Can books change lives? As someone who reviews them for a living, I am primed to say they can. But doesn't life teach one to man up, be robust, do things that are right and practical? The world of literature, then, can seem prissy and out of touch with reality.Milan Kundera perhaps meant this when he wrote an entire book about the unbearable lightness of being. How do we reconcile the breathtaking promise of art with our trite realities? There is something precious given to us - an innocence, a lack of world-weariness - that we seem to lose along the way. How do our early selves morph into artless personas that we cling to for fear - fear, no less - that we might fall off the radar of worldly derring-do and its (hush!) attendant compromises? How tragic to look back on our past and find those spaces to be more ablaze, more lifelike!Growing up in a small city in Madhya Pradesh, my contact with world literature was muted. I was a child marked by whimsy; unable to figure out the world, I w

A novel ready reckoner

Business Standard

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is back. But he is not the historical, political Gandhi as we know him, one who urged us to shun consumerism. This Gandhi from the 2006 film Lage Raho Munna Bhai is the Gandhi of India's new, confident and assertive middle class. He is "an inner conscience" and a "moral guide", even a "fairy godmother".India has changed at dizzying pace since its economic liberalisation in 1991, and with it has changed the depiction of histories and historical figures, such as Gandhi, in Indian cinema. So has the portrayal of religion, emotions, wealth and personal struggles. One way of comprehending this complex growth story of India, which is a maze of several interlinked and conflicting stories playing out together, is through cinema. That's precisely what Rachel Dwyer, professor of Indian cultures and cinema at SOAS in London, attempts to do through Picture Abhi Baaki Hai: Bollywood as a Guide to Modern India. A clever title, it applies well to both Bollywood and India, e

Modern India via Bollywood

Though the story of oral contraception is not new territory, Jonathan Eig brings a lively, jocular approach to it in The Birth of the Pill, casting an unlikely four-part ensemble comedy

The birth of the Pill

Indian Ocean

The founder of one of the country's most popular rock bands has written a memoir about his eventual alienation from it, instead of chronicling one of the most exciting periods in Indian rock history

Susmit Sen's discordant chronicles

In The Saffron Tide: the Rise of the BJP author says India is currently in the midst of one of its most eventful periods

The roots of India's second republic

One entirely predictable consequence of the unprecedented victory of the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance five months ago is an avalanche of (unsolicited) advice on how to revive the stalled economy. The compendium of essays under review stands out in that crowded field for three reasons. First, its release was at 7, Race Course Road at the hands of the new prime minister soon after he assumed office; second, its contributors constitute a veritable Who's Who of the economic opinion space in the Indian media; third, its sponsors are global heavyweights in the advice business - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, supported by the GE Foundation, and leading individual philanthropists. If only I could add a fourth and far more important reason, that of it being outstanding!Ashley J Tellis, a senior associate at Carnegie who has advised Republican administrations in the United States (and was much in evidence in media discussions during the prime minister's recent Unit

Been there, read that

Kathmandu is 'like the puzzle an archaeologist would face who, after discovering an ancient burial, digs beneath it to uncover a beer bottle and a typewriter'

Kathmandu, between tradition and modernity

The summer of 2010 was a bummer for many reasons. Heat waves stewed the East Coast into submission. Harvey Pekar and Tony Judt died. WikiLeaks dumped so many anxiety-inducing classified Afghan war documents that this sprig of dialogue from Gravity's Rainbow seemed freshly plucked: "Everything is some kind of plot, man."That summer's most sinister happening, the troll under the bridge to sanity, was the Deepwater Horizon oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. The writer Eula Biss was home with an infant son in the wake of that mean summer. When she learned that the plastic on her baby's mattress was possibly toxic, it was one shred of paranoia too many."If our government can't keep phthalates out of my baby's bedroom and parabens out of his lotion," Ms Biss cried aloud to her husband, "and 210 million gallons of crude oil and 1.84 million gallons of dispersant out of the Gulf of Mexico, for the love of God, then what is it good for?"Her husband took a deep breath. He said, "I hear you." He add

A needleful of scepticism to deliver us

The Impulse Society bears a generally reformist message; its argument would be clearer if its definitions were sharper

Market-driven behaviour

India's Ambassador to Israel has written an unusual and fascinating account of an Indian encounter with the troubled city of Jerusalem

Book review: An inheritance of loss

The Booker shortlisted author talks about its impact on his life and the authors he admires the most over a traditional Bengali meal

Lunch with BS: Neel Mukherjee

Everybody knows Malala Yousafzai and the story of the girl who stood up for the right to education, was shot by the Taliban for her pains and miraculously survived. So when I picked up the autobiography of this 16-year-old girl, I expected to find a glorified story of her trials and tribulations. That it certainly was. But, unexpectedly, it also turned out to be an absorbing account of overlapping narratives - of a country (Pakistan) undergoing change, of a family whose values of free thinking and integrity brought it to the forefront of the war against terrorism, of a beautiful father-daughter relationship to which most girls will relate, and of a girl's coming of age.Starting with a prologue in which Ms Yousafzai reflects upon the fateful day that began just like any other, the narrative builds momentum towards the shooting, ending with the refrain, "I am Malala and this is my story."Written together with Patricia McCormick, an American journalist and two-time National Book Award fin

Malala's teachable moments

Neither Wolf Hall nor Bring Up the Bodies is the Hilary Mantel book most relevant to The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, her new volume of short stories. Instead, the germane book is her 2003 memoir, Giving Up the Ghost. That book describes a woman who is passive, illness-plagued and spooked. The narrators of these stories are much more like Ms Mantel's description of herself than like the ironclad Machiavellians who dominate her Thomas Cromwell trilogy-in-progress.Set in recent times, this new book's stories have narrators much more outwardly meek and inwardly turbulent than the murderous royals and puppeteers so beloved in her historical fiction.The book's opener is "Sorry to Disturb", though it was first published as "Someone to Disturb" and billed as a memoir in the London Review of Books in 2009; that small title change heightens the faux meekness. In any case, the piece uses the autobiographical fact that Ms Mantel once lived in Saudi Arabia as the wife of a geologist, at a t

A calm exterior, sure, but there's more going on

It has only been just over a month since "Operation Protective Edge" came to an end in the Holy Land. At least 2,200 (if not more) Gazans died in the 50-day conflict (July 8 to August 26), as did 66 Israeli soldiers and six civilians. Once again, the oldest conflict in West Asia made its way to news headlines across the world in all its ferocity and viciousness.Edward Said on Palestine is essentially a reaction to these latest tragic events. Published by LeftWord, this slim volume of 70 pages has been produced primarily to express solidarity with the Palestinian people, especially the hapless natives of the Gaza Strip. As the prominent Indian Marxist intellectual Vijay Prashad notes in his introduction: "As a small talisman, here is the work of the great Palestinian intellectual Edward Said (1935-2003). We have chosen two of his essays, both highly critical of the situation of the Palestinians - under Israeli occupation, and a hapless leadership. The details of the suppression are not

Thus spake Said ...

The economics profession has not, to say the least, covered itself in glory these past six years. Hardly any economists predicted the 2008 crisis - and the handful who did tended to be people who also predicted crises that didn't happen. More significant, many and arguably most economists were claiming, right up to the moment of collapse, that nothing like this could even happen.Furthermore, once crisis struck economists seemed unable to agree on a response. They'd had 75 years since the Great Depression to figure out what to do if something similar happened again, but the profession was utterly divided when the moment of truth arrived.In Seven Bad Ideas, Jeff Madrick, a contributing editor at Harper's Magazine and a frequent writer on matters economic, argues that the professional failures since 2008 were rooted in decades of intellectual malfeasance.As a practicing and, I'd claim, mainstream economist myself, I'm tempted to quibble. How "mainstream" are the bad ideas he attacks? How

The dismal science

A masterly survey of Indo-US relations suggests that the countries may never be allies but they will always be friends

Divided we stand: Provocative book says India, US will never be allies

I have a confession to make. I have not read Hillary Mantel's Booker-winning Bring Up the Bodies, the second in her trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, though I have read the first, Wolf Hall. Perhaps it was the subject matter, but the ponderous dealings of Henry VIII's court failed to enthuse me. I was pretty done in by the end of the first book and learnt to live with the suspicion that I had missed out on something great when the second book arrived.The back-to-back Bookers did not help. You know how we Indians have this anal relationship to the Booker. I told myself that I would get around to reading Mantel with the last of the trilogy, the in-process The Mirror and the Light. But even as her Cromwell engine hums in the background, Mantel keeps popping on the scene with shorter works that play, incautiously, to the gallery.Early last year, she wrote an essay for the London Review of Books (LRB) in which she infamously described Kate Middleton as "a shop-window mannequin, with no persona

Why does Mantel bring up the bodies?

As independent India's 11th Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) from January 2008 to May 2013, Vinod Rai came under intense and vituperative attack from ruling party politicians. None of his predecessors had to go through the kind of trauma that he had to suffer when ministers and even the prime minister accused him of overstepping the CAG's mandated brief. There were charges that his office had leaked draft reports on irregularities in coal-block allocations and suggestions that the CAG was wrongly adjudicating on policy instead of merely auditing a government department for the possibility of financial irregularities.Mr Rai did try to clarify his stance on each of these issues and even wrote to the prime minister. But the attack against him became more vicious as the months went by and the CAG's reports made bigger headlines that caused the government major embarrassment. Indeed Mr Rai spent the last few months of his tenure wondering where he went right or where he was wrong. In t

Not just an accountant's angst

India and China, and their supposed common geo-strategic interests may be all the rage among media analysts, but what's the practical reality of collaborating with the Middle Kingdom? If you are looking for answers The Silk Road Rediscovered is a good place to start. The book has been written by Anil K Gupta, Girija Pande and Haiyan Wang. Ms Wang and Mr Gupta have been researching, writing and consulting on topics related to China and India for over 10 years now. Mr Pande was, until recently, chairman, Asia-Pacific, for Tata Consultancy Services. With deep exposure to the big picture and ground realities of the business environment in China, the trio decided to collaborate to bring out this book.Though it preceded Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to India by some months, the authors say the timing of this book is just about right. India needs to launch an infrastructure revolution just like China did starting in the mid-1990s. This demands large amounts of capital and machinery. Ch

Wealth creation on the new Silk Road

Given that the Niyamgiri Hills, sacred to Odisha tribals, do have rich bauxite deposits, would it be fair to forget that the deposits exist, just because they are on tribal land?

What price development?

Henry Kissinger's latest book is probably one of his most magisterial works in recent years. He has brought together his familiarity with history, in particular European history, the principles of statecraft and diplomacy, to weave together an absorbing narrative about the international order or, as more relevant today, the lack of order. Indian readers will be especially interested in the section on India in the chapter titled "The Multiplicity of Asia", where he explores the Indian world view as contrasted with other versions.At the heart of this volume is a fairly straightforward proposition: that international order has historically been maintained either by a powerful hegemon leading an empire - which may be known by different labels at different times in history but essentially involves setting the rules of the game that others have to generally follow - or through a concert of major powers who agree on rules of behaviour that impose collective restraint, and rely on precisely th

Mr Kissinger's world order

Book News: Check out for latest book news, reviews, book launches and more on Business Standard. Explore now for new books reviews along with books writers and novel reviews and more.

Books News: Latest Book, Book Reviews, Book Features, Book Launches | Business Standard

Check out for latest book reviews, book launches and more on Business Standard. Explore now for new books reviews along with books writers and novel reviews and more.

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