BookRackTag Archive | sandhya | BookRack

The Agenda of the Apprentice Scientist by Nicole Ostrowsky

sandhya — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 09:40:15 +0000

The Agenda of the Apprentice Scientist
Written by Nicole Ostrowsky
Illustrated by Theresa Bronn
Translated from French by Radhika Viswanathan with Gillian Rosner
Published by Universities Press
Ages 7-70 (as it says in a foreword by none other than CNR Rao.)

As parents, we come across this experience almost daily- whether in the sphere of academics or otherwise- our children ask us something, and sometimes (OK, a lot of times) it is something that we may not be very sure of ourselves. When I am faced with such a situation, I often try to explain the concept to my daughter, regardless, but smart cookie that she is, she sees through the attempt. Then I have to admit I need to learn more about / think through about the topic at hand, before I can explain it to her to her satisfaction.

So the acid test of whether one has understood something or not is if one can explain something to a child in clear, simple terms. That is just what this book, written by French physicist Dr Nicole Ostrowsky, who believes in a hands-on approach to education, is about.

There is one new idea / question / problem to ponder on for each day of the year, so we are introduced to 365 concepts, some known, some unknown. All fun to work on. The experiments involve easy-to-obtain-at-home articles, and some days it is just an observation that needs pondering on.

Of course, true to her interest in the field, Dr Ostrowsky deals more with physics here, with quite a bit of spillover into mathematics and the other basic sciences. Each day’s topic eases into the next days at many places, with a whole spectrum of ideas discussed over many days.

My favourite features, the quirky illustrations and the relevant quotes on each page! On the Aug 24 page-look above- there is a quote by Jean Loup Chiflet-“It was so hot that the thermometer read: see the next column!”

A real lifesaver for parents, and fun for children.

Book cover image courtesy flipkart.

Behind Closed Doors: domestic violence in India – Edited by Rinki Bhattacharya

sandhya — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:45:00 +0000

Behind closed doors
Domestic Violence in India
Edited by Rinki Bhattacharya
Sage Publications
Reviewed by sandhya

This is a collection of narratives by 17 women who are survivors of domestic violence, and who have been courageously come out with their stories, not only in print, but also in the documentary film Char Diwari. Both have been made by Rinki Bhattacharya, herself a domestic violence survivor. The heartrending narratives bring home to us how widespread the problem is, and how no privilege can save a woman from a violent situation.

‘Behind closed doors’ are the operative words- as these incidents were believed to be in the sacrosanct family, and as such not brought out in the public. They still aren’t, for the fear of social stigma. Even the apathy of the powers-that-be can be guaged by the fact that the documentary has been aired only twice, that too late at night, when its audience would not be very wide.

There are also essays by experts, feminists and workers in the field of domestic violence, who have tried to make sense of the phenomenon. How could women be marginalised like this in a country which worships the female form of Shakti, as the Goddess, or Devi? One essay argues that in certain communities, where the Devi is worshipped in the original form women still have a better position. As Sanskritisation took place, in the post-vedic period, a ‘spousification’ of this Devi took place, putting the husband above her, and fettering her feared unbridled sexuality. This is seen more in the upper classes, where the need for financial independence of the wife is not felt. There is also a busting of the myth that educated financially independent women do not face violence, and the reasoning behind that.

Further essays also talk about the Domestic Violence Bill and its loopholes, the introduction of a clause for ‘mandatory counselling’ that aims to preserve the family structure in its present form instead of redressal to the victim of violence. Police attitude towards women and their hand in the actual violence, lack of political will or even the attitude of politicians towards these issues play a big role in law-making, enforcement and any justice.

There is also a roadmap for support to victims at the end of the book. A must read for those working in the field and those seeking an understanding of and a way out of the mess.

A Traveler’s guide to the Solar System by Patricia Barnes-Svarney

sandhya — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 07:15:00 +0000

A Traveler’s Guide to the Solar System
Written by Patricia Barnes-Svarney
Illustrated by Gilbert Ford
Published by Sterling Publishing

Reviewed by sandhya.

The tour stars at the innermost planet- Mercury- and continues to the outer ends before returning to Earth. So what facts do we learn about our stops?

A Mercurian ‘day’ lasts 176 Earth days- a long enough time to plan all the sightseeing you want to do here. But what do you see? As there is no atmosphere here, the sky is always black, even though it is day and the Sun occupies a quarter of the sky! And if you feel like a game of golf, your hit could put the ball into orbit! But all that if you are dressed to stand the extreme temperatures- around 537 degrees Celcius in the day versus minus170 degrees in the night! All because of a lack of an atmosphere and proximity to the Sun.

Travel on to Venus, which looks so beautiful in our sky- and you’ll never think of it in those terms again. Temperatures of above 450 degrees, thick, sulfuric acid clouds above an atmosphere that is mostly carbon dioxide- so thick that it exerts pressures of more than 90 times that on our Earth– walking through that is likened to walking through maple syrup. Add to that multiple volcanoes that dot the surface, with lava flows everywhere–Oooff! I’m feeling stifled just by imagining it! Your sense of direction would go for a toss, too, as the heavens seem to rise in the west and set in the east- Venus spins in a direction opposite to that of the Earth.

It goes on this way with fun facts about each planet on the way, their moons, the asteroids- leaving us in no doubt that our Earth is our only home. One place that we have to take care of if we are to survive.

This fun book reminded me of an exhibit in our local science museum, where one can find out one’s weight on different planets- with astonishing results. Illustrated beautifully with full colour pictures in glittering paints, and with full colour actual photographs sourced from NASA, it is a complete guide to our Solar System.

Crossposted.

Kalpana Chawla: India’s first woman astronaut by Dilip M Salwi

sandhya — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 08:21:00 +0000

Kalpana Chawla
India’s First Woman Astronaut
Written by Dilip M Salwi
Published by Rupa & Co. under the Charitavali series.

Reviewed by sandhya.

On 1st February, 2003, as the world watched in disbelief, the spacecraft Columbia turned into a fireball and disintegrated in the sky, 16 minutes away from a safe touchdown after a fortnight in space. All 7 astronauts aboard were killed. Among them was 41 year old Kalpana Chawla, born in India on 17th March 1962, and who had joined NASA as a full astronaut in 1998. This had been her second foray into space.

This biography is a tribute to the memory of Kalpana Chawla, a small-town girl from Karnal, Haryana, who followed her dream and became the first Indian woman astronaut, and the first Indian to be a full member of a NASA team that went into space on a mission.

Born in a place that does not really celebrate the birth of girls, Kalpana struggled against many prejudices, even in her own family, to get an education, and then a higher education- on her own terms. At every step, she had to face the mindset that holds girls back from flying high enough to reach their dreams, and succeeded beyond all expectations.

She went on to obtain a degree in Aeronautical Engineering, then applied to and secured admission for further studies at the Department of Aerospace Science and Engineering at the University of Texas, Arlington, on a scholarship. It was then that her father was convinced, and supported intead of obstructing her.

From then on, Kalpana did not look back. She single-mindedly went after her childhood dream of becoming an astronaut and reaching for the stars.

This lucidly written biography by science writer Dilip M Salwi is peppered by photographs provided by Kalpana’s family, teachers, colleagues, husband Jean Pierre Harrison and NASA- even those taken of her in the spacecraft.

As Kalpana had written in her last email to the students from her alma mater in India from the space shuttle, “The path from dreams to reality does exist. May you have the vision to find it, the courage to get onto it and the perseverence to follow it.”

Letters from a Father to His Daughter by Jawaharlal Nehru

sandhya — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 12:02:00 +0000

Letters from a Father to His Daughter
Written by Jawaharlal Nehru
Published by Puffin Books, Penguin books India
Ages 8+ yrs

Reviewed by sandhya.

A father and his daughter. The bond has to be seen to be believed!

By the nature of his work in the struggle for the freedom of India, Nehru was often away from his family, and his daughter was away at boarding school. Letters being the prime means of communication at the time, Nehru wrote these, which, according to the foreword written by him, were ‘personal letters addressed to a little girl, ten years of age.’ They, however, speak of many things. In the preface, written in 1973, Indira Gandhi writes, “they deal with the beginnings of the earth and of man’s awareness of himself. They were not merely letters to be read and put away…they taught one to treat nature as a book.”

The letters speak of the beginnings of the universe, the formation of the earth and its landforms, of pre-history, the beginnings of mankind, the migration of human beings- he shows great learning and vision in his conclusions- “It may be that the German and the Negro are descended from different types of men, but some time or other they must have had the same ancestor. The differences must therefore have come in by the process of adaption to their surroundings…so we find that people’s complexions are the result of the climate they live in. They have nothing to do with the worthiness or goodness or beauty of a person.” Explained wonderfully in this vein in language easy enough for a 10 yr old to understand.

He goes on to speak of races, religion- early beliefs and faiths, religions as we know them now, languages- the beginnings of communication by making meaningful sounds, of making meaningful marks leading to writing, of the relationships of the different languages of the world. He speaks of civilisation, the division of labour - leading to the patriarch- which led later to kings and kingdoms. And of ancient civilisations all over the world. About trade and travel.

He speaks of the coming of the Aryans to India, and the Ramayana and the Mahabharatha- I loved the simple way in which he has explained the gist of these great epics- again, putting them in an interesting perspective.

Of the Ramayana, he says, “The Ramayana, as you know, is the story of Ramchandra and Sita against Ravana, king of Lanka, that is now Ceylon…it may be that the story of the Ramayana is really the story of the fights of the Aryans against the people of the South whose leader was Ravana.”

And the Mahabharatha- “It tells of a great fight between Aryans and Aryans. But apart from the fight, it is a wonderful book, full of great ideas and noble stories. Above all, it is dear to all of us because of that jewel of a poem which it contains–the Bhagavad Gita.”

The book comprises 30 letters in all, short, independent reads each, or read in a sequence. Each is a story lucidly told, a father’s affection for his daughter coming across in each. These letters were written over the summer of 1928, and retain all of their freshness for every child who has the opportunity of reading them. They have to be, of course, read in the context of terminologies used in the early 1900s, some of which might not be politically correct today.

This 2004 edition by Puffin is hardcover, printed on crisp white paper, and an easy-on-the-eyes font. With a fresh foreword by Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Nehru’s great-grand-daughter.

A logical follow-up to this book would be Nehru’s Glimpses of World History, which was written from October 1930 to August 1933, as letters addressed from prison to his 13-16 year old daughter, published much later.

In the Land of Invisible Women by Dr Qanta Ahmad

sandhya — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 16:37:00 +0000

In the Land of Invisible Women.
Written by Dr Qanta Ahmad
Shree Book Publishers
Reviewed by sandhya.

Dr Qanta takes up a medical post in Riyadh. She gets an unparalleled insider’s view of the almost mythological medieval practices in the Saudi Kingdom. She is unusual in that she is a woman professional of Pakistani origin, born and bred in Britain, with medical education in the US. However, she soon finds out that the fact of her being a woman colours every experience in her erstwhile home. It begins at the airport on her entry into the kingdom, where a mere escort, male, sent by the hospital peremptarily takes charge of her passport and she has to cover herself up in that stifling black shroud- the abbayah- making her invisible.

As a doctor, she gets to interact with the commoners from whom her patoents come, as well as the ‘intellectual glitterati’ who comprise her contemporaries. Some of whom have royal connections.

She soon realises that all we hear of the inequalities, and more, is true. Among her experiences she tells us of a female TV presenter, Rania, who is regularly beaten up by her husband- for being a famous face. She talks about women stalked by the Mutaween- religious police- who are omnipresent. She talks about how her women patients’ relatives are more worried about them being veiled than about them getting the right treatment.

The dependency and helplessness of the women, even educated ones, because they cannot drive, cannot go out without a malke escort, cannot go out with a male not related to them by blood or marriage, cannot take any financial or educational decisions without the permission of males in authority, cannot be considered natural guardians of their childre. Something that was the case in another book, Not Without my Daughter, written by Betty Mahmoody. This book chronicles Betty’s escape from an abusive marriage, her fleeing with her daughter, whom she could not legally take with her under her husband’s country’s laws.

THE OTHER SIDE OF SILENCE: Voices from the Partition of India by Urvashi Butalia.

sandhya — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 08:42:00 +0000

Pic courtesy flipkart

THE OTHER SIDE OF SILENCE
Voices from the Partition of India
Written by Urvashi Butalia
Published by Penguin Books

Reviewed by sandhya.

Urvashi Butalia, the writer, has impressive credentials. Along with Ritu Menon, she set up Kali for Women, the first feminist press in India, in 1984, and later, Zubaan Books. Born to in Ambala, India, to parents who were refugees from West Punjab, now in Pakistan, she grew up hearing stories of the Partition, which tore apart the Indian subcontinent at the time of its freedom from British rule.

She began her research as a process of making sense of her family’s personal tragedy. One thing led to another, and over time she realised that what ‘history’ tells us of the Partition are the bare political facts: tales of warring political parties and the British involvement in the whole gory process, the loss of property and lives, the statistics of the largest mass migration in recent history and violence in the riots between the Hindus, the Muslims and the Sikhs caught in the unfortunate event.

There was not much data on the renting apart of the closely enmeshed fabric of society and the actual sufferings of the flesh-and-blood people caught in the crossfire. The feminist in her also became aware of the huge conspiracy of silence (this term has also been used in reference to the victims of that other regrettable horror of the same time, the Holocaust) that enfolded the suffering of those considered to be of ’not much account’ and therefore on the margins of citizenry- the women, the children and the harijans.

“But the ‘history’ of Partition seemed to lie only in the political developments that led up to it. These other aspects – what had happened to the millions of people who had to live through this time, what we may call the ‘human dimensions’ of this history — somehow seemed to have a ‘lesser’ status in it. Perhaps this was because they had to do with difficult things: loss and sharing, friendship and enmity, grief and joy, with a painful regret and nostalgia for loss of home, country and friends, and with an equally strong determination to create them afresh. These were difficult things to capture ‘factually.’ Yet, could it be that they had no place in the history of Partition? Why, then, did they live on so vividly in individual and collective memory?”

Ms Butalia takes us through these events as pieced together from first-person accounts of survivors. The stories seem fantastic, the violence, the bloodiness ant the loss inexplicable, as does the almost mythological account of a society where the different religions had lived together in harmony, love and trust. Surely something had gone seriously wrong somewhere for the anger to have erupted as it had, killing and maiming millions, and creating a legacy of communal disharmony, and an almost pathological enmity between the two countries which were once part of one whole. A whole that had effectively driven their colonial rulers away.

The feminist in the writer notes some very interesting aspects of the problem. Even the interviews were necessarily taken in a family setting, where men did most of the talking, and women were often silenced. While men spoke of the politics, the killings, the violence, the women’s experience of Partition was largely defined by the death of children, abductions, sexual violence, honour killings, forcible co-habitation/marriages with their abductors, their making peace with it, especially after children were born of these relationships.

During their interviews, Ms Butalia tried to listen to the unsaid, the silences, the sudden breaking-off of the narrative, the nuances. “In my work, the more I looked at women’s voices and found them inserting themselves into the text, the more I realised that the silences did not exist only around women, but also around others, those whose silences have been even less important to society. The search for a history of women was what then led me to a search for a history of others. The voices of women, of children, of untouchables, to me provide not only a different perspective on the history of Partition, but they also establish this history as a process, a continuing history, which lives on in our lives today in a variety of ways.”

Then there was the ultimate insult to injury- the Abducted Persons (Recovery and Restoration) Act, 1949. A lot of this has been pieced together from accounts of social workers who were actively involved in the operation. Ostentiably to recover abducted women and children and return them to their families, the Act would not take into account the women’s choice in the matter, something that all citizens were given upto the late fifties. After being abducted, these women often got assimilated into those families, bore children out of those relationships, but were torn from these children when they were ‘recovered’ to return to their families of origin. The original families would often refuse to accept these ‘children of sin’ which were left with their abductor-fathers. Quite often these children ended up on the streets with the other children who had been displaced or orphaned in the Partition. Both the women and children were refused the ‘choice’ that citizens of both countries had at the time.

First-hand accounts by some of these children, adults at the time of interviewing, underscore the same conspiracy of silence. Many of them glossed over their accounts, unable as adults to relate their memories of the horrors. Some of them, like a Sikh survivor who was just 9 at the time of Partition, had memories overshadowed by one particular incident- the death of their own familiy’s hands of almost a hundred girls and women to ’save’ their honour – an incident immortalised in the book and later movie Tamas.

In fact, most of these personal stories have been found to a large extent in a multitude of short stories and novellas written by many noted authors who have lived through the Partition- Amrita Pritam (Pinjar), Saadat Hasan Manto (Toba Tek Singh, Kingdom’s End and other stories), Gulzar (Raavi Par and other stories), Khushwant Singh (Train to Pakistan), Bapsi Sidhwa (Ice-Candy Man), Bhisham Sahni (Tamas), and more. Many of these stories have been made into film, reaching a larger audience. Many bollywood movies, too, speak of the Partition or ‘Batwara’ as it is called in Hindi.

History, as told in history books, however, sticks mostly to the bare facts and statistics of the Partition. ‘The other side of silence‘ tries to address this deficit in a more factual way, that can be corroborated, than the fictionalised accounts. Showing us that the fiction is not a very long way off reality.

More than twelve million people left their roots and migrated, about ten million of these crossing the western border. Around two million died in the violence. An estimated 75,000-1,00,000 women are thought to have been abducted and raped by men of religions different from their own (and indeed sometimes by men of their own religion). An estimated 50,000 children were born to the abducted women, an an unaccounted number of children were abandoned or simply lost. ”People travelled in buses, in cars, by train, but mostly on foot in great columns called kafilas, which could stretch for dozens of miles. The longest of them, said to comprise nearly 400,000 people, refugees travelling east to India from western Punjab, took as many as eight days to pass any given spot on its route.”

Ms Butalia has very honestly admitted that her work does not represent the whole of the history of Partition, but is a very personal history, her reading of the interviews she took. She also candidly admits that it is probably a very one-sided view of the whole thing, as by 1984, when she began her research, it was no longer possible to obtain access to those on the other side of the border, and cautions communal groups from using her research to reach their ends.

Here are some more excerpts from the book.

A Poem for CRY- an anthology.

sandhya — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 08:43:00 +0000

Pic courtesy infibeam

A Poem for CRY
Favourite poems of famous Indians
Compiled and edited by Avanti Maluste and Sudeep Doshi
Published by Viking: Penguin Group
Foreword by Amartya Sen

Reviewed by sandhya.

Human emotion can be a tricky thing. At once overwhelming and finely nuanced, it is a slippery being. It becomes difficult, sometimes impossible, to express what one wants to say, what one is feeling. Sometimes one does not want to express one’s feelings, but just clarify, validate, what something nebulous that one feels is. Sometmes one is in search of that perfect punch line that is just there…at the tip of one’s tongue, but elusive.

Poetry is the refuge of all such souls. Sometimes a few lines express so well what one has not even admitted to oneself that it makes us wonder – how did the poet know so well? And then one has one’s favourite poet, favourite poems.

Amartya Sen says in his foreword – “If one can find the right poem, quoting someone else can be as much an expression of one’s deeper self as anything one can write oneself. This is a remarkable collection not only for the beauty and reach of the poems themselves, but also for what it tells us about many people who have been active in one walk of life or another, since the selections allow us to have a quick peek into their minds.”

A Poem for Cry is an anthology of favourite poems by what sounds like the Who’s Who of India. Adi Godrej, Rahul Dravid, Gulzar, Sachin Tendulkar, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Indira Hinduja, Anjolie Ela Menon, Sri Sri Ravishankar, Nandan Nilekani, Aparna Sen, Kiran Bedi, Shah Rukh Khan, Amartya Sen, Lata Mangeshkar, Tarun Tahliani, Vikram Seth, Zubin Mehta, Jayant Narlikar, Kiran Majumdar Shaw, Dom Moraes, Rahul Bajaj, Amitabh Bachchan, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, Medha Patkar, Mulk Raj Anand, Derek O’Brien, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Justice Y. V. Chandrachud, Fareed Zakaria, Sonia Gandhi, Shyam Benegal, Pandit Ravi Shankar, Azim Premji … You get the picture?

Some of the poems in this anthology?

Daffodils by William Wordsworth. Mulk Raj Anand, Vishwanathan Anand. Karan Johar.
If (If you can keep your head when all about you) by Rudyard Kipling. Lord Bagri. Farzana Contractor. Rahul Dravid. Adi Godrej. Parameshwar Godrej.
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. Manvinder Singh Banga. Harsh Goenka. Uday Kotak. Azim Premji.
Epitaph on a Tyrant by W.H.Auden. Shyam Benegal.
Footprints In The Sand by Mary Stevenson. Dr Indira Hinduja. Jyotiraditya Scindia.
Abraham Lincoln’s letter to his son’s teacher. Shah Rukh Khan.
And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou. Malavika Sangghvi.
The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning. Naseeruddin Shah.
Speak Gently by David Bates. Brinda Somaya.
Where The Mind Is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore. Tariq Ansari. Rahul Bajaj. Nana Chudasama. Aamir Khan. Anand Patwardhan. Aruna Roy. Prannoy Roy. Mallika Sarabhai. Viren Shah. Kiran Majumdar Shaw. Kavitha Krishnamurthy Subramaniam.

And many more.

The anthology does not limit itself to poems from English. There are poems in Hindi, Marathi, Urdu, Gujarati, Bangla, Tamil, Sanskrit. I was thrilled to find the Gayatri Mantra recommended by Nandan Nilekani. These poems are printed in the original followed by an English translation.

Quite a few poems were not known to me, as were a few poets. Some intrigued me enough for me to do a search for more poetry by that poet. A learning experience.

This copy was borrowed from a friend. It is certainly a book I’ll want to buy for my own collection. The copyright is held by CRY :Child Rights and You. All profits will go to them.

Crossposted.

HANA’S SUITCASE by Karen Levine

sandhya — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 06:35:00 +0000

Pic courtesy infibeam

HANA’S SUITCASE
Written by Karen Levine
Published by Jyotsna Prakashan, by permission of Second Story Press

Reviewed by sandhya.

An estimated 11 million people were killed in the Holocaust, of which about 6 million were Jews. Bare statistics. Since then, many stories of those killed and of the survivors have come to light, bringing home the horror of it all, how many ordinary and extraordinary lives have been lost.

Hana Brady would have been just such one faceless statistic.

Our book begins in Tokyo, Japan, in the winter of 2000, when an ordinary looking tattered suitcase from Auschwitz arrives there. On it are these words painted in white- HANA BRADY, 16 May 1931, WAISENKIND (orphan in German). It was sent here from Auschwitz on request by the Tokyo Holocaust Education Resource Centre.

Pic courtesy:
Tokyo Holocaust Education
Resource Centre

Who was Hana Brady? What was her story? Fumiko Ishioka, the director of the museum, sets out to find out. This is the story of her journey to find out all about the girl, which takes her all the way from Auschwitz to Nove Mesto, in the former Czechoslovakia, where Hana’s story begins.

A happy family of four- the parents and brother-sister, George and Hana. Their life changes in 1939 when the Nazis take over Czechoslovakia. Increasing sanctions make ordinary life difficult and then impossible by degrees, then first her mother and then father is deported.

Then one day, the two children are also deported to Theresienstadt, now Terezin, and they are permitted to take just one suitcase each with their personal belongings. There, they are separated, and later, Hana is transported to Auschwitz on 23rd October, 1944, where she is sent along with the rest of the girls straight from the train to the gas chamber. They had been commanded to leave their suitcases on the railway platform.

Pic courtesy hanassuitcase.ca
Fumiko and George with the suitcase

Fumiko Ishioka doggedly and painstakingly followed the leads from the entry of George and Hana Brady’s name in the Nazi’s registers to trace her journey, and found out about her death, but also the fact that George was known to have survived. By tracing other survivors who were with him in the concentation camp, she finally traced a 75 year old George Brady now residing in Canada, and got in touch with him.

Between them, they brought Hana’s story to us, all his memories and the family photographs that he had saved, and which he now so generously shared. There were also many things that the siblings had put in a box and buried in their backyard all those years ago, in a game of ‘burying treasure’, that were found by another family now living there. Ensuring that she does not remain a faceless statistic. A lovely, lively human being, who was lost to the senseless genocide.

Pic courtesy radio.cz
Hana and George with their
mother Marketa

The book by Karen Levine is simply written, shuttling between Hana’s story in the 1930s, and the story of Fumiko’s effort to bring it to us. There are plenty of real photographs of the Brady family, beginning with the toddler Hana to the 12 yr old Hana on the cover page, copies of the drawings Hana made in the Theresienstadt deportation centre, as also photostat copies of the Nazi records which Fumiko followed on her search.

Crossposted.

THE GROANING SHELF and other instances of book love by Pradeep Sebastian.

sandhya — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 04:15:00 +0000

>THE GROANING SHELF
and other instances of book love
Written by Pradeep Sebastian
Published by Hachette India.

Reviewed by sandhya.

Pradeep Sebastian is a literary columnist for many publications, including The Hindu, Deccan Herald, Businessworld, The Caravan, Tehelka, and many more. Many of the essays in this book have appeared in one or more of these publications, and potray his formidable literary journey.

This is a book about books and about love for books and reading. There are many aspects to it that the book discusses.

One of these is the actual collecting of books, and the ritualistic sorting through their collection that book-lovers have.

“This pleasurable, absorbing ritual of rearranging books, even trying to downsize one’s library, now seems to be really about getting to know these books all over again. To pick up one from the shelves, remember where and when you bought it, and recall the pleasure that finding the book gave you – this is why a book collector gets all her books off and on the shelves every year.”

Pradeep Sebastian speaks of the collecting of books, even of first editions, and brings to our notice the difference between a bibliomaniac (…has a rage for collecting and possessing books) and a bibliophile (a book collector of refined judgement, the quality of whose library reflects his or her exacting bibliographical standards).

We come to know of the different reasons we buy a book - not just for its content. The edition, the cover design, illustrations, paper quality, the font used, the whole look and feel of the book, too matter. Ask me- I often buy whole lots by a favoured author, and favour certain publications which add to the overall experience of reading.

First editions, especially if in a pristine condition with their book jackets, and if they are signed or inscribed by the author, could become valuable additions to one’s collection on par with rare pieces of art by masters.

We have chapters on rare books, history of books in the world, and in India.

A whole section on notable works by his favourite authors, which include works by Pico Iyer, J.D.Salinger, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ayn Rand and Ira Levin. He discusses both the life and works of these writers, giving us a peek into how their creative energies worked.

A whole section on noteworthy bookshops in India, book museums and a chapter on books in movies. Yes, ‘You’ve got mail’ is one of the movies discussed, as are ’84 Charing Cross Road’, ‘The Name of the Rose’, ‘The Mystic Masseur’, ‘Fahrenheit 451′ and ‘The Jane Austen Book Club’. There is also a real story, about how a documentary about an out of print classic, the only book by that author (The Stones of Summer by Dow Mossman) resurrected that book in print.

Some of the chapters on the actual experience of reading gave me an eerie sense of ‘he’s reading my mind’!.

“The books we read make us part of a larger (invisible) community of readers. Could the opposite be true as well? That our reading makes us lonely. Wrapped up in a book, we shut the world out, cutting ourselves off from those who cannot share in our private world.”

Maybe. But then I find that my reading can also open up a world of like-minded friends, where we can share our mutual love of, and impressions of different books, enriching us all. I think the reading-aloud of books shared by me and my daughter is a part of this process, as is this compulsive sharing of a book I loved with all of you in my reviews. I want to convey what I loved about a book, maybe compel you to pick it up!

There is an interesting chapter on re-reading. I’ll quote – “What a commited reader has with a book is a relationship. And like most relationships, it is sustaining, volatile, vulnerable…the question is – does the book remain the same book the second time around? Are we even the same readers when we revisit these books?…it seems to me that our experience alters the book even as the book alters our experience.”

Very true. A book that I have loved reading could not be read just once. One reads it rapidly at first, then mulls over what one has read for a while- which could be anything from a few hours to a few years. One then HAS to return to the book and read it over and over again, finding things one has not noticed or noted at the first reading, somehow managing to internalise the book, until it becomes a part of one’s self.

As J.K.Rowling said while announcing PotterMore: “the experience of reading requires that the imaginations of the author and reader work together to create the story.”

There is obviously more to reading than just a pastime, just a gleaning of information or learning of something. It is a whole experience that has to be, well, experienced. Even books that one has loved and lost, or books that one has encountered in a store or library, found interesting, but not gotten around to really reading through, never to find them again, are part of this experience.

Let me end with one more quote from this wonderful book by Pradeep Sebastian. This one for non-readers, too!

“I often envy non-readers for all the wonderful books out there that they have never read. Imagine the number of books that await them and the joy of encountering these great works for the first time. A favourite literary fantasy of mine has been to turn amnesiac for a year and read all my favourite books as though for the first time.”

ON MY HONOR by Marion Dane Bauer

sandhya — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 13:24:00 +0000

Pic courtesy Goodreads.com

On My Honor
Written by Marion Dane Bauer
Published by Yearling books, an imprint of Random House Children’s books.

Reviewed by sandhya.

Peer pressure. Everyone faces it, children more so. It looms large in their small world, often leading to literally life-and-death situations.

Twelve year old Joel and Tony are ‘best friends’, very different in temperament, often squabbling and bickering, but inseparable.

Tony- exuberant, fun-loving, risk-taking, with a devil-may-care attitude. Joel, the more cautious of the two, introspecting, sensitive to undercurrents in a situation, a foil for Tony.

On the way to a cliff-climbing trip, (which Joel had earlier tried to wriggle out of, hoping his father would not give him permission to go), the irrepressible Tony had decided he wanted to go swimming in the river instead. The turbulant, treacherous Vermillion river, known for its rapids. Inspite of having promised his father ‘on his honor’, that he would not do anything dangerous, Joel falls for the bait when Tony accuses him of being over-cautious.

“Sometimes, Bates, you sound just like your old man.”
Joel could feel the heat flooding his face. “What’s wrong with that?”
” ‘Be careful in that tree, son,’ ” Tony mimicked, ” ‘you might get hurt. Watch Bobby when he crosses the street. Those drivers never pay any–’ “
Joel had been moving closer to Tony as he spoke, and now he gave him a hard shove.

Tony keeps needling Joel, driven by bravado and dare-devilry, goading him to challenge Tony to a swimming race to a sandbar a hundred yards away. With terrible consequences.

Peer pressure. Wanting to fit in. Misplaced confidence. A sense of being indestructible. A devil-may-care attitude. Inability to lose face. Unwillingness to be perceived as a ‘coward’ when being just sensible and careful. A recipe for disaster?

Marion Dane Bauer has written a fast-paced, racy, but sensitively told story based on a real incident that happenned in the town where she grew up, at the very same place as described in the book. A very short, 90 page book that is very hard-hitting.

Bauer’s potrayal of Joel’s effort to get out of what is very clearly a fool-hardy venture, without losing face- first hoping that his father would not give his permission, then trying to make Tony see sense is very realistic. It happens ever so often in our own kids’ peer-group. The disaster comes on unexpectedly, chillingly, with everything else seemingly the same, unchanged.

The potrayal of Joel’s survivor guilt is heart-wrenching. The disbelief, denial, anger, dissociation, grief, a desire to hide, not face the parents, an obsessive ‘washing-off of the stench of the river’, are powerfully written. It helps, that his father is understanding, trying to help him let go of the paralysing, mind-numbing grief.

The wracking sobs flowed out of him like water.
His father held him for a long time, saying nothing, until Joel’s tears came without sound and his breaths were quivering gasps. Even then, his father held him.
“Do you believe in heaven?” he asked at last. “Do you believe Tony’s gone there?”
“I don’t suppose anybody knows,” his father answered gently, “what happens after…I believe there’s something about life that goes on. It seems too good to end in a river.”

It is a Newbery Honor winner, 1987, and the William Allen White Childrens’ book award winner, 1989. A wonderfully written book, that gives the chills on each reading.

Crossposted.

Life Beyond Measure by Sidney Poitier

sandhya — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 01:41:00 +0000

Pic courtesy teachwithmovies.org

The first I heard of Sidney Poitier was quite by accident, and without a realisation about the phenomenon that he is. Way back in 1997, I picked up an interesting sounding movie at my library. It was about a young couple in love, and the girl gets the boy home to meet her parents. The boy is an extraordinarily well-educated person, with a responsible job in the UN, and by all accounts, a dream suitor for anyone’s daughter. Reminded me of the Elizabeth Taylor classic- Father of the Bride, now re-made with Steve Martin and Diane Keaton as the parents.

Ordinary stuff, one would think. Except that it wasn’t. The girl in question is a Caucasian, and the boy an African-American. What followed was extraordinary stuff indeed, considering that the movie was made in 1967, at a time when an inter-racial marriage was a punishable offence in at least 19 states in the US.

A wonderful movie. The parents are played by two of my favourites, Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, a real-life couple, and the protagonist, John Prentiss, played by Sidney Poitier, all three Academy award winners, assisted ably by the newcomer who plays Joanna, the daughter. This was also the last movie in which Spencer Tracy acted, and he passed away a mere 17 days after filming ended.

Instead of telling you how the movie unfolds, I’ll ask you to click on this link for a look at the movie trailer. Go on, click on it. It’s a wonderful trailer, and if you’ve never watched the movie, it is worth your time.

I was fascinated by Sidney Poitier, bowled over, infact, and I proceeded to search out and watch all movies in which he has acted, all that I could lay my hands on. There was To Sir, with Love, based upon an autobiographical book of the same name by E. R. Braithwaite. There was A Patch of Blue, about a black man befriending a visually inpaired white girl, In the Heat of the Night, a crime thriller. There was Lilies of the Field, for which Poitier received an Oscar in 1963, becoming the first African American to receive the award for the Best Actor, male. He was all of 37. (He has also since received an Academy Honorary Award, “for his extraordinary performances and unique presence on the screen and for representing the industry with dignity, style and intelligence”)

In every movie, one is struck with Sidney Poitier’s persona and screen presence, and I was convinced that he was probably one of the priviledged few at the time among African Americans, who had had a wonderful opportunity at education. We are speaking, of course, of the 40s, 50s and 60s, at a time when the Civil rights movement had yet to give the wonderful results that have given us people like the present President of the US.

So when I came across two books penned by Sidney Poitier, his autobiography- The Measure of a Man, (which I have yet to read) and Life Beyond Measure, which is a collection of letters he has written for his great-grand-daughter, for her to read and know about the living history of her people when she is grown-up, I was amazed by what I read.

Pic courtesy flipkart

LIFE BEYOND MEASURE

Letters to my great-grand-daughter

Written by Sidney Poitier

Published by Simon & Schuster

Poitier undertook the writing of this book as a series of letters written to his great grand daughter, born around the time he was in his 70s.

He tells her of his humble beginnings, born as the youngest of a brood of poor farming parents. They lived on the Cat islands, in the Carribean, and it was just chance that Sidney was born on American soil. His parents had come to sell some produce in Florida- a simple thing to do at a time when there were no visa restrictions.

He had next to no schooling, and could not read or write very well when he was sent to America to make his fortune at the ripe young age of 16. Working in New York as a dish-washer, he chanced upon an advertisement for actors at a local theatre, but was rejected on account of his poor command on ‘good’ English.

Here was a turning point. A lesser person may have just not bothered bettering himself, and continued with his ordinary life. Not Sidney. He took it up as a challenge, and with the help of an elderly waiter, tutored himself, and presented himself to the same theatre group a year later. And the rest is history.

Poitier’s letters tell us about his take on life, opportunities, faith, religion, family, love, commitments, marriage, fear, work, scientific advancements, war, health, and yes, about death, too. He does not dwell much on the films he has made, except when he needed to make a point. We also learn a lot about African-American history along the way. All in an easy conversational style reminiscent of a fable.

A legacy from a great-great-grandfather to his great-great-grandfather.

Reviewed by sandhya. Crossposted.

The Scarlett and Rhett trilogy

sandhya — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 10:22:00 +0000

Pic courtesy flipkart
publisher: Pan books

GONE WITH THE WIND by Margaret Mitchell

Which self-respecting bibliophile hasn’t heard of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind? The famed love story of Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler. Even the making of its movie version is the stuff of legends.

For those who don’t, a quick re-cap : Placed during the period of the American civil war, it is a saga of the end of a way of life that was the southern states of the US, and a beginning of a more modern era after the abolition of slavery. It is also the love story of beautiful, bewitching but hard-headed Scarlett, who has a spine of steel and a very strong survivor’s instinct, who constantly rebels against the patriarchial restrictions of a society that seems unfair to her as a woman, and the dashing, notorious Rhett Butler, but who has a soft heart, a sense of fairness re the slaves not understood by the others, who is ‘not received’ by the genteel folk, but, accepted by them as one of them when he proves himself an exemplary father. Who fights for hard-headed Scarlett’s love, which comes to him too late.

The characters of Ashley Wilkes, who Scarlett loves from afar, and his wife Melanie, whose brother Charles Scarlett marries out of picque, and who stands staunchly behind Scarlett inspite of everything, are paler, simpler people, and their story is the perfect foil for the more vibrant tale of the main characters.

Although the book is complete in itself, ending on the famous line- “I’ll think about it tomorrow. Tomorrow is another day!” One does wonder, though, what happens to them.

Pic courtesy flipkart
Published by
Grand Central publishing

SCARLETT by Alexandra Ripley.

A few years back, a sequel was published, and I, of course gobbled it up. Scarlett was written by Alexandra Ripley, and it satisfied all those who were disenchanted by the abandoning of Scarlett by Rhett, now that she had realised that she loved him too. In this book, Scarlett single-mindedly sets out to woo Rhett back, and we are amazed by her sheer grit and determination. Inspite of the unsavoury methods she often adopts, one cannot but be impressed by her mental strength. Something that even Rhett falls short of at times.

It was a fast read, though Ripley could not really match up to Margaret Mitchell in my mind. It was somehow more decadent, painting Scarlett quite scarlet in her attempts, making the book very garish, not quite able to capture the grace of the original. It becomes quite over-dramatic and cheesy at times. I may be biased, though, having read the original in my teens, a more impressionable age, and when one does not look at things too critically.

Another way of looking at it would be to cheer her in single-mindedly setting out to achieve what she wanted. After all, she was jeered at and ostracised from genteel society for the very characteristics that Rhett was praised for. So typical! As we shall see in our third book, written with Rhett as our protagonist, he keeps thinking to himself-”How like me she is!”

Does she get back her man? Find out.

Pic courtesy flipkart
Published by Pan books

RHETT BUTLER’S PEOPLE by Donald McCaig

Right on the cover is specified : “The authorised novel based on Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind.”

Scarlett by Alexandra Ripley was disowned by the Margaret Mitchell foundation, which called it ‘an embarrassment.’ Rhett Butler’s People totally disregards the story as it plays out in that book, and tells its own story. Equally well-researched and well written. It follows the same tenets of romance and genteel behaviour as the original it is based on, and covers a much longer period – from Rhett’s childhood, through his youth to where he meets, woos and weds Scarlett, to further- and we have a happy ending here too.

Characters of a lesser importance in the original are fleshed out, making them more interesting, and we hear their stories too- Rhett’s parents, his sister Rosemary, Belle Watling, her family, and her role in Rhett’s life, the friendship between Rosemary and Melanie Wilkes, (we learn a lot from the exchange of letters between them) and Rhett’s affection for his childhood friend, the free-born black Tunis, who he shoots to death when he is taken into custody, to be tortured and burnt at the stake on a false complaint by a thwarted white woman.

The one thing that strikes us is the more detailed accounts of the Civil War, well researched, since our protagonist is on the battlefront for some time at least. Surely a more testosterone laden version of ‘Gone with the Wind.’

Between them he three books give an interesting ‘What if?’ perspective of the story, as the two later books go on totally different lines. One thing shines out, though. For all her faults, Scarlett O’Hara Hamilton Kennedy Butler is today’s woman, one who knows her mind, and passionately loves those that she does- be it her mother, Mammy, Rhett, Melanie, or Tara, her home.

Reviewed by sandhya. Crossposted.

Darby by Jonathan Scott Fuqua

sandhya — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 05:50:00 +0000

Pic courtesy flipkart

DARBY

Written by Jonathon Scott Fuqua

Published by Candlewick Press

Ages 9-12 yrs

Reviewed by sandhya.

Darby Carmichael is a white, 9 yr old girl living in Bennettsville, Marlboro county, South Carolina, in the racially intolerant early 1920s. She has two “best friends”, Beth at the all-white school, and Evette Robinson, the girl who stays on the farm next door, the daughter of a black sharecropper. Darby looks forward to coming home from school everyday, so that she can just run off to play with Evette. Given a choice, of course, Darby would choose Evette over all her other friends, but even at 9, she knows that it cannot be done.

Darby’s dream is to be a newpaper journalist, and she attempts to write for the local daily, helped to a large extent by Evette with whom she discusses her ideas, and who edits her work. This is accepted by Mr Salter, the editor of the Bennettsville Times, who is a friend of her father’s. Of course, he knows all about Evette’s role in this, but does not say anything, as he, along with Darby’s father, is anti racial sentiment.

Darby gets better and better in her writing (with Evette’s help of course), and soon has an article appearing in the daily every week, her family and friends making much of it! So when she witnesses the beating up of Evette’s brother for being at the wrong place at the wrong time, by Turpin Dunn, a white man who she knows her father despises for his ill-manners and bad-tempered behaviour, and who her father knows is a member of the dreaded Klu Klux Klan, she proceeds to write about it. Fully knowing the furore this would cause, her father permits the daily to publish it.

What happens next? How is the following drama played out? Does right prevail in the end?

A wonderful book about the battle of right against wrong, about an innate sense of equality present in a child’s mind, in a first person version of a 9 yr old on the “priviledged” side of racial segregation. A coming of age book, a journey from wide-eyed innocence to the slow dawning of a knowledge of reality, and the courage to stand up for what one thinks is right.

The book reminded me strongly of a well loved favourite-To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee,- and could be said to be along similar lines.

A book in honour of Black History Month.

Crossposted.

Incredible High by Atul Kapoor

sandhya — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 04:03:00 +0000

Pic courtesy Pustak Mahal

Incredible High
Written by Atul Kapoor
Published by Cedar Books, an imprint of Pustak Mahal.

Nikhil Khanna is the ”shorter-than-average” son of a kabaadi, who feels he has been marginalised all his life for factors beyond his control. That is when he decides to take control of his life, and plans a biking trip from Manali to Leh and back, motivating his group of equally dysfunctional friends and his girlfriend to join him in his endeavour. Initially hesitant, unconvinced as to the viability of the daredevil scheme, they fall in with his plans, and go on a trip of their lives. At one point, they get stuck at a makeshift army camp, as a result of being snowed in, and it literally becomes a matter of life and death, leading to a lot of soul-searching on the characters’ part.

The writer, an avid traveller himself, faithfully recounts the ups and downs of the journey, along with the lows and highs. One wishes, however, that the candour wasn’t extended to instances of some avoidable profanity at places which could have done with some ruthless editing.

This review has been at the request of the author, Atul Kapoor. Book copy courtesy author.

ANNE FRANK: The Diary of a Young Girl

sandhya — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 13:23:00 +0000

Pic courtesy Penguinbooksindia

ANNE FRANK
The Diary of a Young Girl
Edited by Otto H. Frank and Mirjam Pressler
Translated by Susan Massotty
Published by Penguin Books India.
Ages 12+

Anne Frank was an ordinary thirteen year old, who kept this diary from her thirteenth birthday for the next two years. She penned all everyday happenings, her feelings about everything and everyone around her. We have her account of her growing-up pains and joys, a lowdown on her relationships, all the yo-yo-ing typical of adolescence, her darkest, deepest secrets and her hopes for the future.

So how is this any different from something that anyone else might have written? Just this, that Anne was a Dutch Jew in hiding from Nazi persecution with her family and four other people. Other than the turmoil normal for her age, there was the fugitive existence, living life on the edge, in constant fear of discovery, and the chaos of having to live in close quarters with family and strangers, with no end to their troubles in sight.

Even in this situation, the diary is so full of life, and of hope, that the reader sometines forgets that this immensely talented girl died before her 16th birthday, and the world lost someone who could probably have been a prolific writer, and an original thinker who believed in the goodness of humans. The future that Anne herself had envisioned for herself.

Some lines of note from her diary-

11th April 1944 :”One day this terrible war will be over. The time will come when we’ll be people again and not just Jews!”

11th May 1944 : “…my greatest wish is to be a journalist, and later on, a famous writer.”

15th July 1944 : “It’s twice as hard for us young people to hold on to our opinions at a time when ideals are being shattered and destroyed, when the worst side of human nature predominates, when everyone has come to doubt truth, justice and God…Yet I cling to (my ideals) because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.”

After around two years in hiding, on 4th August, 1944, their hiding place- The Secret Annexe- was discovered, and they were arrested by the Gestapo and deported. The afterword gives details of the eight members’ fate. They were first taken to Westerbork, a transit camp, and then on to Auschwitz. There, the group was separated, and in late October, the two Frank girls were sent to Bergen-Belsen. Anne and her sister were together till their end, dying of typhus in early March 1945, at Bergen-Belsen, a few weeks before the surrender of Germany and the end of WW2 in April 1945. Otto Frank, the girls’ father, was the only survivor, and he was handed Anne’s diary along with other papers by Miep Gies, one of the non-Jews who helped them while they were in hiding.

Otto Frank decided to publish the diary in deference to the wish Anne expresses in it to be a famous writer, and to go on living after her death. He also hoped that it could be instrumental in holding up a mirror to the horrors that can be perpetrated due to prejudice about the ‘other’, so that these things may happen “never again!” An optimistic and foolish hope!

A first edition of the diary was published in 1947, after Otto Frank had edited out what he thought were the more ‘private’ matters- Anne’s thoughts on her relationships with the members of her family, and her growing sexuality, something that he was not comfortable with revealing to the world. This latest, definitive edition has the complete text of the diary, and we get a comprehensive picture of society and of Anne’s life before and after going into hiding.

Crossposted.

INVISIBLE PATTERNS

sandhya — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 05:29:00 +0000

>Have you ever felt that feeling of having done something before (deja vu), or dreams of an experience that cannot be explained away as an experience? Likes and dislikes, fears or affinities, that are inexplicable? Do you sometimes ‘like’ someone, or feel that you know someone very well, when infact you may be meeting them for the first time? Or ‘dislike’ someone, sometimes to the point where you cannot tolerate anything about them, even if they might not have done you any real harm?

Phenomena that science has attempted to explain, not very consistently or convincingly. For these lie in the realm of the unknown, where words like uncanny, co-incidence, extra-sensory, sixth sense, the nth dimension, etc., make more sense than the cold, hard reasoning of science.

Pic courtesy The Hindu

INVISIBLE PATTERNS
Written by Dr Shyamala Vatsa
Illustrated by J.K.Naren
Published by Fo’c'sle Publications
Ages: 10+ (my estimate)
Reviewed by sandhya.

Harsh is an ordinary 10-yr-old, who loves getting boisterous with his friends at school, is a keen athlete, and loves messing around with his younger sister Sanjali, grandmother and his parents at home.

But sometimes, something strange happens. Almost unawares, he sees himself as someone else, at some other time, in another place, often with some of his dear ones in some other role. Perplexingly, these experiences differ totally in their time-place specifics every time.

Harsh is confused. What is it that he keeps seeing? Is it some kind of memory? If it is, how is it that he is not himself, Harsh, in these memories? How can he have memories of something that might have happened 100, 1000 or even more years ago, in a totally alien place? Events and places that have been read of only in his history / geography lessons? If it is just associations his mind has been making, how does it all seem so real, so vivid, as if it had really happened? And even more strangely, how is it that his sister can see the exact same things that he has been seeing?

So many questions. Wonderfully for him, his parents do not scoff at him, or put him off with “you must be imagining things!” They keep communication channels open, and try to explain things in a matter-of-fact way, using his everyday experiences. The explanations, of course, are consistent with their beliefs.

How there might be other souls around us, probably helping us along. How a soul may be born again, and experience different things.

How the Karma of the soul- that balance sheet of all the good and bad things it does- leads him to the next life-experience. How this seemingly out-of-our-control-path-of-destiny can be actually modified by us, channelised by us in the right direction by the use of ‘free will.‘ By excercising our choice. Of not squandering our gifts. Of turning bad times into opportunities for change, possibly for the better.

How there may be many alternate worlds co-existing in the universe, at different times, in different places. As explained to him about alternate universes, wormholes, curved spacetime and time travel by a scientist friend of his father.

The book tries to explain the invisible patterns in the universe, that may be sensed more by minds that are open to the infinite possibilities, like those of children. It may be a more commonplace phenomena than we realise. Maybe most adults have lost this childlike quality of the mind, making our thinking more mundane. Leaving it to the ‘exceptional’ ones to pursue a path to …one may call it enlightenment.

I found the book very interesting in that it attempted to put forth a very unusual topic- that of reincarnation and karma- in the format of a story for children. It put forth the concept that there is a balancing of our good and bad behaviours, and that they have a bearing on the possibilities that may be open to us, and that even there, we can excercise our choice, our free will to direct the path we may take.

A well written book, which takes the montessori route of going from the known to the unknown, and letting a child work out most things for himself /herself. Maybe a bit limited to the Hindu way of thinking, so it might be a bit unbelievable for others. Not unless they have a universalistic bent of mind.

A Summer To Die

sandhya — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 08:46:00 +0000

Pic Courtesy Amazon

A SUMMER TO DIE
written by Lois Lowry
Published by Delacorte press, an imprint of Random House.
Age: young-adult
Reviewed by Sandhya.

Two sisters : Molly and Meg. Very different persons. Both in their teens.

Molly is the older, tidier, prettier, golden-haired, outgoing, happier, more popular, cheerleader type. More like her mother in temperament. The one who wants to grow up to get married and have her own babies…babies to love and take care of.

Meg is the younger, messier, plainer, dark-haired, reserved, upended, difficult, not-easily-popular type. More like her father in temperament. The one who is passionate about her photography hobby, developing and printing her pictures in her own dark-room. The one who is going to grow up to have a career. Be ‘a writer, or an artist, or a photographer.’ The one who looks up to and admires her older sister, everything that she aspires to, but isn’t.

The two often do not see eye-to-eye, and there are frequent fights, as only sisters so near-in-age, but so different from each other, can have. Inspite of that, are inseparable.

That summer, they move to the country where their father, who is a professor of literature, can get peace and quiet to finish the book he has been trying to write.

The girls start getting settled at their new school, when things take an unexpected turn. Molly starts getting nosebleeds. At first it is diagnosed as something to do with summer, and hormonal, but it turns out to be something more sinister. Molly has cancer. And it is incurable. She is going to die. ‘It’s as if she has become, suddenly, old.‘ Molly is wasting away- She has acute myeloid leukemia.

Her parents had not told her the bad news for a long time, not until they were sure of it, and were able to deal with the reality of it. Until she realises it herself one day. When Molly is taken away to the hospital, with no idea when she would be back.

Meg cannot believe her beautiful older sister, the one who was going to be a bride, and have many babies, will die before the summer is over. It makes her feel very angry. It isn’t fair!

“Why Molly? Dad, I’m the one who threw up on my own birthday cake, who broke the window in kindergarten, who stole candy from the grocery store. Molly never did anything bad!”
“Meg,” he said. “Meg, don’t.”
“I don’t care,” I said angrily. “Someone has got to explain to me why.”
“It’s a disease, Meg,” he said in a tired voice. “A horrible, rotten disease. It just happens. There isn’t any why.”

Molly passes away before the summer is over. It is a summer in which Meg grows up. Through her sorrow, she discovers her own voice, her own worth. She finds a friend in Will Banks, the seventy years old owner of the house that they have rented. Will becomes her student, and learns photography from her, and in his turn introduces her to the wildflowers growing all around. Helps her to find herself- likening her to the fringed gentian, a shy late-bloomer that flowers deep in the woods, long after other flowers have reached their glory and gone. He also helps her to mourn her loss, and her encounter with mortality.

There is a parallel story in the book about a young couple Ben and Maria, who have moved into another of Will’s cottages, and who have a baby before Molly passes away. It is a re-affirmation of life, of it’s continuity.

At the end of summer, after the book is finished, the family does move back to London. But Meg does return to the place as she has promised Will that she would be there to see the fringed gentian bloom. Healing is on its way.

A wonderful book, written in her usual sensitive style by the two-times Newberry award winner, Lois Lowry. In an afterword, she tells us that as she wrote the book, she was remembering her own sister, who was lost to cancer many years ago. That does not, however make the book an autobiography. The setting, situation, all were fictional. What were real, though, in her words, are ‘the feelings. The relationship between the sisters-best friends and worst enemies, sidekicks and bullies-complete with the jealousies and bickering, as well as the fierce, protective love. The anger, helplessness, and anguish that overcome an entire family caught in an unfair, inescapable situation.’

CLICK

sandhya — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 18:20:00 +0000

>CLICK
Written by: Refer to cover page picture for the whole list.
Published by Scholastic Children’s books.
Ages: YA
Reviewed by sandhya.

The book is a collage of sorts, with each author writing one chapter. Each chapter can be read separately on its own, or strung together to make the whole story.

Image Courtesy Amazon

Have you ever seen a picture, a photograph and wondered about it? If there were some story behind the person in it, the place it had been taken at, the situation it had been taken in, the reasons for taking it?

George “GEE” Keane is a photographer of international acclaim, who specialises in photographs of human interest. In his quest, he goes where an everyday person might not go: where there is war, famine, imprisonment, torture, as also where there is beauty and peace. He goes to all parts of the world in the process, and meets many people- extraordinary and ordinary.

Now Gee is dead, and has left behind for his 14 yr old grand-daughter Maggie a handcrafted wooden box with seven compartments, each with a distinctive shell from a different continent, with the instructions: Throw them all back. And for his 17 yr old grand-son his camera and a packet of original photographs signed by their subjects.

The story goes to all corners of the world from there. It goes to the past, the future and also lingers in the present. We meet

prisoners in a Soviet prison at the height of the Cold War,
people mutilated by and children affected by war in their backyard, and reclaiming their human dignity,
a young girl struggling against her feelings of guilt as a victim-was there some way she could have prevented what happened- and finding closure,
a single mother caring for an epileptic child and struggling to make ends meet,
a young boy meeting his idol Muhammad Ali by chance,
a young girl discovering a life-long quest and finding solace in it after losing a loved family member,
and much more.

The beauty of the book is also to be found in the uncanny way that the different stories link across continents, across differing situations and across many decades. Maggie, whom we meet in the first chapter as a 14 yr old, is an old lady, Margaret, on a quest in the last, handing over the baton to her grown-up grand-niece, Iona.

Speaking to her, Margaret says, “He wanted us to see. That was his legacy. He gave his grandson- your grandfather-a camera, and he gave me a set of shells. Jason took the camera, and took off- his life took off. He saw through the lens. He learnt to adjust the aperture, to see as keenly as the instrument allows. I took the shells and I took off too, and wandered the world, and saw what came my way. That’s all we ever want to give away, you know. Not really ourselves, not even our genes. Just our hopes that the young will remember to look, and to see. Through whatever means possible.”

This book is also published in association with Amnesty International. In an afterword by AI, it is written: “Human Rights are why the authors of CLICK could write this book. Human Rights mean you can read it. In some countries people are imprisoned and even tortured for expressing their ideas in writing or for daring to support Amnesty International. You could even be imprisoned for reading a book like this.”

A FLIGHT OF PIGEONS by Ruskin Bond

sandhya — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 09:51:00 +0000

Image Courtesy Penguinbooksindia.

A FLIGHT OF PIGEONS

Written by Ruskin Bond

Cover photograph by Anna de’Capitani

Published by Penguin Books India.

Ages: 16+

Reviewed by sandhya.

In any instance of violence, war, etc, there are the active participants- those that actually go out to war, actually take part in the violence as the perpetrators or as the victims, who die in battle. And then there are those behind the scenes, who are equal stakeholders in the fallout of the war, those who do not actually take up arms, but are silent sufferers as a result of it. Those who need to survive it all, with dignity, and re-build their lives. Those who have no wish for the violence around them, and who would rather go quietly about their lives in peace. The civilian victims, the women and the children. Often those who lose the most.

This book deals with some such survivors. It is historical fiction, which, according to the writer, may be based on fact. On actual events that probably took place during the 1857 uprising against British rule.

A study of the 1857 uprising is usually from the point of view of the Indian participants. We speak about Mangal Pandey, Rani Laxmibai of Jhansi, Nana Saheb, and the like. And that is but natural when we speak of it as an uprising. But the British looked at it as the mutiny, being the rulers at the time.

In this book, the story is told from the point of view of Ruth Labadoor, a teenage British girl, who witnesses the massacre of British civilians in the church in the town of Shahajahanpur, including that of her father, at the hands of Indian militants.

Ruth and her mother, Miriam, grandmother, aunt and cousins are given refuge in Lala Ramjimal’s house. They are tracked down there by Javed Khan, who has been enamoured of Ruth, since before her father’s assassination. He forces the women to come to stay in his household, much to the chagrin of his wife, who is aware of his intentions. Which according to what he tells Ruth’s mother, are honourable. He intends to marry Ruth, but he is willing to wait till Miriam gives her permission.

Javed Khan thus becomes an unlikely hero, whose passion for Ruth, combined with the surprising restraint he shows in waiting for her mother’s permission keeps them safe through the days of peril for the British women. Mariam does the best thing that she could do as a mother fighting for her and her daughter’s survival- keeps him at bay with the assurance that he could marry her daughter if the British fail in taking over Delhi, all the time hoping for the victory of the British, as that would ensure their safety. She knows that if she had stood up in open rebellion of him, she and her daughter would lose all chance of surviving honourably.

They had to spend the whole of 1857, and many months into 1858, in Javed Khan’s household. We are told early on in the book, that Miriam’s mother is a girl from a Nawab family from Rohilon-ka-Rampur, married to a British officer. They therefore have Indian cultural roots, and integrate quite easily. They spend all their time in the zenana of Javed Khan, working as members of the household.

Except for Javed Khan’s wife, Khan-Begum, who dislikes their presence for obvious reasons, the rest of the women of the household soon get attached to them. They get invited to spend a few months at Khan-Begum’s sister Qamran’s and Javed Khan’s aunt Kothiwali’s place. Miriam is only too happy to take them up on their invitations, as it means that she can be safe, yet not worry about Javed Khan’s repeated proposals for Ruth’s hand.

It is at Qamran’s place that a relative comes with the news of a prophecy made by Mian Saheb, a Pir (holy man).

‘…that the restoration of the Firangi rule was as certain as the coming of doomsday. It would be another hundred years, he said, before the foreigners could be made to leave. “See, here they come!” he cried, pointing to the north where a flock of white pigeons could be seen hovering over the city. “They come flying like white pigeons which, when disturbed, fly away and circle, and come down to rest again. White pigeons from the hills!” …’

This prediction of Mian Saheb comes true, luckily for Miriam and Ruth. The British take over Delhi, and the uprising is put down. The British army then moves to take back every town, every post from where it has been ousted.

True to his word, Javed Khan releases the women from his bondage, and they are free to go and join the British, no longer needing to be in hiding from the militants. But not before he gets Ruth to come before him, so that he could gaze on her face once, something he has not done till now, inspite of his passion for her.

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A very perceptive, wonderfully written book, complete with a detailed look into the mechanisms of the zenana or women’s quarters in a segregated household. A tale of survival of the refugee women who probably did so only because of a mother playing by her wits, guts and an ability to adapt and accept her circumstances.

The detailed and very perceptive (considering that Ruskin Bond is a man, and culturally a British one, at that!) potrayal of the camarederie and internal politics inside an all women Indian Muslim household from a hundred years ago.

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The book has an introduction by Ruskin Bond, in which he says that there was probably some truth in accounts of an actual girl called Ruth Labadoor, whose account is to be found in old records of the 1857 uprising. He quotes these specific references in the notes at the end of the book, as also gives us a perspective on the period in which the book is set.

In his own words, in the introduction to this 2002 edition, he says, “In retelling the tale for today’s reader I attempted to bring out the common humanity of most of the people involved— for in times of conflict and inter-religious or racial hatred, there are always a few (just a few) who are prepared to come to the aid of those unable to defend themselves.”

Something that is true of all such situations. As I discovered in my pursuit of books on the Holocaust, human beings are really good, and they often rise above themselves at such times.

He goes on to say, “I published this account as a novella about thirty years ago. I feel it still has some relevance today, when communal strife and religious intolerance threaten the lives and livelihood of innocent, law-abiding people. It was Pascal who wrote, ‘Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.’ Fortunately for civilization, there are exceptions.”

Very true even today, and will always be so until there are dystopian conditions anywhere on earth.

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A review of A FLIGHT OF PIGEONS will be incomplete without a mention of its 1978 movie adaptation, Junoon, which translated means ‘a kind of madness,’ whether it was the conditions during the uprising, or the madness of Javed Khan’s passion for Ruth. This movie directed by Shyam Benegal, with Jennifer Kendal as Mariam, Nafisa Ali as Ruth, Shabana Azmi as Khan-Begum, and Jennifer’s real-life husband Shashi Kapoor as Javed Khan, is that rare instance when, a Hindi movie matches the expectations raised by the book, if not betters it. A must watch for someone who enjoyed the book.

SNAP by Alison McGhee

sandhya — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 10:36:00 +0000

Image courtesy Amazon

SNAP.

Written by Alison McGhee.

Cover photograph by Christine Rodin.

Published by Candlewick Press.

Ages: 9-12 yrs. Though I would personally put it at 15-18 yrs.

Reviewed by sandhya.

Eddie Beckey is an 11yr old. She has a very close friend, Sally Hobart. They have been friends since they both joined 2nd grade as new students. Eddie likes to have everything under control. She likes to make lists, and has six different coloured rubber bands on her wrist, which she snaps to remind her when she wants to control some bad habit.

Sally lives with her grandmother, Willie, and they both mean the world to each other. Willie’s daughter Jill, Sally’s mother, lives in the same village, but is unable to take care of Sally. She had been just 15, a few years older than Sally and Eddie are now, when Sally had been born. Jill lives by herself and works at a local store. Incidents in her past have affected her so profoundly, that she has lost the will to speak.

Most of this background is revealed to us in Eddie’s musings and flashbacks. During the summer in which the actual incidents of the book are set, something very strange happens, and Eddie’s world spins out of control. She keeps feeling that both Sally and Willie are hiding something from her, and she is deeply hurt. After all, they are such close friends that she knows Sally better than Sally herself. Well, almost. So what is it? Eddie is sure it has something to do with Willie. And then she knows.Willie is dying. So who will take care of Sally when she is gone? Will Jill be able to finally look after her daughter? Sally is in such denial, that she even denies the importance of Eddie in her life, all the things they had shared for so many years, all the things that had happened in their lives to make them such close friends.

The book ends with a shift in the relationship between Sally and Eddie. Eddie, who loves Sally’s gorgeous, thick hair, which Willie had been braiding in myriad ways all her life, braids it for her in six plaits, using all six of the different coloured rubber bands on her wrist.

Eddie’s musings, typical for a teenager, are almost poetic in their intensity, and make reading SNAP an unforgettable experience. The feelings get under your skin and leave you dazzled. The book is classified for ages 9-12, but when I finished with it, I felt it was more appropriate for 15-18yrs, although the protogonist is 11yrs old. The emotional layers are of a slightly older child.

It is a beautifully written book about the power of friendship. The line on the cover page says it all: ‘When your best friend’s life changes, can your friendship survive?’