Love by Toni Morrison

An utterly brilliant book of love and hate sitting inseparably, two sides of an indivisible coin.

The story of Christine and Heed two childhood friends, who had a stake driven through their friendship by strangest of twists of fate and adults too consumed with their own desires and hurts to care for anything else. It is the story of the stamina that hate can develop once it is allowed to enter our beings. And how its slow fire always goes on consuming everything around it, the hater more than anything else. It is also about the power of love - no matter how dormant - to douse that smoldering hate, just as a bucketful of sugar can 'caramelize' a slow fire.

As in The Bluest Eye, Morrison invades several souls with consummate mastery and rides feelings and emotions with complete ownership. And as she goes on chiseling her characters - the rapacious Junior, the honorable Ronnen, the lustful Mr Cosey who owns the hotel (and the centre of this story), the mysterious L and, of course the duo of Heed and Christine.

It is a story that teases one truth after out after another till the entire suspense is unraveled in the end. The imagery is evocative and powerful, each comparison a delight.

A powerful book indeed.      

Levels of Life by Julian Barnes

I must admit that initially I did not entirely get this book. “You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed” begins this short novel. And more than two things are put together in the story, indeed more than two stories that do not intersect, except in the passing. What does develop is a theme; of longing and the perennial ache of the aftermath of loss. And to carve this tale of love and loss The Levels of Life relies on stories from the early days of ballooning and aerial photography. In the very end, Barnes moves into a most luminous terrain, the one inside him, and unfolds a devastating landscape of grief.

The depth of the feeling of loss, the stark relief in which it is etched, the universality of emotion it evokes even in someone who has not experienced it firsthand, the bottomless pain that must alternate between a dull throb and sharp infliction – both equally unbearable – are so obviously autobiographical. Indeed the inside cover informs us of the early passing away of Barnes’ wife Pat Kavanagh who married him in 1979 and died in 2008.

Unlike Barnes' The Sense of an Ending, the story here is not linear. Indeed, it is largely bereft of a plot but still flows like a silent stream.

It is clearly a work of deep and abiding love. Such is the heartfelt-ness of the contours of pain that one feels envious of the love that must have been shared in its wake. The accolades from critics are fulsome and surely well-deserved. And even though I could not get the point of the story early on, I came away deeply moved in the end. 

Anticipating India - the Best of National Interest by Shekhar Gupta

I have been a loyal reader of National Interest columns (Indian Express) by Shekhar Gupta. Week after week, I have enjoyed his brilliant analysis of our contemporary political landscape. His style is always simple - but never simplistic.

Anticipating India is a collection of 'the best'of National Interest. It traces the period from the days of the NDA government right up to the Anna Hazare movement. It is a succulent slice of history on one platter!

I was struck by how accurate Shekhar Gupta's predictions turned out and how perceptive he was in his analysis, even if some of it then appeared to be on a shaky terrain. He had started predicting the decline and demise of the UPA II government when - to put it in an analogy from his favourite sport of cricket - the opening batsmen had barely taken guard. Over the last five years, he persisted in the belief that the UPA was on a self-destruct mode. It was chronicle of a death foretold!

Of course he appears to have got a few things wrong. He considered the selection of Amit Shah as organizer of BJP's UP campaign a blunder because Mr Shah was known to be a divisive and polarizing figure. The last elections proved this prediction hugely wrong! To be fair, the reason lay in the fact that Mr Shah and his party appeared to have re-invented themselves and approached issues far less divisively than anyone thought was possible.

This is an excellent book for anyone who understands the nuances of Indian politics and wishes to make sense of the last two decades. 

What This Blog is About

Since May 2009, in five years, I wrote 93 blog posts in five indifferently and sporadically fed blogs.

Under Blue African Skies perhaps gave me the greatest satisfaction, written as it was from Lesotho. It was a lean blog and had a leaner readership.

Blurs and Bright Spots began as a this-and-that blog but soon acquired an identity - a collection of book reviews.

The Summing Up was meant to sum up my experiences of life. It ran aground, not unlike many other projects I have undertaken.

A Hitch Hiker's Guide to Inner Self was meant to trace my inner journey.

Balis' Blog was about our family.'I doubt if many in the family read it!

I decided to merge all those posts into this blog - for record.

Self-Deception: India’s China Policies – Origins, Premises, Lessons by Arun Shourie

Focus on India’s relations with China never recedes to a point where the contents of a book on it become anything less than riveting. Add to it meticulous research and scholarship of an author like Arun Shourie and you have an absorbing read on your hands. Self-Deception: India’s China Policies – Origins, Premises, Lessons turns its spotlight largely on the history of our diplomatic handling of China, especially by the first Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru. It does traverse the more contemporary ground too, albeit briefly.

The central theme of the argument has been this: our handling of relations with China has been extremely inept and self-deluding. We have lived – and continue to do so – in a bubble of denial, often ignoring signs of clear and present danger. In the 50s, we somehow convinced ourselves that there was no pending border issue with China, that somehow our supplicant acceptance of China’s annexation and absorption of Tibet had bought us a permanent seat on the table of friendship, that the Chinese leadership was dependent on our sagacity for learning the nuances of diplomacy and that every Chinese aggressive or hostile move needed to be explained away by us lest the country became anxious! It appeared that we had forgotten that self-generated ‘hope’ should hardly be the sole pillar of foreign policy.

The book solidly relies on documentation. Letters from Prime Minister Nehru to the Chief Ministers, minutes of meeting between Nehru and Chou En Lai and speeches in the parliament have been quoted extensively. There is little to redeem us in those documents.

Many years ago I had read Neville Maxwell’s India’s China War. The conclusions that Maxwell had reached regarding our diplomatic handling of the border dispute were exactly the same. This book provided me with a gloomy confirmation.

Have things changed since? I wish there were reassuring signs but neither the book nor media reports provide us with any. Only recently we described a blatant Chinese intrusion thus: “one little spot is acne, which cannot force you to say that this is not a beautiful face... that acne can be addressed by simply applying an ointment.”

When Arun Shourie was the editor of the Indian Express, he was known for outstanding investigative journalism. Indeed, he was the pioneer in that form of print-media, one who unerringly dug up facts and presented his reports without fear. Later, even as a Union Minister he was known for his competence and probity. All this is reflected in his writing.

The book is highly recommended for anyone with an interest in the trajectory of relations between China and India – and the course correction that ought to be applied.

The Accidental Prime Minister: the Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh by Sanjaya Baru

At the very end of his book, Sanjaya Baru, who worked at close quarters with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as his Media Adviser during UPA 1 from 2004 to 2009, draws analogies from the Mahabharata to summarise Dr. Manmohan Singh’s success as a leader. He rubbishes the analogy that Manmohan Singh had been like Shikhandi – the half man half woman character who shielded Arjuna during battle with Bheeshma; it was common knowledge that the latter would not strike against a woman and could it be that Manmohan too shielded his party from attacks with stoic silence? This characterisation was initially attributed to BJP’s Yashwant Sinha. Baru disagrees. He also wonders if Manmohan Singh could be likened to Dhritrashtra, the blind king who unhappily presided over his strife-torn kingdom, ignoring the wrongs. Going further on this mythological journey, Baru favours a comparison of his boss with Bheeshma himself; for all his brilliance, Bheeshma had been mocked by Dropadi for taking refuge of finer points of religion when he could not defend her while she was disrobed in public. Was Dr. Manmohan Singh the Bheeshma who presided over scams while maintaining the highest standards of personal probity due to a misplaced sense of loyalty?

For five years, Sanjaya Baru was privy to a slice of history as it was made. His book reveals what he saw though, as many have pointed out, the overall picture of Prime minister Manmohan Singh that emerges is not radically different from the popular perception of him as an honest and dedicated man, self effacing, humble and decent, whose failure lay in lack of display of leadership qualities and who allowed the Party (‘the Family’) dictate the narrative. To Baru, the subservience of this scholar was baffling and he concludes that it was a stratagem for his own political survival. This may be an unkind deduction but Baru makes it with a hint of exasperation and sadness.

But contrary to the popular uproar in the media, the book is not entirely unkind to Dr. Manmohan Singh. On the contrary, in most part, it unreservedly extols the Prime Minister and credits him both the victory of UPA 1 in 2009 and the Indo-US Nuclear deal. Baru is mostly affectionate in his tone towards Manmohan Singh and severely critical of those who were malevolent in their intent towards the Prime Minister. Among the many who do not come out well from these pages are Karat of CPM, Mani Shankar Iyer, Prithviraj Chavan, Natwar Singh and, of course, the Family.

The book makes an attempt to redress the balance of history in Manmohan Singh’s favour. But that alone is not clearly the purpose of the book because it also shines light on Manmohan Singh’s warts and moles. To a lay reader, it appears to be a balanced account, though this is hardly a characterisation that anyone from Congress would agree with. Many in the ruling party have already painted Baru as a back-stabber, someone who chose the period of General Elections when the Congress party is battling for survival, to release this book. I can’t agree – isn’t that how books are timed for release?

The Accidental Prime Minister – a rather accurate title – is an easy read. It is not a story with dramatic twists and a red-hot plot. All the same, it is a gripping account and provides part of the explanation why the Congress is staring down the barrel today.

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Khushwant Singh (1915-2014)

In 1978, Khushwant Singh wrote an article in the Illustrated Weekly of India, whose eminently successful editor he was, on the passing away of his father Sobha Singh. In 'On Losing a Parent' Khushwant Singh celebrated the fact that his father died nursing a scotch. 

I was 20 and drawn to every word he wrote. I penned him a short letter of condolence and posted the Inland letter care of the Times of India address on Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg in Delhi. I ended the letter with a suggestion that since I could visualise how busy he must be, the letter need not be replied. In any event, given the state of postal service and the perception I had of 'celebrities' I was sure that no mail was ever likely to arrive in return. 

I promptly received a reply that ended with the exhortation for the Guru to shower his blessings upon me. After this, we exchanged a couple of mails and I finally met him in Delhi when he was the editor of 'New Delhi', a magazine that subsequently failed to respond to his Weekly magic. A little earlier, the management of the Weekly had ejected him and handed its reins over to the anti-septic M V Kamath, a move that drowned the iconic magazine without a trace. 

He was courteous and direct. We spent 15 minutes discussing this and that - surely completely inconsequential talk for him. A sample: "Which is the main tribe where you are in NEFA?" "Sir, Mishmi." Änd which religion do they follow?", he asked. I was stumped. "I don't think they follow any religion Sir." "That is very healthy.", he said very seriously.

He saw me off at the door of his office and left an indelible mark on my young mind. 

I met him again in 1999 and when I reminded him of that meeting, though he hesitatingly claimed to recall, I suspect he was only being nice.

Khushwant Singh has moved on. He was 99. He missed a century but I am certain a century or more will miss him. To me he was one of the most delightful human beings of our times, a real character who spoke his mind, courted controversy without fear and lived his life to the fullest. 

Light has just gone out of the Bulb. 

RIP Khushwant Singh (02 Feb 1915 - 20 Mar 2014).

 

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David and Goliath – Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell always makes for entertaining reading. He takes an idea – or two – and proceeds to demolish conventional wisdom built around it with a barrage of carefully selected statistics and persuasive anecdotal narrative. And there is a tantalizing element of self-help woven into the theory; remember the prescription of devoting 10000 hours to one’s chosen pursuit to reach the end of the rainbow, in Outliers? It is sociology’s pop version at its appealing best.

But does all he has to say stand rigorous scrutiny? The best that can be said is that the jury will always be out on some of his hypotheses. In the meanwhile, the believers and laymen like me will eagerly lap up his offerings. That is how his previous works ‘The Tipping Point’, ‘Blink’, Outliers’ and ‘What the Dog Saw’ were received and the book under review ‘David and Goliath’ has similarly found enough readers to scale every prominent Bestseller List.

The central theme of the book is that the ‘weak’ need not lose – indeed their disadvantages are not what they appear to be. It is entirely a question of understanding what an advantage or disadvantage really is, the limits that power of the strong has and following asymmetric tactics to grapple with such an adversary.
The book is built around these ideas and to me, at times it appeared that the stories are being forced to fit the theme; indeed some of the tales did not appear to have much to do with the core hypotheses. A case in point is the narrative of the insurgency in Northern Ireland and law and order in some of the badlands of urban America.

The books tilts at conventional logic and comes up with a few interesting and credible arguments. One is the proposition that contrary to common understanding of parents and educationists, small classrooms are necessarily not beneficial for its students. Indeed, Gladwell argues that lack of competition and peer support to weaker children militate against the desirability of small classes. There is a great deal to be said for the desirability of interaction among children and its value to education. Also, teachers of small classes do not automatically pay more attention to each student; human nature is to adapt and work less in such circumstances. Gladwell also points out that very large classroom are not beneficial either; they are chaotic and render children nameless and anonymous. He quotes figures from the performance of either variety to underscore his conclusions. A median strength is preferable, he says. Could it be about 25 children per class in the Indian conditions?

Similarly, the book argues that joining the more ‘prestigious’ schools and colleges is not always an advantage. There is a great deal to commend the theory that to be a large fish in a small pond does much more for the growth of an individual than to be reduced to being a small fish in the large pond of an elite college. A student who joins an Ivy League college on merit might soon find that in the new environment of heightened meritocracy, he or she is just an average player. Not only can self-esteem be a casualty, many students actually drop out of their preferred courses and take up other streams of education. The elite schools do more to ‘ássure’ wealthy parents that they are providing the ‘best’ possible education to their children that they do for the children themselves. Indeed, the end result could well be quite the opposite of the intended objective.

Gladwell also professes the applicability of the inverted U-curve in many situations where something that appears to be an advantage hits the law of diminishing returns and even becomes counter-productive over time or when pressed beyond a point. He gives examples of law-enforcement vis a vis application of stringent laws (as in the ‘Three Strikes’ law first introduced by the State of California to stem the tide of crime) as one of the examples.

Finally, if you need an occasional fix of pop-sociology and want to quell that desire to understand the way slices of our world function, I would recommend David and Goliath – Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants.

Incidentally, this was the first book I ever ‘heard’ through the earphones as I walked every morning. The experience was enjoyable and made the walks easier. But I did find that once in a while my mind tended to wander and had to be nudged back. Initially that bothered me till I reminded myself that even when I ‘read’ a book, my concentration is rarely a hundred percent!

The Siege by Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark

Armies and security agencies the world over are in love with the phrase ‘lessons learnt’. Others too have embraced this expression whenever the need to forget our follies arises. After all, it has such a comforting ring to it, an assurance that we will not foul-up again and that while we may not have been wise in time in the past, we have pored over our errors with such sharp introspection that we need not worry about the future. And lest the less industrious have trouble digesting the syrup of our labour, we have reduced it to bullet points that lend themselves to adorning a single slide of a PowerPoint presentation.

Is this a frivolous introduction to the review of a very serious work that recounts a terror attack of most vicious kind that India – and most of the world – has ever seen? Perhaps not. Because what alarmed me most after I put down this remarkably researched book is the sickening realization that, arguably, we have done little or nothing since the attack that was called India’s 26/11, to repair the infirmities of our system.

The author duo has already been celebrated for their work ’Meadows’, an account of the kidnapping of ten Western backpackers in Kashmir by terrorists. The present work ’The Siege – The Attack on the Taj’ is another work of similar painstaking and meticulous research. Using credible sources, it reconstructs events right from the planning of the attack in Pakistan to the journey of the terrorists across the Arabian sea and the horrendous mayhem they inflicted on unarmed civilians in Taj, Cafe Leopold, the Chatrapati Shivaji Railway Terminus, the Chabad House where Jews lived and other places. The story is chilling in its rendition and every word rings of authentication.  This is a minute by minute account of the events; the mobile conversations between the terrorists and their handlers in Pakistan, the courage of a few unarmed and inadequately armed policemen, the great character shown by many including the manager of the hotel who lost his entire family and the failure of our decision making apparatus are among the many sub-plots that illuminate the narrative. A Note on the Sources in the end is most instructive.

Nearly 300 pages in length, it is an easy read. The authors mostly stick to reporting (brilliantly) and adopt a mostly non-judgmental approach that steers clear of pontificating.     

The book is highly recommended for everyone.