One of the most effective ways to hone your writing skills is simply to keep writing! There are many opportunities for a writer these days to take part in writing competitions the world over, thanks largely to the power of the internet. A budding writer keen on improving his skills and image as a writer will seize the most appropriate opportunities as often as he can. This does not mean, of course, that one participates indiscriminately in every writing competition one comes across. That would be a stupid thing to do and extremely counter-productive. Continue reading “On Writing Competitions & More”
I was astonished to hear that “The Red Sari” (originally titled, “El Sari Rojo”) by Javier Moro was for sometime banned by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) when it was the ruling Government in India. If anything I thought their opponents, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) who are the current ruling dispensation may ban the book for being altogether too flattering about the central figure of the book, Congress President Mrs Sonia Gandhi nee Maino.!! The book was released in English in India in 2015 when it was eagerly awaited as a book known to have been banned makes people want to read it all the more. Whispers about its contents when it was not available in India made the book more mysterious and enticing than it eventually turned out to be. What kind of scandals were in the book that it had to be banned, one wondered? Frankly, there turned out to be none. Continue reading ““The Red Sari” by Javier Moro.”
I have always been partial to stories written in the first person, and “The Passenger” by Lisa Lutz is one such. The beginning of the story is dramatic enough to grab your attention. A young woman, Tanya Dubois who tells her story in the book sees her husband, who is much older to her, fall to his death. Was she involved in his death? She assures us she wasn’t but who is to know the truth? Tanya flees from the house grabbing just a few essentials. You would think she does this so that she is not blamed for her husband’s death. You could be right but she fears more than anything else that the police may dig into her past and investigate what she hopes she has buried behind her forever. Continue reading ““The Passenger” by Lisa Lutz”
The mystery surrounding Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose has fascinated millions of Indians including me over the decades. It was with great interest therefore that I bought, “India’s Biggest Cover-Up” by Anuj Dhar. Considered Enemy No. 1 by the British Raj, Bose was branded a traitor for his links with Hitler ‘s Nazi Germany and the Japanese. His Indian National Army (Azad Hind Fauj) founded in 1942 was portrayed as being a rag-tag bunch of losers, many of whom were Prisoners of War who changed sides to fight alongside Bose. This was the story propagated by the British but in reality they feared him more than any other prominent Indian leader of those times. We now know that Bose’s role in India getting independence with the end of the British Raj in 1947 was considerably underplayed.
This story continues to haunt many in India even after the parents of the 14-year-old schoolgirl Aarushi Talwar, found murdered in their own home in Noida in May 2008, are now in jail, sentenced to life imprisonment for killing their own daughter. Is this case which took the country by storm in those days such an open and shut case as some have made it out to be? Were the parents foisted with the charge of murder? Did the CBI team hastily conclude that the parents of the dead girl had killed her just to close the case and get laurels for themselves? Was sufficient attention and scrutiny paid to the servants, Krishna and his friends, who were key suspects at one time? Were they let off despite considerable evidence being found against them? Did the Talwars jeopardize their own case by getting conflicting legal advice from different lawyers thereby diluting their stand in the process? Was the evidence produced in court doctored by those who wanted to see a verdict against the Talwars? Continue reading ““Aarushi” by Avirook Sen”
When I mentioned that I was reading her book, “Kashmir: A Tragedy of Errors” the noted writer Tavleen Singh regretted that the book had not been printed after that first edition way back in 2000. For most of India, and this is my educated guess, the image of Kashmir is that of a strife-filled state which has been at the heart of bitterness between India and Pakistan ever since Partition took place in 1947 and the British walked away leaving the two newly founded countries to figure out what to do with disputed territories on their own.
I found Tavleen’s book quite fascinating because as an experienced journalist she has the knack of getting straight to the point and though at times the book tends to become a bit repetitive, there is a lot of new insight on Kashmir to readers. I, for one, had not realized the importance of a few events described in this book, such as :
- When the Pakistani raiders first attacked the State of Kashmir, most of the Hindus fled and it was left to Sheikh Abdullah’s party to stem the tide till the Indian military forces stepped in.
- That Dr Farooq Abdullah was a fun-loving medical doctor settled happily in the UK till he was pulled back home by his ailing father Sheikh Abdullah to take over what was his legacy in difficult circumstances
- That the Central Governments in Delhi had a huge role to play in mis-governing the troubled State, bringing matters to a head through the act of vengeance by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in dismissing Farooq Abdullah’s Government in 1984 or the widespread rigging in the elections of 1987.
Events like these led up to the major problems that erupted in the Kashmir Valley in the late 1980’s. It is surprising that the then Government did not forsee how some of the actions they took, like the Farooq-Rajiv Gandhi Accord of 1986, were doomed to fail the way they were designed and implemented.
It was troubling to read in this book that the media too was terribly biased and wrote only what the powers that be wanted them to write. Most major journalists ( Tavleen was an exception) didn’t go to Kashmir at all but wrote up their reports sitting in the comfort of Delhi based on inputs sent in by local stringers, many of whom were biased or incompetent, Not surprisingly, the rest of India had to settle for what appeared in the media or what they conjectured could be the real situation in Kashmir.
An interesting book and I wonder if Tavleen will write a sequel now that we are in 2016, or are things in Kashmir still the same as they were in 2000, or earlier, or even going back to 1947? Highly recommended for history buffs and anyone with an interest in contemporary Indian politics.
I recall the excitement with which I read Ravi Subramanian’s debut novel, “If God Was A Banker.” It won for him the Golden Quill Readers’ Choice Award in 2008 and we knew a promising writer had made his mark in India. After that he has written several books, largely centered around an environment he knows best, multinational banking with all its diverse facets. He is, after all, a graduate of the prestigious Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore and worked in big name global banks for two decades or more.
“The Newsmakers” is a fast paced read by Lis Wiehl, and Sebastian Stuart, published by Thomas Nelson. The story opens with a Staten Island ferry crashing into the crowds in New York in a horrific accident. This is witnessed by chance by television reporter Erica Sparks, who has recently joined GNN, Global News Networks, a media business conglomerate. She has come up the hard way from a rough childhood in a poor family in rural Maine. The beautiful Ms. Sparks worked her way through Yale and is as talented as she is ambitious. Continue reading “The Newsmakers by Lis Wiehl”
Historians, writers and the American people, at large, have given more attention to the Bay of Pigs incident and the Cuban crisis during John F. Kennedy’s presidency than the happenings in South East Asia, especially the Sino-Indian War of 1962. This was only to be expected as the Cuban crisis saw the two global super powers, the United States and the then USSR virtually on the brink of a nuclear war. However, as Bruce Riedel writes in his book, events in far away South Asia nearly dragged the US into another conflict, this time between the two most populous countries in the World, China and India. Riedel has therefore very aptly named his book, ” JFK’s Forgotten Crisis: Tibet, the CIA & The Sino-Indian War.” This will soon be published by the Brookings Institution Press.
Continue reading ““JFK’s Forgotten Crisis: Tibet, the CIA & The Sino-Indian War” by Bruce Riedel”
Since President John F. Kennedy was closer to my times it was natural that I read many books about him. He was, for many of us, a childhood hero and I still remember November 22, 1963 and the newspapers headlines that day. However, for many of a previous generation, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the first and only President of the United States to hold office for an unprecedented four terms, from 1933 till he passed away in 1945, was the ultimate Democrat leader. I had of course heard about FDR especially his term of office during the Second World War, but not knowing too much about his early days, it was with considerable interest that I read, ” Franklin D. Roosevelt: Road To The New Deal” by Roger Daniels, Charles Phelps Taft Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Cincinnati, published by the University of Illinois Press. Continue reading ““Franklin D. Roosevelt: Road To The New Deal” by Roger Daniels”
Prem Rao : Stories from a Story Teller 