L. Somi Roy is here with a collection of endearing and vibrant retellings of Manipuri myths told for the first time ever to the outside world! Do we know why man gets wrinkles and a stoop?
Here’s why! Scroll down for a short extract from one of the 12 fascinating tales from Manipur passed on by balladeers and grandmothers over hundreds and hundreds of years!
‘O Paobirai, my ancestor! Your grandchild humbly offers you a basket of rice and a human every day. Please accept my offering.’
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Finally, it was Man’s turn. Now, Man was very lazy and tardy and so he came very late to the gathering. He did not know what lifespans each of the animals, birds, fishes and insects had requested. As he came into the presence of his creator, Soraren looked at the latecomer with annoyance. Man said nervously, ‘Lord of the Sky, my Creator, I humbly request that my kind and I may live for fifty years. Please grant us a lifespan of fifty years.’
And That is Why || L. Somi Roy (Author), Sapha Yumnam (Illustrator)
Very well,’ said Soraren in an irritable voice. ‘Your wish is granted. You, Man, shall have a lifespan of fifty years. And it is just as well since you are late and the last to come and I have only fifty years left to give out.’
And Man gratefully took the last remaining fifty years and hurriedly went along his way. And that is why, Dear Punctual One, you must never be lazy and always be on time.
After all the living beings had received their lifespans, they set out on their journey back to their holes and burrows and nests and houses on Earth. On the way, Man met Monkey and Elephant. Man asked them, ‘Monkey and Elephant, how many years did each of you ask for and how many were you granted?’
They replied, ‘We both asked for a lifespan of a hundred years each and it was granted. How many years did you ask for?’
Soraren, who was also known as the Eternal Creator, lived in great happiness with the other mighty beings and together they knew no pain or sorrow or even illness or death
Hearing their reply, Man did not answer but started to cry instead. He wept loudly and large drops of tears rolled down his cheeks and snot ran from his nose. It was all really quite awkward, Dear Embarrassed One.
Seeing the very wet and messy and unhappy state Man was in, Monkey and Elephant did not know whether to be sorry or embarrassed for him. Finally, they asked, ‘Man, why are you crying?’
Man burbled through his tears, ‘I thought the Creator was angry with me since I was late. I was afraid. So, I did not ask for many years. I asked only for fifty years. And I got the last fifty years the Eternal Creator had left. And now I will have to die before you both.’ Saying this, Man sobbed all the more. He bawled even more loudly than before, if that was possible.
Monkey and Elephant rolled their eyes and looked at each other and said, ‘Do not cry any more, Man. We will each give you twenty-five years from our lifespans. This way, you will have one hundred years altogether to live.’ For, as everybody knows, Dear Arithmetical One, fifty and twenty-five and twenty-five make one hundred.
Man happily agreed. He wiped away his tears and Elephant helped him blow his nose with his long trunk. ‘Oh, thank you, Monkey and Elephant!’ said Man through his tears. ‘Let us go to the Eternal Creator. Let us tell him what we have spoken about and request him to give his approval to our arrangement.’
So according to the elders, Soraren decided that he would give all the living beings a lifespan each
Monkey and Elephant agreed. Together with Man, they went back to Soraren and told him everything. Upon hearing their words, Soraren thought in silence. ‘Very well,’ he spoke at last. ‘If this is what you have all agreed upon, I will allow it. And I have no more years to hand out. Man will now live for one hundred years. For, as everybody knows, fifty and twenty-five and twenty-five make one hundred. But this lazy and tardy creature called Man must never forget the generosity and kindness of Monkey and Elephant. He must be reminded in the future, for all his tomorrows, and for all generations to come till the end of time, that the lifespan I had granted him was fifty years but that he received twenty-five years from Monkey and twenty-five years from Elephant.’
Soraren then looked at Man and declared, ‘Man, here’s the thing. You shall keep your looks and stand upright as I have made you for the fifty years that I first granted you. But once you cross the age of fifty and start to live the twenty-five years you have received from Monkey, your skin will wrinkle and fold like Monkey’s so that you may never forget you are living his years. And once you cross the age of seventy-five and start to live the twenty-five years you have received from Elephant, your back will bend and you will stoop like Elephant so that you may never forget you are living his years. Let this be so.’
And that is why, Dear Curious One, once Man has lived his fifty years, he gets wrinkles like the Monkey, and once he has lived seventy-five years, he gets a stoop like the Elephant.
Sarbpreet Singh left the shores of his homeland, Sikkim, and went to America in his early twenties. When he learned about the lives of the Gurus, the trials and tribulations they faced, and the glorious story of the Sikh Empire, he felt his spirit soar like it never had before. Following his interest, in The Story of the Sikhs, he penned down the rich historical context that defined the foundational principles which guided Sikhs during the era of each Guru.
Here’s an excerpt from his book about Guru Nanak, who spent his entire life fighting injustice, superstition and ritualism, passing of the torch to Guru Angad.
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The Story of the Sikhs || Sarbpreet Singh
One winter’s night, during heavy rainfall, a part of the wall of the Guru’s house collapsed. The commotion woke up the household, including both of his sons. Several of the Guru’s most devout Sikhs also gathered, many sleepily rubbing their eyes, shivering under the coarse shawls they had tossed around their shoulders to ward off the rain and the cold. The Guru decreed that the wall be fixed immediately!
There was much hemming and hawing and shuffling of feet. Some wondered privately if the Guru was going senile. Finally his sons mustered the courage to speak. ‘It is past midnight father and bitterly cold. Please go back to bed. In the morning we will engage a mason and labourers and take care of this.’ The Guru merely looked at the group and said, ‘Why do I need masons and labourers when I have all of you?’ Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when Lehna stepped up, inwardly laughing at his foolishness. After all, what was the need to repair the wall at once?
Lehna got to work under the watchful eye of his master as the rest of the Sikhs, including Sri Chand and Lakhmi Das, returned to their warm beds. Lehna diligently rebuilt a large section of the wall and found the Guru looking over his shoulder as he worked. ‘It is crooked Lehna,’ said the Guru. Without a moment’s hesitation Lehna tore down the wall and started again. This time the Guru let him build it and examined it critically when it was finished. ‘You built it in the wrong spot Lehna! You are going to have to move the wall.’ Uncomplaining, Lehna threw down the wall and started to build it for the third time.
It was dawn by then and the Sikhs began to wake up. Some gathered around Guru Nanak’s house watching Lehna work. Finally, when the wall was completed, the Guru once again expressed dissatisfaction and commanded Lehna to tear it down yet again. Some of the Sikhs began to titter. The Guru’s sons mocked Lehna, calling him a fool for obeying such unreasonable orders. Lehna went back to his work unperturbed.
Lehna continued to serve his master for three more years in this manner. Guru Nanak grew increasingly fond of Lehna and spent a lot of time instructing him. The Guru’s sons had grown jealous of Lehna’s deepening relationship with their father and began to openly express their dislike for him. The Guru, sensing the depth of the animosity, decided to send Lehna away to Khadur. Of course, his disciple left with no hesitation and started to live a disciplined life of prayer and meditation in his hometown, garnering great respect from the locals. Although he was distraught at being separated from his master, he never complained, certain that Guru Nanak must have had a reason for sending him away…
Finally came the fateful day when the Guru assembled everyone on the banks of the Ravi and formally anointed Angad as his successor.
14 June 1539 was a warm summer’s day in Punjab. A strange scene unfolded on the banks of the river Ravi, which flows by the town of Kartarpur. Guru Nanak was surrounded by his family and his beloved Sikhs, but he was doing something most unusual, even disconcerting. Surely unbefitting an elderly patriarch whose followers loved him and respected him like none other, Guru Nanak rose from his seat—the Guru’s seat—and to it he led Angad, who looked embarrassed and nonplussed. Guru Nanak, with a reassuring smile, gestured towards the Guru’s seat and bid Angad to sit. Angad looked reluctant, but being the most obedient of his master’s followers, he gingerly lowered himself into the seat. To the assembly’s astonishment, Guru Nanak reverently placed an offering of five paise or pennies and a coconut before his disciple and prostrated himself before him. The assembly gasped audibly. The Guru rose and turned to Bhai Buddha, another of his beloved disciples, a solemn man, who had been known as ‘Buddha’ or the wise old man, since he was a precocious lad! Bhai Buddha, on the Guru’s command, anointed Bhai Lehna’s forehead with a Tilak or saffron mark, signifying royalty. The torch had been passed. Visibly and dramatically. The humblest of Guru Nanak’s disciples, Bhai Lehna, now known as Guru Angad, was now his successor.
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Now that you have had a glimpse of the life of Guru Nanak, who had paved the path of spirituality for many, read in detail more about other Sikh Gurus in Sarbpreet Singh’s The Story of the Sikhs.
The onset of monsoon brings all the book aficionados to the window on balmy mornings, letting them enjoy the whiff of their freshly brewed coffee mixed with the sweet breeze. Nestled in the porch, when the rain makes you feel grey, curl up in a corner with a book or two or maybe six (you may find that, like a chip or a cookie, you can’t stop after one). So, taking care of your moods to suit the light drizzles, heavy showers, and oh-when-will-it-rain-again days, we bring to you our latest releases that are sure to lighten your heart, brighten your days, and enrich your soul.
Are you now ready to rekindle the romance with books this monsoon season?
The Story of the Sikhs
The Story of The Sikhs || Sarbpreet Singh
In The Story of the Sikhs, author Sarbpreet Singh helps us reimagine the lives of the Sikh Gurus through a rich narrative that that intricately weaves in selections from the Guru Granth Sahib, the Dasam Granth and epic Braj poetry.
Starting from the birth of the first guru, Guru Nanak, the book charts the lives of the ten Gurus. Through carefully curated stories, the book does not just show the egalitarian ideals and compassionate worldview that have come to define the faith, but also sheds light on the historical context that defined the foundational principles which guided Sikhs during the era of each Guru.
Sarbpreet has deliberately approached this retelling as a storyteller rather than as a student of history in an attempt to make the work accessible and engaging. Immersive and expansive, The Story of the Sikhs is a tour de force that weaves a multi-dimensional tapestry of narrative and poetry.
A Rude Life
A Rude Life || Vir Sanghvi
Vir Sanghvi, in A Rude Life, turns his dispassionate observer’s gaze on himself, and in taut prose tells us about all that he’s experienced, and nothing more for he’s still a private man. He unhurriedly recounts memories from his childhood and college years, moving on to give us an understanding of how he wrote his biggest stories, while giving us an insider’s view into the politics and glamour of that time.
This is an explosively entertaining memoir that details one of the most eventful careers in Indian journalism. Studded with a cast of unforgettable characters like Morarji Desai, Giani Zail Singh, Amitabh Bachchan, Dhirubhai Ambani and a host of other prominent political and cultural figures, A Rude Life is a delicious read.
Karma
Karma || Acharya Prashant
The meaning of ‘Karma’ stands distorted by centuries of misplaced fictionalization. Karma remains a disquieting enigma to the few who refuse to accept compromised notions. This book is for them.
If to live rightly is to act rightly, what then is right action? This has tormented us since ages. The scriptures answer this, but without stooping from their cryptic heights. Nor do they advise how their ancient words apply to the present. Acharya Prashant’s work provides the missing link. He imparts clarity, leaving nothing to conjecture or belief.
Acharya Prashant demolishes ubiquitous beliefs and outdated notions to reveal some simple truths. When we ask, ‘What to do?’, the book handholds us into ‘Who is the doer? What does he want from the deed?’ This shift provides the solutions, and finally the dissolution of the question.
By My Own Rules
By My Own Rules || Ma Anand Sheela
Irrepressible, honest, bold and charming, very few can claim to have lived life on their own terms as Ma Anand Sheela has. Yet controversy continues to follow her. Whether it is her portrayal in Wild Wild Country or the Osho International Foundation’s take on the Netflix series, a wide spectrum of opinions has cloaked for too long the real Sheela Birnstiel. In the 1980s, she was the personal secretary of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and managed the Rajneesh commune in Wasco County, Oregon, USA. She was eventually sentenced to prison, served her time and walked out in three years.
Today, she runs homes for the disabled and the elderly in Switzerland. Almost three decades later, she is still in love with Bhagwan and his teachings. From rebuilding her life from scratch in Switzerland to an interview with Karan Johar on her grand return to India, she is adored and vilified by the world at the same time. In her memoirs, By My Own Rules, Ma Anand Sheela bares all-her life, her lessons, her beliefs, her inspiration and what makes her live life on her own terms.
Operation Khukri
Operation Khukri || Major General Rajpal Punia, Damini Punia
This is the true story behind the Indian Army’s Most Successful Mission as part of the United Nations. The year was 2000. Sierra Leone, in West Africa, had been ravaged by years of civil strife. With the intervention of the United Nations, two companies of the Indian Army were deployed in Kailahun as part of a United Nations peacekeeping mission.
Soon, the peaceful mission turned into a war-like standoff between Major Punia’s company and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels in Kailahun, with the Indian peacekeepers cordoned off for seventy-five days without supplies. The only way home was by laying down their weapons.
Operation Khukri was one of Indian Army’s most successful international missions, and this book is a first-hand account by Major Rajpal Punia, who, after three months of impasse and failed diplomacy, orchestrated the operation, surviving the ambush of the RUF in a prolonged jungle warfare twice, and returning with all 233 soldiers standing tall.
The Long Game
The Long Game || Vijay Gokhale
India’s relations with the People’s Republic of China have captured the popular imagination ever since the 1950s but have rarely merited a detailed understanding of the issues. Individual episodes tend to arouse lively debate, which often dissipates without a deeper exploration of the factors that shaped the outcomes. This book explores the dynamics of negotiation between the two countries, from the early years after Independence until the current times, through the prism of six historical and recent events in the India-China relationship. The purpose is to identify the strategy, tactics and tools that China employs in its diplomatic negotiations with India, and the learnings for India from its past dealings with China that may prove helpful in future negotiations with the country.
A Begum and A Rani
A Begum and A Rani || Rudrangshu Mukherjee
Exploring the lives of two remarkable women who chose to enter a field of activity which, in the middle of the nineteenth century, was seen a male domain, this book brings to light how unusual circumstances catapulted Begum Hazrat Mahal of Awadh and Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi into the rebellion of 1857. Both of them sacrificed their lives trying to overthrow the British rule, which they considered to be alien and oppressive. Their resistance and their deaths are heroic and poignant.
The book captures the different trajectories of their lives and their struggles. In different but adjacent geographies these two women, both married into royal houses, decided to uphold traditions of ruling and culture that their husbands had established. These traditions had been subverted by the policies of Lord Dalhousie who had annexed both Awadh and Jhansi. While noting these similarities, it should be highlighted that Awadh was a large and sprawling kingdom with a long history whereas Jhansi was a small principality.
The rani and the begum never met, even though they were embroiled in the same struggle. It is the rebellion of 1857-58 that provides the context, which makes these two outstanding women feature in the same narrative. This book tells the story of two women in a rebellion.
The afterlives of the begum and the rani took on very different hues. The rani was made a nationalist icon: a woman on horseback with a raised sword, who died in battle. The begum was a relatively forgotten figure who did not get her due place in the roll call of honour. Revisiting the revolt of 1857 from a unique perspective and looking at their afterlives, the myths, this book attempts to set the record straight.
Looking at the revolt of 1857 from a different perspective, A Begum & A Rani is an act of retrieval.
Khwabnama
Khwabnama || Akhtaruzzaman Elias
Bengal in the 1940s. Having overcome the famine and the revolt of the sharecroppers, Bengal’s peasants are uniting. Work is scarce and wages are low. There is barely any food to be had. The proposal for the formation of Pakistan, the elections of 1946, and communal riots are rewriting the contours of history furiously. Amidst all this, in an unnamed village, a familiar corporeal spirit plunges into knee-deep mud. This is Tamiz’s father, the man in possession of Khwabnama.
At first glance, Khwabnama is the tale of a harmless young farmhand who becomes a sharecropper and dreams of a future that has everything to do with the land that he cultivates and the soil that he tills. The fabric of his dreams, though, have as much to do with the history of
the land as its future, and as much to do with memories as with hope.
In this magnum opus, which documents the Tebhaga movement, wherein peasants demanded two-thirds of the harvest they produced on the land owned by zamindars, Akhtaruzzaman Elias has created an extraordinary tale of magical realism, blending memory with reality, legend with history and the struggle of marginalized people with the stories of their ancestors.
A Passage North
A Passage North || Anuk Arudpragasam
A Passage North begins with a message from out of the blue: a telephone call informing Krishan that his grandmother’s caretaker, Rani, has died under unexpected circumstances-found at the bottom of a well in her village in the north, her neck broken by the fall. The news arrives on the heels of an email from Anjum, an impassioned yet aloof activist Krishnan fell in love with years before while living in Delhi, stirring old memories and desires from a world he left behind.
As Krishan makes the long journey by train from Colombo into the war-torn Northern Province for Rani’s funeral, so begins an astonishing passage into the innermost reaches of a country. At once a powerful meditation on absence and longing, as well as an unsparing account of the legacy of Sri Lanka’s thirty-year civil war, this procession to a pyre ‘at the end of the earth’ lays bare the imprints of an island’s past and the unattainable distances between who we are and what we seek.
Written with precision and grace, Anuk Arudpragasam’s masterful novel is an attempt to come to terms with life in the wake of devastation, and a poignant memorial for those lost and those still alive.
The Incomparable Festival
The Incomparable Festival || Mir Yar Ali “Jan Sahib”
The Incomparable Festival (Musaddas Tahniyat-e-Jashn-e-Benazir) by Mir Yar Ali (whose pen name was Jan Sahib) is a little known but sumptuous masterpiece of Indo-Islamic literary culture, presented here for the first time in English translation. The long poem, written in rhyming sestet stanzas, is about the royal festival popularly called jashn-e-benazir(the incomparable festival), inaugurated in 1866 by the Nawab Kalb-e-Ali Khan (r. 1865-87) with the aim of promoting art, culture and trade in his kingdom at Rampur in northern India. The task of commemorating the sights and wonders of the festival was given to the hugely popular writer of rekhti verse, the tart and playful sub-genre of the ghazal, reflecting popular women’s speech, of which Jan Sahib is one of the last practitioners.
Structured as an ode to the nawab, the poem is a world-album depicting various classes on the cusp of social upheaval. They include the elite, distinguished artists and commoners, brought together at the festivities, blurring the distinction between poetry, history and biography, and between poetic convention and social description. The book is a veritable archive of the legendary khayal singers, percussionists, and instrumentalists, courtesans, boy-dancers, poets, storytellers (dastango) and reciters of elegies (marsiyago). But, above all, the poem gives voice to the ‘lowest’ denizens of the marketplace by bringing to light their culinary tastes, artisanal products, religious rituals and beliefs, and savoury idioms, thereby focusing on identities of caste and gender in early modern society.
This Penguin Classics edition will be of interest not just to the Urdu and Hindi literary historian, but to specialists and readers interested in the histories of music, dance, and the performative arts, as well as scholars of gender and sexuality in South Asia. Lovers of Urdu poetry will find in it a forgotten masterpiece.
Savarkar
Savarkar || Vikram Sampath
Decades after his death, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar continues to uniquely influence India’s political scenario. An optimistic advocate of Hindu-Muslim unity in his treatise on the 1857 War of Independence, what was it that transformed him into a proponent of ‘Hindutva’? A former president of the All-India Hindu Mahasabha, Savarkar was a severe critic of the Congress’s appeasement politics. After Gandhi’s murder, Savarkar was charged as a co-conspirator in the assassination. While he was acquitted by the court, Savarkar is still alleged to have played a role in Gandhi’s assassination, a topic that is often discussed and debated.
In this concluding volume of the Savarkar series, exploring a vast range of original archival documents from across India and outside it, in English and several Indian languages, historian Vikram Sampath brings to light the life and works of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, one of the most contentious political thinkers and leaders of the twentieth century.
Strictly at Work
Strictly At Work || Sudha Nair
Simi works in marketing at a furniture company. Ranvir is an analyst at a finance startup.While their desks happen to be on the same floor at Bizworks, a swanky co-working space in Bangalore, their paths aren’t meant to cross. But as circumstances bring them together again and again, they find it harder to deny the spark between them.
In a live-in relationship with his girlfriend, Ranvir doesn’t expect to have feelings for someone else. And while Simi’s family pushes for the perfect arranged match for her, she knows she doesn’t love the man her parents want her to marry.
When their personal lives clash with their attraction at work, Simi and Ranvir must decide if they want to remain just co-workers or mean more to each other.
Harsh Realities
Harsh Realities || Harsh Mariwala, Ram Charan
Breaking away from the shackles of family-run Bombay Oils Industries Ltd, Harsh Mariwala founded Marico in 1987. Today, the homegrown Marico is a leading international FMCG giant which recorded an annual turnover of over Rs 8000 crore last year. Their products, like Parachute, Nihar Naturals, Saffola, Set Wet, Livon and Mediker, are market leaders in their categories. This is the story of grit, gumption and growth, and of the core values of trust, transparency and innovation which have brought the company to its current stature. Co-authored by leading management thinker and guru Ram Charan, Harsh Realities is a much-awaited business book by an innovative and clear-headed leader who built a highly professional, competitive business from the ground up.
Sarasvati’s Gift
Sarasvati’s Gift || Kavita Kane
Sarasvati, the feminine force worshipped as the goddess of learning, is a household name, yet we barely know much about the goddess. She is known as a lost river and seen as a singular goddess, never as part of a couple, such as Shiva-Parvati or Lakshmi-Narayan. In Sarasvati’s Gift, Kavita Kane brings to light Sarasvati’s story-the goddess of art, music and knowledge-told in the voices of nameless celestials, powerful gods and lesser mortals. The book explores her relationship with her Creator, Brahma, and their unusual marriage-a union of fiercely independent minds and the most non-conforming, unconventional of the Triumvirate couples. As these peripheral figures and silent catalysts take centre stage, we get a glimpse of an extraordinary woman and her remarkable story, obscured and buried under myths and legends.
Brand Activism
Brand Activism || Philip Kotler, Christian Sarkar
What happens when businesses and their customers don’t share the same values? Or, for that matter, when employees of a company don’t share the same values as their executives? Welcome to the world of Brand Activism.
Companies no longer have a choice. Brand Activism consists of business efforts to promote, impede, or direct social, political, economic, and/or environmental reform or stasis with the desire to promote or impede improvements in society. It is driven by a fundamental concern for the biggest and most urgent problems facing society.
Brand Activism: From Purpose to Action is about how progressive businesses are taking stands to create a better world.
Life and Death of Sambhaji
Life and Death of Sambhaji || Medha Deshmukh Bhaskaran
It begins to dawn on the nine-year-old Sambhaji that his father has fled from the clutches of the Mughal badshah Aurangzeb and left him behind. He must now find his way back home with the help of strangers . . .
Under the shadow of an illustrious father, Sambhaji finds himself thrust into the Maratha-Mughal conflict from a tender age. His mistakes cost him dearly and when his father suddenly dies and he becomes the chhatrapati, it is as if he has inherited a crown of thorns.
In the nine years that follow, he faces a constant battle-internally, as palace intrigues simmer to kill him, and externally, as Aurangzeb descends on the Deccan with full military force.
Even Chhatrapati Shivaji had never faced a full-blown Mughal aggression.
Will he be able to protect the Maratha nation and Swaraj that was his father’s dream? Will he prove to be a worthy son to his father-in life as well as in death?
History has been unfair to Sambhaji, but it can’t deny that he inspired a generation of Maratha warriors, who eventually ensured the end of Aurangzeb’s jihad.
Asoca
Asoca || Irwin Allan Sealy
Asoca-often spelled Ashoka-was hailed as Ashoka the Great, the emperor who ruled most of the Indian Subcontinent and was pivotal in the spread of Buddhism from India to other parts of Asia in the third century BC.
But his life as emperor was not always led by non-violence. History has it that he masterminded one of the biggest and deadliest wars ever fought, and it was the insurmountable grief he experienced at the sight of the people dying and dead on the battleground that made him turn to Buddhism and take a vow of ahimsa.
Who was the man, and who was the king? What were his demons, and what gave him strength? This historical novel, drawn from research and portrayed with energy and complexity, transports the reader to the era of the Mauryan dynasty with atmospheric vividness and insight. Epic in scope and Shakespearean in drama, Asoca: A Sutra leaves the reader breathless with the full-bodied richness of Sealy’s prose, his trademark whimsy and his imaginative modern reconstruction of that enigmatic and brilliant ruler of the Indian subcontinent.
Brands, in what they show, tell, feel, smell and taste like, say a lot. Our five senses play a significant role in the recognition of a brand and how it is received by the audience. Sandeep Dayal tells how brain sciences can help brand ambassadors and brand theatres of operations engage the human senses. It would be right to say that all the cognitive brand marketers must note the finer nuances for branding that this book offers.
Let us read this extract from his book to understand that when designing and executing brand experiences, it is important to think of a plan for each sense, or at least consider its impact on them.
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Right Between the Ears || Sandeep Dayal
Most real-world brands have a ‘theatre of operations’ and ‘ambassadors’. They go to market through retail stores and/or a salesforce.
Sergio Zyman was the chief marketing officer of the Coca-Cola Company when they sponsored the Summer Olympics in Atlanta in 1996. Years later, I was Sergio’s chief marketing officer in his consulting company. Sergio told me that at the time when he ran the sponsorship for the Olympics, he had his teams build a thick binder called the ‘Red Book’, which was a detailed playbook for everything that Coke would do at the games. How and where Coke would be seen, who would do and say what and when, what it all meant and how it fit together in a single brand mosaic.
The Olympics would be Coke’s theatre of operation. Anyone with the red Coke shirt would be a brand ambassador, and every moment would be choreographed according to the Red Book.
When consumers step into a brand’s theatre of operations or interact with its brand ambassadors, there is an opportunity to build immersive experiences for them by engaging their five senses. The strongest brand experiences, as we learnt before, are those that are associated with other prior experiences. They are recalled more easily and better than others, last longer and feel more important to the brain. When marketers weave their brands with the human senses, they create even more associations with the experience, making it easier to recall. That’s why immersive sensory brand experiences make deep impressions on our brains.
If you walk down the Magnificent Mile in Chicago, even if you have never done that before, you can recognize the Burberry store with its trademark black-and-brown tartan cross hatches from blocks away with no help at all. The store design itself makes a statement about the brand. As you step inside, you can smell it.
During spring and summer, Zaluti scent machines diffuse the spring crocus scent and during autumn and winter, a special autumn scent. You look around and see that the wall colors are neutral with darker accents and furniture. That is deliberately orchestrated to bring to mind Burberry’s classic trench coat or tartan.
The personal shopper who greets you leaves an impression with how they look and sound, and how they gently direct you to where you want to go in the store. Every one of those sensations embody the Burberry brand.
The brand theatre of operations does not end with the store. Burberry also live-streams its runway shows, to share the excitement of decloaking new fashions as they happen with its fans worldwide, and lets them buy select new products online with its ‘see now, buy now strategy’.
Even brands like Away, Glossier, Farmer’s Dog, Made In Cookware, Lively Intimates and Everlane, which started out as pure online brands, have opened exciting stores on Lafayette Street in New York. They realized that bringing people to a brick-and-mortar store was the best way to create immersive experiences for customers—and that is what many consumers want. Virtual companies like Facebook and Google have opportunities to expand their brand theatre of operations into the real world with events and sponsorships.
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Read Sandeep Dayal’s Right Between the Ears to get insights into the fascinating world of branding and hold on to the anchors in the age of hyper-competition by understanding why people make the choices they do and how to keep a brand relevant.
In her timely masterpiece Unmasked, Paro Anand writes of despair, courage and hope. Through eighteen short stories, she introduces us to characters who feel familiar and their stories intimate.
Here’s a glimpse into the author’s mind as she delves into the subject that inspired the book.
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Unmasked||Paro Anand
Remember the song from the TV series – Orange is the New Black? Could well reflect our lives right now. Trapped, trapped, trapped…
For me, as for many, the pandemic has been a test, a trial and in some cases, a triumph.
So how did it change me as a writer? For one, I realised that I probably can never be a writer who hides away for long periods to write in glorious isolation. No. I need the excitement of beating hearts around me. I need the furious curiosity of young minds shooting questions and testing me to the limit. I need the fear I feel that teenagers will reject me and my work and words outright. I need to hear the twang and slang of young people to get their voices and language spot on. Otherwise, I am just an old-ish aunty pretending to be groovy. (see, there’s one word that is a dead giveaway.) I realised that social distancing just isn’t my thing.
So pandemic time around, where do I go, as a writer? Where do I find the life force to draw my words from?
And of course, there is only one answer. Virtually. It meant thinking, not out of the box – but differently inside the box, or the four walls of your room. To write about the outside people while being kept away from them.
For a while, I was totally trapped into inaction. And I am a writer who writes compulsively. Every day. yes, every single day. But with the world closing in on itself – and a sudden load of housework – I found myself distanced from my work. If I don’t write, the creativity tap shuts off, the muscle atrophies. Pulling myself out of ditches of real despair wasn’t easy, but it was greatly helped by the excitement mounting in my personal life. I had grandchildren coming. Three of them! The anticipation spurred me on to writing two picture books – Babies in my Heart (Dil Mein Bacha Hai ji – in Hindi) and RooRoo.
Both books are published by Ektara who had also given me a fellowship just prior to the pandemic. While having the fellowship was great – I mean, to be paid to sit home and write is every writer’s dream, but it also meant that there was tremendous pressure.
While the distractions of Nani and Dadi hood were wonderful, I was being eaten up by the need to write. Especially to write the kind of brutally honest young adult reality fiction that I am better known for and love. I need to write this genre like I need to breathe. The world was choking because of the pandemic and so was I.
There was a brutal reality taking place right outside and I wasn’t being able to come to grips with it in my writing. I realised it was because of two things that I was stuck. Firstly, I need to let a feeling, a thought ‘cook’ for a while before I can jump in. the second is the I always have a need to empower my young reader to do better, be better. Not in a moralizing way, but simply because, through my interactions, I have come to sincerely believe that if anyone can make a difference, it is young people.
But in this locked down world, how were children or anyone going to do any better when we were all trying to save our own arses?
My own children, soon to be parents, meanwhile, just pressed on. My daughter becoming very involved in relief programs for the Dharavi slums and that is what unlocked and unmasked my creative flow. The image of the high-rise, high-end flats of Mumbai with the world of shanties and chawls at their feet. Yet each was bound by a common enemy and it was coming to get us all. No one, no matter how rich or powerful was being left untouched. The help was flowing both ways, no matter who you were. There was a one-ness to the world even though we were socially distanced as never before.
It was when my three grandsons were actually safely home that I had this ah ha moment that – simply – life goes on.
I started to write stories on the pandemic – nineteen of them to signify COVID’S 19. Because of my staunch belief in young people, I placed a young girl’s poem as chapter 1. It is called “What would you do?” and it asks, no, demands positive action. The poem came from a young girl who was part of a virtual writer’s workshop I was conducting.
The stories all reflect the connectedness of us all.
The funny thing was, I was working on the manuscript during the first wave. As my agent tied up with Penguin RandomHouse and work began in earnest, the editor on the book disagreed with the title. She and the marketing team felt that, because the book was still some months away, the pandemic would be a bad memory that no one would want to remember. So we had to elude to it, but not have the dreaded word in the title. She, in fact, came up with the lovely title, Unmasked, hoping that’s how we would all be. But…well, we know that is one big BUT. With at least 3 waves.
I had my 19 stories of horror and hope and going in my mind. The way different people were responding and coping and stepping up, or going into hiding. Priya Kuriyan, the illustrator too, didn’t merely illustrate the stories, she depicted her own visions of the times. The cover, I just love for the way it ties the two worlds of the stories together. The sheer variety of experience made the subject of each story easy. And that’s when it struck me….well there is a surprise ending to the book that will make each copy of it unique and different.
Because everything in this moment in history is different pandemic time around. And though it is something we may never want to remember, this is a time that we will never be able to forget.
In his book Believe, Suresh Raina takes us through the challenges he faced as a young cricketer. He was bullied in school and at cricket camps, but he always punched above his weight, overcoming every adversity life threw at him and never giving up. This is the story of the lessons he learnt and the friendships he built.
Peppered with invaluable insights – about the game and about life – that Raina acquired from senior colleagues like M.S. Dhoni, Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble, Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly, among others, this book will make you believe in the power of hard work, love, luck, hope and camaraderie. It is a journey through the highs and lows in the cricketing career of a man who saw his world fall apart and yet became one of the most influential white-ball cricketers India has ever seen.
Enjoy this little excerpt that explores his relationship with the legend M.S. Dhoni.
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Believe||Suresh Raina, Bharat Sundaresan
Mahi Bhai always makes fun of me for being clumsy. I’ve seen him talk about how if I am around in his room, I would end up dropping something or walking into something. ‘Tu rahega toh kuch na kuch hoga,’ he likes to say. Maybe there’s some truth there. I am just a very energetic person, and I am always up and about as you might have seen me on the field.
There’s another thing that he is amused by. He’ll talk about how I would saunter into his room, order a lot of food over room service and not even wait for it to arrive. I’ll tell you why I am always keen on ordering my own food. What happens with a lot of them is that they would order nothing but chicken and roti. I, on the other hand, am a vegetarian. Moreover, I never have maida, because back home, I was used to having rotis made of ragi atta. My eating habits are pretty desi, so I need a good number of vegetable dishes and can’t do without a dal.
So, Mahi would ask me to order my own food. But often, after ordering, I would remember that I had a gym session and end up not eating that food. But I made it a point to not waste it and would go back later for it, even if by then the food had gone cold.
Talking of room service always reminds me of the times Robin Uthappa and I would order food on Mahi Bhai’s tab. And of that time in Pakistan when Rahul Bhai was captain and said, ‘Boys, order whatever you want. It’s on me.’ We made him pay for that reckless statement.
It involved, me, Irfan, Robin and Mahi Bhai. It was Dhoni’s idea. He just called up room service and asked for a double of everything we had ordered. Two milkshakes, an extra biryani, two extra rotis, two more dals, two more sabzis. Rahul Bhai couldn’t stop laughing at us. He eventually admitted that he’d learnt his lesson and that he would never give us a free hand again with room service. We did end up finishing everything we’d ordered, though.
That’s the kind of fun Mahi Bhai and I would have at other people’s expense all the time. We are like partners in crime when it comes to pulling someone else’s leg. I’ve been at the receiving end too at times, when he decides to turn on me. We’ve had an interesting relationship over the years.
I have also gone through so much because of our friendship. Like the whole bias angle. People would say, ‘Oh, Raina gets picked because he is Dhoni’s friend.’ But people forget the contributions I have made for teams captained by him—India as well as CSK. That’s how you build trust in a player as captain.
For us, it was like how when you have a neighbour over at your place all the time. You can take liberties with that person, saying yeh toh ghar ki baat hai. I played so much of my career down the order, and he would say let some of the others play at the top. At times I would say, ‘Humein bhi upar khelna hai.’ But he would respond, ‘Nahi, tu at will chhakke marta hai . . .’ and say that the others, be it Rohit or Virat or Ajju (Ajinkya Rahane), were better off at the top of the order. I was more reliable in those situations. He knew my mindset. He knew what brought the best out of me. And I trusted him. It would hurt when people kept linking our friendship to my being part of the team. I don’t think the numbers lie. I’ve always earned my spot in the team, just like I earned Mahi Bhai’s trust and respect. I was there for him. He always made me feel special. Nobody can take away from that. And it doesn’t matter what people say . . .
We grew closer and closer, and even got to know a lot about each other’s personal lives and families. I went to his house and met his family. After meeting them, I realized why he is so sorted. Sakshi and he came to meet my parents soon after their wedding. A UP–Bihar cultural connection there as well.
There’s always a lot of talk about Mahi Bhai being Captain Cool. But I can tell you that is not his greatest strength as captain. He will never compromise on the game. That’s what I like about him the most. That’s what I think makes him such a legendary captain and a fantastic leader.
One thing that’s really difficult to do in the humid heat of July even as an adult, is to not run outside the moment so much as a drizzle becomes imminent. How then are we to keep our little ones dry, safe and away from the virus that prowls outside the doors? The answer is rather simple. Give them one of our exciting July releases and a comfy spot near a window, on a porch or anywhere they can enjoy the weather as well as a thrilling literary adventure.
There are so many to choose from!
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My Little Book Series
My Little Book of Krishna||
Let’s dive into the vast and wonderful world of Hindu mythology!
Naughty little Krishna’s search for butter leads to an unexpected adventure.
With charming illustrations and simple language, this short tale about Krishna will entertain and delight.
This series of charmingly illustrated board books introduces kids to some of the best known and best loved gods from popular Hindu mythology, including Krishna, Ganesha, Lakshmi, Hanuman, Shiva and Durga. Dotted with interesting facts about each god as well as an interactive seek-and-find activity, this book offers a fun and enjoyable introduction to timeless myths and festivals for modern kids.
A must have to impart important life lessons from various gods and goddesses.
Age: 3+ years
My Little Book of Lakshmi||
Lovely Lakshmi comes to Earth once a year. Will she have a good time here?
With charming illustrations and simple language, this short tale about Lakshmi will entertain and delight.
The perfect way to familiarise babies with India’s rich cultural fabric, this book is a must have to impart important life lessons from various gods and goddesses. My Little Book of Lakshmi makes for a great gift for every preschooler for a holistic learning experience
Age: 3+ years
My Little Book of Ganesha||
Clever Ganesha’s got something on his mind, but what that is you’ll have to read on to find.
With charming illustrations and simple language, this short tale about Ganesha will entertain and delight.
Collect all books in the series!
Age: 3+ years
The Book of Cultures||Evi Triantafyllides and Nefeli Malekou
The Book of Cultures
Explore the cultures of the world!
Meet buddies from different parts of our planet and go on adventures near and far with 30 stories bursting with intrigue, curiosity and wonder! Travel from Japan to Peru and South Africa to Denmark, and learn about diverse cultures, customs, traditions and more in one handy, charmingly illustrated volume.
A magical, educational experience for young readers to discover the differences that make our planet so special, but also to uncover the similarities we often overlook. Fictional plots of kids from different countries capture the imagination of little readers and allow them to experience the world beyond themselves, developing compassion and empathy. Every story is accompanied by a 2-page snapshot of that country’s culture, filled with fun facts and engaging activities, such as puzzles, songs and recipes
Age: 4+ years
Spaceship to the Universe||Shruthi Rao, Anuradha Jagalur
Spaceship to the Universe
‘A great library is freedom. And that freedom must not be compromised. It must be available to all who need it, and that’s everyone, when they need it, and that’s always.’–Ursula le Guin
Libraries. We love them. Tyrants tremble before them. There are children in the world desperate for them, and people who are willing to put their own lives at risk to save them.
In this book, you’ll discover the oldest libraries, and the largest ones. You’ll find libraries in battlefields, in Antarctica and even in space. You’ll come across libraries in boats, on the backs of donkeys and elephants, and in telephone booths. And you will meet amazing people who will do almost anything to take libraries to people who need them
In this celebration of libraries, Shruthi Rao and Anuradha Jagalur bring together inspiring and fascinating stories to delight all those who love books and libraries.
Age: 10+ years
How the Earth Got Its Beauty||Sudha Murty
How the Earth Got Its Beauty|
After the huge success of How the Sea Became Salty and How the Onion Got Its Layers, Sudha Murty brings to you a brand new tale as part of her gorgeous chapter book series for young readers.
Excellent artwork that helps expand a child’s imagination, easy to read and understand.
A remarkable story narrated simply and endearingly for young readers.
Have you ever stopped to marvel at the earth’s beauty: at snow-capped mountains and oceans so deep; at colourful flowers and extraordinary animals? The tale of how such beauty came into existence is a curious one indeed.
India’s favourite storyteller brings alive this timeless tale with her inimitable wit and simplicity. Tricked out with enchanting illustrations, this gorgeous chapter book is the ideal introduction for beginners to the world of Sudha Murty.
Age: 5-8 years
The Great Big Lion||Chryseis Knight
The Great Big Lion
Drawn and written by a 3-year-old Mensa prodigy
Long, long ago, there was a Great Big Lion. Tom and Lily were fascinated by him. They loved to hear him ROAR! But one day, the lion vanished without a trace. And so, off went Tom and Lily to find and bring back their friend, the Great Big Lion.
Written by one of the youngest writers in the world, this board book will connect to your child and make them think about empathy, friendship, nature and conservation. Dive into this fun read that combines storytelling and learning through patterns and numbers.
Age: 1-4 years
Topi Rockets from Thumba||Menaka Raman
Topi Rockets from Thumba
A charmingly illustrated and colourful book to inculcate interest in STEM subjects for young readers.
Join Vikram Sarabhai and his scientists as they try to launch a sounding rocket in Kerala, with a little help from young Mary!
The year is 1963 and India is about to embark on an audacious adventure – launching its first ever rocket into space. After much searching, a team of scientists led by the visionary Dr Vikram Sarabhai zero in on Thumba, a tiny fishing village off the coast of Kerala as the place to launch the rocket and India’s dreams of space exploration.
Mary is all of 10 years old and bored of life in sleepy Thumba. Nothing ever happens here but fishing. That is, of course, until Dr Sarabhai and team arrive
Topi Rockets from Thumba is an imagined account of the weeks and months leading up to the launch of India’s first ever rocket, told through the eyes of the inquisitive Mary.
Age: 6+ years
Smash It, Butterfingers!||Khyrunnisa A.
Smash It, Butterfingers!
Look out! It’s Butterfingers again, and in smashing form!
There’s a lot going on in Green Park School. Ozymandias, a black cat, walks into classrooms and there’s a buzz about a badminton tournament that is to be played on Friday the thirteenth.
Sponsored by Brijesh K. Singh, an eccentric multimillionaire who loves badminton and hates superstitions, this tournament is good news for sports-crazy Amar Kishen, aka Butterfingers, and his friends.
Badminton practice begins, but can it be smooth sailing with talk of scams, superstitions and suspicions? Butterfingers sure has a lot on his hands!
Join Amar on his hilarious adventures as he defies luck with his madcap schemes. Let the game begin!
Age: 9 years
The Boy Who Played with Light||Lavanya Karthik
The Boy Who Played with Light
Before Satyajit Ray became a world-famous film maker, he was a little boy who saw many things in the shadows.
A delightfully illustrated short biography that will inspire young readers.
Age: 7+ years
The Girl Who Loved to Sing||Lavanya Karthik
The Girl Who Loved to Sing
Before Teejan Bai became a world-renowned singer, she was a little girl who had to fight for her freedom to sing.
A delightfully illustrated short biography that will inspire young readers.
With the world opening up slowly, it seems that travel might be a possibility in the near future, especially if you’re fully vaccinated. Does this mean it’s time to really think about where to go, once we can?
Here is a list of books by authors who’ve written about different places and their experiences. You’re sure to get some inspiration. If you’re not planning to travel at all, these books will help you leave your daily routine to travel to someplace far, through the comfort and safety of your home.
Don’t Ask Any Old Bloke For Directions
After twenty years in the Indian Administrative Service, P.G. Tenzing throws off the staid life of a bureaucrat to roar across India on an Enfield Thunderbird, travelling light with his possessions strapped on the back of his bike. On the nine-month motorcycle journey without a pre-planned route or direction, he encounters acquaintances who appear to be from his karmic past: from the roadside barber to numerous waiters and mechanics― fleeting human interactions and connections that seem pre-ordained. Life on the road is full of pot holes in more ways than one, but Tenzing acquires a wheelie’s sixth sense.
Kathmandu
Kathmandu is the greatest city of the Himalayas a unique survival of cultural practices that died out in India 1000 years ago. It is a carnival of sexual license and hypocrisy, a jewel of world art, a hotbed of communist revolution, a paradigm of failed democracy, a case study in bungled Western intervention and an environmental catastrophe. Kathmandu follows the author’s story over a decade in the city and unravels the city’s history through successive reinventions of itself. Erudite, entertaining and accessible, this is the distinctive chronicle of a fascinating city.
Tales of the Open Road
Ruskin Bond’s travel writing is unlike what is found in most travelogues, because he will take you to the smaller, lesser-known corners of the country, acquaint you with the least-famous locals there, and describe the flora and fauna that others would have missed. And if the place is well known, Ruskin leaves the common tourist spots to find a small alley or shop where he finds colourful characters to engage in conversation. Tales of the Open Road is a collection of Ruskin Bond’s travel writing over fifty years.
The Other Side of the Divide
Pegged on journalist Sameer Arshad Khatlani’s visit to Pakistan, this book 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.
Dare Eat That
From using sign language to haggle over ant eggs in Bangkok to being hungry enough to eat a horse in Luxembourg, from finding out the perfect eel to barbecue to discovering the best place to source emu eggs in India, Dare Eat That explores their journey to eat every species on earth, at least once!
Invisible Cities
In Invisible Cities Marco Polo conjures up cities of magical times for his host, the Chinese ruler Kublai Khan, but gradually it becomes clear that he is actually describing one city: Venice. As Gore Vidal wrote ‘Of all tasks, describing the contents of a book is the most difficult and in the case of a marvellous invention like Invisible Cities, perfectly irrelevant.’
A Moveable Feast
Hemingway’s classic memoir of Paris in the 1920s, published for the first time as he intended – from the Nobel Prize-winning author of A Farewell To Arms.
Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway’s most beloved works. Since Hemingway’s personal papers were released in 1979, scholars have examined and debated the changes made to the text before publication. Now this new special restored edition presents the original manuscript as the author prepared it to be published.
The Spirit of Enquiry by Carnatic vocalist and writer T.M. Krishna has a spectacular piece on the legendary singer S.P. Balasubrahmanyam that highlights the range and depth in SP’s music and how his brilliance came from being musically selfless. Read on for a glimpse!
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SPB happens!
SPB was in love, surprised, joyous, excited, fearful, sad, contemptuous and disgusted. He was the father, son, lover, brother, friend, villain and hero. He was the voice of the privileged and the questioning voice of the oppressed and marginalized. He was an urbanite, a villager and could belong to any era. In his voice we found every social, cultural and aesthetic possibility. This allowed every individual, irrespective of their sociopolitical location, to find himself/herself within his voice at one time or another. This self identification gave SPB a universalism that has eluded every other Indian playback singer. And I would like to stress with extra emphasis that no other ‘voice’ in Indian film history has belonged to such a diverse cross-section of Indian society.
SPB came from a certain social construction and to be able to debaggage that in his work would have been impossible, unless he was able to leave S.P. Balasubrahmanyam the person behind the moment
he stood in front of the mike. SPB had an instinctive way of tapping into various cultures and demographics. This is emotional insight of the highest order and difficult to explain. For all other singers, there was and is a social-range limit to their voice.
There is one possible answer to this mystery. Great musicians are those who listen carefully, attentively and receive with respect. Listening is not limited to music; it is as much about accent, dialect and pronunciation. It is beyond listening in the sonic sense; it includes learning varied body languages, internalizing social contexts and realities. SPB seems to have been able to absorb this from all that he witnessed in life. In other words, he let life imbue his musicality. Therefore, when he sang a song, it had a larger story to tell; not just the one being communicated by the director, music director, cinematographer or actor. SPB’s voice became the voice of the idea. He abstracted the song from the specificity of the film and made it a human calling.
If there is one indicator of the nuance in his listening, it is in the way he enunciated the words in a song. Most people do not realize that pronouncing a word is entirely different from singing it. As a part of music, the word becomes a musical body and its highs, lows, elongation and emphasis undergo a subtle but crucial transformation. Only if these happen will the music flow. Added to this complication is the fact that these alterations are language-, dialect- and culture specific. In other words, depending on the character SPB was singing for, the musical word had a specific etched acoustic form. And SPB gave every musical word, phrase and line the social, political and aesthetic identity it demanded.
The Spirit of Enquiry || T.M. Krishna
Such a person had to be selfless, musically. This comes from a realization of one’s role that as a musician, one is a catalyst and not an originator. When you are a bridge between people, ideas and feelings, ‘I’—the individual identity—has to become invisible. This sounds very close to an actor’s reality, but is actually much harder to accomplish. The actor enters the secondary reality of the film using the character he is playing, separating himself from the role. The two realities are clearly demarcated.
On the other hand, the playback singer comes in momentarily to lend his voice. In the studio, away from any semblance of the cinematic reality, he needs to give life to an idea, keeping in mind the described context, the actor’s image and the music director’s composition. And while adhering to all these requirements, he needs to somehow find his own bearings.
SPB lived selflessly, transcending the imagination of all these people but yet put aside the craving for the ‘spotlight’. He realized that the ‘self’ is established when it forgets its own presence.
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For the first time, T.M. Krishna’s key writings have been put together in this extraordinary collection. The Spirit of Enquiry: Dissent as an Art Form draws from his rich body of work, thematically divided into five key sections: art and artistes; the nation state; the theatre of secularism; savage inequalities; and in memoriam.
A.A. Jafri was born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan. He is an economist by day and a writer by night. Of Smokeless Fire is his first novel.
We caught up with him and asked him a few questions that really intrigued us. Keep reading to find out his answers.
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Of Smokeless Fire||A.A. Jafri
Of Smokeless Firewas your first published book, was it also your first attempt at writing one?
I started writing from a very early age, first with poetry and then short stories in Urdu. Initially, I think it was an exercise in self-discovery, a stream of consciousness experience without much structure or order. This novel was the first time I wrote in a serious, sustained way. So, yes, this is my first attempt at writing with the hope of getting my work published.
How was writing this book as an experience for you? Do you plan on writing and publishing more works in the future?
For me, writing Of Smokeless Fire has been a joyous journey. It has given me a sense of perspective, a place to give voice to my thoughts, memories, and reflections. Writing this novel has also been an incredibly cathartic experience, providing me with the means to revisit Pakistan’s complicated history and delve into the aftermath of the partition of India that my parents’ generation experienced. By creating and recreating characters and situations, it has helped me frame some uncomfortable questions.
As for the future, I’m writing a prequel to Of Smokeless Fire, imagining the life Noor ul Haq, one of the novel’s protagonists in the story, led in pre-partition India. What made him who he was? And why was the sense of belonging and displacement so pronounced in his life? While my present novel, among other things, explores the relationship between Noor and his son Mansoor, the prequel examines Noor’s relationship with his father.
You’re an economist who deals with facts and figures all day, what compelled you to write fiction?
Behind facts and figures, there are always stories of human beings—how people live, how they scrape a living, and how they die. I have always questioned the way professional economists have dealt with human problems. My interest in economics has always been related to issues of poverty and economic development. John Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath about how families got uprooted by the Great Depression. Charles Dickens’s Hard Times is about the social and economic conditions of the early industrial age and how it dehumanized workers. Fiction sometimes explains economics better than professional economists. I often imagine the “what-ifs” of policies. Although my novel raises questions about alienation and belonging, I hope it also reveals deep-seated economic issues and issues of class and gender in our society. I’m compelled to write the human interest behind these issues.
Is the story in fact, purely fiction, or are there bits and pieces drawn from life and experience?
I can’t envision any story as solely fiction; it has to emulate lived experiences and invent replications. My novel is, of course, a fabrication, but it also draws from people I met or knew or heard about, the conversations I eavesdropped on, the fleeting encounters with strangers, the myths I grew up with, the rumors that circulated. I have tried to retrieve all those memories—real or fantastic—and applied them to a concocted reality, imagining the what-ifs and trying the why-not. The change of fortunes in Joseph’s and Mehrun’s lives—the servants’ children—in Of Smokeless Fire is fictitious but inspired by stories of real people who broke out of the cycle of grinding poverty.
The lines from the Qur’an that serve as an epigraph to Part I of the book are rather significant. What made the ‘djinn’ so central to your plot while you conceptualised your story?
I grew up listening to stories about djinns and reading about their existence in the Qur’an. I knew many who believed in a literal interpretation of djinns, while others explained them metaphorically. Opinions about the sacred often become such a steadfast belief that no amount of fact or logic can shake that certainty. Even followers from the same faith have conflicting views about such beliefs. It is like you are speaking a different language in the chaos of contrasting opinions. I felt that such disjunctions needed to be told in a story. So often, disparate explanations create an interesting plot, bringing in contradictions, contempt, and cruelty. I wanted to capture all that in my novel.
In my story, Noor explains what the word djinn means. It is something hidden, the part of everyone’s self that’s concealed, even from our own selves. According to him, one needs to discover that reality. He tells his son that if he finds his inner djinn, he will find his true self. My book explores the internal struggle that one has with oneself.
