Category: Specials

Memories of Fire by Ashok Chopra is the story of five school friends who meet after 54 years and look back at their very different lives. The book chronicles post Partition Punjab and the all-pervasive sense of neighbourliness that seems to have vanished—or has it?
 
Let’s read a few words from the author as he reminisces about the ways of the past.
 
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A few days back, I got an unexpected phone call in the middle of a relaxed Sunday afternoon. “Hi, Ashok. Are you home? We were just around the corner from your house. Wanted to drop off our son’s wedding card. See you in 20 minutes!”
Oh gosh. Nooo!
Firstly, it is Sunday—God’s day. Even He rests today. Secondly, who gives only a 20-minute warning these days? I need, at least, a day’s notice to prepare myself for company. Thirdly, didn’t their son already get married some years ago? Oh yes, I did hear something through the grapevine. The wife had turned out to be… opinionated. How dare she, right?
Anyway, who am I to pry? (But if you ask me, good for her.)
I reluctantly put my book down and got up from my comfortable chair. One swift look around the house and I determined that not much could be achieved in 20 minutes, so, meh. I then made my way to the kitchen to check if I had the basic afternoon tea paraphernalia.
Biscuits – check
Tea – check
Ginger – check
Cardamom – check
Milk – check
Sugar – oops
 
Uh-oh. I did remember to write it down in my to-buy list. But I didn’t remember to actually buy some. Oh, well. But what can be done now? I live in Gurgaon, where there are no kirana shops close by that one can walk to. There are only high-end grocery stores in malls where one must drive to. Even if one needs to buy a ten-rupee Maggi packet. And although I had heard of websites that do 60-minute grocery deliveries, I hadn’t yet heard of technology that made things appear out of thin air at will. How unfortunate.
 
Maybe they won’t even drink anything. Usually, these card-giving drop-ins are too short a visit anyway. But damn it, now I felt like having tea. Why don’t I just borrow a cup from my neighbour? I remember, as a child, my mother would send us countless times to our neighbour’s to borrow sometimes this and
on other days that. And the neighbour too would be doing the same regularly.
 
‘Uff, ghee khatam hai. Chal fatafat saath wali aunty se katori le aa.’
‘Yeh saare biscuit kaun kha gaya? Aunty se ek packet pakad la.’
‘Achha sun, woh aunty ka na gas cylinder khatam ho gaya hai. Humara extra wala de aa.’
 
If I was being paid a million dollars, I still wouldn’t be able to recount the million times this give-and-take took place. In fact, not just in terms of giving and taking, the entire neighbourhood lived as one big close-knit happy family! We knew exactly who lived where; how many people lived in each house;
all their names; their hobbies; their secrets. Sometimes, we even knew how many times Khan Uncle had burped during the day (only because he loved telling this thrilling piece of information to anyone who would listen). Aunties and neighbourhood uncles would leave their children in our homes for a few nights if they had to go out of town in an emergency.
 
But today, I don’t even know my neighbour’s name. Now, you know as well as me that it isn’t just my ignorant self; this is true for most people. Everyone is so busy trying to be self-sufficient, they’ve forgotten how to build relationships. They are so curious to know what’s happening in the life of a friend living 10,000 miles away that they simply ignore the people sitting right beside them. There are
many instances that youngsters don’t even know their own cousins. They have more ‘friends’ on Facebook than the ones they could actually have a real conversation with.
 
Wait a minute, didn’t this neighbour in question also send me a friendly request last month? I remember being somewhere else at the time I received it. There was loud music, too many people … ah, yes, of course. My school reunion! Oh, how I’d been looking forward to that evening. I had spent the entire train journey to Shimla in hopeful anticipation. Though I knew what my friends were up to through their pictures on social media, I wanted to hear the real stories of their lives and everything in them. But it sure turned out to be disappointing. A BIG waste of my time. It was obvious phones had replaced actual dialogue: ‘So, my grandkids got a sweet puppy recently. Let me show you a video of him.’
 
‘Ashok, I know you’re into organic farming and I thought of calling you just last month to know your tips and tricks. But, guess what, I simply googled it and voila. Now, I have a garden full of basil, cherry tomatoes, green chillies…’
 
I am not against progress. But people are simply losing the art of making a connect. Not the WiFikind, but a personal one. WhatsApp may be ‘instant conversation in a few words’  but the art of letter-writing has disappeared. Maybe they will find a way to reinvent it. Or maybe they will…
 
DING DONG.
And before I could finish my thoughts on the ever-changing world, or find the courage to ask my neighbour for some sugar, I was inviting my friends in and asking them if they’d like some tea.
 
‘Yes, of course. But please no sugar for us. We’ve been off it since a while. It is so bad for your health, you see. There have been reports all over …’
 
It all always does work out in the end–in the past as well as now.
 
 
Ashok Chopra
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When a young Kashmiri girl, Sehmat, gets to know her dying father’s last wish, she can do little but surrender to his passion and patriotism. This marks the beginning of her transformation from an ordinary girl into a deadly spy. She’s then married off to the son of a well-connected Pakistani general and her mission is to regularly pass information to the Indian intelligence. Something she does with extreme courage and bravado, till she stumbles on information that could destroy the naval might of her beloved country.
Get to know Sehmat Khan– the unsung heroine of war here:




 
 

Abu Salem’s life is a study in paradox. He was unique among the Mumbai mafia in a number of ways. Here are some facts about one of the most dangerous dons our country has ever seen from the bestseller book- My Name is Abu Salem, the third book by Hussain Zaidi’s part of the mafia trilogy, after Dongri to Dubai and Byculla to Bangkok.

French Lover by Taslima Nasrin is the story of Nilanjana, a young Bengali woman from Kolkata who moves to Paris after getting married to Kishanlal, a restaurant owner. Kishanlal’s luxurious apartment seems to be a gilded cage for Nilanjana, and she feels stifled within its friendless confines. While she looks desperately for a way out of the boredom and depression that threaten to engulf her life, her road to self-discovery begins.
Bold in concept and powerful in execution, this book is a fascinating glimpse into the workings of a woman’s mind as she struggles to come to terms with her identity in a hostile world.
Here are quotes from the book that take us into Nilanjana’s world.









 

In Exile, Taslima Nasrin writes about the series of events leading to her ouster from India, her house arrest, and the anxious days she had to spend in the government safe house, beset by a scheming array of bureaucrats and ministers desperate to see her gone. Without a single political party, social organization or renowned personality by her side, she had been a lone, exiled, dissenting voice up against the entire state machinery with only her wits and determination at her disposal.
These seven quotes from the book give us a glimpse into her life in the seven month period in India.







 
Taslima Nasrin’s book Exile is a moving and shocking chronicle of her struggles in India over a period of five months, set against a rising tide of fundamentalism and intolerance that will resonate powerfully with the present socio-political scenario.
 
 

Sanjeev Sanyal, bestselling history author of Land of the Seven Rivers, is currently the principal economic adviser to the Indian government. A Rhodes Scholar and an Eisenhower fellow, he has written extensively on economics, environmental conservation and urban issues.
 His work takes him to many places and often leads to encounters with various colourful characters throughout India. You can meet them all in his latest book, Life Over Two Beers, slated to release this month marking his entry into the world of fiction and poetry.
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By Sanjeev Sanyal
My latest book “Life over Two Beers” will hit the stores next week. Quite unlike my previous books, it is a collection of quirky short stories, some satirical, some with a twist in the end. And then there is the odd verse thrown in along the way.  So, why this foray into the world of fiction and poetry?
It will come as some surprise to those who have read my non-fiction writings over the years that I began writing this book, in bits and pieces, a decade and a half ago. I was then a young economist working in financial markets, recently relocated to Singapore from Mumbai. My first child had just been born. Sitting in my study one hot and sunny Sunday afternoon, with the rock-band Era playing loudly in the background, I typed out my first short story on my company issue IBM Thinkpad. Nothing pre-meditated, it was just something that I wrote out just like that.
My profession as an economist requires routine writing of reports, articles and newspaper columns. However, over the next few years, I ended up typing a story here, a fragment of verse there. At some point, I had written out enough that I wondered if it could be published. So, when I first reached out to publishers circa 2005-6, it was to publish this book. The problem was that publishers were not too keen on it. As any editor or aspiring writer will tell you, it is very difficult to publish short fiction and almost impossible for poetry.  The publishers persuaded me to write non-fiction. I am not complaining – it sent me on a happy journey and I will probably remain primarily a non-fiction writer. Nonetheless, the idea of publishing my short stories remained and I kept adding and updating the collection. Every time I changed laptops, I had to remember to transfer the file. Only four of my original set have found their way here but I am glad the book finally got published.
There are a several reasons that I wanted to publish this book. First, I have long felt that the art of short story writing needs to be revived. Till the middle of the 20^th century, it was the dominant form of fiction writing and most well-known authors across the world practiced the art. However, by the 1970s, short fiction was replaced by the novel. Those who were once avid readers of short stories in magazines and other periodicals, I am told, moved on to television serials. As a result, the market dried up and short fiction became a poor cousin of the longer format.
I have never been convinced by this explanation. I like reading short fiction and I think others do too. People still read short stories by Tagore, Manto, Dahl, Hemingway, Doyle and Borges. Indeed, every era since the Panchatantra and the Arabian Nights has had its stories told simply and without the literary fuss of a full-fledged novel. Why not 21^st century India?
The second motivation was to revive the art of satire. India has a long tradition of satire going back to ancient times. While it survives here and there in a few Indian languages (and in social media), it is sadly no longer a mainstream art form. Note that I distinguish here between first-order humor of comedy, which is alive and well, and the second-order humour of satire. Hindi and Bengali, till very recently, had a vibrant culture of satirical poetry. These seem to have somehow been replaced by the humor of comedy. Not quite the same thing.
I am a firm believer that no society can thrive unless it can occasionally mock itself. Hence, many of the stories in this collection, albeit not all, have an element of satire. I would like to clarify, nevertheless, that all the characters are fictional and any apparent similarity is merely due to the fact that satire, by its very nature, is based on a caricature of real world social mores.
The more avid readers will probably enjoy the many hidden layers and inside jokes in the collection. For instance, there are many direct and indirect allusions to my favourite authors. No prizes for guessing who inspired the cover but the reader will be amused to know that the artist Jit depicted himself in the cast of characters!
A more serious theme that run through the book is that of intellectual openness and social mobility in its many forms. India is currently experiencing unprecedented intellectual and social churn. Any depiction of early 21^st century India needs to take this into account. Thus, many of the stories depict new entrants into social and intellectual spaces, and the responses of incumbents to this change. Rather than being unduly judgemental and moralistic, the stories sketch out the opportunism, self-doubt, snobbery, and need for validation that characterizes such a churning society.
I do no not wish to burden the general reader with all the above baggage. The book should be read purely for fun at the first instance. As for me, I am glad to have finally dragged it to the finishing line. After carrying around the manuscript for years, a full draft was done by end-2016. It should normally have been published in 2017 but the editing was delayed by a full year as I took up a challenging new job. So, now that it is finally in print, I feel oddly lighter and emptier at the same time.
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