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Category: Excerpts

Why Do We Need to Know about the Sea?

Posted on by Penguin India

In a crumbling neighbourhood in New Delhi, a child waits for a mother to return home from work. And, in parallel, in a snow-swept town in Germany on the Baltic Sea coast a woman, her memory fading, shows up at a deserted hotel. Worlds apart, both embark, in the course of that night, on harrowing journeys through the lost and the missing, the living and the dead, until they meet in an ending that breaks the heart – and holds the promise of putting it back together again.

Here is an excerpt of Raj Kamal Jha’s book The City and the Sea

“Like all children, I have a father.

We shall meet him in just a little while.

An odd character, my father. Sometimes, it seems, I am the one who is the adult and my father is the child. But then that’s the way Papa is. I cannot do much about it, Ma told me about Papa, I love him but I am no longer sure how much. If you ask me, I would tell you that I think Ma deserves someone better. I know that’s a hurtful thing to say but I will say this behind Papa’s back, he won’t know because there’s no way he’s ever going to read any of this.

That, I am absolutely sure of.

 *

As was her routine Monday to Friday and one working Sunday a month—which was that day—Ma should have been home latest by 4 p.m. from the newspaper where she worked on the copy desk, most of the time on the morning shift. It began at 8 a.m. and ended at 3 p.m., during which she edited stories and made pages. She had to send out at least two or three inside pages to bed, to the press, ready for plating and printing before the night shift came in and began work on the front page and the national pages.

If I sound as if I know quite a bit about Ma’s work it’s because Ma often talked to me about it, once she took me to office when there was no one there. She showed me how she made a page on QuarkExpress, how she drew text boxes into which she flowed the text, picture boxes into which she placed the pictures. She showed me how she typed in the headline, chose its size and font from the style sheet that popped up on the right-hand side when you hit F9 on the keyboard. Many of these stories and pictures that I edit are from The Sea, she said, about people who live there, things that happen to them. If we don’t put these stories out, no one will get to know what’s happening in The Sea.

Why is that important, I asked, why do we need to know about The Sea?

What kind of a question is that, Ma said, if you want to live in this city, you can never run away from The Sea so why not get to know what’s happening there? That way, you will always be prepared.

Prepared for what? I asked.

When someone from The Sea comes visiting, she said.

I didn’t understand what she meant, it was 3 p.m., her shift was over, it was time to go home.

  *

That evening, however, 4 p.m. became 5 p.m. became 6 p.m. and it was shortly before 7 p.m., more than three hours after I had returned from school, had lunch, washed, even changed into my night clothes, when Papa walked up to me and said—he was speaking to me for the first time that day—your mother still hasn’t come home, did Ma tell you anything this morning about coming home late?

No, I said, she didn’t tell me anything like that.

  *

You aren’t going to hear much about Papa, I will tell you that up front, because he is here, he is not here, he comes and he goes. He is at home most of the time when Ma is at work and I am at school. Or, he wanders around the city all by himself because he lost his job a year ago. When we are home, all three of us, most of the time Papa rarely gets in our way, he lives and moves in spaces in our house constantly draped in shadow. Maybe a bit of The Sea has slipped into your Papa, mixed with a little of his blood and that’s what has made him seem lost all the time, as if he’s missing a vital piece, Ma whispered to me once, and I think she felt sorry for saying this because she tried to be nice to him the rest of the day even though he remained, as ever, cold and distant.

One night, when they thought I was asleep, Papa and Ma were in my room talking and Ma told him to keep meeting people, keep going for job interviews but he said there was no point, no one wanted him, they would like to get the same work done for half his salary to which Ma said forget the salary, take anything they give you, you need to be out of this house working, you need to be with other people, forget about us, you need to feel safe and secure, I can’t be the only one dreaming around here. I would love to take a vacation with all of us, I would love to walk on a beach, I would love to go abroad, to watch the snow fall, how is all this going to happen, how is any of this going to happen?

The way she said all of this, angry and defiant, set Papa off. He shouted back at her, don’t tell me about your dreams, he struck his palm hard on the dresser table, making things fly away, do you think I should work as a security guard? As Santa Claus? I should beg at the streetlight, scrub the toilet floor at the mall? That, too, is a job, isn’t it, he said, and he walked out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

Ma followed him a few minutes later.

She was crying.

I heard all this, I saw all this with my eyes open just a chink.

I am very good at watching with my eyes closed, at making people believe I am sleeping, that I am not listening when I am, actually, wide awake, fully alert.”

This is a book about masculinity – damaging and toxic and yet enduring and entrenched – that begs the question: What kind of men are our boys growing up to be?

The Lost Art of Scripture – An Excerpt

Posted on by Penguin India

Today we see the Quran being used by some to justify war and terrorism, the Torah to deny Palestinians the right to live in the Land of Israel, and the Bible to condemn homosexuality and contraception. The holy texts at the centre of all religious traditions are often employed selectively to underwrite arbitrary and subjective views. They are believed to be divinely ordained; they are claimed to contain eternal truths.

In our increasingly secular world, holy texts are at best seen as irrelevant, and at worst as an excuse to incite violence, hatred and division. So what value, if any, can scripture hold for us today? And if our world no longer seems compatible with scripture, is it perhaps because its original purpose has become lost?

In her book The Lost Art of Scripture, Karen Armstrong, a world authority on religious affairs, shows in this fascinating journey through millennia of history, this narrow reading of scripture is a relatively recent phenomenon.

Read the excerpt from the first chapter here!

The fall of Adam and Eve is one of the most famous stories of the Hebrew Bible. Yahweh, the divine creator, placed the first human beings in Eden, where there was every kind of tree, enticing to look at and good to eat, with the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the middle of the garden”. But Yahweh gave Adam a stern warning: he could eat the fruit of all these trees except the fruit of the tree of knowledge,’ for on the day you eat of it, you shall most surely die’. But, alas, Eve succumbed to the temptation of the serpent and she and Adam were condemned to a life of hard labour and suffering that could end only in death.

This story is so deeply embedded in the Judaeo- Christian consciousness that it is, perhaps, surprising to learn that in fact it is steeped in the Mesopotamian Wisdom traditions that embodied the ethical ideals that bound the ruling aristocracy together. Civilisation began in Sumer in what is now Iraq in about 3500 BCE. The Sumerians were the first to commandeer the agricultural surplus grown by the community in the fertile plain that lay between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates and create a privileged ruling class. By about 3000 BCE, there were twelve cities in the Mesopotamian plain, each supported by produce grown by peasants in the surrounding countryside. The Sumerian aristocrats and their retainers – bureaucrats, soldiers, scribes, merchants and household servants – appropriated between half and two-thirds of the crop grown by the peasants, who were reduced to serfdom. They left fragmentary records of their misery: ‘ The poor man is better dead than alive,’ one lamented. Sumer had devised the system of structural inequity that would prevail in every single state until the modern period, when agriculture ceased to be the economic basis of civilisation.

Adam and Eve, however, lived at the beginning of time, before the Earth yielded brambles and thistles and humans had to wrest their food from the recalcitrant soil with sweat on their brow. Their life in Eden was idyllic until Eve met the serpent, who is described as arum, the most ‘subtle’, ‘shrewd’ and ‘wise’ of the animals.’ Did God really say you were not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?’ the serpent asked her. Eve replied that only the tree of knowledge was prohibited on pain of instant death. The arum serpent’s prediction of what would happen to Adam and Eve drew heavily on the terminology of Sumerian Wisdom: No! you will not die! God knows in fact that on the day you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.’ Of course, Eve succumbed: she wanted to transcend her humanity and become godlike, The couple did not, in fact, die as soon as they ate the forbidden fruit, as Yahweh had threatened. Instead, as the serpent promised,’the eyes of both were opened’ – words that recall the exclamation of a Mesopotamian student to his teacher:

Master-god, who [shapes] humanity, you are my god!

You have opened my eyes as if I were a puppy;

You have formed humanity within me!

Get your copy of The Lost Art of Scripture today

Examining the Muslim Demographic through ‘Siyasi Muslims’ – Excerpt

Posted on by Penguin India

How do we make sense of the Muslims of India?

Do they form a political community?

Does the imagined conflict between Islam and modernity affect the Muslims’ political behaviour in this country?

Are Muslim religious institutions-mosques and madrasas-directly involved in politics?

Do they instruct the community to vote strategically in all elections?

What are ‘Muslim issues’?

Is it only about triple talaq?

While these questions intrigue us, we seldom debate to find pragmatic answers to these queries. Examining the everydayness of Muslims in contemporary India, Hilal Ahmed’s Siyasi Muslims: A Story of Political Islams in India offers an evocative story of politics and Islam in India, which goes beyond the given narratives of Muslim victimhood and Islamic separation.

Here is an excerpt from Siyasi Muslims Triple Talaq as an MCQ:

————————————————————————–

The question of ‘triple talaq’ is posed as an objective-type MCQ (multiple choice question)! We are given two options—support it (say yes) or oppose it (say no). The meaning of yes and no are also premeditated in this schema: Yes refers to closed Islamism, while No stands for gender equality and progress.

This dominant (and somewhat stereotypical) representation of the triple talaq issue is based on a  few strong assumptions about Muslims in general and Muslim men in particular:

  • The Muslims of India constitute a single, closed, homogeneous community, which is inevitably male-dominated.
  • This male-dominated community is governed by a few established Islamic norms which are highly anti-women in nature. Islamic religiosity as well as Islamic practices, hence, are intrinsically patriarchal.
  • The Islamic clergy functions as the true representative of the community. It has an ultimate right to interpret religious texts and, at the same time, speak on behalf of all Muslims.

These convictions, interestingly, are often presented to us as hard facts—not merely by the government, political parties and the ulema class but also by those who prefer to be identified as ‘liberals’. As a result, a media-centric discourse of political correctness emerges, which virtually freezes any possibility of a nuanced and meaningful discussion on the nature and functions of patriarchy among Muslims.

The recent debate on triple talaq is an example of such stereotypical public imagination. No one bothered to look at the arguments and positions of various Muslim women’s groups on the status of Muslim women in India, the internal debates among them on the question of Muslim patriarchy, their varied interpretations of the Quran and Hadith, their critical responses to the much-debated idea of the Uniform Civil Code and, above all, their critique of Muslim personal law and the role of the ulema in nurturing the anti-Muslim attitude of Hindutva politics.

The triple talaq debate, surprisingly, is seen as a battle between the conservative ulema represented by the All Indian Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) and the committed BJPled NDA government. The discussion in the Parliament on the triple talaq bill and, later, on the triple talaq ordinance seems to ignore the nuanced arguments made by Muslim women’s groups, especially the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA). The purpose, therefore, of this chapter is to clarify and contextualize the public debate so as to make sense of the various aspects of the controversy. In addition, an attempt is made to analyse the politics of triple talaq in the wake of emerging Hindutva.

Let us begin with a few frequently used terms:

  • ‘Triple talaq’ refers to a practice which empowers a man to divorce his wife by saying ‘talaq, talaq, talaq’ in one go.
  • ‘Mehr’ is a sum of money or other property to be delivered to the bride by the bridegroom at the time of the nikah as a prerequisite for the solemnization of their marriage, as specified in the nikahnama.
  • ‘Iddat’ is the period of time (approximately three to four months) during which a divorced woman/widow cannot remarry another man.
  • ‘Nikah’ is a contract of marriage between a man and a woman. The nikahnama is a document which specifies the terms and conditions of this agreement.
  • ‘Sharia’ or ‘shariat’ is a collection of rules and norms that have been codified following the Quran and Hadith (laying out the sayings and acts of Prophet Muhammad). Since this codification is subject to various interpretations, there are various shariats among Sunnis and Shias.
  • ‘Nikah halala’ is also a frequently used term. Once a woman has been divorced, her husband is not permitted take her back as his wife unless the woman undergoes nikah halala, which involves her marriage with another man who subsequently divorces her so that her previous husband can remarry her.

The practice of triple talaq, we must note, is legitimate among Sunni Muslims of the Hanafi shariat. Although we do not have adequate statistical information about the sect-wise population of Muslims in India, it is believed that Sunni Hanafis are in the majority, at least in the northern states. But there are four other schools of Sunni shariat—Hanbali, Shafi, Maliki and Ahle- Hadith. These schools have their own interpretations of rituals and customs and specific norms for divorce.

The AIMPLB itself recognizes this Islamic religious plurality in India. In fact, one of the stated objectives of the AIMPLB is:

To promote goodwill, fraternity and the feeling of mutual cooperation among all sects and schools of  thought     among Muslims, and to generate the spirit of unity and coordination among them for the common  goal of safeguarding the Muslim Personal Law.1

There are two questions are important here: Does the AIMPLB determine the everyday conduct of the religiously diversified Muslim communities? If so, do Muslims, particularly the followers of the Hanafi shariat, practise triple talaq precisely because of their religious adherence to Islam?

Know more in Hilal Ahmed’s Siyasi Muslims: A Story of Political Islams in India

Getting off at a Place not Printed on the Ticket – an excerpt from Ali Smith’s ‘Spring’

Posted on by Penguin India

Spring will come. The leaves on its trees will open after blossom. Before it arrives, a hundred years of empire-making. The dawn breaks cold and still but, deep in the Earth, things are growing. 

Yesterday morning, a month to the day since the memorial service (they’d had her privately cremated some time before the memorial, he doesn’t even know when, close family only), he is walking along the Euston Road and as he passes the British Library he sees a woman sitting against its wall, thirties, as young as twenties, maybe, blankets, square of cardboard ribbed off a box on which there are words asking for money.

No, not money. The words on it are please and help and me.

He’s passed countless homeless people even just this morning coming through the city. Homeless people are the word countless again these days; any old lefty like him knows that this what happens. Tories back in, people back on the streets.

But for some reason he sees her. The blankets are filthy. The feet are bare on the pavement. He hears her too. She is singing a song to nobody – no, not to nobody, to herself – in a voice of some notable sweetness, at a quarter to eight in the morning.

It goes:

a thousand thousand people

are running in the stre-eet

oh nothing nothing nothing

oh nothing nothing nothing

oh nothing

Richard keeps going. When he stops keeping going he is just past the front of King’s Cross station. He turns and goes in, as if that’s what he meant to do all along.

There is a stall in the middle of the concourse beneath the giant Remembrance poppy. The stall is selling chocolate in the shapes of domestic utensils and tools: hammers, screwdrivers, pliers, cutlery, cups and so on; you can buy a chocolate cup, a chocolate saucer, a chocolate teaspoon and even a chocolate stovetop espresso-machine (the stovetop machine is costly). The chocolate things are extraordinarily lifelike and the stall is thronged with people.  A man in a suit is buying what looks like a real kitchen tap, made of silver-sprayed chocolate; the woman selling it to him places it delicately into a box she first lines with straw.

Richard puts his card into one of the ticket machines. He inserts the name of the place that’s the furthest a train from here can go.

He gets on to a train.

He sits on it for half a day.

An hour or so before the train reaches this final destination he’ll see some mountains against some sky through the window and he’ll decide to get off the train at this place instead. What’s to stop him doing what he likes, getting off at a place not printed on the ticket?

Oh nothing nothing nothing.

King Gussie, to rhyme with fussy, is how he’d always thought it was said, like the robot announcer pronounces it over the speakers in London King’s Cross above his head before he boards the train.

Kin-you–see is how it’s said by the guest house people whose door he knocks on when he gets there. They will be suspicious. What kind of person doesn’t book ahead on his phone? What kind of person doesn’t have a phone?

He will sit on the edge of the strange bed in the guest house. He will sit on the floor and brace himself between the bed and the wall.

By tomorrow his clothes will have taken to the air-freshener smell of the room he’ll spend the night in.

Get a copy of Ali Smith’s Spring here!

The Reluctant Billionaire – An Excerpt

Posted on by Penguin India

Dilip Shanghvi is one of the most interesting and least understood business minds whose journey has been shrouded in mystery because of his reticence.

The Reluctant Billionaire reveals the riveting story of the fiercely intense personality that lies beneath his calm demeanour. Based on interviews with over 150 friends, family members, rivals, former aides and Shanghvi himself, it traces his transformation from a quiet, curious child working in his father’s small shop to an astute strategist, who built India’s largest pharma company, Sun Pharma, despite being untrained in science.

Here’s a gripping excerpt from the book that talks about the acquisition of Taro and Ranbaxy.

Should a story be told when the subject is unwilling? Maybe ‘not’ if it’s an ordinary story of a private person, or maybe ‘yes’ if it’s in the guise of fiction where it is easy to speak the truth. But what if the story happens to be of a man who arose from the anonymity of a small wholesaler to become the richest man in a country of a billion-plus people and as many dreams? And he did so, not by creating a conglomerate, which depends on cronyish connections and government concessions, but by building a global firm focused only on making medicines. Isn’t his story more than just his, a story that belongs to a generation, a nation?

And when he became the richest man of the country in 2015 and was asked how he felt, he replied, ‘Uncomfortable, very uncomfortable.’ Despite living what could be argued as one of the most remarkable life of his generations, his mind feels like a black box. Dilip Shanghvi is one of the most interesting and least understood business minds of India today. For someone, unschooled in degrees of sciences and management, who worked his way up from a tiny shop in the bylanes of Dawa Bazaar in Calcutta of the 1970s to create one of the country’s most valuable enterprises, he is also one of the least documented and least studied capitalists. One reason behind this is his own unwillingness to share his story.

He doesn’t care about being celebrated, and stubbornly disapproves, even casts off attempts to document him. Another part is because with no drama, no modulation in pitch, few words and fewer expressions, he neither fits the bill of a conventional inspiring pin-up business leader nor does he make for a great colourful flamboyant story. It is easy to miss the intensity of someone who is more presence than personality. What compounds this conspicuous absence from mainstream is a past yet unsearched but which, on the surface, doesn’t show up juicy controversies to merit an investigation, and a lifestyle that could appear normal enough to be boring. No wonder the media was ready to spare him the limelight he so avoided.

From time to time, when the need arose, he was profiled with a few recycled facts thrown in—that he borrowed 10,000 rupees from his father to start his firm Sun Pharma with two medicines for psychiatry and that in his sixties now, he is a fan of Harry Potter books. What happened in the interim was left to the imagination.

This un-deliberate arrangement of mutual disinterest worked fine till one day—the maths of life changed it all. That day in March 2015 his net worth crossed that of Mukesh Ambani and he was pronounced India’s richest man. The country was curious to know who this guy was, how he had done it.

If the search and discovery had been so easy, answers to these questions wouldn’t have remained so elusive. Shanghvi, known to shun press conferences, interviews and parties expressed his unwillingness for this book when approached initially. ‘You will probably put my face on the cover and I would be recognized by many more people on the streets and that’s always a problem. It takes away from my freedom.’

The Reluctant Billionaire is a tale for everyone who has once had a secret dream, an insanely bold one.

Ruskin Bond on friendship and farewells

Posted on by Penguin India

‘It was 1947, and life was about to change quite dramatically for most of us’

In the third part of his memoir, thirteen-year-old Ruskin Bond is back at school, doing what he loves – reading, goal-keeping, spending time with his friends and eating lots of jalebis. But things seem to be rapidly changing all around him. Whispers of a partition haunt the corridors of his school. Does the formation of a new, independent India mean saying goodbye to old friends-and, with it, the shenanigans they got up to?

In Ruskin Bond’s inimitable style, Coming Round The Mountain gives us some wonderfully wistful and poignant snapshots of friendship and the farewells brought on by the relentless change at the end of an era. Here are some of them:

~

The fearsome-sounding cliques one forms in childhood

‘I was turning thirteen in May that year. My best friends were Azhar Khan, who was my age; Brian Adams, who was a year younger; and Cyrus Satralkar, who was the youngest. We called ourselves the ‘Fearsome Four’, although there was nothing very fierce about us.’

*

The best friends are those who extend a hand when we need it most, whether or not we know precisely that we need them

‘I’d been going through a different period, adjusting to my stepfather’s home in Dehra and learning to cope with the world at large. Although a shy boy, I needed friends, and I was quick to respond to those who offered me friendship.’

 *

The irrelevance of cultural barriers in schoolboy comradeship

‘We were not in the least interested in each other’s religions or regional backgrounds. Adults seemed to think it important; but at thirteen, friendship and loyalty seemed to matter more.’

*

When adversity (or at least a compatibility of vices) brings you together

‘The catalyst for our bonding was that early -morning rouser for PT. For some reason— or different reasons—the four of us overslept one morning and failed to turn up on the first flat for our exercises. Our absence was duly reported by a senior prefect, and we were summoned to the headmaster’s study for the usual punishment. At least three strokes of the cane were to be expected.’

*

A friend who feeds is a friend indeed

‘World War II had been over for more than a year, but some food items—butter, cheese, chocolates—were still hard to come by. Brian divided his Kraft cheese into four portions, and each of us had his share. Now, there was a friend!’

*

The difficult feelings of older people who have to see enormous upheaval in all they have held dear

‘Dunda Hawkes had been deeply affected by the division of India. He was a simple man who, like my father, had been to army school and spent most of his life in barracks or on the march. He had become a boxing champion and was responsible for making sportsmen and athletes out of most of us.’

 *

The poignant uncertainty of goodbyes in that year of changes

‘Azhar was beside me, his arm around my shoulders. ‘Time to say goodbye,’ he said. ‘I’ll write to you. We’ll meet again—some day, somewhere.’ Surely we would meet again. The world hadn’t come to an end. But the light was going out in a lot of lives, and it would be some time before it came on again.’

*

 When the absence of a friend seems like a removal of an aspect of one’s own being
Front cover of Coming Round the Mountain
Coming Round the Mountain || Ruskin Bond

‘Sometimes we don’t really value our friends till we have lost them. Azhar’s departure left quite a gap in my life. He had been someone to whom I could talk freely, someone to whom I could confide and share my dreams.’

 *

The love of a friend does not need to be put in words for one to know that is there 

‘Send me lots of beautiful postcards,’ I said. We shook hands. In those days we were not given to hugs and demonstrations of affection. But I loved my friends, and they knew it and loved me too.’

Super Century – An Excerpt

Posted on by Penguin India

What is it about the Indian psyche that makes us so incapable of fulfilling our promise as a nation? Why are we so averse to risk, resigned to mediocrity and mired in a collective lack of confidence? India has so much potential but seems forever stuck on the brink of actualization, unable to muster the political will and geo-economic force to clear the final bar. The stakes are higher than ever, and India’s moment is now.

In Super Century, Raghav Bahl offers a cogent and candid assessment of how we got where we are and a clear blueprint of what we need to do, both at home and in the world, to fulfil our promise going forward.

Here is an excerpt from the book:

—————-

The dawn of the twenty-first century brought new geopolitical opportunities for India and the other fast-developing nations christened the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). In the first decade of the new millennium, the twin catastrophes of 9/11 and the 2008 financial meltdown deeply shook America, weakening its position as the world’s sole superpower. With the US suddenly vulnerable and preoccupied with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the BRICS— especially China—stepped into the void, asserting themselves in the economic and diplomatic spheres. They got a boost from the forces of globalization, which levelled the playing field and transformed the very nature of geopolitical power. No longer could a strong, successful state impose global influence solely through its military; the new world order valued economic prowess—leveraged by citizens, businesses and nongovernmental agencies through trade, aid and culture capital—above all else. For India and other rapidly rising countries with huge populations and untapped potential, that shift opened up a world of new possibilities.

As India’s economy grew, Delhi gradually adopted a larger and more defined role in global affairs, increasingly willing to take a principled stand on matters of national—and international—importance. Still, we struggled to win the world’s respect, denied a seat on the United Nations (UN) Security Council and membership in the Group of Seven (G7)—even though India’s economy is bigger than both Canada’s and Italy’s, which do belong to the G7. Such snubs only feed our national insecurity and spur greater defensiveness.

When Modi took office in 2014, he enthusiastically advanced the narrative of India as a leading power, and Indian confidence swelled. The government abandoned all vestiges of non-alignment and introduced an expansive new policy of multi-alignment, centred on increasing engagement—bilateral as well as multilateral and with friends as well as rivals. Delhi revitalized its partnership with Washington, stepped up its leadership in Southeast Asia and artfully managed China through a balance of engagement and containment. Modi took a more assertive stand against Pakistan, retaliating against persistent small-scale crossborder attacks with open and unapologetic surgical strikes, rather than employing covert actions while pretending to ‘turn the other cheek’. And he gave maritime strategy top priority, particularly in the Indian Ocean, with a focus on new security agreements and greater cooperation with India’s democratic neighbours; in 2015, Delhi agreed to build its first overseas military base in the Seychelles.

Modi himself relished the role of traveller-in-chief. In his first three and a half years in office, he visited forty-nine countries— including the US four times—and met with a dizzying array of heads of state, foreign dignitaries and business leaders, among others. His tireless jet-setting may have helped elevate India’s standing abroad, but it earned him ridicule at home, with critics mocking his jovial banter and awkward bear hugs. In retrospect, all that time on the road might have been better spent overhauling India’s economic policy. But Modi was determined to demonstrate his commitment to multi-alignment; in 2016, he became the first Indian leader since 1979 to skip the annual Non-Aligned Movement summit.

In keeping with this mandate, India has asserted itself diplomatically in sophisticated new ways. While continuing to seek entry into traditional Western-dominated international organizations such as the Nuclear Suppliers Group, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the UN Security Council—as well as gain commensurate influence with the West in bodies such as the World Bank and the IMF—Delhi has also embraced the newer, more nimble BRICS-based alternatives, such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. Against all odds, India has become a leader on climate change; after years of complaining that emissions caps were unfair to developing countries, Delhi abruptly changed course at the 2015 Paris Climate talks, with Modi joining France’s then President

François Hollande to create an India-based international solar power alliance. And India has taken more initiative in addressing global crises; when a Saudi attack trapped thousands of foreign nationals in Yemen in 2015, India rushed to the rescue, safely evacuating not just its own citizens but civilians from more than two dozen countries—including the US and Pakistan. Indian troops make up one of the largest national contingents of UN peacekeepers.

Going forward, India must continue to pursue greater global engagement. We must look not just West or East, but North and South too, working with big powers and small to shape the global agenda. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain from participating in such diverse multilateral groupings as the ‘Quad’ talks (with Japan, the US and Australia)—as we did for the first time in 2017—and the RIC (Russia–India–China) annual foreign ministerial meetings. Our country’s sheer size, geography and status as the world’s largest democracy make it essential—if not inevitable—that we assume a bigger leadership role in preserving peace and security, both in Asia and the world. That is especially true given today’s rapidly evolving world order, with the US retreating from its multilateral commitments and China eagerly stepping in to fill the void. With Xi Jinping consolidating power and hot-headed rulers in both Russia and the US, India looks relatively stable, reliable and transparent by comparison. It would be a shame to waste that political capital at a time when the world is starved for decisive, rational leadership.

In Super Century, Raghav Bahl offers a cogent and candid assessment of how we got where we are and a clear blueprint of what we need to do, both at home and in the world, to fulfil our promise going forward.

Chanakya and the Art of War-Excerpt

Posted on by Penguin India

Each and every one of us wants to become successful. We aim to fight and win in businesses, careers, relationships and, ultimately, in life. However, most of us fail to reach our full potential because of various speed breakers.

In Chanakya and the Art of War, Radhakrishnan Pillai decodes the war secrets of Chanakya as relevant to our personal and professional lives. Be it an army fighting enemy soldiers across the border, the police encountering internal challenges, a politician who wants to win an election, or the common man fighting for survival, Chanakya has a plan for every situation. In the game of life, Chanakya teaches you the winning strategies by putting into practice the Art of War.

Here is an excerpt from the book:

—
We are constantly at war.

It may be an external war—at our workplaces, our homes, amongst friends, relatives and/or with the government and its systems.

It may be an internal war—inside our heads, with time, with decisions, with what is right and what is wrong.

This is unavoidable when we live in a world full of different people and different views. From the day we are born to the day we die, the external or internal wars will continue. From womb to tomb, we will always face difficult choices.

After a point, everyone realizes that they cannot walk away from such wars. Everyone has to fight—some win, some lose. This is where the difference in our attitude towards the war becomes known. We either accept defeat, or fight on to emerge a winner.

Most of us often compromise and give up. It is a good feeling, although temporary, that there was no bloodshed, that we avoided facing an extreme situation. But later, when we sit down and analyse, we realize that we have actually lost the war in the name of compromise.

The problem continues to exist. Sooner than later, it re-emerges in a different way. The quick-fix of compromise is temporary in nature because we have not fixed the leak. The tooth now requires an extraction. That one rotten apple has already spoilt the whole bunch.

We must make sure we win the war once and for all, rather than be under the illusion that a compromise has closed the issue.

The art of winning a war can be learnt by understanding some rules and then applying them in a practical manner to real-life situations. There are various formulae and techniques. Just because we have never been exposed to a war does not mean the ‘art of war’ is not meant for us.

Swami Tejomayanandaji, the spiritual giant from Chinmaya Mission, says: ‘If you don’t stand up for something, you will fall for everything.’

True that.

Are we all just living a life of compromise and adjustment? Have we become so weak that we cannot even voice our views? Have we forgotten the skills of negotiations and strategy?

Let us not simply allow life to happen to us, let us make life happen according to our wishes. We can decide what we want, and yes, we can emerge a winner. The good news is that there is a method and a system to do this.

It starts with building some basic leadership qualities. Yes, the answer lies here.

Leaders are strong men and women who stood up with conviction, squared their shoulders and faced the challenges that came their way. They were the only hope when others around them felt hopeless. They had nothing else but tremendous will power. World history is never complete without the stories of such great leaders from various nations and backgrounds. Initially, they were ordinary people, but their extraordinary leadership qualities made them shine in situations that were challenging and difficult.

Today, the life stories of such leaders guide us. They inspire us. They bring hope and possibilities. They are the guiding beacons of societies. Their stories must be told to our children. They should be discussed at dinner tables, their books should be read by all, and more research should be done on these great men and women.

Emerging as a winner in war is not just the work of the military and armed forces. It can be part of our basic nature. If every individual is taught the art of war, she/ he will be better equipped to focus on the means and the ends towards which they are working so hard. Winning a war requires many skills. Studying our opponent, understanding human psychology, the right timing and place, keeping motivation levels up—all these and more.

If we master the art of war, we can be successful in every field of life.

Chanakya and the Art of War  draws upon lessons from the great teacher, philosopher and strategist Chanakya’s masterpiece, Arthashastra, which can help us overcome those speed breakers to become innovative and influential and realize our true potential. AVAILABLE NOW.

Queens of Crime – An Excerpt

Posted on by Penguin India

Dysfunctional families, sexual abuse, sheer greed and sometimes just a skewed moral compass. These are some of the triggers that drove the women captured in these pages to become lawbreakers.

Queens of Crime demonstrates a haunting criminal power that most people do not associate women with. The acts of depravity described in this book will jolt you to the core, ensuring you have sleepless nights for months.

Based on painstaking research, these are raw, violent and seemingly unbelievable but true rendition of India’s women criminals.

Here’s an excerpt from the first chapter!

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The Drug Queen Of Mumbai

Back in Siddharth Nagar, her sons on either side, she wondered which door to knock on first. Four of her five brothers were married and living in their own rooms. She decided to stay in the room of her brother who was serving time in jail for murder. Two of her other brothers had served jail sentences for the same murder, but they were out now. Another brother, who had been arrested initially but had had nothing to do with the crime, had committed suicide in jail in protest.

She knocked on the door, the awkwardness of the moment weighing her down. The door, which led to a small eight-by-eight- foot room, was opened by her brother’s wife, Sumiti.

‘Didi! What a pleasant surprise! Welcome,’ her sister-in law greeted her and pulled the children into an embrace. She had been married for just a few months and didn’t have any children of her own.

Sumiti was quick to realize that something was amiss. After serving them tea, she said, ‘Didi, I’m with you. You don’t have to say anything.’

Her affection brought tears to Shantidevi’s eyes. ‘Thank you.’

The next morning, her sister-in-law left the house early, before Shantidevi woke up. But she had prepared a kadai full of poha for the three of them. Shantidevi woke her children up, helped them bathe outside using the bucket of water that had been kept ready for them, and then all of them ate gratefully.

That evening, Shantidevi asked her sister-in-law, ‘Can I get work here?’

Sumiti nodded. ‘I’ve already spoken to a lady in one of the apartment complexes not far from here. She will give you two hundred rupees for two hours. I’ll get you more houses to work in within a week.’

Shantidevi thanked her again. She was grateful because now she could earn her own money. It was the economic empowerment that she needed.

Soon, Shantidevi was working in three houses and was able to move into her own room in the same chawl. Now that she was earning Rs 600, she could hire a room for Rs 300. Her life was unremarkable for the next year. She was barely able to make ends meet with the meagre salary that

she earned. Her husband never bothered to check if she was all right. He was so heartless, thought Shantidevi, that he didn’t even inquire about the children. The lack of money started to pinch her. But what could an uneducated woman like her do?

One day, something unexpected happened. As she was walking back home along the Worli Sea Face after work, she felt weak and decided to stop for a few minutes at a bus stop nearby to catch her breath. She sat on the metal bench, held the pillar for support and closed her eyes. It is just weakness, she thought, and will pass soon. It did, and after a minute or so when she opened her eyes, she found that a man seated at the far end of the bench was staring at her.

She was about to give him a mouthful to nip whatever he had in his mind in the bud, but the man spoke first, ‘Sister, the world can be cruel. Are you feeling better now?’

His voice calmed her down, as did the fact that he had addressed her as ‘sister’. She nodded and wondered if she should get up and be on her way.

But before she could, the man spoke again, ‘And in Mumbai, there is only one god. Do you know who that is?’

‘Ganpati bappa.’

He laughed and then, his face turning serious, said, ‘No, the real god is money, cash, rupiya.’

The man was crazy, thought Shantidevi.

‘If you have the money, everything is great. But if you don’t have the money, you live the life of an insect in this city.’

A grasshopper flew out of nowhere and landed near his feet. The man raised his Kolhapuri chappal and stamped on it. ‘This guy here had no money, so I ended his life.’

She smiled for the first time. The man was right. She said, ‘But for money you need an education. Insects are uneducated.’

‘Says who? What if I told you that the man who lives on the tenth floor of this building,’ he paused and pointed towards a posh building behind them before continuing, ‘in flat number 1002, is uneducated and yet he is rich.’

‘That’s a lie.’

‘That’s not a lie, sister. I work for that man, which is why I know.’

Shantidevi got up and walked towards him. She sat on a bench three feet from him, saying, ‘How is that even possible, brother? Tell me about him.’

Little did Shantidevi know that this conversation would change her life.

Grab your copy of Queens of Crime today!

An Excerpt from ‘The English Maharani’ on Queen Victoria’s Bicentenary

Posted on by Penguin India

The English Maharani by Miles Taylor charts the remarkable effects India had on Queen Victoria as well as the pivotal role she played in India. Drawing on official papers and an abundance of poems, songs, diaries and photographs, Taylor challenges the notion that Victoria enjoyed only ceremonial power and that India’s loyalty to her was without popular support. On the contrary, the rule of the queen-empress penetrated deep into Indian life and contributed significantly to the country’s modernisation, both political and economic.

As the world commemorates Queen Victoria’s bicentenary today, here’s an excerpt from the book:

Victoria and Albert collected Indian exhibits of their own in the early 1850s, in the form of adopted royal children. There were two: Princess Gouramma, daughter of Chikka Virarajendra, the Raja of Coorg (Kodagu), and the Maharaja Duleep Singh, who been taken into custody by the British in 1849. Queen Victoria was godmother to many infants, including the African American Sara Bonetta in 1851, and, from New Zealand, the son of a Maori chief, who was baptised Albert Victor Pomare at Buckingham Palace in 1863. Her Indian adopted children received special treatment. Both were welcomed almost as new siblings, their acceptance into the royal home marked by rituals of conversion and depiction. Princess Gouramma arrived at the court via the Basel mission in Mysore. Persuaded by the mission, the Raja of Coorg negotiated with the East India Company to have his daughter, then aged eleven, brought up in England, under the guardianship of the queen. In exchange he hoped for the return of his wealth, seized by the British in 1834. He had already used his children as bargaining chips. Another daughter had married Jung Bahadur, the chief minister of Nepal in 1850. Gouramma was brought over from India by Mrs Drummond, the wife of a retired major in the Bengal cavalry, and came to Buckingham Palace at the beginning of June. As the terms were agreed about her adoption, the queen showed off Gouramma to her own children, and commissioned Franz Winterhalter to paint her portrait. The queen watched the sitting and made her own sketches of the Indian princess. Gouramma also played with the royal children. At the end of the month she was christened in the chapel of Buckingham Palace. The Archbishop of Canterbury performed the service, Lord Hardinge and James Hogg (of the East India Company) were Gouramma’s sponsors and, with all the royal family in attendance, the queen led Gouramma to the font, naming her Victoria. Controversy flared after the baptism, when her father objected that Gouramma’s guardian, Mrs Drummond, was not of sufficiently high social standing and claimed that he had been misled into the wardship of his daughter. As a compromise Gouramma remained looked after by Mrs Drummond but at the homes of various families with connections to the Government of India, such as the Hoggs, the Hardinges and the Woods. Her father’s grudge against his treatment by the Company continued until his death in 1859, whilst Gouramma eventually married a lieutenant colonel, John Campbell, and with him she had a daughter of her own, Edith.Queen Victoria celebrated the little princess Gouramma as a Christian convert from the east. Winterhalter’s portrait shows Gouramma in her Indian clothes: a fitted blouse, pleated sari with a wide embroidered pallu, gathered by a gold belt. She is heavily jewelled with an elaborate headpiece. In her hand she holds a small Bible. The queen also commissioned the sculptor Carlo Marochetti to capture the moment of Gouramma receiving her crucifix, executed in pale marble. The queen then had the bust painted to enhance Gouramma’s facial features. An almost identical pattern was repeated with Duleep Singh. He arrived at Buckingham Palace two years after Gouramma, in the summer of 1854. As an eight- year- old boy, Duleep Singh had been taken into the care of the British forces under Henry Hardinge, who pitied the plight of the ‘beautiful boy’. Dalhousie was far less sympathetic to Duleep Singh, ‘a brat begotten of a bhistu – and no more the son of old Ranjeet than Queen Victoria’. Nonetheless after the surrender of the Punjab in 1849 Dalhousie authorised the boy to be placed into the guardianship of Sir John Login, former surgeon at the British residency in Lucknow, and his wife, Lena. As temporary governor of the citadel at Lahore, Login was in charge of the dispersal of the Lahore treasury. Duleep Singh proved one piece of booty over which he was especially careful. Whilst his mother was exiled to Kathmandu, the young maharaja was taken to Fatehgarh for his safety, and there began his western education with the Logins, converting to Christianity in 1853. The switch of faith surprised many, including Dalhousie. In the meantime, arrangements were made for what portion of the Lahore treasury would be kept for the prince, for the costs of his maintenance in England, with some set aside for the construction of a tomb for Ranjit Singh at Amritsar. By the time Duleep Singh arrived in London, he was a well- groomed fifteen- year- old, with good English and refined manners, as the queen noted. Just as she had with Gouramma, she sat and watched Winterhalter paint Duleep on successive days, as well as sketching him when he joined the family at Osborne. Winterhalter’s portrait is a grandiose full- length study, depicting Duleep as a proud Sikh ruler, richly dressed, adorned with pearls, a sheathed sword in his right hand, and a temple in the background. One small detail hints at his conversion. Around his neck is a miniature portrait of Queen Victoria, the very same one that had been given to Ranjit Singh by Lord Auckland in 1839. Two years later, as she had done with Gouramma, Queen Victoria commissioned a bust from Marochetti of Duleep, and had it coloured, although was disappointed with the result. As well as sketching Duleep Singh, the queen kept a record of their conversations that summer. She went over the details of the narrative of his life, getting him to confirm some of the awful events – in particular, the murder of his uncle, Sher Singh, astride an elephant while Duleep was his passenger – and she questioned him about his conversion to Christianity and the ostracisation he had suffered from his family as a result. In an ironic twist she revealed to Duleep Singh some of her own souvenirs of the Punjab. She showed him Charles Hardinge’s sketches of him as a small boy, and let him see the Koh- i-Noor, which he was allowed to stroke. But she ensured that he did not view the captured Sikh arms on the terrace. Her fondness for Duleep was clear, but there was also a certain wallowing in his submissiveness. Passing on her congratulations for his sixteenth birthday she noted he ‘would have come of age, had we not been obliged to take the Punjab’.Duleep Singh returned to stay with the royal family at Windsor and Osborne again over the next two years, and on each occasion the queen was able to observe the progress of his education under the guidance of the Logins. Some of this took a conventional form. There was a lot of hunting and shooting in the Scottish Highlands, and a tour to Europe at the end of 1858. Other episodes in the grooming of the maharaja reflected Prince Albert’s enthusiasms. He was taken on a tour of the sites of Staffordshire in March 1856, including a descent down a pitshaft, and later that year attended the Birmingham cattle show and helped set up a refuge home for Indian lascars. He joined a volunteers regiment in 1859, and once he left London in 1859 to live at Mulgrave House, near Whitby, he represented the queen at various local functions. By the time he was a young adult, Duleep Singh was pining for the Punjab. To the consternation of Queen Victoria, he remained close to his mother. Duleep yearned to return to India, and finally travelled there in 1861, bringing his mother back with him to England, only for her to die two years later. He made another trip to India to scatter her ashes, and passing through Cairo on his return he met and married Bamba Müller, a young woman of German and Abyssinian descent who lived in the American mission there. They settled down to country life on a Norfolk estate, raising a family of six children, the first of whom, Victor Albert Duleep Singh, born in 1866, became the queen’s latest godson. Duleep Singh’s frustrations in forced exile in England radicalised him, and by the 1880s he was planning to renounce his Christianity, return to India and claim his succession as Sikh leader. He sought allies for his restitution as far as Cairo and Moscow, and finally died in Paris in 1893, separated from his homeland and from his family. For much of his life Duleep Singh proved a headache for the British government at home and in India, and on occasion he was a major strategic risk. Despite his reputation as a pampered prince, he remained a credible focal point for Sikh nationalism throughout his lifetime. For all his justifiable resentment against the British, Duleep Singh was considered an intimate member of the queen’s extended royal family until his death. From the marriage of Princess Vicky in 1858 through to the funeral of Prince Leopold in 1884, he attended every major royal ceremony, including the funeral of Prince Albert in 1861 and the thanksgiving for the recovery of the health of the Prince of Wales in 1871. On each occasion he sat on one side of the queen (her own children were on the other) along with the other foreign princes, mostly those from the smaller German states who were related to Victoria and Albert. Queen Victoria’s own dedication to Duleep rarely wavered. She defended him from suspicion that his loyalties lay elsewhere during the Indian rebellion of 1857–8. In 1868 she pressed Disraeli’s government to make further provision for Duleep Singh’s growing family, although that had not been part of the original terms under which he was included in the civil list (the public funds used to finance the royal family). Even in 1886, once his machinations with Russia were known, and she conceded that he was ‘off his head’, she still insisted that the government look after his family properly, in the event of his not returning to Britain. There was a final meeting between the queen and the maharaja in Grasse in the south -east of France in March 1891, two years before he died. Queen Victoria’s obsession with these two young exiles in the mid-1850s defies simple explanation. She undoubtedly had a genuine sympathy for the Indian royals whom her own government had done so much to displace. It extended to the old as well as the young. The same year that Duleep Singh came to the court, she had an audience with Prince Ghulam Mohammed, the last living son of Tipu Sultan, who had come to London to argue the case for ongoing support for his own sons and any descendants they might have. To support his claims Prince Ghulam republished the history of Tipu, already reasonably well known. The queen noted in her journal her respect for Prince Ghulam’s quiet dignity as he went about his appeals, whilst observing that had Tipu survived then all might have turned out very differently. Her magnanimity always came from belonging to the winning side. There was also a strong element of mothering. Tipu was widely depicted as a neglectful father. Queen Victoria’s wrath against Duleep’s mother and also her contempt for the Raja of Coorg betrayed the same indignation over poor parenting, the very reversal of the patriarchal household that she and Albert had developed around their own children. Her own maternal instinct was more than matched by Prince Albert’s vision of a princely confederation that might include his own sons, as well as the minor German princes and Duleep Singh. They were of royal blood after all. After his death, Victoria remained loyal to Albert’s dynastic aspirations, with her inclusion of all the princes in all the family ceremonies thereafter. Particularly in the case of Duleep, there was also a heavily romanticized appreciation of Sikhs and Sikhism, fuelled by the first- hand accounts from the battlefield and also by travel literature popularised by various German and English writers in the 1840s. As a war- like but conquered people, there was not a little vanity and conceit contained in the way in which the royal family not only captured Duleep in his Sikh finery, but also appropriated it for themselves. Most telling of all, the addition of these young India royals to the court represented the high- water mark of Queen Victoria’s evangelical aspirations for India. This can be seen in the rituals around conversion, that is to say, Gouramma’s baptism at the Palace, and Duleep being made to recount the trials he suffered surrounding his own conversion. It is also evidenced in the portraits and busts that the queen commissioned of the two, depictions emphasising their racial difference, whilst at the same time detailing the tokens of their new allegiance to a western monarch and to a Christian god. Here was Christianity in India making rapid strides at her very feet. Three days after she introduced Gouramma and Duleep Singh to each other for the first time, she wrote to Lord Dalhousie, saying how she approved of their future marriage (it never happened), and also how she hoped that the growing network of railways in India would ‘facilitate the spread of Christianity which has hitherto made very slow progress’. The Bible and the steam engine –religion and industry: for all their curiosity about the east, Victoria and Albert understood India from a largely western perspective. The year of rebellion, 1857–8, changed all that.

Get your copy of The English Maharani on Queen Victoria’s 200th birthday!

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