesting and intellectually stimulating compilation of revered works of renowned authors from across a spectrum of Indian languages translated largely by students from Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). 

German novelist and Nobel prize winner Gunter Grass once famously said, "Translation is that which transforms everything so that nothing changes." His words ring true and find inspiration among students of MA Literature from IGNOU who came together under the leadership of their professor Anand Krishnamurthy to bring out, 'Potpourri' - An anthology of poems and tales from India, published on July 23 and now available for purchase on Amazon. 

The book consists of 15 poems and 10 short stories translated from various languages in India of works by famous authors and eminent writers including Padramarajan, Paul Zacharia, O.N.V. Kurup, S. Joseph, Madhavikutty, Vylopilli, O.V. Vijayan, Sarweshwar Dayal Saxena, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, Amrita Pritam, Makhan Lal Chaturvedi and Fakir Sena Pati, as well as writings from a young dalit poet Chandramohan S. and short story writer Lakshmi Das.

Since time immemorial, translation has played a major role in helping literature cross the barriers of language, place and time. Without translations it would have been nearly impossible to celebrate writers like Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Gabriel Garcia Marques among others, writes professor Anand Krishnamurthy in the preface to the book. "Translation has also helped in archiving works across the ages. For instance, Aristotle’s renowned work on poetry and drama titled 'Poetics' was primarily written in Greek language, but over time most parts of 'Poetics' were lost while some parts were retrieved later. Students of English literature will be familiar with the work, as it is generally prescribed for their study of Literary Criticism and Theory. But most of them are not aware of the fact that the English translation of 'Poetics', whether by Janko or St. Halliwell or Gallimard or Butcher, were not based on the original work in Greek but of its available translation from Arabic (eighth century A.D.) It must be observed that this live nature has kept the domain of translation a raw field even today. It presents the modern-day translators with immense (unexplored) opportunities to delve deep into," tells Krishnamurthy to THE WEEK.

The book is a treat to read especially for the remarkable variety it offers in terms of the selection of the authors and their works. Each story or poem is short and crisp and that makes it easier to complete the entire book in one reading within a couple of hours at a stretch. Take for instance 'The Deserted Room,' a poem by Rashtrakavi (national poet) Padma Bhushan and Jnanpith awardee Ramdhari Singh Dinkar from Bihar which is beautifully translated by IGNOU student Vandana Jha. It is nostalgic to read Dinkar's work, and that too in English. Another student, Unnimaya A.S.  translates 'Cattle' (originally, Kannukaalikal) by renowned cartoonist, short story writer and novelist O.V. Vijayan who gave us  his masterpiece, Khasakkinte Itihasam (translated as The Legends of Khasak).  

At a time when students across the country and the world have taken to studying online, IGNOU classes too adapted to the new method of teaching with the help of online platforms. "It meant that I had a group of 30-40 students for MEG 14 (Modern Indian Literature in Translation) from varied parts of India. Our initial sessions were focussed on theoretical concepts of translation, blended with works prescribed for study. Towards the end of the first leg of sessions around May 23 this year, the idea of attempting translations of short vernacular literatures came forth. To my surprise, I had received more than twenty entries by the time the second leg started around June. In order to escape any copy right issues, it was decided to work on such vernacular works," says Krishnamurthy.  

A few IGNOU students such as Sreedevi Menon have taken to translate the works of newer and upcoming writers. In 'Through Me,' Menon translates a poem by Dhanya Unnikrishnan a post graduate degree holder whose first publication is a collection of poems written in Malayalam, titled, Mouna Mandranangal which appeared in 2019. The key highlights of her poems are the description of equations shared by man and his environment. "This is an opportunity of a lifetime given to us by our faculty at IGNOU. It helps us immensely as students of literature to understand the nuances of translation and apply them in our own work," says Sreedevi Menon.

Book: 'Potpourri' - An anthology of poems and tales from India

Edited by: Anand Krishnamurthy

Pages: 82

Price : Rs 150

‘It is a truth universally acknowledged’, as Jane Austen told us ages ago, ‘that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife’. There are many single men in Diksha Basu’s Destination Wedding, all of who are in need of a wife (possibly more than one). Correspondingly, there are many single women of equal means who are in need of a husband – again, often more than one. The result is that the book could pass off as a monument of smileys to the institution of marriage.

Actually, there is only one wedding that has, so to speak, its ‘i’s dotted and its ‘t’s crossed – that of Shefali (a cousin of Tina, the central character) and Pawan. But strewn across the pages are any number of near misses and near Mrs, re-marriages, and imagined marriages. The glut has also spawned ancillary industries – matchmaking for widowers and divorcees, and aggressive event managers whose field of specialisation is – no surprises – weddings.

Tina’s parents are happily divorced. Their happiness gets doubled when each of them seek and find a boyfriend and girlfriend respectively. As for Tina herself, she hovers tantalisingly between a handsome Australian and a handsomer Sid who lives in Dharavi. Tina’s close American friend Marianne is making up her mind whether to continue with her old faithful or get besotted with the groom’s dashing brother who is rumoured to have slept with all the women in the world’s capitals.

When the whole motley crowd gets together for a wedding in Delhi, you would think it would set off World War III. But Basu knows better, and the group gets along so well that Destination Wedding ought to be handed a Peace Prize – although it was shortlisted, but did not win, the Bollinger Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction.

Whatever their marital status of the characters as of this morning, one thing is common – they are all (with minor exceptions) mouthwateringly opulent. Basu’s world is populated not just with the ‘haves’ but the ‘have plentys’. Their interplay which includes cavorting casually with one lover while being nostalgic about another may sound unreal, but she is able to pull it off. Even if the fake does not look real, it certainly becomes funny.

Basu’s fluid style flits, like Tennyson’s brook, from one set piece to another, from sparkling conversations in New York to ditto conversations in New Delhi’s clubs, from covert courtships to one-night stands. The trouble with Basu’s brook, however, is that it seems in no hurry to get to the river. It is not as if the plot does not budge, it does move, but in many directions simultaneously. It’s only in the last lap that everyone realizes that the party is coming to an end and a closure would be in order. Proposing then almost becomes a pandemic.

One could hope wistfully, like so many of the suitors in the book do, for greater depth of character, for more meaningful social insight and for the author to have achieved a smoother resolution of her story. However, all is forgiven because, for the most part, there is a laugh in every page. It is also worth a read because when all is said and done, all the world’s a baraat.

Book: Destination Wedding

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Pages: 286

Price: Rs 334

A diabetologist and researcher par excellence, Dr V. Mohan has every right to blow his own trumpet. But in Making Excellence A Habit, his recently released autobiography, Mohan chooses to dwell on the power of grit, passion, empathy, and collaboration, the cornerstones of life, instead of celebrating or bragging about his accomplishments. 

''I felt that this would be a legacy I could leave behind for the younger generation, helping them to get the right work-life balance and learn how to achieve success without adopting shortcuts or devious methods,'' says Mohan, a Padma Shri awardee and chairman of Dr Mohan’s Diabetes Specialities Centre, Chennai. ''Making Excellence A Habit is not just an autobiography. It also deals with values in life and shares several pearls of wisdom which I've picked up throughout my life,'' he adds.  

The book is studded with anecdotes. He recalls an incident where the pharma industry came down on him after he wrote a letter to the Drug Controller General of India about the potential adverse effects of Pioglitazone, a widely used anti-diabetic drug, causing the drug to be banned in India. Mohan took that extreme step after three of his patients who were on Pioglitazone developed bladder cancer and reports of similar cases started emerging from other countries. Some of his colleagues also had cases of Pioglitazone induced bladder cancer. '' At that time, the Pioglitazone market was worth Rs 800 crore in India, and several companies were marketing it,'' he writes. Mohan was bombarded with hate mails. '' It was a dark period of my life,'' he says. After a month, the ban on the drug was lifted with certain clauses. As a precautionary measure, lower doses of the drug were recommended, the usage of the drug dropped from 40 per cent in 2004 to 4 per cent in 2008 and lawsuits cost the drug manufacturer billions of dollars. 

An ardent devotee of Sathya Sai Baba, Mohan believes that anything is possible through prayer. He writes about how Srinivasa Ramanujan, the late Indian mathematical wizard, would receive inspiration for his formulae by praying to Namagiri, the goddess of creativity. ''Together, faith and self-confidence can brew magic,'' he writes. The book has an entire chapter dedicated to the power of prayer, wherein he shares an anecdote of how he had a vision of a missing textbook placed on a sack of charcoal. 

''To this day, I have not been able to explain how the book got there,'' he writes. ''It instantly reinforced my faith that there is indeed a power which is beyond all of us, a power to which we can turn to for solace whenever we are in need.'' 

It took Mohan about two years to write the book. ''The most challenging part was finding the time to write it amidst my busy professional, academic, research and administrative schedules. But once I started it there was no looking back and I was determined to finish it,'' recalls Mohan.

Making Excellence A Habit is a delightful blend of science and spirituality. Mohan, a seeker with a spiritual bent of mind has much to offer for those who tread the uneven and meandering path of life. 

The mind does not readily accept the passing of a loved one. It recoils, rebels, and

in desperation, reimagines all that has happened – a hundred different keys to

open a slammed door that will not budge. When nothing works, it seeks refuge in a

fragile but deeply felt universe where deaths can be undone. Kamla Malik,

protagonist of Kiran Manral’s More Things in Heaven and Earth often exits the

world where she lost her husband in mysterious circumstances to inhabit one

where he is there to smile at her, pat her, pet her and call her ‘moonface’. It is not

an easy migration for the young woman, however, because as Eliot had put it,

memory mixes with desire. In Kamla’s case, the emotional vortex curdles into an

intoxicating, almost inflammable brew.

As a heroine battling to prevent herself from tipping over into the death spiral of

insanity, Kamla holds your attention. She claims to look for closure but could well

be seeking continuity. There is a past she cannot erase and a future she will not

enter. She has friends aplenty and at least some parts of a caring family but all they

do is accentuate her loneliness. That leaves her in her own space and her own time

zone. It is neither here nor there, neither now nor then.

Apart from a heroine, alternatively assertive and vulnerable, there’s a lot going for

More Things. Fear stalks the pages. When you get acquainted with the cast of

characters, you do not try to figure out their age but rather speculate how long it

will be before they die. Horror of different shapes and shades is everywhere – from

the attic in their hillside home, congested with family skeletons to an entire upper

wing in a Goan villa where ghosts have taken up permanent residence. Even when

the sun shines cheerily on contented palm trees or when lovers arch into each

other’s arms, you know it’s only a matter of time before the sinister gains the upper

hand again. The plot, straddling a guilty past and an ominous present is craftily

spun, and borne along on Manral’s lush prose.

Here is a filigree artist whose medium is words. While there is a story to tell,

Manral also has pictures to paint – of the place, the people and of the labyrinth

inside her mind. She is fastidious about detail, even if it means venturing into

beguiling byways that take the plot off the road. Riveting as these digressions are,

they come at a price. When you have an obsessive miniaturist in charge of the

narrative, the story cannot be rushed. Impatient readers may want out.

Well, it’s Kiran Manral, and this is her trademark style – whether she is tickling

your funny bone, or sending chills up spines. For those who prefer journeys to

arrivals and do not mind digressions before getting to destination, ‘More Things…’

is well worth the ticket.

More Things in Heaven and Earth

Publisher: Amaryllis

Pages: 290

Price: Rs 399

Renowned jurist Nani Palkhivala had been offered the position of the Attorney General of India in the 1960's. He said yes, but at night he suddenly had second thoughts as to how he could possibly fulfil that task and whether he would be doing the right thing by defending the government.

He phoned the law minister in the morning and said, “Sorry, I have to go back on my acceptance but I don't think I will be able to accept it.” A reason why the eminent lawyer declined the position was because he had a tremendous drive to work and he found working in the government as partly a waste of his time. 

The anecdote was recounted by the late Ashok Desai in a speech he had delivered at a function held to commemorate the birth centenary of Palkhivala in 2019. Desai's speech, as also those of other legal luminaries who participated in various functions held to remember Palkhivala's legacy, have now been collated in the form of a book. The collection of speeches and lectures titled ‘Rethinking Palkhivala – Centenary Commemorative Volume', edited by Maj Gen Nilendra Kumar, an eminent academician in the field of law.

Law veteran Soli Sorabjee, in his speech at one of the functions, recounted his first meeting with Palkhivala and what he learnt about his manner of functioning. “...I had briefed him in some matters. There was one thing I noticed. He came straight to the point. He was never laborious, never repetitive. His conference got over in 10 minutes.”

Sorabjee revealed that the solicitors were very upset about the brevity of the meeting, and they complained, “kya karta hai, 10 minute mai khatam kar diya, paisa khatam kar diya.”
“...but that was Nani Palkhivala,” said Sorabjee.

Former Supreme Court judge Justice Madan Lokur recounted that as a student of law, one of the highlights of those times was the hearing in the Kesavananda Bharati case, and he regularly went to the top court to hear Palkhivala's submissions. “Later I had the temerity to ask one of the learned judges on the Bench about why Mr Palkhivala was considered so great. The response was similar to the description given a few years earlier, that his submissions were brilliant, uncomplicated and eloquently enunciated,” said Lokur.

The book is a treasure trove of stories about Palkhivala, retold by some of the most eminent names in the field of law, which throw light on unknown aspects of the life and times of the jurist and also help understand better what is already known about him, especially his commitment to safeguarding the Constitution and his expertise in the less glorious field of taxation matters.

Rethinking Palkhivala – Centenary Commemorative Volume
Edited by Maj Gen Nilendra Kumar
Published by Oakbridge
Price 995; Pages 328

Gudumba in Telugu means illicit liquor. When Gaddar—poet, singer and revolutionary—notices how the ordinary folk enjoy their "gud", he refuses to castigate the drink as something morally reprehensible. And so, part of his song on Gudumba goes thus:

Only yesterday you met my people.

You got to know

all the secrets of the people

No I don't want you, girl

Little mother I don't want you

I don't want you, Gudumba girl.

I will drink the blood

of those who drink my blood.

Similarly once on his way to a performance, when the Telugu balladeer, considered one of the most prominent faces of grassroot struggles in India, saw some cowherds sitting and singing about toddy, he replaced some vulgar connotations in their song and it transformed into a kinship with "Jeethagadu" or bonded labourer.

When chants of 'Salaamun Halai' wafted out of a dargah, Gaddar learnt it meant 'salute to the dead' and a song was born:

Lal Salaam, Lal Salaam

Ya Rasool salamalaika

Ya Nabi salamalaika

Ya salawatula alaika

(Salawatula alaika is a salute to Prophet Muhammad)

This is how Gummadi Vittal Rao—popularly known as Gaddar, his non de guerre—paid homage to the common people who inspired his firebrand poetry. He took their songs, worked on them and then took it back to them, so they could change their lives. "The people are great poets. They are great artists. There is great poetry in their songs. There is life in their dialect," he writes in an essay in 'My Life is a Song: Gaddar’s Anthem for a Revolution' which brings to life, for the first time for English language readers, the beloved songs of one of India's greatest people poets. He is a cultural icon and a household name in Telugu society.

Gaddar is among the most well-known of the figures associated with people’s resistance movements in India. Born Gummadi Vittal Rao in 1947, in Tupran village of Medak district in what is now Telangana, he became an activist in his youth after dropping out of engineering college due to poverty. With a gift for singing and song writing, he travelled the road—for some time underground—reaching lakhs of people with his music, and became the cultural face of ‘rebellion’, the literal meaning of his nom de guerre.

With his inborn ability to sing, dance and write verses on the sorrows of the nameless and the faceless, he became the cultural face of the People's War Group, one of India's oldest militant revolutionary parties. He understood that the marginalised expressed their fears and anxieties in oral traditions of songs and folk dance.

Of the thousands of songs Gaddar performed, only a few were ever recorded in print. 'My Life Is a Song' brings together, for the first time in English translation, twenty-three representative songs, selected by his friend and fellow traveller, Vasanth Kannabiran.

Translated from the original Telugu with a keen eye for Gaddar’s unique style and delivery, this selection takes the extraordinary ‘anthems’ of a living legend of revolutionary thought to a wider audience.

In a powerful introductory essay, 'The Bard of The Revolution,' the translator distills the life and legacy of the poet in one pithy sentence: "The noted intellectual Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd says that if Russia produced a Gorky, China a Lu Xun, India has produced a Gaddar."

With his ability to captivate crowds and move them to action, Gaddar was unsurprisingly on the hit list of the cops. In 1997, he was shot at point-blank range in his own house. Although he survived the attack, a bullet continues to reside close to his spine. The translator does not miss the irony when she notes how the state provided him security back-up after this incident. "Twenty years later he still moves around with a security guard and a bullet safely lodged in his back," writes Kannabiran who is a poet, writer and campaigner for women’s rights.

Book: My Life is a Song: Gaddar's Anthems for the Revolution

Publisher: Speaking Tiger

Price: Rs 299

Pages: 146

Akash Verma’s Only the Good Die Young comes not far from its predecessor You Never Know, as four years is a relatively short time in a story telling journey. However, if like me, you remember only the broad-brush strokes of the first book or have not read it at all, the book makes for an interesting standalone read too, which is a definite plus.

The book is narrated in large parts by its three main characters. Each of them is flawed. Each is grey. And that is the strength and the weakness of Verma’s characters. They are identifiable but then their tropes can also be just as identifiable.

Characterisation is Verma’s strongest point. The book is set in Lucknow (very briefly when compared to its prequel), Mumbai and Delhi and if you have ever moved around in the circles that Verma locates his characters in, you will be able to take fair guesses about who the physical and/or the character attributes refer to. Some of these can be highly formulated though—the slimy politician or the ad agency head with a reputation.

Verma’s book is the kind you will turn to before a flight (increasingly rare these days though) or on a lazy afternoon. It is a quick read despite the darkness of its main characters. The language is every day. The pace is lightning. From the first page you are plunged into twists, each more convoluted than the earlier one. Some might be stretches of a rich, uncontrolled writer’s imagination taken too far. But as a character in the book says, “The kind of stories he is making up are so far-fetched that they can become serious fodder for Bollywood”— the book is tailor-made for adaptation as a web series or a film.

The greyness of Verma’s characters—the married man in a passionate relationship with a colleague, the professionally successful woman not averse to using a man to avenge herself, the female boss jealous of the attention a younger colleague attracts— comes without any judgements on their moral flaws. He delves into their motivations briefly and in a very matter-of-fact manner.

The story dives right into where the first book ended, without any need to build up a sense of anticipation. The bad (est) character returns to make the woman he once loved pay for his ‘death’. He is not averse to using his old mother to further his ends. As the woman looks for closure and fresh starts, the past of a difficult relationship comes to haunt her even as she gets entangled in another dangerous liaison. Her ex-lover is torn between the need to rebuild his marriage and the attraction, he still feels towards her. It is these lives which collide to create a brisk and ruinous tale.

Though Verma writes in his acknowledgment that the book brings an end to the story of the two main characters (and by extension the third), one cannot but help imagine a further twist in the tale that will keep the story going. And that is the mark of a story well told.

Book: Only the Good Die Young

Author: Akash Verma

Publisher: Penguin

Pages: 280

In the short story 'Chilli Powder', Gangamma is a fearsome, rich lady who has fields and orchards to call her own in Tamil Nadu. Everyone is in awe of her, except Panchayamma who is often found cutting grass and snagging mangoes from the old woman's fields only because it is barred. Panchayamma boasts of her conquests to the rest of the villagers and how she defies the grand old lady until one day, Gangamma catches hold of her stealing and throws chilli powder into her eyes. The feisty Panchayamma goes wild with rage and starts calling Gangamma "molagapoddi" with her friends.

After desperation for work and wages again leads Panchayamma and her acolytes to Gangamma's plantation to pluck cotton pods, the old lady unleashes the cops on them. What follows is an uproarious ride to the police station where Panchayamma snaps at the policemen and jauntily defends her pilfering with a nagging group of women. "We steal because that is the only way we will not starve, even though we need only a little bit of kanji," says Panchayamma even as the policemen refuse to stop the vehicle for her to take a leak. As soon as they reach the station, Panchayamma and the other women lift their clothes and start peeing there while standing. When the cops raise a stink, pat comes Panchayamma's response,"Ayya, one can hold back one's anger, but not one's piss.”

This is just one such specimen of sparkling wit and liveliness in 'The Ichi Tree Monkey: New and Selected Stories' by Bama, author of the acclaimed novel 'Karukku', which established her as a distinct voice in Dalit literature. The English translation of 'Karukku', Bama's childhood memoir' won the Crossword Prize back in 2001. Bama, born to parents who were labourers, teaches in a primary school in Uthiramerur in Tamil Nadu and certainly has a firm grip on the foibles and idiosyncrasies of her geography. She is also the author of the acclaimed novels Sangati (1994) and Vanmam (2002) and the short story collections Kusumbukaran (1996) and Oru Thathavum Erumaiyum (2003).

In her new collection of 15 short stories, Bama brings her irreverent, incisive gaze to bear upon rural Dalit lives in a Tamil village setting and finds much humour and pathos in their small, everyday uprisings. By turns funny and sorrowful, the stories affirm the resilience of spirit that doesn't ever wallow in victimhood. And the English translation deftly enlivens local idioms and zingers. A few delightful examples include: "When he smiled, his teeth glittered like a kenda fish thrashing in the sun", "with a paunch like a swollen toad stuck to a coconut leaf" or "That woman got so furious she was swaying like an elephant calf gone mad".

From the story about a daughter lost to cunning exploitation to dismantling of hierarchies by calling an upper caste landlord a swine to a no-holds barred prankster beheading snakes and garden lizards, the stories never lose their vitality and vividness.

Book: The Ichi Tree Monkey by Bama

Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books

Pages: 154

Price: 299

In the 2000s, it was not uncommon to find a female Star TV executive primping at a beauty salon during duty hours. And on company tab. For head honcho Peter Mukerjea, workplace atmosphere and ethos were significant parameters, and he spared no expense. “Quite often I compensated people more than what they expected because only then could you get them to constantly deliver great results,” Mukerjea told THE WEEK.

This anecdotal reveal, and many other insights that pepper Mukerjea’s just-released memoir Star Struck, help shed light on his rather legendary run in India’s corporate echelons. Helming Star India from 1997 to 2007, Mukerjea transformed the then also-ran TV network, and its flagship Hindi entertainment channel Star Plus in particular, into an industry leader.

Of course, mum’s the word when it comes to those problematic travails in his later life—like being implicated in the Sheena Bora case. There is not even a whiff of a mention of the ‘mum’ in question. Instead, Mukerjea’s book focuses, very much in a horse-with-blinders-on mode, on his days at Star TV.

“It would not be an honest response if I said this was not intentional,” he admits, adding, “I was very clear in my mind that this was about my professional life and nothing else.”

Not that it is such a bad thing. Mukerjea’s nearly decade-long stint heading Star India was not just a corporate success story; it literally transformed India’s television industry, and in the process, India itself.

In Star Struck, Mukerjea takes readers on a fly-on-the-wall trip through this momentous evolution. From the moment he realises he is up for the plum post while in a taxi in Hong Kong to flying into Mumbai, the umpteen meetings, recruitments and strategising—all goes into an amorphous whole as he works on reinventing the Star juggernaut in India. The brief from global media mogul (and boss) Rupert Murdoch is succinct—break into the top slot, and make a tidy profit while at it.

It was not going to be easy. When he took over, Zee TV ruled the roost in the Indian television firmament and the Star network, despite its early-mover advantage, huge coffers and brand equity, remained a distant third in the lucrative Hindi language category, with Sony coming second. While he dwells a little on the other channels under his brief, the ‘main course’ in this book is very much Star Plus. Or rather, how he helmed its transformation from an urban channel beaming international soaps like The Bold and the Beautiful to sindoor-and-sari sagas like Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi.

Not to forget the crore craze he let loose. Mukerjea takes the reader behind the scenes to the board meeting where Rupert Murdoch upends his plans for Kaun Banega Lakhpati by raising the prize money a hundred-fold.

Mukerjea’s very Brit subtlety, fortified with an intellectual sharpness, comes through in the way he narrates the many crises which peppered his stint at Star. The incidents are detailed and crisp, the recounting in reported speech leaving no doubt as to it being his version of events. In trying to downplay the momentous issues he faced—right from getting government permissions, dealing with the cable and distribution lobby and, most vexing for him perhaps, getting the overlords at the Star headquarters in Hong Kong on board his many plans—Mukerjea’s apparent aversion to dramatising the events is amply evident.

Now that his professional life story is done and dusted, will he get around to writing about the truth behind the infamous murder? “Personal elements of my life, I believe, should be privately held anyhow,” he suggests. “There are a couple of thoughts in my mind which I have yet to crystallise completely and to see how they evolve.” Then he says tantalisingly, “You never know, it may be sooner than one imagines.”

Star Struck: Confessions of a TV Executive

By Peter Mukerjea

Published by Westland Business

Price Rs699 (hardcover); Pages 278

All those lives that we do not experience are just tall tales to us,” wrote Benyamin in his famous novel Goat Days. After reading The Sickle, this would probably be the first thing that would come to your mind. That we live in a country of extreme inequalities; that our ruling class is not ready to see or believe the sufferings of the impoverished. Written by acclaimed Bengali writer Anita Agnihotri, The Sickle is a highly political novel that empathises with the unprivileged in this country. Agnihotri places the novel in the drylands of Marathwada. The novel starts with the plight of farmers forced to migrate from the drought-prone Marathwada and work for low wages in the sugarcane fields and mills of Satara. Many go there with nothing but their sickles, and the payment to them are made at a “per sickle” rate. The title of the book thus becomes a reference to the dehumanisation and exploitation faced by the farmers. But the novel does not just stop with the farmers’ crisis. It presents a series of overlapping social problems—female foeticide, rape culture, internal migration, feudal power relations and casteism—in its narrative. The novel underlines the fact that it is women who have to suffer the most whatever the social evils are.

The Sickle makes incisive political and sociological observations about contemporary India. For instance, it takes a swipe at the ultranationalism in the country when it says, “The bigger the statue you can build, the more of a patriot and a devotee of valour you are.”

The Sickle is a daring novel, considering the growing intolerance against writers, filmmakers and intellectuals who portray the darker sides of India. The novel was originally published in Bengali and translated to English by Arunava Sinha.

The Sickle

By Anita Agnihotri

Published by Juggernaut

Price Rs479; Pages 260

Ioan Grillo’s book is about the trafficking of illegal US guns which wreak havoc in Latin America killing innocent people and making monsters out of teenage kids. Grillo maps the flow of the “iron river” of illegal guns from the US to cartels in Mexico, Central and South America. It is estimated that more than 200,000 guns are trafficked over the US-Mexico border every year. According to the Mexican law enforcement agencies, about 2.5 million guns had been smuggled into Mexico from US in the first decade. The illegal US guns are the main factor in the gruesome violence in the "Northern Triangle of Violence" in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

Grillo has brought out the symbiotic relationship between guns and drugs. The two fit together like a lock and key. The gun black market is thriving and working in tandem with drug trafficking. Illegal flights which take drugs to US return with guns to Mexico. The business is highly profitable, thanks to the elastic prices of both products on the black market. One could exchange a few wraps of heroin with a junkie in Maine for a $500 handgun which could be sold to a Mexican for 2500 dollars. The gun black market provides a tool that allows gangsters to control those drug profits. The two products are often bartered. 

United States has an estimated 393 million guns in civilian hands. The gun industry adds at least a million more every year with production and imports. The American gun companies profit from the black market in guns. The gun lobby has fought the policing of the gun black market, defending the loopholes and achieving limits on law enforcement of firearms. The result is that it effectively defends the criminal market in guns which are illegally supplied to Latin American cartels

Mexico has only one gun shop for the entire country of over one hundred million population. It is run by the Mexican army and is located in a defense department building in Mexico City. There is rigorous background check of the applicants for guns.  The shop sells about nine thousand guns a year to the public. Of course, a few more thousand (both from their stocks as well as those seized in raids) are sold illegally by the army and police officers. But this is very small compared to the 200,000 arms which come into Mexico illegally from US.

Across Mexico’s border, there are about 23,000 gun shops in the four states of US. The state of Texas alone has 10,810, the highest in US.  California has 7,530 shops and Florida 7,201. These are the main sources of illegal supply to Mexico and Latin America. The total number of Federal Firearms Licensees across the nation is about 135,000. To put this in perspective, the US has 10 gun shops to every Macdonald.

There is hardly any restriction on arms purchases in US. There is no legal limit on the number of firearms one can own. A buyer named Uriel Patino had purchased 723 guns for a total of $575,000, according to a document of the Department of Justice. In 2000, a firearms dealer in Ohio sold 182 guns to a man, including 85 in a single purchase. These straw purchasers ( buyers on behalf of others) get paid $70 per pistol, $100 per rifle, and $500 for each .50 caliber. It is estimated that the sales to Mexican gangsters made $127 million a year for the U.S. firearms industry. So, the last two decades of Mexico’s drug war could have meant well over a billion dollars in revenue.

The gun control laws do not apply to private sales.  No paperwork or background check necessary. According to an estimate, over 20 per cent of gun sales are through such private transactions. One can walk into the gun shows held every week in the border states and buy an AR-15 with no paperwork.

The US has strict laws against drug trafficking and routinely arrests and puts in jail hundreds of thousands of small-time vendors. But it does not have specific law against gunrunning. There are gaping loopholes and bizarre restrictions on policing arms, making important parts of gun law unenforceable. This is exploited by the black market to maximum effect. The Department of Justice states, “There is no federal statute specifically prohibiting firearms trafficking or straw purchasing.” Instead, the law has dozens of smaller firearms offenses, such as “engagement in firearms business without a license,” “knowing sale to prohibited person,” and “knowing shipment or transport of a stolen firearm.” American gun culture has helped forge a bizarre labyrinth of gun laws in which the black market thrives.

There is no searchable database for guns in the United States because the law won’t allow it. If a car is in a hit and run, a police officer can type the license plate into a computer and get the name of the owner. But the gun code prohibits “any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions or dispositions be established.” So, they can’t put those records into a database. The gun lobby has been working relentlessly against proposals for databases.

The US government and the public wake up on the gun issue only whenever there are mass shootings in schools and malls. There is some noise and calls for gun control. But soon the issue is forgotten and the guns continue to flood the market. There does not seem to be hope for any effective controls for gun trafficking, given the power of the gun lobby and the entrenched gun culture.  This means the continuation of trafficking of US guns which will keep killing of thousands of Latin Americans. Unfortunately, the Latin Americans do not take up the issue with US publicly and forcefully.

But the US continues to force Latin Americans to take actions to prevent production and supply of drugs. They have made some Latin American governments to resort to aerial chemical spraying of coca farms. The Latin American farmers protest that the aerial spraying affects other crops and pollute the soil. But the US does not care. They also force the Latin American governments to prioritise drug interdiction with deployment of police and army and other resources. The US infiltrates the Latin American security forces and intelligence agencies in the name of the Drug War and through supply and aid of helicopters, arms and equipment. But the US refuses to acknowledge the ‘supply side’ in the case of the deadly gun trafficking.

There is a Latin American conspiracy theory which holds that the US is deliberately allowing gun trafficking to cartels to make Mexico weak and unstable, and so easier to control. The theory was articulated in a Mexican newspaper editorial headlined “Guns to Destabilize Mexico.”

The US War on Drugs is a failure and it has become more as a game of deception. It has failed to reduce the American consumption of drugs. The only gain for US is that it has managed to stigmatise Latin America and destabilise the region. The US government, Hollywood and media have misleadingly portrayed Latin America as the cause of the drug problem by focusing exclusively on the supply side.  They blame Pablo Escobar and El Chapo as the villains for production and trafficking of drugs into US. But the truth is that drug is basically a consumer driven business amounting to an estimated 150 billion dollars a year. It is the continuing American consumption which drives the drug trafficking.

What the US does not talk about is the trafficking of illegal guns from US which kill more Latin Americans than the number of Americans killed by drugs. These illegal American guns have made the Mexican and other cartels in Latin America as deadly forces traumatising the societies in the region. The US does nothing to stop this arms trafficking.

Ioan Grillo’s book reveals to the readers the ugly truths covered up by the US government and the dangers posed by the gun lobby beyond the American border. Bolsonaro and his sons, who are admirers of NRA, are said to be taking the advice of NRA to lose gun control in Brazil. Grillo, who is a British journalist, has given an authentic and unbiased account of the gun trafficking, based on his coverage of Mexico in the last two decades. He has witnessed first-hand police and military operations, cartel killings, severed heads and bodies and mass graves. He has interviewed cartel assassins, drug and gun traffickers, gun manufacturers, security officials and political leaders. He has written two more books: El Narco: The bloody rise of Mexican drug cartels; and Gangster warlords: Drug dollars, killing fields and the new politics of Latin America.

One cannot but agree with Grillo’s comment “Drugs are consumable—they go away. Guns don’t go away.”

The author is an expert in Latin American affairs

2020 will be remembered by most of us as the ‘Year of the Virus’. Everyone is talking about Covid-19, but the irony is that no one seems to know much about it conclusively. This is where Dr Vishakha Shivdasani’s new book, Covid and Post-Covid Recovery, might be of help. She charts out a six-point plan to expedite recovery from the virus and reduce chances of complications from it.

Shivdasani (popularly known as DoctorVee) says that one of the causes for complications arising out of Covid-19 is chronic inflammation. It is the “common denominator in patients with comorbidities, be it obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease or other lifestyle ailments”, she writes. Most of her recommendations in the book are lifestyle modifications that are designed to reduce this inflammation and thus fight Covid-19 and its complications.

Shivdasani has helped countless patients reverse lifestyle diseases, like obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease, through this plan, which covers diet, gut health, sleep, exercise, stress management and enhanced healing with supplements. So does it work for Covid and post-Covid recovery? “Considering the volume of patients I see, it was easy for me to connect the dots,” she says. “To reverse chronic lifestyle diseases, we take care of inflammation. I found remarkable success among patients when I extrapolated it for Covid-19.”

But the true utility of the book might be that it is not just applicable to Covid-19 patients, but to all of us who want to improve our lifestyle and take care of our health. She teaches you things like the right technique to do slow breathing, how to stimulate the vagal nerve—the longest nerve in the body—as an antidote to stress, how to ensure undisturbed sleep and which food have anti-inflammatory properties. The book is a veritable encyclopedia of useful information like this. As Shivdasani says, if you can make your body more resilient, you can fight whatever is out there, whether it is Covid-19 or something else.

The author can be contacted on vishakhashivdasani@gmail.com or on her Instagram handle @doctorvee

COVID and Post-COVID RECOVERY: DoctorVee’s 6-Point Plan

By Dr Vishakha Shivdasani

Published by HarperCollins

Price (ebook) Rs99; pages 55

Mizoram Governor P.S. Sreedharan Pillai is known for his copious literary output. A lawyer by profession and a politician by passion, he has authored 120 books on varied subjects ranging from politics to legal issues and even the arts. While he has penned 14 poetry collections in Malayalam since 2004, the year of the pandemic saw him dabbling in English verse. The result is a slim volume dedicated to his current posting, titled Oh, Mizoram. It is Pillai's first collection of English poems.

Attuned to the natural wonders of the northeastern state, Pillai summons the historical hills of Lushai in his titular poem 'Oh, Mizoram' and how he gathered fortitude from the mystic Mizo hills, calling to mind the restorative powers of nature poetry. In the 'Raj Bhavan Garden', the poet-politician in his brief moment of solitude at his official residence envies Thoreau's life in the woods until the still, slumberous afternoon is set abuzz with roving bees again. The quietude of nature coexists with enlightenment which is more immaterial as in the poem North-East Calls, "Cast aside the clouds of darkness/Break the night and enjoy the silver dawn!"

While the poems amply illustrate Pillai's deeply felt enchantment with his immediate surroundings, it is also worldly wise in the way it zooms out to touch subjects as diverse as the coronavirus and 'broiler chicken' politics. This expansive range is unavoidable as Pillai wears multiple hats; he's been a successful lawyer, a noted orator, philanthropist and thinker. The foreword in the book compares his love of nature to be as compassionate as that of Shelley, Keats and Wordsworth. Taking time to reflect, organise and express one's interior landscape after a day's hard-headed political commitments is no mean achievement and Oh Mizoram attests to that discipline and commitment.  

Never judge a book by its cover is a maxim for anyone who is serious about reading. Priyanka Chopra Jonas’s memoir Unfinished is, however, the exception to this principle. On the cover, her name in bold and her picture loom larger than the actual title, making no pretence about what lies inside: a brand with flash and little else.

The book is vain, vapid and, worse, dull. In the past few years, memoirs have acquired a much coveted place on a publisher’s list. Always in-depth, often revealing, even the reluctant politician has realised that to sell, you must tell. No longer just an air-brushed Insta version of life, a book with meat has almost become a rite of passage for a celebrity. Everyone does one. Sharon Stone is writing one. Karan Johar’s sold briskly. Chopra’s, however, is like seeing glossy holiday pictures on Facebook. Captured carefully, where the lighting is great and everyone looks happy.

A superstar actor, Chopra has displayed spunk in her acting, but her memoir offers none. It is also written for an American audience. Chopra helpfully explains why she stayed with her grandparents when she was young, and with her aunts and uncles while in high school in America. “I know this may seem strange to some, but it is simply a cultural thing. In India, taking care of one another’s children is just part of who we are. It is seen as duty and a responsibility, not an imposition,” she writes. Her explanation of India—a sort of tweet-style simplification—is peppered through the book. There is also the not-so-subtle message of gender disparity, which she weaves in as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.

Unfinished focuses heavily on Chopra’s growing-up years, her relationship with her father, her family life, being sent to “sort of Ivy League boarding schools with a touch of posh finishing school” to learn discipline and the Miss World experience. She also describes her American high school experience where she hid a boy in a cupboard—her only description of her love life apart from that with husband Nick Jonas.

Her growing-up years are brought alive in minute detail, but again, the story is told through rose-coloured glasses. As is the first step she took towards becoming a celebrity—applying for the Femina Miss India pageant. The call to come to Delhi comes at a time when she is to take her pre-board exams. No one quite knows how to tell her father. Till her mother comes up with a plan—to put on some music, be nice and open champagne. “Champagne was always involved whenever Mom had to convince Dad to agree to something, and this night was no exception,” she writes. Growing up in 1990s India, where coffee shops were still rare, champagne on demand seemed like a fairy-tale existence. Yet, Chopra’s story has this dreamlike quality of an escapist Bollywood film of the past.

Her career in the Hindi film industry, too, is firmly in the safe zone, with no names and no juicy details. Her stand against sexism and her career highlights, like Barfi, have been barely mentioned. Her acting in Quantico is fleshed out in more detail. In the long list of people to be thanked, she names not one co-actor. She does thank filmmakers who have shaped her. For her fans in India, it is deeply disappointing. But for those who are beyond just her fans, Unfinished lives up to the title. It does not do justice to an actor who has ambition and a real story to tell.

Unfinished

By Priyanka Chopra Jonas

Published by Penguin Viking

Price Rs699; Pages 244