Ha Ha Hu Hu tells the delightful tale of an extraordinary horse-headed creature that mysteriously appears in London one fine morning, causing considerable excitement and consternation among the city’s denizens. Dressed in silks and jewels, it has the head of a horse but the body of a human and speaks in an unknown tongue. What is it? And more importantly, why is it here?
Let’s us read an excerpt from the book.
The animal gestured that the floor was all muddy and there was nowhere to sit down. People understood the gesture. They brought a big stool and handed it to the animal. The animal sat on the stool in the lotus position, closed its nostrils and began to meditate. Nobody understood what it was doing. After about an hour, it opened its eyes and stood up, tied the now dry cloth around its body and put the cloth it was wearing out to dry. It pointed towards the fruits, gesturing for more. The Lord Mayor sent his men and had a large basket of fruits brought in. The animal then gestured asking for a chƟmbu. Where could you find chƟmbus in England! So they gave it a glass instead. The animal took the glass, sprinkled a few drops of water on the fruits, muttered something, waved its hand around the fruits and then ate all the fruits. It gestured for more water. They gave it more water from the hose. The animal drank the water.
Sitting on the stool, the animal looked quietly around at everybody. It laughed again. Now the people understood that that was how the animal laughed. The animal pointed towards the cage and gestured asking why it was there. Everyone was amazed.
Someone in the crowd said, ‘No, this isn’t an animal. This is a human being. The head is a horse’s head but this surely is a human being. We have discovered new continents, but we haven’t yet discovered the continent where people like this live. Let’s find out what his language is and which country he comes from. Looks like he comes from a very civilized culture. Why put him in a cage? Get him out.’
The police officers didn’t agree. ‘We can’t free him from the cage,’ they said. ‘How can we be sure that it’s not an animal? What if it pounces on the crowd and eats people alive?’
So the cage stayed.
The officers talked about many things to the animal in English. It was clear the animal did not understand. Then they spoke in French, German, Italian and Russian, one after the other. Still the animal did not understand. They brought a black man and had him speak his language to the animal. Listening to all these languages, the animal began to laugh as if it were ridiculing them. The police didn’t know what else to do. After a little while the animal neighed, which sounded to people at a distance like ‘Kim ma e sudam? Kim edam?’ By now everyone knew that the animal was talking. But it did not know any of their languages, so they did not know how to communicate with it.
However, they noticed something interesting: The animal was totally calm and looked uninterested in the people around it.
All this time, the soldiers stood with loaded guns. Coming close to the bars, the animal looked at one of their guns. A soldier standing behind the animal was frightened and walked four paces back and held the gun close to him. The animal turned around and saw his frightened face. It realized that the man’s hands held some kind of an instrument for killing. It looked at the gun with some interest and asked the policeman to see the gun. The policeman refused.
Everyone looked on in amazement.
The sun was setting. People were leaving for their homes. For fun, the eight-year-old son of a police inspector poked at the animal from behind with his badminton racket. The animal turned around as the boy ran away and stretched its hands through the bars to catch him. The boy escaped but the animal did get hold of a soldier, pulling the gun from his hands into the cage. People were frightened and ran away. Even the police and the soldiers were fleeing when the Lord Mayor commanded them to stop.
The animal began to look closely at the gun.
Category: Excerpts
Choices by Shivshankar Menon – An Excerpt
Shivshankar Menon served as national security adviser to the prime minister of India from 2010–14 and as India’s foreign secretary from 2006–09. A career diplomat, he has served as India’s envoy to Israel (1995–97), Sri Lanka (1997–2000), China (2000–03) and Pakistan (2003 06). In 2010, Menon was chosen by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the world’s top 100 global thinkers. Menon in his book, Choices, gives an insider’s account of the negotiations, discussions and assessments that went into the making of India’s foreign policy.
Let’s read an excerpt from the book- Choices.
———–
I am often asked why India committed itself to not using its nuclear weapons first. The center-right National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government adopted the no-first-use doctrine when India first publicly tested nuclear weapons at Pokhran in 1998, and all subsequent governments of India have reiterated this pledge.1 The doctrine states that:
The fundamental purpose of Indian nuclear weapons is to
deter the use and threat of use of nuclear weapons by any
State or entity against India and its forces. India will not be
the first to initiate a nuclear strike, but will respond with
punitive retaliation should deterrence fail.
India will not resort to the use or threat of use of nuclear
weapons against States which do not possess nuclear
weapons, or are not aligned with nuclear weapon powers.
There is still some residual anxiety in India about the wisdom of this commitment, particularly in military minds. Why have a weapon and forswear its use? India could have followed the United States and Pakistan in retaining the option of using its most powerful weapon first should the nation’s defense require it.
The answer to that question lies in India’s nuclear doctrine, which is itself a product of the unique circumstances in which India finds itself. Those circumstances also explain why India chose to test nuclear weapons and become a declared nuclear weapon state (NWS) in 1998.
By the late 1990s, India was in a situation where two of its neighbors with whom India had fought wars after independence, Pakistan and China, were already armed with nuclear weapons and were working together to build their capabilities and proliferate them in Asia. The international nonproliferation regime was not in any position to address this problem. India therefore chose to become a declared NWS in 1998. The Indian government made that decision in the face of opposition by all the major powers, despite misgivings within Indian society, and after twenty-four years of international nuclear sanctions resulting from India’s first nuclear test, Pokhran-I, in 1974. (India described the 1974 test as a “peaceful nuclear explosion,” adopting a term from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, whereas the 1988 test was described by the government of India as a nuclear weapon test.) Those sanctions had been designed to “cap, cease and roll back” India’s civil nuclear program and potential to make atomic weapons. They had failed to do so. Since 1974, India had also been threatened with nuclear weapons at least three times: twice by Pakistan and once, implicitly, by the entry of the nuclear-armed U.S. aircraft carrier USS Enterprise into the Bay of Bengal during the 1971 war with Pakistan. (The Enterprise had also entered the Indian Ocean in 1962 when India and China fought their brief border war, but that move was intended to support, not threaten, India.)
When India decided to test nuclear weapons publicly, in 1998, it was evident that nuclear weapons, because of the scale and duration of the destruction they cause, are primarily political weapons, the currency of power in the nuclear age, rather than effective warfighting weapons. The government of India therefore declared after the 1998 tests that these weapons were to prevent nuclear threat and blackmail, and that India would not be the first to use nuclear weapons against other states. If, however, anyone dared use nuclear weapons against us, we would assuredly retaliate and inflict unacceptable damage on the adversary.
————
An Unsuitable Boy by Karan Johar – An Excerpt
Karan Johar is synonymous with success, panache, quick wit, and outspokenness, which sometimes inadvertently creates controversy and makes headlines. KJo, as he is popularly called, has been a much-loved Bollywood film director, producer, actor, and discoverer of new talent. Baring all for the first time in his autobiography, An Unsuitable Boy, is both the story of the life of an exceptional film-maker at the peak of his powers and of an equally extraordinary human being who shows you how to survive and succeed in life.
Let’s read an excerpt from his best selling book, An Unsuitable Boy–
—————————————————————————————————————————————————–
My first proper meeting with Shah Rukh Khan was on the sets of Karan Arjun with my dad. Then I met him on the sets of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge where I told him that many years ago, I had sat across him in Anand Mahendroo’s office. He said he remembered being there but didn’t remember seeing me. Now when I look back, it was a really weird first meeting. Who knew what life had in store for both of us?
My father had taken me along to the sets of Karan Arjun. I knew Kajol was going to be there; she was somebody I had known as a child (she was one of the few people who lived in South Bombay, on Carmichael Road). I was a bit nervous because my father had started taking me around a little (he said I should go out there and meet people). He wanted to sign Shah Rukh for Duplicate. This was before I started to assist Adi (Aditya Chopra) in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. So I called Kajol and said, ‘I’m coming for the shooting of your film. Will you be there?’ She said, ‘Yeah, I’m doing a song sequence, “Jaati Hoon Main” [which went on to become quite popular].’
Karan Johar has detailed his long friendship with Shah Rukh Khan in his autobiography, ‘An Unsuitable Boy’. Karan writes that after the duo went through a slightly distant patch, they reconciled at a party for Deepika Padukone’s ‘Piku’ success.
I had this preconceived notion about Shah Rukh. I thought he was this young brat, borderline arrogant. But within five minutes of that meeting in Film City, my opinion of him changed. He was warm and chatty.
I remember my father got out of the red car we had and Shah Rukh came up to the car and opened the door for him. It was meant to be a ten-minute meeting, but they had broken for lunch or something and Shah Rukh spoke non-stop for two hours! He was so accessible, friendly and respectful of my father that he won me over in those two hours. I was very sensitive about how people treated my father because I knew what he had gone through. He said, ‘I’ve heard so much about you, sir, and such wonderful things about you as a human being.’
… That was my first meeting with him. I remember coming back and telling my father what a nice guy Shah Rukh was. He was so different from what I thought movie people were like. I had seen my father dejected and disappointed with so many of his fraternity people. I was not cynical but I was apprehensive about them. But Shah Rukh was an outsider and he was new. His syntax as a human being was very different from others in the film zone. I remember being completely enamoured by how he connected as a human being. He was so charming. He was not my favourite actor; I was a big Aamir Khan fan. But somehow in that two-hour meeting, my entire perception of him changed. I felt he was magnetic, charming, funny and sensitive. All these qualities came jumping out at me.
There’s so much that’s been said about Shah Rukh and me. Yes, there was definitely a distance between us in recent years but that was because we were not working with each other. There’s no other reason. And there were a lot of people who broadened this gap. There were people who said things to him, and who said things to me.
I sent him a message to come on Koffee with Karan in the last season, for the New Year episode, to which he didn’t reply. But he replied to every other message I sent him, about everything else. Maybe, he didn’t want to come for the show. I understood he didn’t want to come, and he expected me to understand. I didn’t ask him after that. It’s not that I called him and said, ‘Why are you not replying?’ But I called him when there was a problem or a situation I needed his advice on. Or I would go and have a drink with him in his house.
When two people are so close, when they’ve done six feature films together and then haven’t worked together on the set for a while, there’s bound to be a gap. That’s the way the industry is. The fault is mine because I went on record to say I would never make a film without Shah Rukh Khan. I should not have said that because I put that seed in his and everybody else’s head. I don’t blame people for saying things because I went on record and then didn’t live up to my promise. So it’s my fault. I don’t blame him. Also, you get attached to somebody, and Shah Rukh is a very possessive person. He’s a possessive friend. I think I may have hurt him when I made a film without him. And I think I got hurt because when I did, I felt he didn’t give me that paternal or fraternal feeling that I had from him otherwise. I think we were two hurt friends for no reason.
Shah Rukh and I have the most awesome chemistry at work. When we work together, it’s magic. And when the right film is to be made, it’ll be made. But it has to be something that we both love. Even when there was this minor or mild distance between us, on many levels, he was still my first go-to person in a situation of distress, or to seek help or advice. When I had a falling out with Kajol, the first call I made was to Shah Rukh. He came to meet me, spoke about it to me. Then I called Adi, and we discussed it. But my instinct was to call Shah Rukh first.
He had nothing to do with the problem. But I still called him because somewhere Shah Rukh, Kajol and I have been so close. We’ve built a very solid part of each other’s careers together. I called him to discuss the situation, to know whether what I was saying was valid and right. And he was very helpful. He called me right through every day that week to check whether I was okay.
When Gori Tere Pyaar Mein bombed — and I was not used to having that kind of a big failure — he called me to ask, ‘Are you okay?’ I said, ‘Yeah, things happen, shit happens. Once in a while you have to deal with a film that doesn’t work.’ So while admittedly there was a distance between us, it did not take away from the largeness of our relationship.
I think Shah Rukh and I are aware of the fact that people are envious of our relationship, which is why we’ve never had a blowout with each other. There was a simmering, silent, respectable distance between us. But there’s also an equal amount of love and affection we have for each other. That’s never going to go. I have a huge amount of respect for him. He can ask anything of me and I will do it. And I know that if I were in dire straits, and if he could do something to change that situation, if it was in his power, he would do everything to help me. There’s a big layer of love and respect still, and no one can come in the way of that.
—————————————————————————————————————————————————–
The Fuzzy and the Techie: Why the Liberal Arts Will Rule the Digital World, An Excerpt
Scott Hartley is a venture capitalist and startup advisor who has served as a Presidential Innovation Fellow at the White House, a partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures, and a venture partner at Metamorphic Ventures. In his book, The Fuzzy and the Techie reveals the counterintuitive reality of business today: it’s actually the fuzzies – not the techies – who are playing the key roles in developing the most creative and successful new business ideas. They are often the ones who understand the life issues that need solving and offer the best approaches for doing so. It is they who are bringing context to code, and ethics to algorithms. They also bring the management and communication skills, the soft skills that are so vital to spurring growth.
Here’s the introduction by the author.
The terms ‘fuzzy’ and ‘techie’ are used to respectively describe those students of the humanities and social sciences, and those students of the engineering or hard sciences at Stanford University. Stanford is what’s known as a ‘liberal arts’ university not because it focuses on subjects that are necessarily liberal, or artistic, but because each student is required to study a broad set of subjects prior to specialization. The term liberal arts comes from the Latin, artes liberales, and denotes disciplines such as music, geometry, and philosophy that can together stretch the mind in different directions and, in that process, make it free. Each of these subjects is meant to broaden the student, force them to think critically, to debate, and to grapple with ambiguities inherent in subjects like philosophy. They are also meant to help the student cultivate empathy for others in subjects such as literature, which forces one to view the world through the eyes of another human being. In short, they are less focused on specific job preparation than they are about the cultivation of a well-rounded human being. But at Stanford, beneath these light-hearted appellations of ‘fuzzies’ and ‘techies’ also rest some charged opinions on degree equality, vocational application, and the role of education. Not surprisingly, these are opinions that have bubbled well beyond the vast acreage of Stanford’s palm-fringed quads and golden hillsides, into Silicon Valley. In fact, these questions of degree equality, automation and relevant skill sets in tomorrow’s technologyled economy are ones we face in India and across the world.
This decades-old debate to separate liberal arts majors from the students who write code and develop software has come to represent a modern incarnation of physicist and novelist Charles Perry Snow’s Two Culturesa false dichotomy between those who are versed in the classical liberal arts, and those with the requisite vocational skills to succeed in tomorrow’s technology-led economy. In India, from the earliest entrance exam standards that determine whether or not students move toward or away from engineering, we have created policy and education pathways that separate rather than foster an understanding between these ‘two cultures.’ Whether a student sits for the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) for admission to an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), for the Birla Institute of Technology and Science Admission Test (BITSAT), the VIT Engineering Entrance Exam for a coveted engineering seat at Vellore Institute of Technology or for a regional common entrance exam in Maharashtra, Karnataka, or West Bengal, students are quickly funneled down very specific predetermined paths, and are perhaps less able to explore their own passions or values. And this is not specific or unique to India, but endemic across many cultures and societies.
This book not only seeks to reframe this ongoing debate, by taking into account the very real need for science, technology, engineering and math, so-called ‘STEM’ majors, but also acknowledges their faux opposition to the liberal arts. Indeed, as we evolve our technology to make it ever more accessible and democratic, and as it becomes ever more ubiquitous, the timeless questions of the liberal arts have become essential requirements of our new technological instruments. While those fabled graduates of the Indian Institutes of Technology, or of the great engineering academies such as Manipal, develop critical skills and retain steadfast importance in laying the technological infrastructure, most successful start-ups require great industry context, psychology in understanding user needs and wants, intuitive design, and adept communication and collaboration skills. These are the very skill sets our graduates in literature, philosophy, and the social sciences provide. These are not separate or add-on skills, but the imperative components alongside any technological literacy.
As a fuzzy having grown up in a techie world, this false dichotomy has been something I observed in Palo Alto, California, where Steve Jobs donated the Apple computers we used in high school. This was something I observed furthermore as a Stanford student; as an employee of Google, where I spent over a year launching two teams in Hyderabad and Gurugram, India, as an employee of Facebook, and then as a venture capitalist at a $2-billion fund on Sand Hill Road, California. Peering behind the veil of our greatest technology, it is often our greatest humanity that makes it whole. Having met with thousands of companies, the story I want to share with India is that no matter what you’ve studied, there is a very real, and a very relevant, role for you to play in tomorrow’s tech economy. Our technology ought to provide us with great hope rather than fear, and we require policymakers, educators, parents and students to recognize this false divide between becoming technically literate, and building on our most important skills as humans.
Our greatest human problems require that we blend an appreciation for technology with a continued respect for those who study the human conditions, for they are the ones who teach us how to apply our technology, and to what ends it must actually be purposed. We ought to consider the true value of the liberal arts as we continue to embrace and pioneer our new technological tools. As we move forward, we require the timeless and the timely, the great poets and literature of Bengal and the glass-towers of Bengaluru.
Scott Hartley
Spring, 201
The Lord and Master of Gujarat – An Excerpt
The Lord and Master of Gujarat is set four years after The Glory of Patan, and unfolds at dizzying speed, abounding in conspiracies, heroism and romance. In the book, the kingdom of Patan is under attack from the army of Avanti. People have fled their villages to seek refuge in the city. Amidst the mounting panic, the arrival of Kaak, a young warrior from Laat, sets in motion a frantic chain of events.
Arguably K.M. Munshi’s best-known work, The Lord and Master of Gujarat deftly weaves state politics and battles with personal trials and tribulations into one glorious tapestry.
Here is an excerpt from the book:
_______________________________________________________________________
It was a freezing night in the winter of Samvat, 1154. The solemnly flowing waters of the Saraswati resounded fearfully in the stillness of the night. The moist breeze rising from the river made the atmosphere closer to the monsoon than to winter. It was a night when one would prefer to curl up at home next to one’s beloved. Yet, the bank across the city of Patan was occupied by about 400 to 500 people. Some tried to ward off the cold with bonfires; others slept or tried to sleep around the scattered fires. A few, not planning to sleep, sat curled up anxiously. In the darkness, the flickering of the flames cast eerie shadows and filled the night with dread. The whole scene appeared to evoke a gathering of ghouls.
Beside one of the bonfires, a young man sat half-reclined. His head rested on his shield, which lay on the ground. The style of his turban indicated that he belonged to Sorath. His sword lay near his face, covered with his sash. There was no sleep in his eyes. He sat staring at the fire, aiming an occasional woodchip and feeding the fire. He was alone. At a distance sat two men huddled against the tree. They were not talking to each other.
The young man appeared to be about twenty-five years old. His face was dark yet attractive. His eyes were large and forbidding. They sparkled with mischief every now and then.
His physique was strong and shapely. His attire, the ornaments on his wrists and arms, his earrings and the gold chain around his neck suggested that he was a man of means. He had the nonchalant air of an aristocratic warrior.
In a little while, the sound of a fast-approaching camel was heard, followed by the thud of a camel sitting down. Silence fell once again. The young man by the fire sat unperturbed. It appeared that there was nothing more important to him than throwing woodchips into the fire.
A man appeared from the direction of the sound. He was in a hurry and, seeing the young man, turned to him.
The new arrival appeared to be in his early twenties. He was well-armed—sword and dagger at his waist, a shield on his back and a large staff in his hand. He turned towards the young man and for a moment both looked at each other. With the exception of their turbans, their attires were similar, although the newcomer had hardly any ornaments. Both were tall, wellbuilt and attractive. Their eyes shone with a similar sparkle; their broad foreheads were adorned with similar sandalwood marks. Both appeared to be Gujarati warriors who had fought under the glorious Solankis in their conquest of Gujarat. Yet there was a lot that distinguished the two. Their personalities were clearly different. The newcomer was slightly taller, his eyes smaller and sharper, his body firm and lithe. On the other hand, the man who sat there had a rounder face. The flare of his nostrils and large eyes gave him a leonine appearance. He exuded courage and power. The newcomer’s sharp eyes, chiselled jawline and aquiline nose lent him the countenance of a bird of prey. He exuded concentration and caution. If the former looked fearless and calm, the latter looked farsighted and composed. Both were exemplars of characteristics associated only with men of character—one leonine, the other aquiline—one the king of the jungle, and the other the king of the sky.
______________________________________________________________________
6 Exercises That Will Help You Give Birth Naturally
In light of the many complications that arise following a Caesarean-section delivery-such as infections, excessive blood loss, internal scarring –women are increasingly reverting to natural births. Antenatal exercises help in regaining your confidence to deliver naturally according to your own potential.
Here are a few antenatal exercises recommended by Dr. Mahima Bakshi in her latest book, Birthing Naturally.
Please note: Antenatal exercises should not be learnt from any untrained person as it might harm your baby if not done properly and an expert will know what has to be kept in mind before deciding the exercises that are safe for you.
Talent Wins: The New Playbook for Putting People First – An Excerpt
Turning conventional views on their heads, talent and leadership experts Ram Charan, Dominic Barton and Dennis Carey provide leaders with a new and different playbook for acquiring, managing and deploying talent–for today’s agile, digital, analytical, technologically driven strategic environment and for creating the HR function that business needs. Filled with examples of forward-thinking companies that have adopted radical new approaches to talent (such as ADP, Amgen, BlackRock, Blackstone, Haier, ING, Marsh, Tata Communications, Telenor and Volvo), as well as the juggernauts and the start-ups of Silicon Valley, this book shows leaders how to bring the rigor that they apply to financial capital to their human capital–elevating HR to the same level as finance in their organizations.
Here’s an excerpt from the book.
——————————————
The top of the company also must align behind something else: the story you’re going to tell investors. If you’re leading a talent-driven organization but talking strategy-first to Wall Street, there’s a disconnect between your company’s public and private personae. That’s not good for investors, your company, or your workforce.
Telling investors about talent seems like a risky tactical change. Why would a company in, say, the semiconductor industry want to position itself in a way that seems more suited to a movie studio announcing its latest slate of star-driven features?
There are several answers to this question. For starters, shifting to a story built around talent is a sign of the times. Some companies already include slides about their key talent in their quarterly presentations. Financial analysts know the impact people like Jony Ive, Astro Teller, Sheryl Sandberg, and Andy Rubin can have on a company’s valuation. The phenomenon is hardly limited to tech: the performance or career peregrinations of Wall Street stars, fashion leaders, and even manufacturing pros can affect share prices as well.
But your company’s talent narrative isn’t just a story of stars. In fact, in times of great turbulence it can be a sign of stability. GE has made its deep talent-development efforts part of its narrative for years. GE stock has had its challenges, of course. But the company’s education efforts at its Crotonville, New York, facility and its history of always having great talent at the ready give investors confidence in GE’s management pipeline. Google’s track record of giving great leeway to its talented employees is equally well known. At one point, employees were even encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time working on their own pet projects. Investors have applauded CEO Larry Page’s effort to rein in some of the company’s more outlandish experiments, but they wouldn’t want to see the company reduce its commitment to innovation. Analysts have come to expect the unexpected from companies like Google, Amazon, and Apple, and are apt to forgive the occasional failure, because the companies’ talent-first models have produced one unexpected innovation after another. At these companies, there’s a well established narrative history of the power of talent.
The Unseeing Idol of Light by K.R. Meera; Excerpt
K.R. Meera is a multi-award-winning writer and journalist. She has published short stories, novels and essays, and has won some of the most prestigious literary prizes. The Unseeing Idol of Light, K.R. Meera’s latest book is a haunting tale that explores love and loss, blindness and sight, obsession and suffering-and the poignant interconnections between them.
Here’s an excerpt from the book:
Deepti had gone missing one day before the TV centre in Thiruvananthapuram was commissioned. On their last day together, Prakash and Deepti had mostly talked about TV.
‘Considering the state of affairs here, we’ll probably get to watch TV by the time our son goes to college! Though I sometimes wonder whether we will ever really be so lucky.’ Deepti laughed, the rich timbre of her voice reminiscent of a finger knocking softly against a bronze pitcher.
That laughter and her question had resounded so often in Prakash’s ears that he had refused to purchase a TV in his home for a very long time. TV, to Prakash, was inexplicably associated with misfortune. In the shock of losing Deepti, the nerves controlling his vision had separated, making him blind. As it turned out, he never really had the luck to watch TV, just as Deepti had predicted.
Much later, when cable TV came into vogue, Prakash had two unexpected visitors at the town’s government college, where he was employed as the chief librarian. A young woman and a man had dropped in, carrying a camera and a microphone.
‘We would like to interview you since you are a blind librarian.’ The young woman brusquely extended the microphone towards him.
‘Where did you get such pretty lips, my girl?’ Prakash’s brazen query stunned the woman.
‘Ah, you are not blind, are you?’
‘Aren’t we all blind in some way or the other?’
Opening Chekov’s Collected Stories and turning to page 132, Prakash started reading out from ‘The Husband’, the book held close to his nose.
‘It makes me sick to look at her!’ he muttered. ‘Going on for forty and nothing to boast of at any time, she must powder her face and lace herself up!’
The young woman peeked into the book and, seeing that he was perfectly correct, beat a hasty retreat. However, after they had left, Prakash regretted sending them away. Deepti might have seen the TV programme in some corner of the world, recognized him and returned to spread light again in his life. Immersed in this thought, he became extremely frustrated.
Even after so many years he had not been able to reconcile himself to Deepti’s departure. He had been completely prepared to be a father, and eager to play with his little son, when Deepti disappeared. In his mind’s eye, he repeatedly saw how, on that evening, seated in the kitchen, Deepti and he had enjoyed platefuls of ada with their tea.
————————————
Dera Sacha Sauda and Gurmeet Ram Rahim by Anurag Tripathi – An Excerpt
Anurag Tripathi is an investigative journalist with sixteen years of experience spanning print, electronic and digital media. Tripathi’s book, Dera Sacha Sauda and Gurmeet Ram Rahim, involves his decade long investigation into reported criminal activities undertaken at the Dera Sacha Sauda headed by Gurmeet Ram Rahim.
Let’s read an excerpt from the book.
———–
For twenty-one-year-old Anshul, life was moving at a pace that any youngster from a small town envisions. He was good at his studies and dreamt of studying to be a lawyer. It was his father’s dream that he was pursuing diligently. With two siblings—a fourteen-year-old brother, Aridman, and sixteen-year-old sister, Shreyasi—mother Kulwant Kaur and father Ram Chander Chhatrapati, Anshul was content and secure. Little did he know that life as he knew it and expected it to be was about to change forever.
After 8.15 p.m. on 24 October 2002, he would embark on the journey of a relentless legal battle, fought amid constant threats to him and his family. He was not to know that for the next fifteen years, he would have to put aside his own dreams and fight tooth and nail for justice for his family.
On that fateful day, in their small, single-storeyed house at Govind Nagar in Sirsa, Anshul was watching a television show along with his brother and sister. He was also chopping vegetables for the dinner that was yet to be made. His mother had had to leave in a hurry that morning for Guru Har Sahai in Firozpur, Punjab, to attend the funeral of a close family member. Before leaving, she had instructed Anshul to take care of his younger siblings for she was aware of her husband’s routine of returning home late from work.
‘After writing his reports and sending the newspaper to press, my father had a habit of meeting his old friends at a tea shop in town. There, he would discuss the latest news making the rounds, and also take feedback on major events taking place at the Dera.’
That day, however, was not a usual one. Chhatrapati, to his children’s surprise, reached home at around 7.15 p.m., which was early for him. He was elated as he told Anshul about a major lead in his investigation against Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh. He announced that he would try his culinary skills and busied himself in the kitchen.
At around 8.05 p.m., the family heard a motorcycle stop at their gate and someone call for Ram Chander Chhatrapati by name from the small alley outside their house. Asking his children to stay indoors, he went out to meet the visitor. The house has two gates—a bigger one, which opens out into the main alley of the locality to the west, and a smaller one, which opens into an adjoining alley to the north of the house. Normally, the main gate was kept closed most of the time, and it was the smaller gate that was used by the family to enter and exit the house.
As was his habit, this time too, Chhatrapati used the smaller gate to get out of the house. The killers, who had obviously been tracking his and his family’s movements, knew that it was the small gate that was in frequent use. If they waited for him at that gate, Chhatrapati might not open it. So they hid themselves behind the main gate on the west side, and waited for him to emerge from the small gate and walk out towards the main alley.
When a few minutes had passed, Anshul thought of going out and calling his father back in for dinner. He was about to open the main door when they all heard five consecutive gunshots. The assailants, two in number, fled the spot on a motorcycle. As the nearest police post at Khairpur was barely 200 metres from the house, one of the assailants, Kuldeep Singh, was apprehended by a constable who had heard the gunshots and was heading towards the alley. The other assailant, Nirmal Singh, managed to flee the crime scene.
Meanwhile, Anshul locked the main door of the house and rushed towards the small gate.
‘By the time I reached the main alley, all I could see was my father lying in a pool of blood.’ He started screaming for help as he rushed to help his father. Chhatrapati, though grievously wounded, with two gunshots in the abdomen and one each on the shoulder, the back and the thigh, was trying to stand up. The entire neighbourhood had heard the gunshots and people had started gathering in the alley. A neighbour brought his car out and rushed the badly wounded Chhatrapati to the nearest hospital in Sirsa.
‘The 200–km drive from Sirsa to Rohtak seemed like the longest I have ever had to drive in my life. All throughout, I was holding my father’s hand. He was conscious and was looking into my eyes. I felt utterly miserable and helpless,’ said the son, for whom his father was the greatest role model.
Meanwhile, Anshul’s sister and brother were at home, crying and clueless about why their father had been shot. The news of the brutal attack also reached Firozpur. Kulwant Kaur composed herself and started for Rohtak. ‘He was an upright man. He was fighting against a monster and he knew its consequences,’ Kaur told me while recalling that night of horror. ‘He would always tell us that no one has left this earth alive. “Neither will I. But I can’t sit back and see my city go to ruin because of Gurmeet Ram Rahim.”
———–
Five Areas Where India Has Witnessed Immense Growth In The Past Seven Decades
Has democracy in India fulfilled the aspirations of its people? Is the country secure on its external borders? Will India become an economic powerhouse?
All these and many more integral questions loom large as India completes seven decades of independence. The book, Seven Decades of Independent India, edited by Vinod Rai and Amitendu Palit, reflects on the India of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, by gathering rare and candid insights from some of the most distinguished experts, practitioners and scholars on India.
Here are five areas where India has progressed notably-
