by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books
By Kishori Sud,
Title: “The Perils of Being Moderately Famous”; Author: Soha Ali Khan; Publisher: Penguin Books: Pages: 210; Price: Rs 299
She comes from a family of heavyweights: Her father, the late cricketer Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi; her mother, veteran actress Sharmila Tagore; her brother, actor Saif Ali Khan; and Kareena Kapoor Khan is her sister-in-law. However, actress and former banker Soha Ali Khan, now married to actor Kunal Kemmu, has had her own fair share of adventures which she has shared in a crisp memoir.
The author of “The Perils of Being Moderately Famous” shows that she despite her lineage, she has striven for as “normal” a life as you and me.
In the introduction, Soha makes it clear that she offers no fodder for gossip from the lives of Kareena or Saif, let alone the couple’s one-year-old child Taimur.
The smooth read sheds light on a number of phases, aspects and facets of her life, including her life in Mumbai when she started living on her own away from the limelight of showbiz, faced a robber (not technically, as Kunal battled the intruder like a knight in shining armour), found her calling in a field she had not set out for initially — things common to commoners.
Soha gives an insight into her life before she signed up for “Dil Maange More” in 2004 and also recounts how she got trashed for her work by unforgiving movie critics and how her family helped her, shaped her and advised her on how to face the music and not lose heart.
People, especially from the the generation of the 1980s and 1990s, will easily relate to the funny, sad and happening episodes of her life as Soha too went through the phase when access to mobile phones was limited, fathers were men of few words when on the phone but had, and still have, proper conversations when present in person.
The book keeps you hooked as Soha recalls life when she was studying modern history at Oxford’s Balliol College and earned a master’s in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Belonging to the family tree of Bengali polymath Rabindranath Tagore, Soha has a knack for writing and expressing herself in print.
If you love travelling, you will find a friend in Soha, who has travelled with a semi-stranger, trusted her guts and tasted freedom of the heart that backpackers seek all their lives. She suggests that it’s good to travel as it broadens your mind on a number of things and makes you see the bigger picture in life.
On her life in showbiz, Soha does not mince words in telling her readers that “life as an actor can be stifling”. There is a warning hidden between the lines as she says: “It is easy to feel validated or destroyed by other people’s opinions and living on the surface becomes a simpler, more appealing option.”
Soha has also addressed the recent phenomena where people misuse social media and troll individuals they have never met and know nothing about.
Citing an example, she recalled how she faced the nuisance herself when she was targeted on Twitter for having expressed regret over former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan announcing his exit in 2016, and then on another occasion when she had worn a sari.
With a crystal-clear insight on who she is and what she has gone through, Soha proves with the book that even “moderately famous” people are normal human beings.
(Kishori Sud can be contacted at kishori.s@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books
By Vikas Datta,
Title: Nevertheless: A Memoir; Author: Alec Bladwin; Publisher: Harper/Harper Collins Publishers: Pages: 288 Price: Rs 599
Unforgettable actors are renowned for the sheer variety of roles in their onscreen careers, though their normal lives beyond the limelight may not be as dramatic as these portrayals. Alec Baldwin could, however, well qualify — he may have learnt to operate a nuclear submarine for one of his roles but the way he rose to the heights where he is from his origins is the stuff of epics.
We know Baldwin, the eldest of the four acting brothers, as equally capable with action, romance but especially comic roles, which he plays with panache, or for his roles, leading or supporting, in films spanning “Beetlejuice”, “Pearl Harbor”, “The Marrying Man”, “Ghosts of Mississippi” to the “Mission Impossible” franchise. He was once married to Kim Bassinger. He is famous for his portrayals of Donald Trump, before and after he became President, in “Saturday Night Live”. What more could make him stand out?
Much more, as Baldwin tells us in this most disarmingly candid, introspectively insightful, totally unpretentious and quite moving account of his life before, during and beyond movies. It is rendered with no sense of self-pity — as far as his impoverished background was concerned — but redolent of his trademark wit and keen observation.
Beginning with a list of desired occupations spanning proprietorship of a bespoke stationery shop to prison warden to nightclub owner (like Rick Blaine of “Casablanca” whom “all men would envy” and “women, against their better judgment would throw themselves at me nightly”), he tells us he didn’t intend to become an actor.
“I didn’t end up choosing any of these careers and fell into a completely different line of work. I never imagined I would do what I’ve done for a living or see what I’ve seen,” he says, adding that, through acting, he could satisfy some of the desires of the imagined careers.
And he admits that he didn’t want what most people in the entertainment industry seek for his relationship to it was much simpler. “Acting was a way to ease, though never eliminate, the financial anxieties of the boy from South Shore Long Island who remains in me today,” he says, also revealing he wrote this book “not to discuss my work, my opinions or my life” but because he was “paid to write it”.
Frequently seen portraying powerful immoral men or narcissistic though inherently moral characters, Baldwin grew up in a small, not very fashionable, house on New York’s Long Island where he and his five siblings (three brothers and two sisters) shared one of its two rooms.
After an evocative — and fairly exhaustive — description of his surroundings, his struggles, his relationship with his parents (to whom he pays tribute for letting none of him and his siblings fall into bad ways), he moves to his entry into show business — via soap operas and then theatre. This was where he changed from Xander, as his parents had named him, and the biggest challenges were developing a liking for alcohol and fending off gay agents.
When it comes to his Hollywood career, Baldwin may disappoint by forsaking a “tell-all” account full of juicy gossip for a more nuanced approach of his perceptions and observations of top actors, directors and the whole business itself.
Interesting details are, however, not absent entirely — fans of Sean Connery will find his treatment by his wife at a party for “The Hunt for Red October” (1990), in which Baldwin played the key role of the hero — CIA analyst Jack Ryan — particularly hilarious, while admirers of Tom Clancy, on whose bestseller it was based, will find the author’s treatment on set and comments on the film version absorbing. The actor’s own fans will also come to know why he did not reprise the role of Jack Ryan in subsequent installments of the franchise.
There is much more about Baldwin’s take on movies he did (including less known ones and why he did them and what he liked about them), movies he wished he could have done and movies he is inspired by (“The Godfather”) and the people he has worked with — and those he admires (at the very last).
As said, it is not a conventional movie memoir — even for hardcore fans, but as an account of rising above straitened circumstances and the reality of showbiz, its unlikely to be bettered.
(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books
By Vishal Narayan,
Title: Notes From a Spanish Diary; Author: Ranjita Biswas; Publisher: Niyogi Books; Pages: 298; Price Rs 850
For some, being a traveler can be a tiring business. Forced by an automatic reflex, they are compelled to record in words everything they see; continuously making little scrolls of descriptions and burying them inside the numerous crevices of the brain, flagged with “stickies” as an aide memoire. The problem arises when he or she decides to make a book of it.
The book under review is a travelogue of Spain and as its author testifies in the preface, it is a “diary of sorts” and, also by her own admission, “insignificant perhaps, compared to great travel books by great travel writers”.
Leave out the “perhaps” and perhaps these are the most convincing words that author Ranjita Biswas writes in the book.
Trinidad-born, Oxford-educated V.S. Naipaul spun his trilogy on India out of a poor, recently-freed country and he had his sensibilities sharply tuned to the borrowed prissiness of the new elite and the nervousness of being left alone (by the British) of everyone else below them.
We have now here a book where the author — third world witnessing first world — finds nothing bad to write about in the country she is visiting, going on and on about how beautiful everything there is and doing it in dazed, arid, unidimensional prose, which never lifts off the page.
The book presents to the reader a series of undistinguished sights, recorded with an uncannily indiscriminating pair of eyes. She describes a church she visits in Barcelona as “beautiful”, another at another place as “fabulous”, a garden as “beautiful”, same garden as “beautifully tiered” in the next line, and so on, alternating between the two adjectives, leaning in favour of the former.
Elsewhere, at a house, she is introduced by a guide to “richly embellished” quarters with “fabulous” tiles in the room, complete with a “richly worked” balcony. The word “white” is seldom allowed without it being stalked by “pristine”. She has a neat way of describing buildings as “renaissance”, “baroque”, and “neo-classical”. If only we all were art history students.
She continues, for most part, in the same pastel-shade monotony — unless when some genuine work of art or nature takes her “breath away”, an occasion which happens often enough for one to notice.
Every time the author begins a new chapter with a new place she has visited — Cordoba, Barcelona, et al — the reader waits like a hungry supplicant at the door; all he gets is a faint echo of clanging promise wafting out as the mistress potters about.
To pad up the text, Biswas has written snatches of local history, peppered with interesting trivia related to local bandits, religious sects, artists (Picasso, Goya) and local cuisine. But while with one hand she laboriously sketches a scene out of the past, with the other she tends to ruin it with what seems like a childhand scrawling, the hard pressing of the pencil or colouring out of lines. Consider:
“In its heyday, Cordoba was the most modern city in Europe. Accounts say that the streets were well-paved, with raised sidewalks for pedestrians. During the night, the main streets were illuminated by lamps. This was much before capitals like Paris or London in Europe had the same privilege. Cordoba also had 900 public baths. The story goes that a Moor would go without bread rather than soap.”
Continuing, she writes, and this is the other hand at work: “All you out there, marketing teams of MNCs and creative teams in ad agencies, think of the market you’d have had those days selling personal products!”
Notice the exclamation sign. Stuck like an epitaph at the end of the paragraph.
The text drips with pop emotion — “call me a sentimental fool” she says once — and clichés and, after a point, one is no more interested in reading what seems like a 200-plus page brochure of a travel company.
The prose trundles on towards the quotidian. The author parades the magnificence of Spain before one’s eyes as cardboard floats on a tableaux, one after another in quick succession, hurling mute adjectives at this building or that statue, and fails to touch even once the viativ nerve of the reader who has spent an evening in the vain hope of eye-touching the hem of the fabled peninsula.
(Vishal Narayan can be contacted at vishal.n@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books
By Vikas Datta,
Title: Salafi-Jihadism: The History of an Idea; Author: Shiraz Maher; Publisher: Penguin Random House UK: Pages: 292; Price: Rs 499
Fundamentalism is an inescapable feature of all religions, but becomes a problem when it takes an intolerably and indiscriminately violent form of a “holy war”. This is an issue in its heartland no doubt but exacerbates when it spills over into the wider world — and that is why Islamist jihadism is among the biggest challenges we face now.
But it is not enough to label its manifestations like Al Qaeda, and the more sophisticated and brutal Islamic State, or others, a bunch of medieval-minded, psychopathic zealots or think they can be bombed out of existence.
For the chief shortcoming — and cause of failure — of George W. Bush’s “Global War on Terror” was ignoring that it was fighting an idea — which cannot be defeated by force, however overwhelming, but by disproving them or better ideas.
Groups like the Al Qaeda or the IS, as this book argues, don’t just represent an instinctive repudiation of the Western political and social ideas, but a more calibrated and argued religious-based reaction to it. Whatever you may think of their arguments, they do exist, are based on religious principles — no matter how subjective or self-servingly distorted — but above all, not known widely, says Shiraz Maher here.
The activities of these jihadist groups do not only stimulate public interest in the political dimensions of the crises in the Islamic heartlands but also in the ideas which drive them on the ground, and that is what Maher, a Senior Research Fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) at Kings College, London, seeks to answer here.
“Islamic State is a Salafi-Jihadi movement, although the broader soteriology (salvation doctrine) of Salafism from which it is derived remains poorly understood by the public. Salafis are typically viewed with suspicion and often characterised as extremists because of their religious conservatism and aesthetic conformity.
“For men this would typically include a long and unkempt beard with a robe that stops just short of covering the ankle. For women in public it is most closely associated with the niqab, an enveloping veil which reveals only the eyes. To reduce Salafism to this alone is to compress a vast and complex tradition into a few lazy cariacatures,” he contends.
In his historical and theological analysis, Maher shows how the ideology of the IS is “neither new nor novel”, “its intellectual framework appears to sit within the mainstream tradition of Salafi-Jihadi thought” and it is a philosophy that “believes in progression through regression”.
After an invaluable exposition on how Salafi thought can be divided into its methods for change — violence, activism and quietism — and how they affect its attitude towards the state or global order, he examines the key features of the philosophy of Salafi-Jihadi — which is just one part of a broader spectrum.
After examining what scholars identify as its key characteristics, Maher identifies them as “tawhid” (unity of god), “hakimiyya” (extending the rule of Allah), “al wala wa-l-bara” (to love and hate for the sake of Allah), jihad and “takfir” (excommunication of those Muslims following a separate path) which both protect and promote the doctrine.
Subsequently, he goes on to expand on these, especially jihad, to explain their rationale for attacking enemies far away as a defensive measure, the rules of killing enemies, the law of retaliation, vicarious liability of common citizens in “enemy territory” and the use of human shields. Here he also shows their subjective interpretation of Islamic principles to justify their activities, while also making a credible postulate when the trend began — the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and crystallising in the Second Gulf War.
Alongside, he also shows how Salafi Jihadism’s “roots grounded in the experiences of Sunni Islam”, drawing in not only Islamist ideologues like Sayyid Qutb or Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, but also its South Asian influences, especially the writings of India’s prominent Islamic scholar Abul Hasan Ali Hasani Nadwi ‘Ali Mian’.
While Maher gives no solutions in his work which is thorough but mostly lucid — though the similar-sounding Arabic religious terms need regular flipping to a helpful glossary — it clearly shows the dimensions of the issue and how we need to be extra-vigilant to prevent religions being hijacked by radicals.
And then while he shows how jihadis stem from mainstream Islam, it also must be remembered that their fervour isn’t shared by the entire community.
(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books
By Vikas Datta,
Title: The Misfit’s Manifesto; Author: Lidia Yuknavitch; Publisher: TED Books/Simon and Schuster: Pages: 148; Price: Rs 350
In a materialistic world which emphasises more on conformity, convention and success, those who prefer not to abide by these rules of “normalcy” are rarely lauded. They can expected to be labelled mavericks, even weird, but usually “misfits”. But what do they think of themselves, how did they get that way, and do they have any use?
But first we must know what the word “misfit” means exactly — and what it does not — says American author Lidia Yuknavitch, who holds her eventful life qualifies her to be called one, and is a badge she wears with pride.
There is a “lot packed into that little word”, she holds in this book form of her acclaimed TED Talk “The Beauty of Being a Misfit”, but clarifies that misfit doesn’t mean anyone who occasionally feels weird, lonely a failure or left out. Nor does it mean feeling out of place, resenting social roles, or caught in a midlife crises “though these states of being are important”.
While the Urban Dictionary definition, which, among others, says misfits are individuals “who do not fit into any one clique quite right”, “tend to be outcast for no reason”, have few good friends, usually intelligent and mature, and “sometimes sort of insane and depressed…”, Yuknavitch says she uses the term for those who “never found a way to fit in at all, from the get-go, all through our evolving lives, including in the present tense”.
And in this book, she chronicles cases of those who “experience that altered state of missing any kind of fitting in so profoundly that we nearly can’t make it in life” and quite a few give up in desperation. But, as she stresses, her intention is not to draw pity but substantiate how and why the world needs misfits.
Drawing from her own case — of an abusive parent, failed marriages, loss of a child, near-fatal accidents, addiction and rehabilitation, dismissal from jobs before success as a novelist — Yuknavitch goes on to dwell on how realising and acknowledging her “misfittery” and “understanding it as a way of being and seeing in the world, saved my goddamn life”.
And in telling her own story, and of many others she has come across with stories akin to hers with experiences of failing to enter the domains of cultural and social organisations (relationships, families, communities, et al), she says this would have something important that “might help the rest of us get by, if our stories could be amplified”.
It is scarcely a comforting journey, with abusive parents, dysfunctional families, dashing expectations, other traumas, alienation, lack of success in most aspects of life relationships and work, addictions, kinks, confused sexual identities, feelings of inadequacy, the death of all hopes and more disheartening stuff.
At the same time, Ken Kesey, the author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, which also became a cult movie, also makes an appearance, while there are a wealth of insights into the human condition.
One misfit recalls how his efforts to blend in with the others at school by acquiring knowledge about a common interest led them to think he was “so much weirder for my efforts”, how one saw everything they did treated with derision, many show the observation that suffering makes you stronger is a myth — and even more lethal.
And above all, the importance of humanity, given that the questions that misfits ask themselves cannot be answered by Google.
There are heartening stories of how misfits never lost their humanity or discovered how the dismal patterns of their lives could motivate themselves to seek refuge and release in creativity, artistic, literary or other. As Yuknavitch cites some key advice she got: “Don’t listen to anyone who tells you to change your voice…” and “Sometimes telling the story IS saving your own life”.
There is a also powerful strand of hope and redemption, as well as the salutary point that misfits give each other a second (and third or more) chance. Shouldn’t those who fit look up from their satisfied lives, their money fixations or smartphones to do to the same?
(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)
—IANS
