by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books
By Bhavana Akella,
Bengaluru : It was in 1905 that the first Nobel Prize for Peace was won by a woman, Bertha von Suttner. Since then, there have been 15 others who have been awarded the Nobel Peace prize for their efforts. In a multitude of cultural settings from different countries and situations, all the women had one aspect in common — fighting injustice.
In her latest book, “Battling Injustice: 16 Women Nobel Peace Laureates” (HarperCollins; Rs 599; 512pp), 28-year-old international journalist and peace activist Supriya Vani chronicles the lives of these 16 women.
Looking at each of the women through a cultural and political lens, Vani brings out facets of these women one wouldn’t otherwise know.
From the youngest Nobel Peace Laureate Malala Yousafzai to Africa’s first woman head of state Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, to the Iranian crusader for human rights Shirin Ebadi, to Myanmarese politician Aung San Suu Kyi, Vani also managed to meet all the 10 living female Nobel peace laureates.
“It was indeed a herculean task. It needed grit and determination and, above all, tenacity of purpose to pursue all living 10 women Nobel peace laureates and convince them about my earnestness to further the cause of world peace,” Vani told IANS in an interview.
Meeting the women was both inspiring and ennobling, said Vani, who is also a member of the advisory board of The Hague Justice Portal.
She also had to visit the International Court of Justice and many international libraries to gather information about the six peace prize winners who are no longer alive.
“One need not gather all the details. One only needs to know the intrinsic values which they cherished in their lives which need to be made known to others,” Vani elaborated.
The author also shared in the book personal letters written by these women to their families during challenging periods, their thoughts as teenagers and how grit was a common denominator she could draw among all the 16 women.
“Fathoming the guts of these women to fight injustice has been at the core of my entire research effort. I have not penned abridged biographies of these eminent women, but dovetailed all such events in their life which show the purity of their mind and empathy,” Vani said.
“Barring Mother Teresa, who achieved sainthood by virtue of her selfless service to the suffering humanity, all others were peace activists who battled myriad vicissitudes in their social and political lives and succeeded in their mission,” the writer stated.
Meeting women like these is a special experience, Vani believes. “Meeting Suu Kyi, Shirin Ebadi, Leymah Gbowee, Malala and her parents was a pilgrimage of a sort. All of them are very special to me,” she said.
“The only part which is stressing me now is the silence of Aung San Suu Kyi about the genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Burma (Myanmar),” Vani admitted.
There has been much criticism of Suu Kyi, with many across the world asking for her Nobel Peace prize to be taken away amidst her silence when thousands of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar are being forced to flee the country. (Close to 400,000 have fled since August 25 alone when the army launched a crackdown.)
But each of the women peace laureates she met had left an “indelible mark on my psyche”, Vani said.
“Some of them took personal interest and conveyed to me that I am taking forward the cause which they are close to, for which they have been bestowed the Nobel Peace prize,” the writer added.
(Bhavana Akella can be contacted at bhavana.a@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books
By Vikas Datta,
Title: Silence; Author: John Biguenet; Publisher: Bloomsbury; Pages: 152; Price: Rs 250
We are taught in proverbs to regard it as golden, asked to practice it most of the time in our home and school life, and may use it to evade uncomfortable situations — and resent it when used against us. Or is it what should come when we reach the limits of speech, as a German philosopher contended?
Is this all the significance of silence in our lives?
Not at all, for it may also be considered a “servant of power, as a lie, as a punishment, as the voice of God, as a terrorist’s final weapon, as a luxury good, as the reason for torture” among many other aspects, contends American academician, novelist and playwright John Biguenet.
In an another of Bloomsbury’s intriguing, informative and incisive “Object Lessons” series focussing the “hidden lives” of ordinary things, ranging from dust to golf balls, he begins by delving into what silence is not — and this may be counter-intuitive to our perceptions.
“We may conjecture that somewhere in the cosmos, beyond the borders of all human trace, a zone of silence awaits (always receding, of course, before the advance of future explorers), a great sea of stillness unperturbed by the inanimate, an utterly quiet virgin territory. But our imagination misleads us if we conceive of silence as a destination at which we might arrive.
“Similarly, in a less poetic vein, if we assume that silence is merely the absence of sound waves, or more precisely, the absence of a medium capable of transmitting sound waves, though we are correct, we miss a larger point: Silence is a measure of human limitation. Beyond the boundaries of the upper and lower ranges of the ear’s capacity to sense sound lies the subject of this book,” he says.
Biguenet then goes to draw on a wide range of human experiences, spanning the poetry of John Keats and W.B. Yeats to the unsettling stories of Poe, Kafka and the TV show “The Twilight Zone”, from Freud to political scandals and cover-ups down to Snowden, and from experiments in sensory deprivation to his experience of Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath, to show the various aspects of silence in our lives and our world.
And there are surprising facets galore.
While he cites Ludwig Wittgenstein’s famous dictum, “… and about that of which we cannot speak, we must remain silent”, Biguenet then goes on to explore silence as a commodity where it is “bought and sold at prices rivalling our most sought-after consumer goods” as can be seen in cellphone-free retreats, as well as exquisite watches, airport lounges and high-end cars which promise it.
He looks at our attempts to seek silence in our crowded, noisy urban environs where most humans live and work, and how too absolute a silence can be a daunting experience as he cites the case of the quietest place on earth — “an anechoic chamber at Orfield Laboratories in Minnesota” which no one can stay in for even an hour.
The author then draws a distinction between silence and solitude, the role of silence in religion (and his own experience as a novitiate monk), and considerable other uses of silence in classical music, poetry and art, and literature. The last is crucial, for here he shows that “silent reading”, as most of us practice, may not be entirely that for research by neuro-scientists has shown that “reading spontaneously elicits auditory processing in the absence of any auditory stimulation”.
Biguenet goes on to deal with our responses to tragedy, terror and crime, the relationship of children with toys and pets, Freud’s views on the uncanny, gender roles in asking of questions and giving of advice, especially on directions — where men rule supreme to the dismay of feminists — and many other facets as he shows how silence is an integral part of our lives, even in ways we could have never imagined.
And as he brings his wide-ranging discourse to end, profound questions remain: Should we seek or fear silence — or is it even for us to choose?
(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books
By Mohammed Shafeeq,
Title: A Bonsai Tree; Author: Narendra Luther; Publisher: Niyogi Books; Pages: 227
Many books have been written on India’s partition but here is a first-hand account of the horror by a migrant from what is now Pakistan, who went on to become one of the first officers of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS).
The autobiography of Narendra Luther, now 85, is a gripping story encompassing heartrending events of partition, the life of a migrant on the Indian side of Punjab, his struggle to fulfill his dream, his experiences as an administrator and his love for Urdu, Hyderabad and humour.
This is the 14th book in English from the man considered to be an authority on Hyderabad’s history and culture — and a symbol of the city’s “Ganga Jamuni tehzeeb”.
He has dedicated the book to his Budha Goraya ancestral village in Sialkot district, now in Pakistan. Born in Hoshiarpur in 1932, Luther recalls how his father Mela Ram, a government teacher, used to translate “ayats” of the Quran and “slokas” from the Gita and explain their contents.
Luther did his primary schooling in Dharam Pura, a suburb of Lahore, with Urdu as the medium of instruction. He grew up in the Muslim majority area of Punjab, where people used to live in harmony till relations were strained by heightened political activity in the run-up to India’s freedom.
In 1947, his father was transferred to Rawalpindi when Luther was in Class 10. He was witness to the mayhem and bloodbath which began in March that year. Armed with a broken and rusted sword, he was one of the youths who were asked to do night patrolling in their Krishan Nagar Hindu locality.
It was a Muslim officer who gave shelter to the family. Luther recalls that he took a Muslim name Akram while his brother Vijay became Aslam to save their lives.
The author presents a bone-chilling account of the family’s escape along with many others by train from Rawalpindi to Amritsar. The travellers survived hunger and thirst and, most importantly, the killings by riotous mobs en route to the Indian side of Punjab.
Despite losing all their property, the family drew comfort from the fact that none of its members was killed and no woman from the family was abducted or molested. The author recalls that they did not lose the secular values in which they were nurtured.
The book details the struggle by the young student, who later rose to become the Chief Secretary of Andhra Pradesh before retiring in 1991. At university, he fell in love with Bindi, also a migrant from Pakistan, and later married her.
When Luther was allotted to Andhra Pradesh, a new chapter began as the newly-married couple reached Visakhapatnam.
With a lot of anecdotes, the author explains the socio-economic and political environment he experienced in Pakistan, later in Indian Punjab and subsequently in different places in Andhra Pradesh and finally in Hyderabad, where he settled down.
It’s no easy task to be candid while writing about all one has gone through and even more difficult to write about the trauma near and dear ones had suffered. Luther has done all this and much more.
He intertwined the description of evolving socio-political environment and administration with life on the personal front.
He poured out his heart when his only son became a drug addict during his college days. The story reflects the helplessness he felt when his son slipped back into addiction every time it looked he would come out of it.
When transferred to Hyderabad in 1958, Luther wondered whether it was compensation for the loss of Lahore. “It was a popular saying in Punjab that one who had not seen Lahore had not yet been born! Coming to Hyderabad, I felt twice born.”
He fell in love with the city for its cosmopolitan culture, Urdu language and poetry, rich history and heritage and became part of the social circle even while discharging official duties in key positions. As special officer at the municipal corporation, he used to act on petitions received in Urdu.
It was in Hyderabad he turned a humorist. He narrated an incident when he arrived at a dinner at 8 p.m. and was told by a servant that “saab paani nahaa rahe hain”. “It meant that our host was taking bath with water — a saying peculiar to Hyderabadis. I asked the servant if I was at the right place. He replied that there was going to be a dinner, not evening tea.”
Towards the end, Luther expresses his joy over his son Rahul not only overcoming the addiction but setting up a rehabilitation centre for other addicts.
In sum, a good read.
(Mohammed Shafeeq can be contacted at m.shafeeq@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books
By Vikas Datta,
Title: I Quit! Now What?; Author: Zarreen Khan; Publisher: Amaryllis; Pages: 296; Price: Rs 350
For many urban Indians, their desire to land a job, usually corporate, often makes them oblivious to the exacting demands it may make on their lives — with free time for hobbies or other interests usually the first casualty. And once in the rat race, it is very difficult to take a break from the soul-crushing regimen of long working hours, unappreciative bosses and unreasonable deadlines.
Sabbaticals, as our protagonist Nimisha learns, are not yet part of the Indian corporate lexicon — apart from some favoured employees, and especially not for women who are not married or plan to get on the bandwagon anytime soon.
She also goes on to find out that when you do get a sabbatical, by the simple expedient of chucking up the job which she had grown to detest, it may not work out the way as she had planned during the drudgery of work.
And with her savings dipping alarmingly, rumours over her exit from her earlier job, new offers drying up, questions from family and friends as to what she plans to do getting difficult to field — with a impromptu witticism to one friend landing her in a welter of confusion. Also, with her best male friend breaking up with his girlfriend and other relationship issues, and her budding career as an author, Nimisha has her hands full.
Was this what she wanted to do in her sabbatical? And will she continue in this vein or go back to the certainty of a paying job? And will she be able to find one?
We find in this well-crafted, gripping and delightful story by occasional marketing consultant and full-time mom Zarreen Khan (who stresses she is “NOT on a sabbatical” herself), what all working Indians (women and men alike) will identify with in some way or the other.
But what lifts it from a mere litany of the complaints about the unforgiving world with its “endless weekdays, working weekends, making presentations, working with complicated Excel sheets, handling a boss with time-management issues and the general politics of the workplace”, are the key issues about our lives and work it touches upon.
These include aspirations professional and personal, expectations of family, friends and employers, balancing life and career (and figuring out the latter’s purpose), the bane of technology which has, on one hand, made us contactable anywhere and liable to work from even outside office among others, and on the other, allowed us to share our lives with even casual acquaintances, but also second chances and redemption, even in unlikely cases.
This is complemented by a generous sprinkling of sparkling wit and spirited dialogues, some vivid characterisations, plenty of twists and turns and some set-piece scenes, comic and poignant.
Divided into two nearly equal part about Nimisha’s corporate life and her sabbatical, the story, told from her point of view, makes this evident right from the start, as she describes her friend’s marriage in Goa — a typical big fat Indian wedding.
While some evocative descriptions of work in a low-paying, high-demanding job (with the details seeming stemming from the author’s own career) with a “boss from hell”, and manipulative colleagues follow, the parts where Nimisha is trying to explain the concept of a sabbatical to her boss and her farewell party are really uproarious — and will then leave you rather queasy.
Then her misadventures in her sabbatical, specially the zumba training and its consequences, her white lie about working in the “Jacques Closeau Detective Firm” which causes no lack of tension with a friend and a prospective boss, are as amusing.
And given the story is about young independent professionals, love does play a major role but Zarreen is singularly accomplished here too and presents it in a way you would not suspect or predict.
Above all, the ending is a superb cliff-hanger and raises the prospects that this is just the first — we would eagerly look forward to more. For Nimisha, her friends and family are too good to restrict to a single outing.
(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books
By Vikas Datta,
Title: Immune; Author: Catherine Carver; Publisher: Bloomsbury Sigma; Pages 288; Price: Rs 499
Picture a mighty fortress besieged by a huge array of cunning invaders, some of whom have even managed to enter and entrench themselves by a range of subterfuges. But then, its defenders are mostly equal to repelling them with a variety of approaches – isolating them, cutting off their supply, or even gobbling them up or disintegrating them.
As some may have gathered, this fortress is the human body, the invaders pathogens that attack it at every conceivable opportunity and in every conceivable action “from having sex to cleaning the kitchen sink”, and the indefatigable defenders, in various shapes, sizes and operating methods, come from our resourceful immune system.
“Every epic tale needs a hero. Ours is 12 microns tall and lives for a matter of hours; it’s called a neutrophil and your live depends on it. Don’t be deceived by its tiny stature and miniscule lifespan; this cell can capture bubonic plague in a web of its own DNA, spew out enzymes to digest anthrax and die in a kamikaze blaze of microbe-massacring glory,” says doctor and science populariser Catherine Carver in this fascinating overview of the immune system.
She starts with the more evident body defences like the skin, the lungs which deal with the 10,000 bacteria we suck in with each inhalation of breath (smoker’s cough is also a defence mechanism), our stomach with its powerful acid, as well as less obvious candidates like tears, snot and earwax, before going inside into the system in earnest.
But Carver does not however only deal with “ninja” neutrophils, or “mega-munching” macrophages, or the “beautifully-named” natural killer cell, which unlike the earlier two, deals with the invaders who make it to the inside of the cells, but goes on to reveal many other facets of the immune system, beyond its defensive role for the body.
She goes to take up organ and other implants, both crucial or cosmetic, and what the system can do to them – and by extension, to our continued existence. Or for that matter, the system’s relation with the billions of beneficial bacteria among us – and a special bank, which deals in our solid waste, to remedy any deficiency, including those caused by indiscriminate use of antibiotics.
After that rather sordid episode, Carver then deals with the more agreeable – and much vital – issue of the system’s role in influencing sexual relations and even love (with plenty of telling anecdotes of research and droll comparisons), and follows it with the quite inevitable issue of pregnancy, where the foetus may be seen by the system as another alien body but is actually welcomed and cossetted by it.
Subsequent chapters take up bigger, and more horrific, parasites that seek to nestle in us and how our assiduous defender deals with them, antibodies and vaccines, as well as its darker side as manifested in allergies, or when it goes rogue or becomes to weak to perform its duty.
There are its major adversaries – cancer and why it is such a major challenge and what we are doing about it, as well as two mass killers – anthrax and Ebola which should make us “very afraid” even as Carver ends on a note of hope with the drugs that seek to replicate the immune system’s powers and performance to “save us from the nightmare of the antibiotic apocalypse”.
Carver, who studied Medicine at the University of Aberdeen, worked with TB/HIV sufferers in Tanzania and then in British hospitals before moving to public health and public health policy, takes us on a fascinating journey to the battleground inside us.
And while there is a lot of complicated science – from the complement system of proteins in blood and cell surfaces to the alphabet jumble of cytokinases, she enlivens the lucid and relatable account (with many pop culture references or drawn from news, eg telling us animal organ transplants will require us a system of surveillance that will startle Edward Snowden) with sparkling wit and humour.
But above all, it is most informative about the titanic struggles going inside us and how they affect us, personally and collectively, in ways we are never aware of. In this respect, its a thriller we cannot ignore.
(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)
—IANS
