Ranjit Hoskote is the author of five major books of poems, including, most recently, Central Time, Vanishing Acts and eighteen works of cultural criticism. He is the editor of Dom Moraes: Selected Poems. His translations include I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded. His latest, Jonahwhale, is a sophisticated project in anamnesia, that retrieves fragments and episodes from the multiple pasts that we inherit; it makes an inquiry into the unregarded legacies of the colonial encounter at sea rather than on land.
Let’s have a look at 6 most heart touching vignettes from the book.
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1. Dunhuang
2. Kushan Dawn Song
3. Planetarium
4. Passage
5. The Refugee Pauses in Flight
6. The Swimming Pool
A Murder on Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey – An Excerpt
Sujata Massey is an award-winning and highly acclaimed mystery writer. She holds a BA in Writing Seminars from John Hopkins University, and started her working life as a features reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun. Her new book, A Murder on Malabar Hill, is set against the backdrop of colonial Bombay and follows the gripping tale of an incomparable sleuth, a female lawyer, Perveen Mistry.
Let’s read an excerpt from this gripping narrative.
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Sakina’s bedroom suite door was open. Inside, everything was as orderly as before; even the silver tray was gone. Perveen looked under the bed and in drawers and then lifted aside the picture to look at the locked safe door. The safe was certainly wide enough to accommodate the briefcase—but perhaps not deep enough.
Being in Sakina’s room alone made Perveen feel almost like a thief. She put her head out of the door, checking in the hallway for new sounds. Perhaps five minutes had passed since she had entered the room. It was too bad she didn’t know which room was Mumtaz’s.
Perveen glanced towards the brass jali that Sakina had said was the conversation place between the zenana and main house. If Mr Mukri chose to eavesdrop, he could only do so from there; that was the likely reason the wives were speaking in Razia’s faraway bedchamber rather than Sakina’s closer quarters. As Perveen studied the patterned brass border, a smear of red caught her eyes.
A dash of red, reminding her of the kumkum Hindu and Parsi women used to make a decorative marking between the eyes. But this red marking was slashed across the brass metalwork, and there were droplets and smudges on the floor. It could not be vermilion powder. With a growing sense of worry, Perveen stepped out of the doorway, taking care not to touch any of the red droplets as she approached the screen. Squatting, she could make out a shadowy mass just below the document slot.
Although she knew it was improper, Perveen lifted the long, wide brass lid that covered the slot. Her last calm thought was that this lid was about the same weight and size as the one on the mail slot in the door of Alice’s ancestral London townhouse.
Then she wanted to be sick.
On the other side, Mr Mukri lay collapsed, arms and legs skewed wildly, as if he’d tried to escape but failed. Half under him was the edge of her Swaine Adeney bridle-leather document case. Blood covered the back of his head and collar and ran in thick rivulets down his black suit jacket. Something long and silver protruded from his neck. Was it a knife? She didn’t care.
She couldn’t bear to look any longer.
Perveen put her hand to her mouth and stepped back. If she hadn’t looked through the slot, she wouldn’t have known he was dead. Now it was too late…
Across the Universe: The Beatles in India by Ajoy Bose – An Excerpt
Ajoy Bose has written a widely acclaimed book on the Emergency, For Reasons of State, and Behenji, the definitive political biography of Dalit leader Mayawati. A leading television commentator and columnist, he now uses his formidable investigative skills to look beyond politics, recreating the fascinating journey of the Beatles to India half a century ago. Full of characters and happenings delightful and evil, of comic excess and dark whimsy, Across the Universe: The Beatles in India, traces the path the Beatles took to India and the dramatic denouement of their sojourn at the Himalayan ashram.
Here’s an excerpt from this fascinating read.
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Based on a raga recorded by Ravi Shankar some years ago on All India Radio, George’s song seemed quite independent of the rest of the album in its entirely Indian orientation played by Indian musicians with the rest of the Beatles out of the picture. The Indian musicians were recruited from the Asian Music Circle in Finchley, north London. They were Anna Joshi and Amrit Gajjar on dilruba, Buddhadev Kansara on tanpura and tabla player Natwar Soni. The song also featured lyrics that were overtly spiritual, seeking to explain the Hindu concept of maya, a veil of illusion that needed to be cast aside to find spiritual truth and happiness ‘within you’. The passion with which George played the sitar and the distinctive quality of the song impressed both Paul and John who were getting quite annoyed with his lack of enthusiasm towards the album. Both thought the song was great and did not appear to mind George having Indian musicians take over their studios and, for the first time, leaving them out of a Beatle song. Describing the song as ‘a great Indian one’ John said, ‘We came along one night and we had about four hundred Indian fellows playing here and it was a great evening, as they say.’ He would say later, ‘One of George’s best songs. One of my favourites of his, too. He’s clear on that song. His mind and his music are clear. George is responsible for Indian music getting over here.’ No longer the quiet Beatle, George, his imagination fired by Indian spirituality, could not stop talking about his new infatuation. He appeared along with John on the prestigious television show The Frost Report and gave innumerable interviews to a variety of publications declaring his adopted faith. When he was asked to give his choice of iconic personalities that the Beatles had decided to put on the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover, the four he chose were all Hindu seers, starting with his favourite Sri Paramahansa Yogananda and the three gurus who preceded him, Sri Yukteswar Giri, Sri Mahavatar Babaji and Sri Lahiri Mahasaya. On George’s insistence, these unfamiliar holy men from a distant land and an obscure faith brushed shoulders on the Sgt. Pepper’s cover with a variety of popular Western icons including Marilyn Monroe, Edgar Allan Poe, Karl Marx, Carl Jung and the champion swimmer Johnny Weissmuller who played Tarzan in Hollywood movies, among numerous others. In less than a year of meeting Ravi Shankar, George had virtually erased from his life all traces of his English working-class roots in Liverpool. The Harrisons became vegetarians, inspired by ahimsa, the Hindu pledge of non-violence to all living things. Pattie would shop at the local health food store in Esher for grains, pulses, vegetables and fruit, cooking not just nut cutlets and stews but also pakora, samosa, lassi and rasa malai. The scent of hash and joss sticks permeated the house. An ornate hookah sat on a low table in a sitting room which had no chairs, just cushions and rugs, according to George’s biographer Thomson. Thomson paints a compelling portrait of a Beatle who had by now fully embraced the culture and creed of a distant land. At his twenty fourth birthday party at his Kinfauns home, he played the sitar and then watched and recorded a concert performed in his honour by the great sarod player Ali Akbar Khan. No other Beatle attended. George wore a traditional cotton kurta and his guests included photographer Henry Grossman and the Byrds’ David Crosby and McGuinn, each arriving with vegetarian dishes for the buffet-style meal. It was, according to McGuinn, a charged occasion. ‘I remember being at that party with him in 1967 and I could feel the room change, there was something happening in the room. I looked at George and asked what was going on, and he said, “I’m transcending.”’ In 1966, a Vaishnavite Indian seer, Swami Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada, had founded a Krishna cult called ISKCON that would sweep the West captivating thousands of young men and women with its evocative ‘Hare Krishna’ chant. The swami asserted that by merely chanting the name of Lord Krishna, devotees could directly connect to the deity. When George came across a record of this chanting, he immediately fell under its spell. He played it to John who too was mesmerised by the repeated and almost hypnotic intonation of ‘Hare Krishna, Hare Rama’, a mantra that is routinely chanted every day by millions of devotees in India belonging to the Krishna sect of Hinduism. For the two Beatles, however, the ‘Hare Krishna’ chant seemed like a magical stairway to divinity. It was also another step towards the quest of the mantra that would take them to Rishikesh. George and John started chanting together whenever they met, forging a second bond in addition to their earlier connection over their shared first encounter with LSD.
For instance, both acid and mantra came together for the two during a sojourn out in the picturesque Aegean Sea in the month of July, when the Beatles went on a bizarre and ultimately abortive hunt to buy a Greek island to build their own kingdom. ‘Somebody had said we should invest some money, so we thought: “Well, let’s buy an island. We’ll just go there and drop out.” It was a great trip. John and I were on acid all the time, sitting on the front of the ship playing ukuleles. Greece was on the left; a big island on the right. The sun was shining and we sang “Hare Krishna” for hours and hours,’ George would fondly reminisce many years later. In that same month George waxed eloquent about both spirituality and India in an interview with Fifth Estate, a radical underground periodical. It would be his most explicit confession of embracing the Hindu faith and Indian culture and is worth quoting in detail. Answering a question on public curiosity about his new zeal for the chant, George expounded on the Hindu theory of Karma:
‘They get hung up on the meaning of the word rather than the sound of the word. “In the beginning was the word” and that’s the thing about Krishna, saying Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, so it’s not the word that you’re saying, it’s the sound Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna and it’s just sounds and it’s great. Sounds are vibrations and the more you can put into that vibration, the more you can get out, action and reaction, that’s the thing to tell the people.’
Pakistan’s Nuclear Bomb by Hassan Abbas – An Excerpt
In this inside view of Pakistan’s nuclear programme, Hassan Abbas profiles the politicians and scientists involved in the development of the country’s nuclear bomb, and the role of China and Saudi Arabia in supporting its nuclear infrastructure. Drawing on extensive interviews, the book also examines Pakistani nuclear physicist A.Q. Khan’s involvement in nuclear proliferation in Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Let’s read an excerpt from the book.
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When A.Q. Khan finally joined the PAEC in January 1976, a small uranium-enrichment programme code named Project 706 (also known as the Directorate of Industrial Liaison) had been in place under the management of Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood since October 1974. Munir Khan was directly supervising the nascent project, but there is almost a consensus among experts that it was going nowhere before A. Q. Khan.119 A. Q. Khan was asked to report to Mahmood as director of research and development, but was unhappy about that, given his vastly superior qualifications. Bhutto had already approved the construction of a centrifuge research and development laboratory under an unassuming title: the Aviation Development Workshop (ADW).120 It was a good cover, as this was located in the old barracks at Chaklala Airport, between Islamabad and Rawalpindi.
Within a matter of months A. Q. Khan ran into trouble with Munir Khan and others involved in the project. One view is that personality clashes and a desire for more control over the project brought the two Khans and others into conflict. What is often ignored here is the fact that A. Q. Khan was used to working in environments where efficiency and discipline were valued very highly. He had risen in his professional career because of his hard work and professionalism. The PAEC was quite different, as he quickly found out. It was more individual driven, and A. Q. Khan found it difficult to adjust. Disappointed with the lack of support from Munir Khan, A. Q. Khan told the prime minister that he needed financial and administrative independence to be able to deliver. He bitterly argued that he ‘could have contributed at least ten times more’ if he had been allowed to operate the way he wanted to.121 Bhutto appeared receptive to A. Q. Khan’s demands, as he was well acquainted with bureaucratic culture in Pakistan. He could see that jealousies were at play. To remove the administrative hurdles and bickering that had developed between the two Khans, he decided to give A. Q. Khan independent control of the centrifuge project. He did so by administratively separating the centrifuge project from the PAEC; the new institution was named the Engineering Research Laboratories (ERL). It was inaugurated on 31 July 1976, under A. Q. Khan’s direct command. The ERL project remained a well-kept secret and, other than the prime minister, only Ghulam Ishaq Khan knew the specifics of A. Q. Khan’s operation. As is evident from A. Q. Khan’s recent writings (as a columnist for The News since 2015), he had complete freedom to hire and make appointments in the organization—and he was able to attract the best scientific minds in the country
The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert – An Excerpt
The Hazel Wood, is about seventeen-year-old Alice and her mother who have spent most of Alice’s life on the road, always a step ahead of the strange bad luck biting at their heels. But when Alice’s grandmother, the reclusive author of a book of pitch-dark fairy tales, dies alone on her estate – the Hazel Wood – Alice learns how bad her luck can really get. Her mother is stolen away – by a figure who claims to come from the cruel supernatural world where her grandmother’s stories are set. Alice’s only lead is the message her mother left behind: STAY AWAY FROM THE HAZEL WOOD.
Let’s read an excerpt from this absolutely unputdownable book.
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Althea Proserpine is raising her daughter on fairy tales. Once upon a time she was a girl named Anna Parks, one of the legion of midcentury dreamers who came to Manhattan with their hopes tucked into a suitcase. Then she went missing. Then she came back, and achieved an odd kind of fame, glittering from some angles but dark from others. Now she’s gone again, ed to a turreted house in the deep dark woods, where she lives with her ve- year- old daughter and her husband, an actual royal— she just can’t quit fairy tales. When I get her on the phone, her voice is as alluring as her most famous photo, the one with the ring and the cigarette. I ask if I can come talk to her in person, and her laugh is hot whiskey on ice. “You’d get lost on the way to nding me,” she says. “You’d need breadcrumbs, or a spool of thread.” — “The Queen of the Hinterland,” Vanity Fair, 1987
My mother was raised on fairy tales, but I was raised on highways. My first memory is the smell of hot pavement and the sky through the sunroof, whipping by in a river of blue. My mom tells me that’s impossible— our car doesn’t have a sunroof. But I can still close my eyes and see it, so I’m holding on to it.
We’ve crossed the country a hundred times, in our beater car that smells like French fries and stale coffee and plasticky strawberries, from the day I fed my Tinkerbell lipstick into the slats of the heater vent. We stayed in so many places, with so many people, that I never really learned the concept of stranger danger.
Which is why, when I was six years old, I got into an old blue Buick with a redheaded man I’d never met and drove with him for fourteen hours straight— plus two stops for bathroom breaks and one for pancakes— before the cops pulled us over, tipped off by a waitress who recognized my description from the radio.
By then I’d figured out the man wasn’t who he said he was: a friend of my grandmother, Althea, taking me to see her. Althea was already secluded in her big house then, and I’d never met her. She had no friends, just fans, and my mother told me that’s what the man was. A fan who wanted to use me to get to my grandma.
After they’d determined I hadn’t been assaulted, after the redheaded man was identified as a drifter who’d stolen a car a few miles from the place we were staying in Utah, my mother decided we’d never talk about it again. She didn’t want to hear it when I told her the man was kind, that he’d told me stories and had a warm laugh that made me believe, deep in my six- year- old’s heart, he was actually my father come to claim me. She’d been shown the redheaded man in custody through a one- way mirror, and swore she’d never seen him before.
For a few years I’d persisted in believing he was my dad. When we left Utah after his arrest, to live for a few months in an artists’ retreat outside of Tempe, I worried he wouldn’t be able to find me again.
He never did. By the time I turned nine, I’d recognized my secret belief for what it was: a child’s fantasy. I folded it away like I did all the things I didn’t need— old toys, bedtime superstitions, clothes that didn’t fit. My mom and I lived like vagrants, staying with friends till our welcome wore through at the elbows, perching in precarious places, then moving on. We didn’t have the luxury of being nostalgic. We didn’t have a chance to stand still. Until the year I turned seventeen, and Althea died in the Hazel Wood.
Syama Prasad Mookerjee by Tathagata Roy – Excerpt
Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee was an educationist, politician and patriot who often opposed the official narratives of his time but fought consistently for India’s independence and pre-eminent position in the world. His life has remained largely unexplored until now.
In the book, Syama Prasad Mookerjee: Life and Times, author Tathagata Roy aims to rectify that omission by examining his life in detail and shedding light on the turbulent and contentious events of his times.
Here is an excerpt from the book that talks about his entry into politics in 1939.
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Dr Mookerjee’s political career had begun in a small way. When he entered the Bengal Legislative Council in 1929 as a Congress candidate from the Calcutta University constituency, it was a projection of his growing reputation as an educationist. In a sense, this was not really a political move, because his intention behind entering the council was to act as a watchdog for the interests of the university in the legislature. When the Congress gave a call for boycott of councils in 1930, Dr Mookerjee duly obeyed and resigned from the council. Perhaps he was confident that he could walk into the council any time he wanted to. As a matter of fact, he was re-elected to the council as an independent candidate from the same university constituency. The primary reason behind Dr Mookerjee’s entry into fulltime realpolitik lay in the treatment meted out to the minority Bengali Hindus by the rabidly communal Muslim League– Krishak Praja Party coalition government of Bengal. It was a coalition for namesake, with the Muslim League calling all the shots, and the Krishak Party (including the Prime Minister and the Hindu ministers) meekly following. As always, the Congress, which was roundly supported by the Hindus of Bengal, chose not to take up their case for fear of losing the vote of a particular community, and Dr Mookerjee was persuaded that he, of all persons, could not stand and idly watch the situation. Those who blame Dr Mookerjee today for not doing ‘inclusive politics’ are rather unaware of the political realities of that time. It is important to recontextualize his life in the context of the political realities of that time. The Government of India Act of 1935 came into effect in 1937, and in the same year, Dr Mookerjee was again elected to the Bengal assembly. So he had the opportunity to study the working of provincial autonomy from close quarters. Nevertheless, since his tendencies lay in the sphere of educational administration, Dr Mookerjee did not feel attracted to the ‘noisy and dusty career of a politician’. Rather, he felt that the best way for him to serve his country would be through the path of education. The major factor that drove him into politics was the political situation, particularly the aftermath of the Government of India Act of 1935. The minority Hindus of Bengal (about 47 per cent) had already been crushed under Ramsay Macdonald’s Communal Award of 1932, which reduced Hindus to political impotence. The Congress’s reaction to the Communal Award was of ‘noncommitment’— they neither supported it nor opposed it. It is difficult to see how the premier political party of India refused to take a position on an important pronouncement by the British Prime Minister. This refusal turned out to be a grave blunder. In the 1935 Act a separate electorate was provided ‘with a vengeance’ for giving special protection to the majority Muslim community in Bengal. In his diary written much later (1944), Dr Mookerjee records some of the glaring instances of Hindu suffering, such as the ratio of communal representation in respect of the services, the defilement of Hindu images, the suppression and supersession of better qualifications in respect of Hindus, and preferential treatment of Muslims in educational and other technical services, the passing of laws specially jeopardizing Hindus, the encouragement of riots and attacks on Hindu women. Almost identical sentiments were expressed by Nirad C. Chaudhuri, who trod a very different path from Dr Mookerjee.
How to be Human by Manjeet Hirani – An Excerpt
Manjeet Hirani is a senior commander and trainer with Air India. Fascinated by all things philosophical, she is also an influencer and a speaker across various platforms. Manjeet blogs at manjeethirani.com. In this book, How to be Human: Life Lessons from Buddy Hirani, she writes through her personal experience with her dog, Buddy, about attachment, parenting, and karma, among other things. This is a charming and heart-warming book that, with its light touch, will make you look at life from a less cynical standpoint.
Let’s read the foreword by Dia Mirza
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Sultan, my beautiful golden Labrador, would know when my car would reach the junction that led to my apartment building. He’d run to the front door and lie down in front of it, wagging his tail well before I would even reach the porch! There was never a day in his eleven years of life that he didn’t make it to the door in time to greet me.
Sultan always knew when I was coming home or leaving on a long trip. He knew everything. He knew when I was happy or sad or angry. He would find an endearing way to let me know that he was around. He would sit by my side with his head on my lap, or put a paw on my foot, or prance around wagging his tail.
He always found a way to show that he cared, that he loved me no matter what. He never judged me or found fault with me.
Sultan was also a great teacher. I think much of who I am today is courtesy the many lessons of compassion and love that he and the other pets we’ve had taught me.
Dogs are healers; I think they are the non-human form of saints. They are often found assisting in all kinds of recovery programmes to aid human beings in overcoming seemingly insurmountable (physical and emotional) problems across the world. They are a part of security squads and protection groups. It is not without reason that dogs are called man’s best friend.
The thought of a life without knowing the love of a dog seems incomprehensible to me. Thank goodness for children and their inherent love for animals! They are born with knowledge that ensures their response to nature, i.e. pets, is instinctual. If it weren’t for Vir’s incessant pleas and his deep desire to bring a dog home, then perhaps this remarkable discovery unfolding each day would have gone undiscovered in the Hirani household.
Manjeet Hirani has written one of the most honest accounts of what it means for a person to embrace a pet. To me, what remains the most fascinating aspect is her willingness to share how much she is learning from this incredible new member of their family. Manjeet is a mother, daughter, wife, sister, friend, pilot, and now a dog lover.
This book is a beautiful journey of discovery and learning—a journey of love that has made its way into every day and into every moment. It is about the deep abiding joy that Buddy has brought into the Hirani home. But above all it is a book that will help even the non-believer become a believer.
Quiz on Parshu-Raam and Vishwamitra
Vineet Aggarwal runs a blog, Decode Hindu Mythology, which has a dedicated readership. His book, Bharat: The Man Who Built a Nation talks about the man who changed the destiny of our country and gave it a brand new name-Bharat!
Here’s a quiz to treat the mythology aficionados.
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She Who Knew How the Caged Birds Sang
With the guidance of her friend, the novelist James Baldwin, Maya Angelou began work on the book that would become I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Published in 1970, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings received international acclaim and made the bestseller list. The book was also banned in many schools during that time as Maya Angelou’s honesty about having been sexually abused opened a subject matter that had long been taboo in the culture. Later, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings would become a course adoption at college campuses around the world
On her birthday, we take a look at her famed work through the various poignant quotes by her:
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8 Facts about the Islamic Flows between the Gulf and South Asia
Over the last fifty years, pan-Islamic ties have intensified between the Gulf and South Asia. Gathering together some of the best specialists on the subject, The Islamic Connection, edited by Christophe Jaffrelot and Laurence Louër, explore these ideological, educational and spiritual networks, which have gained momentum due to political strategies, migration flows and increased communications. At stake are both the resilience of the civilization that imbued South Asia with a specific identity and the relations between Sunnis and Shias in a region where Saudi Arabia and Iran are fighting a cultural proxy war.
Here are some facts about the Islamic Flows between the Gulf and South Asia:
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