On Beauty & On Family

 

I bought On Beauty in 2007 – recently reading about Swing Times being nominated for Booker, I had a faint recollection that I did own a Zadie Smith & I dug out the book out of my home library.

In 2007 I had 2 kids and now I have 2 teenagers who are stepping into adulthood – As a father I am still getting used the idea. As it happens with most of us you go through an event or an experience, reflecting on the experience in a desolate stretch of a cab ride back home – certain lines / thoughts flashes in your mind. At times when you start writing words get’s formed and the idea takes shape in the form of a poetry / blog / scribbles in my diary.

Reading On Beauty which is essentially about 2 families with teenagers stepping into adulthood was like reliving many such moments which I have had as a family. The brilliance of Zadie Smith is how she evocatively writes about a similar experience many of her readers might have gone thru – many times my expression was Oh! She expressed my idea / feeling / thought in the best possible way.

Family life shifts between mundane like vegetable shopping to heated deliberations on choice of restaurant / menu (in Bengali households this is cause of most altercations) and confusing – read going in circles discussion with teenagers in deciding a college or making a career choice. And of course, COVID is whole new chapter.

But family is a deeply personal & sacred space – beyond work that’s your refuge. In today’s work culture the dividing line between office and home is thin & slippery. So, during weekends or when you are back home after spending 2 weeks away on work – you are fully charged to devote your full attention to family what in marketing jargon is called quality time. Sometime, we tend to overdo it and keep stepping into each other’s private spaces & evokes reactions which when u look back may have no logic and you end up saying – we are like this only. Better to ignore and hope to change than carrying the guilt on your heart.  

In many books family anchors the book & creates it path which leads to many other paths like the recent book which I read last month - ‘The Mountains Sing’ where the story is told my grandmother – but it’s all about the Vietnam and it’s history. On beauty is only about family hence it did not evoke a positive response in me when I read it 14 years back. To that extent this is for more matured audience who have been through this phase and can relate to similar situations.

Other thing which I like about the book is the beautiful description she gives of a place and people – the book is set around Boston and England – she beautifully describes the season and uses it as a movement / passage of time. It’s almost like screenplay and as you read you can visualize the place in your mind.

On Beauty and being wrong

When I say I hate time, Paul says

how else could we find depth

of character, or grow souls ?

Mark Doty

The end of a chapter, or maybe the beginning.

 

Some quotes get stuck inside your head and one of them which is inside me and keep remembering it when I cross a threshold. “What seems to be an end is the beginning of something new”.

Yesterday was one such moment – when Joyee passed out of the Rishi Valley School, her home for last 6 yr, since her 12^th was mostly from home. A year she would like to forget. Before that Niki had spent 6 yrs. From 2012 every year & the 7 – 10 days we would spend in the valley when we were invited to visit the children were like a gasp of fresh air from the rest of the year.

The moment you turn into the road leading up to the valley the hush of the valley with chirping birds, trees, vast sky and mountains all around – had a profound impact on my senses. It was like suddenly everything else have fallen away and this is the world I would like it to live in even if it’s for few days. 

Add to that the children all around me just doing what a child should do, climbing trees, eating mangoes with their hands – tearing the skin and biting into the mango, younger kids rolling all over sand. It was not something from a playbook or a brochure – it was real. It took me back to my summer holidays when we would all pack our bags and go the village and there would be 20 kids doing all the above and parents having no clue – who is eating where, who is sleeping in whose house. The only time they will come into the picture is when some one has fallen from a tree or someone is drowning or bitten by a leech and such unfortunate incidents.

But of course, the school is much more than what I wrote above. It’s only when I interacted with the akka's (it's a word in telegu which means elder sister & that is what the children call teachers) and spoke to Niki & Joyee that I could understand the deep involvement with every single child. They would know them almost like we know them – their 4-page pdf about how they are doing in school gave us very different insights bettering our understanding of how they are growing up, the conflicts they are facing and of course what they enjoy the most. It was never about chapters completed & exams conducted - it was always about what the child can do, what is she good at.

Niki who hated sports was the sports captain when she left the school and now runs marathon with me. Joyee was always keen in sports but can create art works overnight – like she did yesterday when she wanted to create a card for her friend and left it at the school.

The underlying approach and the foundation are of course set in Krishnamurthy’s philosophy of creating a better human being who can create a whole new world which she can do only if she is treated equally and gets an opportunity to find her calling.

His approach is unique – I don’t know who gave me the book ‘The fire in your mind’ – a yellowed version of the book remains after 30 years but that was the start of the journey and he has been with me as a friend and a foe always challenging me – even now off and on I will pick up his book or see his talks he still jolts me and challenges me like no one else has.

My children may have left the valley and they may have not enjoyed the K Talks like many children, but I know they will always carry the air and sound of the valley wherever they go, and their mind has absorbed what was spoken in K Talks and will shape the future they are chasing.

And who know where their children will tread….

Reading about Legends: Bob Dylan

The Bill Gates divorce and the articles which followed was like a personal loss to me. Unknowingly I had become a fan of his, reading his articles / talks / his book list. For a long time, my mind still could not accept it. I am 50+ so it is not that I am a teenager and infatuated with Justin Beiber. There are so many corporate scams which are written in India that now we have become thick skinned if we hear about ILFS (the latest one going around). There also these hushed departures when a person is asked to leave overnight and the stories start floating about inappropriate behavior, bribe etc.

Although I know that we are humans and are allowed some distractions, but I always wonder why people at such senior levels who have everything they need – money, fame,  would cross the line knowing that they are hitting the danger zone. Is it worth it? But corporate actions doesn’t interest me (I think most of it is greed) as much as the creative folks mind and heart.

Inside my heart somewhere there was always a hidden creative light which was shining like a sun till teenage and after the whole engineering/medical melodrama of life landed me in the fringes of creative world. So as a day job creativity took shape in videos, websites, emailers campaigns & not the way my teenage heart had visualized but not blank also – so a middle ground.

Hence, it’s fascinates me on how a person writes books, songs, makes certain movies – what’s the inspiration / drive, how they have grown. With the internet you can get drowned with opinions but there are a few columns / journalists I read time to time. And some land up on at your inbox – thanks to Netflix / Prime / Disney and not forget the Criterion channel & now MUBI. 

The Other place of discovery is Blossoms where in that mountain of books you just may find a book which you never knew existed. That is how I picked up Bob Dylan’s Chronicles: Part 1 (just for record there are no other parts – it is like the last book of GOT, still being written).

And when I did a search on Netflix, I found a Dylan documentary Rolling Thunder Revue directed by non-other than Martin Scorsese. With my playlists having most of the Dylan albums, it was easy to envelope yourself with Dylan, I was listening to Oh! Mercy and reading about how the album came into existence. I also Googled and read about New Orleans a melting pop of jazz, folk and music – that is place a house was converted into studio and Oh Mercy was recorded.

Bob Dylan’s book is like a blog in some sense, he just rambles in a way that it almost feels like he is narrating you a story. Imagine a big wooden house in heavy winter where the logs are being turned over to spread some warmth and both of us are sipping some scotch. The language is very different I think that is way he would have spoken in his early days and maybe now as well. So it’s not an easy rad and type set also not the usual font – this is a 2^nd hand book which was printed in UK in 2005.

What stuck me – one was his sense of observation & sense of detailing; it was like he was capturing the milieu of 50’s / 60’ & New Orleans so beautifully that I could visualize the whole scenario. A similar feeling comes to you when you listen to Tambourine Man or Hard rain is falling. I think that is what makes a great poet / writer. The words creates a whole new world in front of you – This are the words of Kazuo Ishiguro for whom Bob Dylan’s songs were an inspiration and why he got into writing.

I don’t want to judge Dylan or any of the greats because they also toil through the lives like we all do and what we wanted to do and we do sometimes are very different. Although his inspiration Woodie Guthrie just did that all his life – sing folk songs, his sings took a very different edge as he passed through his lifetime.

Looking at the documentary it did not feel any different what so many Hollywood movies have visualised the late 60’s & 70’s hippie culture. It was very different from what you saw in 1963 Newport Folk Festival (63/64) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pid0Ud4y3XY / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeP4FFr88SQ ) – 2 of my favourite videos.

I still live with that image of Bob Dylan in my mind when I go to sleep.

For informed reviews read:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/oct/16/highereducation.biography

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/05/books/so-you-thought-you-knew-dylan-hah.html

https://nymag.com/nymetro/arts/books/reviews/10010/

Overstory: Richard Powers

 

Some books change your lens, and you start looking at things in a completely different way, and when that deals with the fundamentals of life – suddenly you start connecting the dots. Overstory is one such book which will make you look at trees in a completely different way.

The basic premise of the book is that trees talk to each other, take care of the world around it and are intelligent. The older generation / tribes / sages in the context of India understood this and hence they are a big part of myths and philosophy – like Rigveda / Bible etc.

Right from page 1 trees are symbiotically woven into every character and their family. I loved the choice of characters and for me, the first section – Roots which creates the foundation of all the 8 characters was the best part and held me spellbound by it’s lovely storytelling.

The second part – Stem is all about getting them together for the cause – which is protecting the trees from corporates who were razing them to ground to create resorts or properties. Some portion of it was long winded and but this is where the trees form the center piece – trees are described in a way that you can touch and feel them. I googled and saw the Red Wood trees and they are nothing like I had seen in Assam or the Himachal / Uttarakhand belt. These are like giants and, I cannot imagine a forest of such trees or how would somebody cut them.

Some portions of the book could have been smaller (630+ pages), some characters were there for no reason – at least I could not connect with characters like that of Ray & Nilay. But one would overlook these minor things and admire the ambition of the book – which is to write a book where trees are the real heroes. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2019. and is based on the principles laid out in The hidden life of trees By Peter Wohllwben.

As I was reading the book over a period of week ten days, I would go for a walk and look at the trees around my apartment with awe – imagining what’s happening inside the tree and all the birds, squirrels, woodpeckers, ants, mushrooms, bees, insects and the whole eco-system which exists because of these trees.

Trees always fascinated me and they have been part of many folklore, stories, poem. Here’s something from the book which I really liked:

We all travel the Milky Way together, tress and men….In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks. The clearest way into the universe is through a forest wilderness. Muir

The Bystander at 51

 Is that what I am,

A question comes to one,

who turned 51

There is a war out there:

at every turn of the page, every switch of a channel.

Sample a few:

People of Lakshadweep protest just to survive,

Farmers and their family from Punjab Protest to no avail

Villager in Uttarakhand protest against the hydro projects in Uttarakhand.

Can they stop:

The dams & ports being built.

Reverse the policies.

The pages of history are replete with

1000’s of people maybe millions

Laying down their lives

Knowing that

Very soon

They will soon become 

part of

Public amnesia.

The only thing this bystander can do,

Is to sign some petitions which come in Wapp

Or make some contribution to a welfare schemes.

Beyond that,

he lives in the imaginary world where;

the stories come to an end.

movies come to an end.

He knows'

 this war will only end

When the world comes to an end.

Another Round (Oscar Round Up 2)

Another Round is a Danish film which won the Oscar for the Best Foreign Film this year and came to Prime last week. It was real fun watching the movie. At my dinner table explaining the movie theme got the expected judgmental comments from the 3 women surrounding me – one more reason for boys / men to go drinking, scientific reasoning that alcohol is a depressant & so on so forth.

I was reflecting on the comments in my solitude as I walked alone after my dinner and thinking about the movie and all my drinking sessions which started from my Engineering College and ended when all of us went our way. Yes there were some good ones during the early years of work when we were up till late singing, chatting, arguing etc.

Yes, it was the magic potion which helps you open, loosen your tongue, be emotional – remove your covers and stand naked in your emotions in front of your best friends. Friends who will not get up tomorrow and judge you but more importantly come forward to help you, be sympathetic to your cause and lend you their ear / shoulder.

Can it happen coffee? For some maybe but not for me. We have grown up on having filter coffee / hot chai standing in a small tea shop – not Starbucks. Somehow I have never warmed up to it. For me like many of my batchmates – the mahoul or the ambience is everything. In college it used by table lamp in the corner and Pink Floyd, which then moved to Jagjit Chitra at some point & of course Kishore Kumar & some old soft rock was a must have. Those wear the days of cassette players & not mp3.

While the movie has a message – but it is bottled beautifully like a champagne. Uncork it to have some fun.

A more nuanced review here.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/another-round-review-raising-a-glass-to-self-improvement-11607028732

OSCAR 21 Round up - 1

 

In a world of movie nerds, OSCAR is the most popular pit stop. Despite all the criticism which it has been facing for diversity most movies are at the top of the heap & well made movies. 2021 was one of the rare years & I sincerely hope it is the last when I found most of them on OTT. I could see them from my home rather than waiting in que to see them in a movie fest. While I saw Father last week when my friend Jai shared it & wrote about it.

I got to see Nomadland, Minari & The White metal this week. If I include Father all four of them deal with people / situations which one would notice or read about, so it was a peak in to a very different world.

Nomadland:

In 2000 in one of our trips to Sariska, a small forest / sanctuary near Delhi – we saw this gigantic van parked and the owners were happy to show us the interiors which had everything which a luxirous home has – except that it had wheels. Driving back, we imagined like a newly married couple do – won’t it be great if we could do this as well.

Cut to 2021 – Hitting 50 & with 2 grown up adults, our dream is still to embark on a similar trip but on flights & trains. Inshallah!

Nomadland explores this nomadic nature of all of us. This urge to experience the freedom and new things and at my age this urge becomes more stronger because we are almost at the end of family responsibilities. At this age we seek people who also have gone through their life – most lived life is imperfect and there is a kinship a symbiosis which does not need much words. Just being together and in nature is fine.

But for Fern it was not fun, but a need borne out of the fact that the city Empire, Nevada had shut down due to recession forcing all its residents out. On her own since her husband passed away & with hardly any social security balance or savings – she lived on the van did odd jobs as she moved from state to state. Working with Amazon fulfilment centres or helping big farmers in their harvesting season – she barely managed to survive. And like her she meets many Swankie who is suffering from Cancer and in her last stages, Bob whose son died 3 years back and now he organizes these large gathering of van dwellers or Linda May who want to build an sustainable earth ship dwelling.

In a way the movie also depicts the fractures in the American society (maybe most capitalist societies including India) which worships money and choice and meritocracy. For what? People give their life and freedom to build something and under the burden of mortgages and other commitments – live a borrowed life. Swankie, Linda or Bob – all of them were grieving and the van was their way to make their vision come true.

Lovely cinematography & hard hitting acting by Frances McDormand, which is her forte, makes you think much after the credits roll by.

Below are 2 interviews which explains the deep involvement of both the lead actor & director. They both won the Oscar.

https://www.indiewire.com/2020/09/nomadland-interview-chloe-zhao-1234584703/ 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc8X-6HI9d4

Ode to a new breed of story tellers

3 years back I read Sapiens & was stunned. I had never read a nonfiction book like a Murakami book. I just could not put it down. It was like a person with God’s eye who came back to earth and saw everything and then decided to create a movie out of it. Instead, it was a book I could carry around airports, taxi rides, loo and finished it in few days. I was addicted. I read all the remaining books but nothing compared to the first one – well success has it’s effect even on intelligent sentients. Ask Malcolm Gladwell.  

Thanks to my 12^th grader at home due to lockdown, I read Bio Mimicry by Janine Benyus. It was a fantastic look at nature, how the people in the past were much wiser than us in using things from nature. How scientists, designers are learning from nature and creating things which are more adaptable to nature. The language used and the visual description of professors, researchers and their love and passion for their subject was explained so beautifully – that you could visualize the author standing on front of a grass land or listening to a professor who has been studying about a certain variety of seed, nurturing it almost like his own baby & trying to explain all that in 30 mnts. Imagine the prof from Back to the Future.

Now, I am half-way through Origin Story, By David Christian which tackles the story of our origin, solar system, big bang theory, atom and so on so forth. Again you will read about science – where he talks about love, jealously, trench coated villain – and yes he is talking about science.

There are many people I know (and we all know) who have some knowledge about so many things. But Are you a good story teller, you may not write a book but how do you make a cab ride on the middle of night into a great story (this was a topic of a stand up comedy which I saw), or how do you explain the Arab conundrum to a 12^th grade (askmom.com – the wife) this was the conversation I enjoyed during my night walk yesterday?

Giving your story a shape take time & effort, tons of dedication and a sense of purpose, a belief that nobody have heard this before – or this can change the perspective.

Good writing & story tellers (I include movies in this) inspire wannabe story tellers like me. It re-kindles the emotion which goes dormant or gets covered under the carpet of living life for 5 days and tries to sneak out over the weekend 😊

Pause

In a time like this, the world needs more storytellers, people who can go beyond the cacophony to make sense of everything one would experience in this hyper connected world like ours from morning to evening. I am not overtly connected – on weekdays my only connection to the outside world is the business newspaper which is essentially for my job. Although many a times I wonders how it helps. Maybe it’s just a habit which I have to shed.

But weekend brings Mint Lounge which has news from here and there, articles written by people with a depth and ability to connect dots or throw flashlight on things which make you feel hopeful of this world or gives you a peek at things, wanting to research it a bit more or see a video to understand he topic a bit more. By the time I finish the paper a sense of wonder surrounds me. And for me it’s the Pause I look forward to every weekend.

This weekend I read about this article on Anthropause by Rohini Nilekani where she talks about the impact of lockdown on the animals and how it has impacted them positively. It was refreshing positive piece in an otherwise a gasping India.

Having stayed in Delhi / Jaipur where we braved the winter – we have grown with Pasmina and it’s myth’s (it can pass through a ring). I never knew that there are families living in Ladakh’s cold desert, the Changtang plateau and raise a special breed of goats in difficult conditions of Ladakh which gives the world the famed pashmina shawl. They have been doing this for generations but now are looking at stopping the same because of very low income. This gives a totally different perspective on pashmina and make you think “What really goes behind the click which we do in Amazon without blinking an eye-lid.

An article on Satyajit Ray whose birth centenary was on 2^nd May – where the writer explains about the movie ‘Heerak Rajaar Deshe’ and why it was a very bold movie to be made just after emergency because the movie was a satire on the govt. How Ray maintained the continuity and look and feel of the actual story written by his grandfather. Small tit-bits for a movie-holic like puts helps pass the days with a smile/

Then there is lockdown experience shared in columns which are meant to be talking about food / tea where the human element of a family congregating for food and takes precedence over recipe or tea. Reviews of books which not only review the book but explains the context of the book so nicely that you want to get hold of the book as soon as delivery opens in Amazon.

These days, rather for almost 2 years now – I am wearing the lens of my 12^th class daughter. Every time I would read an article or see something interesting on you tube the only thought was “Oh this is such a fresh perspective on science, sustainability, anthropology, biology and so on”. I will hurriedly take the cutting and send to her (since she was in boarding) with scribbles on top / bottom or below”.  Although I really do not know how many she read, how it helped.

But that is the 21st century quality which I want her to build, there is an abundance of data / views / articles. How do you synthesize them or connect the dots to give a fresh perspective and create a story – a life story in her case. 

The Father

 

Some movies touch you, but Father was devastating. For some time, I was speechless - as credits rolled, I closed my eyes and was listening to the background score and I could only see Anthony Hopkins crying in the last scene in front of me.

Equally touching was the role played by Olivia Coleman as the daughter as she plays the role of a daughter seeing his father in a state of complete confusion and loss because of his losing memory.

Especially touching is the scene when she leaves him at a care-giving home and goes to Paris.

All this from a first-time director who had experience it firsthand from her grandmother who was suffering from dementia when he stayed with her. His experience led him to write the play which was very successful. As I write this, I read about Anthony Hopkins winning an OSCAR.

2 yrs back when my father had a relapse of lung cancer and I started looking after him. Feeding him, bathing him, cutting his hair. As days passed the energetic Air Force man who used to walk for an hour shrunk and lay on his bed, then his voice went and when he would try to speak only air would swoosh out – his frustration in not able to speak and the pain he felt just to speak a few words or sip a drop of water – the images kept me awake, came in front of me when I was in a flight or I would wake up at night when I was sleeping.  

If there ever is Father 2 – it should be about Anne.

Some interesting article on making of Father.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/how-the-father-explored-the-painful-descent-into-dementia

 https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/behind-screen/how-the-father-production-designer-evoked-disorientation-in-film-about-memory-loss

Lockdown Notes: Dreams

Bangalore showers just made a comeback and so did the Lockdown. The city has come to a standstill – an eerie silence surrounds my apartment which is next to a busy road. The only noise which breaks this silence is the shrill sirens of ambulance carrying someone whose life they can save & shrill calls of vultures who roam the sky looking for food. A dichotomy – an impasse which we are living through in the past year

The strong breeze coming in from door meshes with the melodious voice of Jagjit & Chitra from their album Passion – a cassette which played in my Walkman 100’s 1000’s of times perhaps – gifted by a dear friend. Songs have a way of transporting you to a past – for me this was the time of dreaming and. A life lived in songs, pages of books, scenes of movies and friendships – a dreamy sequence of life which transformed into a life consumed by the necessities of life.

The weekend is an extended pause where I feel the breeze, the words I read, feel the scenes played out in front of me and try to experience the dream like state I experienced long back. Now I see the dream in my children and more than mine I want their dreams to be fulfilled.

All dreams don’t get fulfilled or if they do, they turn out to be different & the lockdown has taught us all to be in the present and be ready to step into unknown.

We have learnt to look around at the despair of so many people, close friends in ICU, the chatter in the group where friends are trying to organize oxygen for someone and feel lucky.

Lucky at being just your normal self.

March Books

It’s been a month since I got called back on duty – a year after lockdown. I returned to a shelf of books unread. One year back when I went back home – with No Amazon & No Blossoms, I dipped into our cupboard full of books and created a shelf of books which I could not finish.

While I do not remember all of them three of my biggest finds were

-        Salman Rushdie – In my 4^th attempt I was mesmerized by the magic realism of Midnight’s Children.

-        Kazuo Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day – I was in love with his beautiful prose, every sentence was like a crafted showpiece.

-        Natsuo Kirino’s Grotesque – gave me a glimpse of Japanese society and its impact on children’s mind, the writing style was completely unique, non – linear and told in the form of diary

20 20 – was to be the year of graphic novels, so I had ordered Maus, Persepolis & Jerusalem, I managed to lay my hands on 2 of them by the time Jerusalem was going to be shipped – I had left.

20 20 was also the year when the line between work & home blurred, there was no start time & no end time. At work expectation was you can continue as long as there is work, at home you had duties which you did without asking. So, by the time you wanted to sleep – you just slept.

Me being Me (what gets measured gets done + time will not come back philosophy)– I decided I will read at least an hour before I sleep. I also decided to write (not type) for 2 hours in a week. So, all my virtual writing – i.e blog came to a stop (since I did not want to stare at another screen) after my initial enthusiasm of a weekly blog.

2021 – It’s a coincidence that I am writing my first on 21^st of March 21. 21 a month will be ambitious – but I want to give it a shot. March can be a practice month. I always wanted to capture small thoughts which come to your mind – when you are walking down the street and see a mother & daughter or when I walk in the park and see things. But by the time I reach home something else takes over. Like the loose change in the pocket which you put it in a box – these thoughts gets added to those which you had stored somewhere in your sub conscious.

Principles of Prediction: Anushka Jasraj

Most of these are not short stories, but these are incidents which brings out a point of view / slice of life – which is different and cannot be typecast as a thriller / romance etc. Many readers may (on the surface) find it incomplete if they read them in a rush because lot of it is unsaid and it is expected that reader will grasp it – like in Drawing Lessons – was it the sexual attraction between student & teacher (both women) or did the student wanted someone because of her husband’s lack of interest in her. Radio Story – is written like a story and is one of the best, Elephant Maximus is a cute store of a child who becomes famous because she steals cats but what if you have to steal an elephant.

I am not an avid short story reader – but in recent days there are a spate of books which are like an extension of articles / blogs which you write. We grew up reading Ruskin Bond, Satyajit Ray’s Felu Da, O henry and one of my favorites – Banaphool – a Bengali writer.

With Facebook, Instagram, Twitter & Blogs (which I think is dead and nobody reads it) – the story telling has changed dramatically over last 10 years. With social media in our hand everyone is a storyteller, so you get to read all kind of stories across corners of India / World & people you did not have access to– it’s no longer only books and known authors. The good thing the universe has expanded, and the bad thing is over exposure / commercialization of everything.

I liked the book for its sincerity, somehow the stories are written in a very natural way so you empathize with the characters and the stories. The writer is hidden like it should be.

Inquilab: A Decade of Protest

This is an anthology of essays / articles / speeches / letter’s written by Anna Hazare, Ramachandra Guha, Nayantra Sehgal on one side and Kanhaiya Kumar, Mohua Moitra, Rana Ayyub & others. It has a thought provoking forward written by Swara Bhasker and in essence it tries to capture the various voices of dissent and civil disobedience.

Born in the MBA league the only paper I have read in last 25 years is the pink paper. For someone who had quit social media & skips political pages and goes straight to art and literature I wanted a primer on what’s happening around me. Make sense of today’s India which is becoming more & more right wing and dictatorial in squashing dissent in any form.

This book is also a gift for Joyee who will step out of valley this summer and into the real world.

Persepolis: Marjane Satrapi.

This is the book of the month. In one of those night when I was too tired to read a book – text or see something on OTT I decided to go midway and picked Persepolis from my shelf. I could not put it down, it’s so beautifully written – more importantly drawn that no doubt it became a classic and won so many awards. Story from a child’s POV that too 14 – 18 is always throwback time for us parent. Joyee is 18 so I am technical in the middle of it. It’s a must read for one and all. Period.

Maya Angelou: I know why the caged bird Sings.

This is one of the books we had gifted the kids and after they finish it comes to us (that way all of us read each other’s books – mostly). Maya Angelou is much celebrated person, there are videos, speeches, articles (like I mentioned above) in today. The book was first published in 19 69 when I was born. So it’s a half a decade old book and talks about her growing up that is 30’s and the suppression of Blacks by Whites and gives a glimpse of the society in early 30’s – ghetto’s of South and the slow migration of black folks up North. I liked it in parts – but we have been fed on black vs white stories by Hollywood so much that beyond a point it becomes a bit tiring.

The best part of the books is her relationship with her momma (grandmother) – whom she fears (like we all did), her brother (who was like a twin to her and only support system) and her adoration of her mom & dad who was like a king & queen in her eyes.  The way she imagines her world is beautiful and touching and funny at time.