Publish with Us

Follow Penguin

Follow Penguinsters

Follow Penguin Swadesh

© 2020 Penguin India

Category: Features

articles features main category

The Other Side of the Divide- An Excerpt

Posted on by Penguin India

Pegged on journalist Sameer Arshad Khatlani’s visit to Pakistan, The Other Side of the Divide provides insights into the country beyond what we already know about it. These include details on the impact of India’s soft power, thanks to Bollywood, and the remnants of Pakistan’s multireligious past, and how it frittered away advantages of impressive growth in the first three decades of its existence by embracing religious conservatism.

Read an excerpt from the book below:

 

Anarkali Bazaar gets its name from a white semi-octagonal towered tomb believed to be that of slave girl Nadira Begum… popularly known as Anarkali… Legend has it that Mughal emperor Akbar had Anarkali interred alive in upright position in a masonry wall at the turn of the seventeenth century. She earned Akbar’s wrath for daring to fall in love with his heir apparent, Jahangir… The ‘love story’ has little historicity; it appears more to be a figment of somebody’s fertile imagination…

Lahore is replete with symbols and structures reaffirming shared India–Pakistan history and culture. Civil Lines is one such place around a kilometre from Anarkali’s tomb, where anti-colonial hero Bhagat Singh reignited the revolutionary Indian national movement.

Tempers ran high in Lahore in the winter of 1929. National movement leader Lala Lajpat Rai had succumbed to injuries sustained in a police assault at a protest rally. Young blood in revolutionary ranks sought revenge. Bhagat Singh volunteered to kill Lahore police chief JA Scott to avenge Rai’s death around the police chief’s office near the DAV (now Islamia) College. His comrades Rajguru, Jai Gopal and Chandrashekhar followed suit. They were disillusioned with Gandhi’s pacifist policies and wanted to fire militant youth imagination against the British. Bhagat Singh was chosen to pull the trigger. Rajguru was to provide him cover. Chandrashekhar Azad was tasked with ensuring their escape. The revolutionaries rehearsed the killing two days before the chosen date in the busy lanes of Civil Lines. They had prepared a red poster declaring: ‘Scott killed’, in anticipation of a successful mission. Everything except Scott’s identification went as per plan when the revolutionaries emerged out of DAV College hostel and took their positions. Jai Gopal, tasked to identify Scott, had never seen the British officer before. But he hid this fact from others. Bhagat Singh ended up pumping five bullets into the wrong person — twenty-one-year-old probationary police officer JP Saunders. Rajguru had seconds earlier waylaid and shot Saunders in his neck. He killed an Indian policeman who was in their hot pursuit. The revolutionaries ran into the DAV college campus, where they scaled a wall to enter its hostel compound. They fled to their hideout and eventually to Lahore, where they were brought back for their trial and were executed…

The scene of Saunders’ murder is now a busy street surrounded by the traffic police office, Islamia College, Metrobus route, Government College hostel, Lahore district courts and the Central Model School. Very few people remember its association with Bhagat Singh, who was an alumnus of DAV (Islamia) College, which was shifted to Ambala after the Partition. The college, which Hindu revivalist Arya Samaj managed before the Partition, is better known today as the alma mater of cricket legend Wasim Akram. It changed hands and was rechristened after the Partition. Three samadhis of Ranjit Singh’s relatives are located on the campus.

A road named after Hindu reformist Deva Samaj movement between Anarkali’s tomb and the DAV College is another remnant of Lahore’s past. Pandit Shiv Narayan Agnihotri founded it in Lahore in 1887. Deva Samaj began as theistic before re-emerging as an atheistic society. Deva Samaj emphasized ‘ethical conduct and confession of sins’ but denied the existence of gods. Agnihotri, too, is a forgotten man around the road named after his movement. Queries about the origin of the road’s name drew blank stares.

Deva Samaj Road begins close to the Civil Secretariat Metrobus station on the edge of civil court complex before merging into Abdali Road near Vishnu Street. Then Opposition leader Imran Khan, who had been campaigning against alleged election fraud had just held a huge anti-government rally in the area when I was there. Khan’s banners were hanging near Nasir Bagh as I passed by on my way to the Mall Road where the best of Lahore’s colonial heritage is located. The tree-shaded avenue is lined with chic shops, restaurants, hotels and mansions. Hindu and Sikhs owned most of the properties before the Partition also on the Mall Road, built in 1851 to connect Anarkali with Lahore Cantonment. A handful of Muslims owned businesses on the Mall Road before 1947. Today, a sprinkling of Hindus is left in Lahore; most of them are Valmiki.

An orange flag fluttering atop a temple stands out as a sign of Hindu presence at the corner of Bheem Street just across the Metrobus line off the Mall Road. Located in Lahore’s biggest tyre markets amid small shops and dhabas, it is one of Lahore’s two functioning temples. A bell hangs besides an Om symbol at the temple’s main door, where a board declares in Urdu: ‘Insaf ka mandir hai yeh, bhagwan ka ghar hai [This is temple of justice and the lord’s house].’… Valmiki temple is more than a place of worship, it is sort of a community centre, where Valmiki converts to Christianity are among regular visitors.

The day 24 December 2013, when I was roaming around in the area, was one of celebration for the Lahori Hindus; they had finally been handed possession of 14,200 square feet of land for a crematorium at Babu Sabu Chowk. The transfer followed an August 2013 Supreme Court order for the allotment. Lahore’s Hindus had moved the top court seeking the immediate transfer of the land for last rites. The handover had been hanging fire since the government was forced to allocate the land in 2006 following a sixty-two-year-old Hindu woman’s burial at a Muslim graveyard…

The Krishna temple on Ravi Road, over 3 km north of Valmiki temple, is the other functional Hindu place of worship in Lahore. The temples feature regularly on Pakistani TV channels… They invariably have sound bites of saffron-kurta-pyjama-clad priest Bhagat Lal, a balding man in his sixties. Lal has been the mainstay of Hindu religiosity in Lahore for decades.

The Krishna temple was the scene of an arsonist attack hours after foot soldiers of India’s current ruling party demolished the Babri Masjid hundreds of kilometres away in 1992. The lives of Lahori Hindus were suddenly turned upside down for no fault of theirs just when they had begun picking up the pieces decades after the Partition upheavals. The temple, however, was up and running within six months thanks to Lal’s resilience. He reopened the temple and restarted pujas twice daily with the help of government compensation. The fraught India–Pakistan ties took an unexpected turn for the better a decade later… A group of Indian pilgrims to Katas Raj temples in northern Pakistan reinstalled Krishna, Radha and Hanuman idols at the temple for the first time since the Partition in February 2007…

The reinstallation overlapped with the brief India–Pakistan détente from 2003 to 2008. The restoration of Katas Raj temples remains an important legacy of the thaw. The choice of Hindu nationalist and former Indian deputy prime minister Lal Krishna Advani for inaugurating the restoration project in 2005 showed Pakistan’s willingness to move beyond his legacy. Advani led the campaign for the construction of a temple dedicated to Lord Ram in place of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in the 1990s. The campaign led to the demolition of the ancient mosque in 1992 and provoked anti-Muslim violence across India…

In his book India after Gandhi, Ramachandra Guha writes: ‘Hindu mobs attacked Muslim localities, and — in a manner reminiscent of the grisly Partition massacres — stopped trains to pull out and kill those who were recognizably Muslim.’ The demolition also triggered violence against Hindus in Bangladesh and Pakistan in a throwback to the late 1940s bloodbath that ripped the subcontinent and made the Partition inevitable. Shrines like Katas Raj temples fell into disrepair as the bloodbath forced the virtual flight of Hindus from West Punjab in 1947. The first religious service at the temples since the Partition in 2006 turned the page a year after Advani’s visit to Pakistan for the inauguration of its conservation project… But the typical one-step-forward-two-steps-back routine in India–Pakistan ties followed.

Mata Hinglaj temple is perhaps Pakistan’s most important Hindu shrine dedicated to the Kshatriya caste’s deity in the remote mountains of Baluchistan. It is one of the fifty-one Shakti Peeths associated with ‘indescribable spiritual power’ believed to have been created at places where body parts of Shiva’s consort, Sati, had fallen. They are said to have been created after Shiva took her corpse around following her self-immolation in Daksh’s court. Hinglaj has an important place in Hinduism since Sati’s head is said to have fallen there. It is among the most important syncretic shrines dotting the subcontinent. Muslims revere the shrine too; they call it Nani Pir.

Pilgrimage to Hinglaj from India abruptly ended after the Partition, accounts of which date back to the fourth century. The thaw in India–Pakistan ties facilitated a rare visit of a group of Indian pilgrims in February 2006…

Pakistani Hindus want more Hindu pilgrimage sites in their country to flourish like those of the Sikhs. They hope the two countries will encourage Hindu religious tourism. It would create more stakes in peace and benefit local Hindus… Many Indian pilgrims to Katas and Nankana Sahib visit Anarkali and are often surprised to see the Hindu presence in Lahore, where restoration of abandoned Jain temples could attract rich Jain pilgrims. Digambar Mandir, located a kilometre south of the Valmiki temple, is one of at least six abandoned Jain temples in Lahore. They stand as a reminder of Jain pre-eminence across the subcontinent before the emergence of Buddhism and Hinduism. Swetambar and Digambar Jain temples are located next to each other in Lahore’s Mohallah Bhabrian. As many Jain temples are situated on tony Ferozpur Road. Footprints said to be that of Jainism founder Rishabha’s in stone at Lahore’s Guru Mangat Jain temple are believed to be the region’s oldest religious relics. A site of great religious tourism potential remains untapped and hostage to India–Pakistan tensions and a lack of vision…

The Other Side of The Divide attempts to present a contemporary portrait of Pakistan-where prohibition remains only on paper and one of the biggest taxpayers is a Parsee-owned brewery-as a complicated and conflicted country suspended between tradition and modernity.

 

Books to read this World Wildlife Day

Posted on by Penguin India

The Indian subcontinent along with the rest of the world, faces the urgent threat of a dwindling wildlife population.This World Wildlife Day learn about the world’s wild animals with these fascinating books.

Age is no bar, there’s a book for every reader on this list:

The Vanishing

Every year, our planet loses over 150 species of plants and animals, and India is very much in the midst of this mass ‘sixth extinction’.
The Vanishing takes an unflinching look at the unacknowledged crisis that India’s wildlife faces, bringing to fore the ecocide that the country’s growth story is leaving in its wake—laying to waste its forests, endangering its wildlife, even tigers whose increasing numbers shield the real story of how development projects are tearing their habitat to shreds.

Animal Intimacies

What do we really know of the intimate-and intense-moments of care, kinship, violence, politics, indifference and desire that occur between human and non-human animals?

Built on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in the mountain villages of India’s Central Himalayas, Radhika Govindrajan’s book explores the number of ways that human and animal interact to cultivate relationships as interconnected, related beings.

 The Girl and the Tiger

Isha is a girl who loves animals but struggles in the confines of school. When she is sent away to live with her grandparents on the Indian countryside, she discovers a sacred grove where a young Bengal tiger has taken refuge.

Isha’s crusade to save the tiger becomes the catalyst of an arduous journey of awakening and survival across the changing landscape of modernizing India. Her encounters with tribal people, elephants, and her search for the wild jungle are the source of her revelations about the human relationship to the natural world.

The Snow Leopard

An unforgettable spiritual journey through the Himalayas by renowned writer Peter Matthiessen (1927-2014), the National Book Award-winning author of the new novel In Paradise

In 1973, Peter Matthiessen and field biologist George Schaller traveled high into the remote mountains of Nepal to study the Himalayan blue sheep and possibly glimpse the rare and beautiful snow leopard. Matthiessen, a student of Zen Buddhism, was also on a spiritual quest to find the Lama of Shey at the ancient shrine on Crystal Mountain. As the climb proceeds, Matthiessen charts his inner path as well as his outer one, with a deepening Buddhist understanding of reality, suffering, impermanence, and beauty. This Penguin Classics edition features an introduction by acclaimed travel writer and novelist Pico Iyer.

Indica

Did you know that the exquisite caves of Ellora were hewn from rock formed in the greatest lava floods the world has known—eruptions so enormous that they may well have obliterated dinosaurs? Or that Bengaluru owes its unique climate to a tectonic event that took place 88 million years ago? Many such amazing facts and discoveries—are a part of Indica: A Deep Natural History of the Indian Subcontinent.

Researching across wide-ranging scientific disciplines and travelling with scientists all over the country, biochemist Pranay Lal has woven together the first compelling narrative of India’s deep natural history, filled with fierce reptiles, fantastic dinosaurs, gargantuan mammals and amazing plants.

For the Young Ones:
One Lonely Tiger

The rapidly shrinking forest has a lonesome, friendless tiger who is left with only his own shadow for company. Whom should he play with now that all his fellow tigers have disappeared?

In the tug-of-war over living space between people and the wild, where will the animals go if more forests are cut?

One Lonely Tiger illustrates this urgent threat of extinction and loss of habitat among valuable species, and asks the pressing question: are our trees, wild animals, birds and insects safe amidst us?

The National Park Explorers: Chaos at Keoladeo

Experience all that the jungle has to offer with the first in The National Park Explorers series!

Sameera, Alex and Tarun are headed to Bharatpur with Uncle Avi. They’ve heard that the Siberian cranes have returned to Keoladeo National Park after more than twenty years.But things just don’t seem right at the park. The three young explorers find themselves in the midst of things wondrous and wild as they spot birds and animals, bump into wildlife biologist Rauf Ali and sleuth around to solve mysteries along the way.

Chaos at Keoladeo is an entertaining adventure, travelogue, encyclopedia and birding guide all rolled into one.

The Globetrotters

Hudhud is horrible to everyone. He polishes off his classmates’ lunches, plays cruel pranks on his teachers and troubles innocent creatures. Until his strange new history teacher decides to set him straight.

The lesson? A curse! Now Hudhud must roam the vast earth . . . with-and as-the greatest migratory animals. His goal? To find the answer to all wrongs. And so begins Hudhud’s remarkable journey: as a blue whale calf separated from his mother in the deep; as a trusting caterpillar who befriends a hunting spider; as a competitive caribou on a perilous trek; as an Arctic tern too scared to fly . . . But fly across the world he must, if he hopes to ever return home.

Discover India: Wildlife of India

Mishki and Pushka are can’t wait to get going. Daadu Dolma is taking them on a safari to see some of India’s famed wildlife.They’re about to see rare animals, meet endangered species, watch some amazing reptiles and spot colourful birds!

So get set to join your favourite happy campers and their good old friend, Daadu Dolma and learn all about India’s incredible wildlife.

The Jungle Radio

When curious little Gul hears some strange sounds coming from her radio, she follows the musical clues into . . . an Indian jungle! On her walk, she finds feathered friends who TWEET, TAPP and TALK. There are some who howl and hoot, and others who play the flute. With a KEE here and a KAW there, Gul discovers songs everywhere!

The Jungle Radio is a little story about the language of birds-their songs and sounds-with a loud and clear call to listen to the world around us.

7 Reasons Why You Should Read ‘Soar’

Posted on by Penguin India

A story of eternal friendship between Bholanath and Khudabaksh, regardless of their respective religions, Amit Majmudar’s Soar is set in World War I and is the need of the hour.

We figured this might not be enough to get you to pick up the book, hence, here are 7 reasons why you should read Soar:

Friends who pray together, stay together


‘When it was time for Khudabaksh, a Mussulman, to do namaz, Bholanath’s was the second hand raised before his closed eyes. And when Bholanath, a Hindu, rattled off his Shiva stotras, Khudabaksh pressed his palm in place so his friend prayed with joined hands.’

They spoke pigeon but confidently volunteered as translators


‘…an officer from the Royal Messenger Corps came looking for a translator. Since both of them spoke pigeon, or at least the dialect of pigeon spoken in their native Junagadh, Bholanath and Khudabaksh volunteered.’

 

Their conversations quite evidently provide a sense of comic relief

‘ “I remembered what the Brahmin told me before I left,” he said. “I lost all caste by crossing the sea. So I am all contamination, through and through—how can soil soil me now?” ‘

 

There’s a non-communal pet squirrel, Kabira, involved who consumed a balanced diet of shlokas and suras

‘Bholanath dropped the pages and grabbed the rope to steady Khudabaksh. Before the pages (drifting lazily, back and forth) could reach the basket floor, the squirrel darted under them at top speed and caught them. They vanished into her mouth like snowflakes caught on her tongue.’

 They prioritized their friendship & breakfast over discussing a potential partition

‘ “What if, some day, Hindus fall on Mussulmans, and Mussulmans fall on Hindus?” …  Once Hindus and Mussulmans are in two separate places, how will we go out on our feast-day binges? “Maybe Mussulmanistan wasn’t a wise idea after all.” “Do you know what is a good idea?” “What?” Khudabaksh smiled broadly. “Breakfast.” ‘

Through their mindless banter, they were wise enough to propage that a war never ends


‘ “A war doesn’t even end then. After the last soldier finishes screaming, the other soldier can still go on groaning. A war ends only when prime ministers write their names on a piece of paper.” “If prime ministers were as wise as children, all wars would be fought with pistols.” “And they’d be over by sunset, too. Or earlier, if someone brought out a kite.” ‘

Over and above everything, the book highlights the helplessness of the poor to the point where they had to join the military to make ends meet

‘The money is why they had done it, or rather, why the women in their lives had pushed them to do it, Khudabaksh’s wife and Bholanath’s mother. The nawab of Junagadh had promised fifty troops to a proposed 1st Royal Gujarati regiment. As an incentive to his subjects, he announced a bonus of one hundred rupees—more than two good-for-nothings like Bholanath and Khudabaksh would bring home all year.’

Amit Majmudar’s Soar, is a humorous read that has been able to deliver a very important message of friendship soaring above all else through Khudabaksh and Bholanath’s mindless banter. Since it is set in World War I, you will come across scenic depictions and their conversations that are bound to make you realize that war is pointless- no one wins.

Do give it a read and tell us what you think!

 

6 Reasons to Read Rohini Chowdhury’s Beautiful Translation

Posted on by Penguin India

The most popular devotional text recounting the adventures of the Hindu god Ram ‘The Ramcharitmanas’, composed by the poet-saint Tulsidas in the sixteenth century during a dynamic period of religious reform, was instrumental in making the story of Ram-and his divine feats against Ravan, the demon king of Lanka-widely accessible to the common people for the first time.

Rohini Chowdhury’s exquisite translation brings Tulsidas’s magnum opus vividly to life, and her detailed introduction sheds crucial light on the poet and his work, placing them both in the wider context of Hindi literature. Here are a few reasons why you should pick a copy of Rohini’s translation of this timeless epic.

It is a clear and accurate translation of Tulsidas’s epic poem, and conveys, in the best way possible, its scale and grandeur.

~

The author has rendered each original doha and sortha into four lines in English translation.

~

Tulsi’s institution of the Ram Lila may be seen as an attempt at a degree of social integration…this inclusivity remains, by and large, a feature of the Ram Lila even today.

~

Tulsi wrote for an audience which was familiar not only with the story of Ram, but also knew the dozens of ‘backstories’ that weave in and out of the main narrative… Rohini’s translation attempts, in footnotes, endnotes and a glossary, to give as much background information as she could.

~

The Hindu gods all have more than one name, and Tulsi refers to them by these different names, Rohini has kept the names as Tulsi has used them; but to make it easier to the modern-day reader she has added the various names with their meanings under the glossary entry for the relevant god or goddess.

~

Rohini’s translation attempts to give the reader some idea, at least visually, of the structure of the poem. Therefore, the dohas/sorthas are indented; chhands, stutis and shlokas are in italics; and the chaupais form the main body of the text.

~

This translation is a tribute to Tulsidas’ epic poem and brings to the reader the richness and depth of storytelling Tulsi das brought into it.

Meet These Chatty Dead Folks!

Posted on by Penguin India

How would you feel if you woke up waiting in an endless room one day?

Chats with the Dead gets us to meet Malinda Albert Kabalana (or Maali Almeida), who sets out to reach ‘The Light’ – a place where the afterlife comes to an end and the next life on Earth begins. As he glides his way through the afterlife, he meets some dead folks – who are way chattier than one would expect the dead to be. They have some very engaging stories to tell.

We are revisiting some of our favourite afterlife folks below!

 

Dead Lawyer

The Dead Lawyer is witnessing a protest by 113 victims of the 1987 Pettah Bomb blast demanding justice. She wonders:

‘If suicide bombers knew they end up in the same waiting room with all their victims, […] They may think twice.’

*

 

Dead Lovers

Adjusting to the mysterious afterlife, Maali notices the Dead Lovers by the elevator at Galle Face Court. The woman wears a chiffon dress and the man is in a banian and Burberry shorts. The couple tells Maali that,

‘We went together in 1948. […] He was Sinhala, I was Muslim. I think you know the rest of the story.’

When Maali inquires why haven’t they gone for The Light, the Dead Lovers respond with:

‘They say The Light is bigger than heaven or hell […] Easy to get lost. If you think you have found a soulmate, go to them and hold tight.’

*

Dead Mother

Maali comes across his Dead Mother who admits,

‘There is so much to see. I listen to music in different homes. I like to play with the children. I like watching married couples fight.’

When Maali asks her about The Light, she replies:

‘I was abused throughout my marriage. I was forced to give up a baby, my firstborn. If I step into The Light, will they reward me for suffering? Or punish me for being a bad mother?’

*

Dead Dog

A few adventures later, Maali ends up in an exhibition titled ‘Law of the Jungle. Photography by MA.’ The gallery is filled with the finest shots taken by Maali. While looking at the photographs, he’s interrupted by his first visitor – the Dead Dog. And the Dead Dog can talk!

‘If I am reborn human, I will commit cot death.’

*

Dead Leopard

Towards the end of his journey to The Light, Maali is visited by the Dead Leopard who is fascinated by human intelligence. The Dead Leopard admits:

‘I tried to survive without killing. Lasted a month. What to do? I am a savage beast. Only humans can practice compassion properly. Only humans can live without being cruel. I want some of that.’

Maali disagrees and tells the Dead Leopard that humans are most savage of all living beings. The Dead Leopard still wishes to be a human in his next life and asks the way to The Light. He says,

‘Leopards can’t invent lightbulbs. I’ll take my chances.’

Shehan Karunatilaka, bestselling author of Chinaman, is back with a darkly comedic tale of voices from beyond!

The Lone Empress- An Excerpt

Posted on by Penguin India

Today, Jayalalithaa, a woman who successfully challenged the mainstream values of Tamil Nadu politics, was born. Jayalalithaa’s journey from a glamour queen to a towering political leader is one of the most extraordinary stories of contemporary India.

The Lone Empress candidly chronicles Jayalalithaa’s tumultuous political life, examining her battle with intra-party rivalry to become the first elected woman chief minister of India; the long-lasting hostility with her rivals; her pursuit of support from the Centre for political survival; and her discomfort with criticism and dissent.

Here’s an excerpt from the book:

The AIADMK was now a divided house. The anti-Jayalalithaa wave inside the party gathered momentum and some leaders made her a target of attack in public meetings. The pro-Jayalalithaa group in the party retaliated with equal vehemence, while MGR tried to ignore what was going on. Perhaps he knew what was in store when he suddenly fell ill on 5 October 1984 and was rushed to Apollo Hospital. He had suffered a stroke and lost his speech. His kidneys had stopped functioning. He was also suffering from diabetes. This had been discovered only a few months earlier, when he complained of giddiness at a function in Thanjavur. MGR was always very secretive about his health problems, not wishing the public to know of them. He must have hidden his problems even from Jayalalithaa who, therefore, was shocked when she learnt that he was in the intensive care unit (ICU), fighting for his life.

Fearing the political fallout if the public and the Opposition came to know, the top brass decided that visitors, especially Jayalalithaa, should not be allowed. Of course, there was no question of allowing press reporters, with their cameras, anywhere in the vicinity. RMV was worried that if MGR’s face, which looked ghastly now, was photographed and shown to people, they would think it was lifeless.

Within no time, all hell would break loose. He most certainly did not want Jayalalithaa to step into the hospital. She was good at theatrics and could go out and declare that MGR was in no position to hold office any more or, for that matter, even likely to live. Pro- Jayalalithaa party members noticed that MGR’s relatives were allowed to see him. Vaali from the film world could see him. RMV could see him. But Jayalalithaa, who had been propaganda secretary of the party until the previous month, could not.

Solai says, ‘When MGR was admitted into Apollo, these men decided to finish her off. They even planned to have her beaten up. Dr Pratap Reddy, chairman, Apollo Hospital, came to know of this and asked her not to visit MGR in the hospital. Anything could happen when she was in the lift. Later, Thirunavukkarasu would go in a pilot car and K.K.S.S.R. Ramachandran would follow her in another’, as a precaution. Thirunavukkarasu, an AIADMK member and her ardent supporter, later turned against her and would join the Congress, while K.K.S.S.R. Ramachandran became an opponent and joined the DMK.

With the chief minister suddenly taking ill, the state assembly was adjourned sine die. V.R. Nedunchezhian was made acting chief minister. The entire cabinet was camping at the hospital, expecting the worst. Following the doctors’ diagnosis, it was decided that a neurologist, a cardiologist and an urologist be brought from the US. Dr Hande, who was then health minister, went by chartered plane to fetch the doctors after they reached Delhi. They were surprised to find the patient still alive. In spite of the panel of experts attending to him, MGR’s condition became critical on 18 October. Soon he was shifted to the Brooklyn Hospital, New York, for treatment. When Jayalalithaa came to know of this she was devastated.

With MGR away in the US, things became difficult for her. She was being deliberately alienated from the party by the seniors. It is said that Jayalalithaa approached Indira Gandhi for support, which could only have been a moral support. Jayalalithaa was aware that the prime minister was well disposed towards her as was evident from her association with Indira Gandhi in Delhi. Jayalalithaa must have been confident that Indira Gandhi would step in as her mentor. The Congress and the AIADMK were alliance partners and Jayalalithaa probably thought that if something happened to MGR, she could muster support from Indira Gandhi to strengthen her position. Jayalalithaa was still a greenhorn in politics and one does not know exactly what was on her mind. She briefed Mrs Gandhi on how she was being sidelined by senior party men, who were being vindictive out of selfish reasons. Indira Gandhi, though sympathetic, apparently advised Jayalalithaa to be patient.

The Lone Empress  is available now!

A Window To the Calcutta We Love from ‘Sarojini’s Mother’

Posted on by Penguin India

Sarojini-Saz-Campbell comes to India to search for her biological mother. Adopted and taken to England at an early age, she has a degree from Cambridge and a mathematician’s brain adept in solving puzzles. Handicapped by a missing shoebox that held her birth papers and the death of her English mother, she has few leads to carry out her mission and scant knowledge of Calcutta, her birthplace.

In Sarojini’s Mother, Kunal Basu takes us to Calcutta and offers a window into the city we love. Below are some of the highlights of Calcutta from her book.

 

Rex; the tourist trap

“Like most tourist traps that flaunted names like Copacabana or Casino Royale, its daytime business thrived on fruit juice and Western food easy on the stomach. Like chilli-less omelette and salads washed thoroughly in bottled water. At night on Thursdays, which was a dry day in the city, the owner would slip you a joint or a bottle of rum.”

The Calcutta Tram

“My foreign friends love the tram. It reminds them of the nineteenth century. Astride the rickety chairs smelling of stale urine, they can imagine black-and-white photos of horses chugging along the rolling stock, sahibs in top hats and half-naked natives.The Calcutta trams the oldest in Asia, I tell them, older than Shanghai’s. Like an old man, it totters along, unable to keep up with cyclists and walkers. In return for slowness, it offers a welcome respite from the crowds.”

Afternoons, on the street outside the Rex

“With the morning gone, now afternoon prayers had shops shutting down and the crowd had thinned. Siesta time in force, fewer rickshaws plied the streets and travelling salesmen had set down their wares to take a well-deserved rest. The trees were the ones to rise to the occasion, cooling everyone with fanning boughs that ferried the smell of rice and assorted meals cooked by the eateries to feed the hungry. With the fight over leftovers won, dogs had settled down under shadows, gawked at with envy by a caucus of crows.”

Similar afternoons in the slum

“The slum was quiet in the afternoon, the dwellers dozing after the morning’s hard work. Street dogs, normally defensive of territory, gave us free passage. The sound of radio drama came from the huts, and the occasional whimper of a hungry child.”

A lovers’ haunt; The Planetarium

“‘Why is this place so popular with lovers?’ Saz whispered as we settled down. ‘Because it’s dark here and they can do whatever they like.’ I thought I should tell her the truth. ‘Without a place of their own, it’s hard for couples to be intimate. Here nobody minds them. The guards turn a blind eye to the hanky-panky.’”

The Museum that makes you feel like you are in London

“You feel you are in London, not Calcutta, as soon as you walk into the National Museum. Once called the Imperial Museum, it was the nation’s oldest and largest. Villagers, who thronged there on holidays, called it Jaadughar—the House of Enchantments. I took Saz to the museum to bring up a delicate matter.”

The Special Exhibit of the Egyptian Mummy at the Museum

“‘Why bring a mummy over from Egypt to Calcutta?’ Saz sounded genuinely surprised. The reason wasn’t clear to me, but it could’ve had something to do with the Brith moving their possessions around like a rich man moves a vase from the hallway to the parlour. Because of its eerie reputation, the mummy room was the quietest spot in the museum, perfect to raise the delicate matter with Saz.”

Calcutta Racecourse; Close cousin of England’s Ascot.

“The grandstand, which was the gallery for commoners, was already at bursting point, tea stalls busy and toilets frantic. Dignitaries arrived amidst great commotion at the members’ stand, flaunting vintage cars with shining brass fittings…Our Calcutta racecourse was a close cousin of England’s Ascot, but the super jackpot days were rough, Suleiman had told me. The smell of money attracted quite a lot of riff-raff, and the cash counters needed extra protection.”

A Hotel in a neighbourhood that fits even guidebook’s description

“Squeezed between a barber’s salon and a travel agent, [the Peace Hotel] was easy to miss in a neighbourhood that fitted every guidebook’s description of Calcutta, being the perfect location for noise and dust, impossible crowds and bullish traffic. Set against the imposing backdrop of the National Museum, it flaunted jam-packed alleys dealing in trinkets by day and drugs by night.”

——————————————————————————————————————————

Read Sarojini’s Mother for more of Calcutta and find out if the verdict of science will settle the puzzle of motherhood for Sarojini.

A Story Worth (Re)Telling

Posted on by Penguin India

The Ramcharitmanas is one of the most popular and celebrated devotional texts in India. It’s cultural and traditional significance stands even today.

Composed by the poet-saint Tulsidas in the sixteenth-century during a period of religious reforms, this text was instrumental in making the story of Ram, his feats against Ravan, and the values he stood for accessible to the common people as opposed to just the priestly class.

Rohini Chowdhury’s latest translation of the magnum opus makes it even more accessible to a new and wide readership. The story and its teachings are as relevant as ever in the world today.

Read on to find an excerpt from Rohini Chowdhury’s introduction, in which she conveys the enduring significance of this text and why she decided to translate it:

 

My own engagement with Tulsidas began one crisp autumn night fifty years ago in a small town by the banks of the Ganga, when I saw my first performance of the Ram Lila. The sky was sprinkled with stars but I had eyes only for the drama unfolding upon the crude wooden stage before me, where the story had reached a critical point: Hanuman’s tail was to be set on fire. The sets were crude, the costumes garish, the acting unsophisticated— but the story transcended all such concerns, such was its magic and power. I did not know it then, but that was also my first intimate encounter with the Ramcharitmanas, upon which the Ram Lila is based. Growing up, Tulsi’s poem was always around me—chanted in the homes of friends or neighbours, sung on the radio, or the theme of plays and dance dramas. So when the opportunity came to translate it into English for Penguin India, I accepted it with alacrity—and the last five years that I have spent walking behind Tulsi, one of the greatest literary minds of all time, have been a pleasure and a privilege. My translation does not do justice to Tulsi’s extraordinary poetic genius. His use of wordplay, his rhymes and alliteration, and the sheer musicality of his poem I have found impossible to capture in English. I have therefore contented myself with being as clear and accurate as possible in my translation, and to convey, to the best of my ability, the scale and grandeur of his great poem.

The Ramayana tradition

For at least the last two and a half thousand years, poets, writers, folk performers, and religious and social reformers have drawn upon the story of Ram as a source of inspiration. It has been told again and again in countless forms and dozens of languages, making it one of the most popular and enduring stories in the world. More than any other hero, Ram has been upheld as dharma personified, the epitome of righteousness, and his actions as the guide for right conduct. In recent times, the story has provided inspiration for films, novels, and in the late 1980s, a weekly television series watched by more than eighty million viewers.

The oldest and most influential surviving literary telling of the story of Ram is the Sanskrit epic called the Ramayana. Composed sometime during the first millennium bce, and consisting of some 50,000 lines in verse set in seven kands or books, it is attributed to the poet Valmiki, and is widely  regarded as the ‘original’. The influence of Valmiki’s Ramayana has been so profound that the title of his epic has come to denote the entire tradition, from oral and folk performances to literary texts and translations. Within this rich and varied tradition also lie the Ramayana songs from Telangana, the folk performances of the Ram Lila in northern India, the eleventh-century Tamil Iramavataram (‘The Incarnation of Ram’) by Kamban, and Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas.

Published across three volumes, this translation brings alive the story of Lord Ram like never before!

Death: The Most Fundamental Question – An Excerpt From ‘Death’

Posted on by Penguin India

Death is a taboo in most societies in the world. But what if we have got this completely wrong? What if death was not the catastrophe it is made out to be but an essential aspect of life, rife with spiritual possibilities for transcendence? For the first time, someone is saying just that.

In this unique treatise-like exposition, Sadhguru dwells extensively upon his inner experience as he expounds on the more profound aspects of death that are rarely spoken about. From a practical standpoint, he elaborates on what preparations one can make for one’s death, how best we can assist someone who is dying and how we can continue to support their journey even after death.

Whether a believer or not, a devotee or an agnostic, an accomplished seeker or a simpleton, this is truly a book for all those who shall die!

Here’s an excerpt from the book:

Death is a very fundamental question. Actually, death is closer to us than the statistics we read about it. Each moment, death is happening in us at the organ and cellular levels. This is how, with just one look at your insides, your doctor knows how old you are. In fact, death began in us even before we were born. Only if you are ignorant and unaware does it seem like death will come to you someday later. If you are aware, you will see both life and death are happening every moment. If you as much as breathe a little more consciously, you will notice that with every inhalation there is life, with every exhalation there is death. Upon birth, the first thing that a child does is to inhale, to take in a gasp of air. And the last thing that you will do in your life is an exhalation. You exhale now, and if you do not take the next inhalation, you will be dead. If you do not get this, just do an exhalation, hold your nose and do not do the next inhalation. Within a few moments, every cell in your body will start screaming for life. Life and death are happening all the time. They exist together, inseparably, in the same breath. This relationship goes even beyond the breath. Breath is only a supporting actor; the real process is of the life energy, or prana, that controls physical existence. With certain mastery over prana, one can exist beyond breath for substantial amounts of time. Breath is a bit more immediate in its requirement, but in the same category as food and water.

Death is such a fundamental aspect, because if one small thing happens, you can be gone tomorrow morning. Why tomorrow morning—one small thing now and you could be off the next moment. If you were like any other creature, maybe you would be unable to think about all this, but once one is endowed with human intelligence, how can you just ignore such a significant aspect of your life? How can you avoid it and live on as if you are going to be here forever? How is it that after living here for millions of years of life, human beings still don’t know a damn thing about death? Well, they know nothing about life either. We know all the trappings about life, but what do you know about life as such?

Fundamentally, this situation has come about because you have lost perspective as to who you are in this Universe. If this solar system, in which we are, evaporates tomorrow morning, no one will even notice it in this Cosmos. It is that small, just a speck. In this speck of a solar system, Planet Earth is a micro speck. In that micro speck, the city you live in is a super-micro speck. In that, you are a big man. This is a serious problem. When you have completely lost perspective as to who you are, how do you think you will grasp anything about the nature of life or death?

Want to read more? Death is available now!

Will Ullis be Alright?- An Excerpt from ‘Low’

Posted on by Penguin India

Following the death of his wife, Dominic Ullis escapes to Bombay in search of oblivion and a dangerous new drug, Meow Meow. So begins a glorious weekend of misadventure as he tours the teeming, kaleidoscopic city from its sleek eyries of high-capital to the piss-stained streets, encountering a cast with their own stories to tell, but none of whom Ullis – his faculties ever distorted – is quite sure he can trust. Heady, heartbroken and heartfelt, Low is a blazing joyride through the darklands of grief towards obliteration – and, perhaps, epiphany.

Read an excerpt from the book below:

The mysterious quality of in-flight air. The low whine of tinnitus, a charged anxious ringing that kept adjusting its volume. The sense of something about to happen, something decisive. Then the lights dimmed as the aircraft dropped through the clouds and prepared to land. It taxied and turned, taxied and stopped.

Payal sprang up again, grabbed her wheeled case from the overhead bin, and went to the front exit, resplendent in her sari. Ullis stayed where he was until the other passengers had left. Then he put half an Ambien under his tongue and took the white plastic box from the overhead bin and floated towards the lovely slum city.

He’d left Delhi on a whim, carrying only the box from the crematorium. If not for the box what would he do with his hands? He would wring them. Repeatedly. Aki was dead and he didn’t know what to do from one moment to the next. The vast abstraction of time reduced to this: stupefaction with the hands. For now it was okay. For now his hands were cradling the box that contained her ashes.

The events of the week had passed through him without resistance from the moment he came home to find Aki dead in the study.

He’d panicked and called her mother. Then he drove to her house, breathless and shouting in the suffocating car. Aki’s mother had come back with him to the apartment in Defence Colony and they’d taken his wife’s body to the hospital. A quartet of stone-faced orderlies had moved her from the emergency room to the morgue. All night the panic sat like a heavy bear on his chest. The bear stayed for many days and nights, until it gave way to exhaustion and blessed amnesia. His mind disengaged from his surroundings. He felt separated from his body, but only partially, as if he’d been insufficiently anaesthetised.

Later, the only thing he remembered clearly was the crematorium, the priests in their white dhotis and saffron forehead smears, their oily faces peering at him from clouds of smoke, the cold young eyes devoid of all earthly emotion except boredom. He’d been shaken by their indifference and dazed by all that was expected of him.

Her mother had dressed Aki in a spectacularly inappropriate multi-coloured silk sari, and she’d made Ullis don a black suit and white shirt. He’d added a pair of chocolate loafers for urgent private reasons and foregone a tie as a concession to the April heat. This was how husband and dead wife had arrived at the crematorium: dressed for a wedding, in clothes neither had worn in their life together.

The suit and sari had been unnecessary. There were no mourners, no witnesses other than a handful of crematorium employees and Ullis and his dry-eyed mother-in-law. She had organised the cremation in such haste that there had been no time to call those who had known Aki and loved her. There was no time for anything other than the observance of rituals, each more pointless than the next.

The bored priests had mouthed their inane mantras. They had sifted uncooked rice and read from ancient leather-bound tomes and stared with their oily eyes. They rang tiny brass bells in a sequence to which only they were privy. (The bells are an omen, and they ring more than once in this story.) When they demanded of him some minor role in the general pagan tumult, he had obliged with the acquiescence required of the husband of the bride. After all, this was what she had been made to resemble, a young bride in silks and flowers. Except that the marigolds were uniformly wilted. Were they leftovers from a previous funeral?

When the priests told him to push the button that would slide her into the electric furnace, he had worried that the absurd sari would burst into flame.

He’d taken a last look at her slight figure dwarfed by piles of flowers and sundry low-priced objects, her face obscured by the sari’s pallu, artfully obscured so no viewer would remark at the blood vessels that had burst on her cheeks and forehead and neck like scarlet-brown buds that would never bloom. “Kar do,” the priest had said. Obediently Ullis slid her in, and some time later his mother-in-law divided his wife’s ashes into two boxes: “One for you and one for me.”

From the crematorium, clutching the box and dressed in his mourning suit, he walked into the dust of an enclosed courtyard surrounded by dead trees and broken concrete columns. From there he walked into the dust of the street.

“Dominic,” his mother-in-law had said. “You will be all right.”

“No,” he said. Was she now his former mother-in-law?

“Of course you will,” she said. “You’ll be just fine.”

“Okay.”

“Shall I ask Jeevan to drop you home?”

“No thank you,” he said. “I’ll take a taxi.”

“Arré, why? I have car and driver. He can drop.”

“I’ll take a cab. But thanks.”

As soon as he took a seat in the back of the battered white Honda that smelled of garam masala and hand sanitiser, Ullis decided not to return to the empty apartment in Defence Colony where each room reminded him of his dead wife and his abject failure as a husband and a man.

What was the point of going home? It was the last place he wished to go. No, he could do better. He’d travel to a city by the sea. After all, was he not carrying his wife’s ashes and did they not need to be immersed?

“Can you take me to the airport?”

The driver was young and easily shocked. He seemed unreasonably upset by the change of plans.

“Sir, I cannot,” he said.

“But why not?”

“First, you must change destination on phone.”

Ullis opened the app. He deleted “Defence Colony” from the drop location and typed in ‘Delhi Indira Gandhi International Airport’.

In half an hour he was at a reservation desk where he bought himself a ticket to the city he knew best, where oblivion was purchased cheaply and without consequence.

Low is a blazing joyride through the darklands of grief towards obliteration – and, perhaps, epiphany. The book is available now!

error: Content is protected !!