Not Just Cricket by Vikram Dravid

There's more to life than World Cups
When I reached page 97, I suddenly realized that this was a really good book.
I had been reading slowly, enjoying the story about a typical cricket-playing boy from a middle-class family in Bombay. There had been brief glimpses of a world beyond. At page 97 the world beyond shone through, clear and unmistakable, and I understood how and why this book really wasn’t just about cricket. Cricket is the fabric; it’s also the substance of the plot. However, Not Just Cricket also carries glimpses into rich, deep aspects of life that can be revealed to most of us only through fiction because they are so removed from our scheme of things.
Most of the books I read these days are just too long. They go on and on, invariably repeating themselves, aiming to thrill the reader with flourish after flourish. As you long for them to end, all you can do is stretch your eyebrows in exasperation at that fundamental horror creative people seem to consider themselves entitled to – of having the output of their genius savaged just for the user. So after a long time, I was happy to be reading a book which ended too soon. It simply did not do justice to all that the author has to say.
Vikram Dravid is a doctor. He grew up in Bombay and now lives and works in the US. He certainly has the knack of telling a story and his characters are developed with skill, but there were some things I felt were lacking and I emailed him with my questions.

I found the fake names really annoying. Why Suchen Chembulkar? Especially, why Dalmeinkuchkala?! These names are parodies and more fitted to a comic or satirical genre. I found that in your text, which has a quite serene context, they formed abrupt and jarring interruptions. Was there a reason why you did this? And how much of the Pakistan tour you’ve described is as real and thinly disguised? I’m afraid I don’t know cricket so you will have to tell me in case there was a specific series you were talking about. I did enjoy stepping in and getting glimpses of Pakistan along with the team, though.
I was going to use the real names of current cricketers but was told that using the real name, particularly of a celebrity, in a fictitious scenario required their permission. I wanted to give the cricket an aura of authenticity, and not seem make-believe. Using thinly-disguised versions of current day stars, that most of the readers would likely be familiar with, allowed me to extrapolate their real life characteristics into my book without having to flesh them out.
Interestingly, readers have either been turned off or extremely tickled by the names. Dalmeinkuchkala refers to a previous chairman of the board who had a reputation of many unsavoury deals. I must say there was a little inspiration from Rushdie's use of Rani of Cooch Nahin etc, although I recognize that my book is not of the same genre or calibre. The tour is all made up.

Your style is neat and simple and I also admired your frequent linguistic flourishes. But … I would have been a bit more careful with the editing.
Being a first-time author, I sought a lot of advice regarding this. The manuscript has been edited umpteen times. I do think some of the usage may reflect my own peculiarities of language.
I really believe that I am more of a storyteller than a writer. In fact I am better at narrating verbally and sometimes my prose is gushy and has to be chopped up on the second go around.

What I really would have liked is more details of the glimpses you’ve given us into the fascinating lives of Arjun’s parents. I kept thinking kept thinking that you have the seed of more good books in some of the areas you’ve touched on there – in particular the aspects of rural medicine. Maybe a collection of short stories?
The two stories about Arjun's parents have been liked the most by all readers. They did start off as short stories, but because they fitted in well I used them to add layers and dimensions to those two characters and to tie in the narrative.

How did you find a publisher? And how’s the distribution going?
Being removed from India, with no direct access to publishers, I sent out routine emails to the big publishing houses. They weren't quick to respond. I found Cinnamon Teal on the web. They have been very responsive. However, people have found it difficult to get their hands on the book. I guess distribution could be better. For instance, I would love for it to be available in a chain of stores such as Crosswords. Currently it will be made available in select bookstores, I don't know which ones. I would love to be more involved. However, distance and the lack of wherewithal are stumbling blocks. The book has done very well in North America where it is available on Amazon.

What are you working on next?
I do have a sequel in mind, but am currently working on a string of short stories that tie in together with a common thread.

Hickory Dickory Shock by Sundip Gorai

Superpower supercrime
This book is a murder mystery set in a software company. Since it’s written by a Business Intelligence and Analytics wiz, the plot is complicated and has any number of enjoyable twists and surprises. But Sundip Gorai writes simply and directly, and with frequent spurts of mildly giddy-headed humour which gave me the feeling that he was really enjoying himself. I have to regretfully point out that the idiom here is slightly below par – and for this I would blame the publisher’s editors for not doing a proper job.
As I read, a few things bothered me and I mailed Sundip Gorai with questions and I have reproduced our email conversation below – in tact, so as to give a sense of the idiom in the book – relaxed and easy, but fundamentally faulty.

Why did you use a cliché like Shivan when you have such strong, original characters and plot?
I believed that for a reader, at the point of purchase, the front and the back cover play a crucial role in deciding whether to buy or not to buy a book. This is especially true for a book whose name is not known to the reader – though my book is published by Rupa & Co, till the book was published, I was an unknown entity in the world of writing. I consciously used SHIVAN Computers as the name of the mega enterprise where the story is set so that readers can easily identify it with an IT scam and would be egged to read more. I believed that on reading the story synopsis the reader would peruse the table of contents which would egg them to read the first chapter, which in turn would make them buy the book. With the first print sold out I think the marketing strategy is working well. On a side note, the name was suggested by SHIVAN Mittal, my friend’s nephew.

What do you see in common with your book and Da Vinci Code?
The protagonists in Da Vinci Code are in trail of the Holy Grail, whereas in my book the protagonists are after a cutting edge software invention (called LoRD) that has been stolen. In both the books the lead characters are chasing cryptic clues, albeit of very different kind – my cryptic codes and clues are laced around Indian history and Indian heritage monuments, beyond this, the stories are very different.
I had to do a lot of research to formulate the cryptic codes - the book uses anagrams, substitution ciphers, math puzzles, Vedic math concepts and more. I would like to mention here that Edgar Allan Poe, Dan Brown, Umberto Eco, Dorothy Sayers , and Conan Doyle have had a significant influence in fashioning the cryptic codes in HICKORY DICKORY SHOCK!
Da Vinci Code is set against the backdrop of the one of the most controversial questions of Christianity –Christ’s bloodline, whereas my book is set around one of the most controversial scams in the history of computing – a billion dollar IT scam. My story has other subplots that are of a different kind, namely intriguing vanishing culprits, strange math puzzles inspired by Vedic math, LoRD – the cutting edge invention that has been sabotaged and stolen, LoRD’s accounting books that are used to perpetuate the crime, and LoRD’s software code that hold the fraudulent data related to the accounting fraud.

How much of the background of your book is based in reality – I mean floundering projects, mindless HR and so on?
The book brings out many triumphs and tribulations of the Indian IT Industry .The story draws a lot from my personal experience but characters are given shades of grey with the primary intent of storytelling – the book does not intent to preach that all people doing a certain kind of job in IT company are necessarily corrupt.

And how much is based in research (ciphers, American history and stuff like that) – or is this just stuff that you have always been interested in or came across by chance?
I have been an active participant in quiz programs during my school days and have always been the lookout for interesting trivia on almost anything. Over the last four five years, I had analyzed hundreds of plot devices which could form the core of my story. After a lot of deliberation I settled on eight or nine standard tricks used to craft a detective story. I also had to use anagram solvers, code programs to create some of the clues in the book. (A teaser for those who are yet to read the book - “BIG HAT VANISHED GAVE DATA” is an anagram. Can you crack it?) The research that went in the book, namely, ciphers, codes around Indian historic monuments, interesting trivia around mathematics, and world culture, required a scouting various sources. I have been fortunate to get support from Barry Perlus - art historian at Cornell University, Sam Loyd’s museum, Atlanta Fulton County libraries, and my learning from the seminal Indian historical and spiritual texts.

What are you working on now?
Given a demanding day job I did most of my writing on weekends, late nights, flights, airports, and hotels. I am planning to give writing a break for some time, though there are requests coming in for commissioning screenplays. I have a very interesting story in my head - a conspiracy theory related to a great modern day Indian invention, Invention of an airplane by an Indian (this is a true fact – this happened before the Wright brothers invented the plane), Hitler’s obsession with the Aryan race and the related expedition he sent to India, the myth surrounding modern day religions, UFOs and more – hopefully, someday this story will becomes a reality , either as a novel or a screenplay.

When I started reading this book I was thoroughly charmed by the description of the hero, Tuten, the explanation of why he had a name like Tuten, and the stark fact that even someone graduating from IIT cannot be guaranteed a campus placement – in a world where so many B and C grade institutes blithely assure their applicants of “cent-per-cent placement”.
As it progressed, I found my attention lag. The book is similar to Da Vinci Code – but I must say I felt sorry that Sundip does not have the compelling style of Dan Brown, which you just can’t stop reading even though his language is so cheesy. By the time I reached the end, I couldn’t help admiring all the thought that had gone into the book and the fact that, with all its layers and flourishes, it was a real murder mystery with a proper surprise ending. What I liked most about this book, however, is its setting. Sundip has done a great job of showing us what a software company is really like from the inside. Even though his reply to my pointed question was rather diplomatic, I did find many of his characters and situations familiar, and I’m sure people outside the prestigious industry will be interested to read how its Projects, Sales and HR actually function.

Show me a hero by Aditya Sudarshan

The slow thriller

I don’t like the expression “coming of age” to describe a book. It smacks to me of primitive, and suspiciously unhealthy, puberty rites. The publishers have used it here because, I suppose, it deals with a period in the life of a group of youngsters who experienced certain events that moved them from, say, one rung of maturity to another.

Instead, if this book must be labelled, I’d prefer to call it a slow thriller. Its plot builds up gradually, with sharp teasers that promise action ahead inserted at widespread intervals. The matter of suspense itself is plausible and carefully constructed, and when surprises happen it is with elegance - in fact, more elegance even than drama. I liked that.

Reading the simple dialogue and easy descriptions which don’t bother to contextualise situations for those unfamiliar with them, superimposed with the strong characters and the complexity of their thoughts, I started thinking fondly back to Raskolnikov from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and emailed Aditya Sudarshan to ask whether he had perhaps been influenced in any way by the great Russian novelists.

He replied: “I've not read the classic Russian novels properly. I've read some short stories by Chekhov and a few by Gogol. I think I can see why Chekhov has the reputation he does, but that style of dealing in impressions and images doesn't feel that close to me personally. I like more ‘narrative’ oriented short story writers, like Roald Dahl or Daphne Du Maurier.”

When I asked him to tell me something about himself and his influences as a writer, Aditya mentioned that two of his favourite writers were G K Chesterton and Scott Fitzgerald – and that the quote show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy is Fitzgerald's.
He also said that he had studied law at the National Law School in Bangalore, and then worked with a criminal lawyer but took up writing full time and has been doing so for nearly four years.

When I heard that Aditya could have easily been a highly-paid and eventually high-profile lawyer instead of a writer, it made me wonder (as any overbearing Mummy might) what his parents had made of this switch. It also reminded me that Vaibhav, the hero of this book, lives in Delhi, away from home, and works for a wildlife organisation, a niche sort of occupation reasonably well indulged by his well-off parents though I must admit my sense – perhaps imagined – of a certain amount of forehead slapping on both sides.
So I asked Aditya how much of this book’s hero Vaibhav was actually him, and he replied that he had used different aspects of himself for all the three main male characters in the book.

What I liked best about this book is that it is occupied by a population of highly intelligent people.
Reading it, I tried to think about when I had last met so many people together, making the kind of perceptive and thought-provoking remarks I came across here and, honestly – I don’t know if it’s ever happened. Perhaps back when I was school? Or perhaps occasionally, with some of my (grownup) children’s friends. But it’s not that common in daily life. After all, most of us adults are nothing but lazy and mediocre whether in ability or sensitivity or wit.

Tender hooks by Moni Mohsin

P.G. Wodehouse reporting from Lahore
This book is a sequel to Diary of a Social Butterfly, the 2008 novel derived from Moni Mohsin’s popular column of the same name which ran in Pakistan’s Friday Times from January 2001 to December 2007.
I hadn’t been too sure whether I really wanted to read more about Butterfly’s vapid life and the preoccupations of people with wealth but no culture that Moni Mohsin pokes fun at so well. But I spent some time with Namita Devidayal at the Jaipur Literature Festival and she mentioned more than once how “fab” Moni was and for a bit we even exchanged a few witticisms a la Butterfly,

Janoo – it was so good, na

and so on. Janoo being Butterfly’s long-suffering husband who happens to be an Oxen, having being educated in Oxford and all.

So while others on the flight home from the festival had their noses buried in Chimamanda Adichie, Junot Diaz, Irvine Welsh and others, I was rather diffidently reading Tender Hooks, glancing around furtively every now and again to make sure that no had spotted me for a bogus. But when we landed, and I spied a P.G. Wodehouse tucked under the arm of someone at the luggage belt I had a moment of appeasement – which soon turned to wonder that I had never before seen the similarity.
Both Moni Mohsin and P.G. Wodehouse base their stories in small, rather comical communities preoccupied with lineage, inheritance, suitable marriages and so on, and speak in quaint dialects all their own. Even the names resound – key characters in this book are Butterfly’s Aunt Pussy and her son Jonkers.
So I rushed home and dashed off the following email to Moni Mohsin:

Dear Moni,
I’ve just finished reading Tender Hooks and had a few questions – I hope you’ll have time to reply?

• I tau found so much resemblance to that fellow, what’s his name, PJ Woodhouse, na? So I was wondering, were you inspired by him in any way?
• I also got quite digressed, arre baba felt sad na, about Butterfly and Janoo’s relationship and was thinking ke in this book till nearly the end, so many bad bad things were happening between them. There was total no communication and so much quarrels, na? Also I was feeling sad about things in Pakistan – you were showing downslide na? Then in the end Butterfly and Janoo get all lovedovey so it donned on me that maybe you feel optimistic about Pakistan?
• And: Your Butterfly has a bit of a split personality Moni – she’s scheming and greedy and shallow. Yet there’s a smart, sensible side to her. And a brave, honourable side too. How does that happen? Is it there in all those bitchy socialites you are parodying?
  

Waiting to hear.
Regards,
Saaz

To which she replied deadpan:

Dear Saaz,
Thank you for reading my book. The Butterfly is a character like us, with good and bad in her. That's what makes her fun. If she was just mean and shallow and greedy you wouldn't want to read about her. She would be unidimensional, predictable and hence boring. I know that I can be frivolous and serious, generous and mean and fun and dull depending on the time, place and situation, without necessarily being schizophrenic.
And yes the book shows you what living in Pakistan on a daily basis is like and that was part of my purpose in writing it. But people try and wrest what is positive and redemptive even in these grim days and that too is what I wanted to show in my book.
And no, I haven't been influenced by P G Wodehouse though I do love his books.
All best,
Moni

About her first book I had written in a Sunday Mid-day column:

It has a compelling similarity with Mohsin Hamid’s Reluctant Fundamentalist! It’s not just the authors’ shared name, city of residence (London) or affiliation with Gulberg, Lahore’s ultra-posh reserve of the city’s most affluent and influential. Each one’s main character narrates the entire novel in a conversational first person monologue with almost no intrusion. Butterfly picks up at 9/11, where Changez winds down. And while Hamid’s Changez is suave, genteel, highly cerebral and Princeton-educated, Moni Mohsin’s Butterfly is an astonishingly accomplished woman herself!

In this book I found another reason to admire the author’s craft in the sharp voice of reason that the Oxen Janoo brings to it, which you can spot in Moni's response to my email, and which allows Butterfly's giddy-headed narrative to step aside briefly for perceptive sentences like this one to be inserted: “From my experience, even bleeding heart liberals revert pretty quick to colonial sahibs and memsahibs when they find themselves in places where help is cheap and has no rights.”

Jaipur Literature Festival 2011

Disneyland for the reader – again
Why am I posting this four full days after the fabulous Jaipur Literature Festival ended? I suppose it’s because this year I was there on holiday, not work. As a result, I attended very few sessions and didn’t interview anyone. Still, there were precious moments in abundance and this one was one of my favourites. It also shows you what the festival is really like – a place with quiet corners too, and here we sat and chatted – my mother and my daughter and a very close friend who we hadn’t met for several months. And yes – that’s my knitting on the seat and I was going to pick it up the minute I finished taking this photograph and go clackety-clackety-clack once I sat down again. Because, and pardon me for bragging, particularly because this is nothing to do with Jaipur or literature or festivals: I can knit pretty much as fast as I can type. Ahem.
Well – I think I’ve proved how much I love this event and admire the way it is organized and written endlessly about how grand it is and made everyone I know want to go too by praising it without cease. In fact, to me it’s pretty much perfect – it has a true festival atmosphere; the participants and spectators are relaxed and friendly; the setting is beautiful and exotic; you get to hear writers whose books you’ve enjoyed tell you about themselves, their work and their ideas and often even to meet them one to one; everyone has special encounters and hears special people say special things that they can put in their memoirs. Best of all, the Jaipur Literature Festival is completely democratic and everyone there is equal in their aspiration to a Life of the Mind!
Having said all this so many times, there’s only one thing I can do that would be different, and that is to list here what I would wish for to make perfect even better:

• More space. This year, as anticipated, the festival venue was badly overcrowded with people from all over the country and many from abroad who had heard about this wonderful event and naturally wanted to be part of it too. Over the weekend it was apparently claustrophobic.

• More security. In a crowd, even in a place where everyone’s heard of Baudelaire, nasty things can happen. My friend the poet, novelist and journalist CP Surendran was hit on the face by someone he asked for a light. More here

• Better interviewers. Most of the people the festival authorities invite to conduct sessions are intellectuals with doubtless a great deal of reading and teaching experience. However, they are not performers. Many of them have a diffident stage presence. Many of them miss question cues that even the audience wants to jump on. This is one of the biggest differences I’ve found between Jaipur and the Hay Festival where every single event is entertainment of the highest quality. Naturally everyone can’t be as compelling and articulate as William Dalrymple – but most, barring a few professionals, are really rather mediocre.
  

Back from the festival, the only thing I ever want to do is read and read and read. And write and write and write. And I’m waiting eagerly for next year …

Nine Lives by William Dalrymple

Good book, super festival, sorry controversy
I first read Nine Lives in November 2009, during a journey that lasted nearly all day. The long flight and transit melted away with the compelling style and fascinating story of the nine people chosen to feature in this book. Each one is related in some way to religion and through this book you can see, more clearly than in daily life, how much India has changed and how much it remains the same and will perhaps never change.
I enjoyed it all over again when I read it aloud to my friend Gladys a few months later.
It’s always interesting to me that, though we are so similar in many ways, our perspectives differ so much – doubtless on account of our differing cultural backgrounds. For instance, I was rather awestruck by the young Jain girl who ran away to become a nun, and went through a process of plucking out each hair on her head and later stoically watched her companion (and dearest friend) perform a ritual starvation to death. Gladys, however, has no patience with this sort of thing; she thought the girl was rather foolish and it was a waste of a life.
I had wanted to write about this book in my Sunday Mid-day column but the editor felt it would be better if the review was done by the mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik who was better qualified than I to assess this subject and in the end it never got done.
I remembered that when, in June 2010, I noticed with surprise and disappointment that Nine Lives was not on the list of nominations for the Vodafone Crossword Book Award. It had apparently not been eligible because William Dalrymple is not an Indian national - odd, since The Last Mughal once won a Crossword prize for non-fiction. And in any case, he has lived in India for twenty years or more and written more detailed, interesting and scholarly as well as lay books about various aspects of India than any of us. AND this really was one of the best books I’d read in that year.
I knew I must write about it here, and finally decided to do so now because this year’s Jaipur Literature Festival, one of William Dalrymple’s biggest contributions to the Indian literary scene, begins tomorrow.
As it happens, everyone is talking about William Dalrymple these days. Just yesterday I received a press release about a signature campaign launched by him, along with Gurcharan Das and two associations of Indian publishers, to petition the Union HRD Ministry against the proposed Copyright (Amendment) Bill 2010 to Indian Copyright Act, 1957.
And he has been making news ever since 2011 began.
First, Hartosh Singh Bal (the man who “broke” the Niira Radia story) wrote an article (also in Open magazine), The Literary Raj, about how insular the Indian literary scene is, and some of our cultural tendencies, all well described.
Furiously accusing someone of being racist in a case like this is kind of like a vengeful sexual harassment charge. Sadly, that’s just what William Dalrymple did: The piece you ran is blatantly racist. To which Hartosh Singh Bal’s wrote a good rejoinder, Does Dalrymple know what racism really is?
Now all this is unbearably longwinded and all, but what struck me is the fact that, even though Dalrymple has done so much undeniably good quality work, so many of us seem to resent him so much.
Why could that be? What is it about his manner that we find annoying? Perhaps it’s a fundamental pomposity - many of the Delhi journalists I know consider him faintly ridiculous. You can catch a glimpse in this photo of him preparing for a session at last year’s Jaipur Literature Festival, with a residue of his reflex long suffering “Ahem, can you please go away? Bloody tourists!” look.

Some of this is also reflected in his writing style in this book. It is over-dramatised in parts, and uses the type of slightly exaggerated storytelling style generally reserved to recount tales of great valour or legends of yore. I was amused that his publishers called it “an almost biblical simplicity”.
At the same time, I did appreciate the fact that this style, once you’re already in and enjoying yourself, draws you in even more.

Tales in colour by Kunzang Choden

The soul of a country

Bhutan was always a place of dreams – sheltered, peaceful and idyllic. When I visited a few months ago, I found that it was indeed a dream come true. The heart-stopping natural beauty, the ages-old architecture and the calm and smiling people gave me a healing interlude in a time of pain which will always soothe me when I look back at it.
One of the key features of Bhutan is its fundamental inaccessibility. Partly it’s the distance and the mountains that protect it. But the country’s visionary and benevolent government has also been restrictive in admitting outside influences. It’s not easy to enter Bhutan. And in any case, as a tourist, you only see the most superficial aspects of a place. It’s this that made Tales in Colour really special to me – because it gave me a much more satisfying look at the life and culture of its people than I had had in person.
This collection of thirteen stories is prefaced by the author’s own experience of cultural battering as a child by a Reverend Mother at her Indian boarding school who found the Bhutanese system of names intolerably barbarian.
Each story takes you into the life of a Bhutanese woman and through it we learn about life in the villages and how different it is from life in the towns, the way people think and how they spend their time, and their dreams and aspirations.
In one story a deformed woman tells her brave and lovely story – and in one, it’s a mouse that speaks. In another, a ring in the belly button makes one very special; in another we have a philandering husband; yet another has teenagers exploited by older men. The desperate love of a son for an errant father makes another particularly touching. I also found it very interesting to get a brief glimpse of the ancient Bon tradition that gentle (and trendy) Buddhism once rudely displaced. And that medication in Bhutan follows a familiar third world approach.
The language is simple and gentle and very suited to the thoughts and actions in these lovely stories.
Some of the women in this book are strong and balanced, and some are badly oppressed or succumb and fall apart. So it also struck me when I read it that though our situations differ, women all over the world feel and think so much alike. I liked that too.

Where the serpent lives by Ruth Padel

Real, imaginary and figurative serpents
Where the serpent lives is basically about what a beautiful, marvellous world we live in, and the terrible, disastrous things that are wrong with it.
As a book about the environment it paints a picture of magnificence but also takes us to wildlife reserves in different parts of India where officials entrusted with protection are the ones responsible for depredation and slaughter. In tracts of forest in Devon, a county in England, louts kill badgers for sport. And in London, illegal traffic in goods such as African bushmeat, luxury products and Asian medicine endangers animals as it funds criminal networks across the globe.
As a book about relationships, its lovely heroine is so frailly human that she walked away forever from her father on the basis of a few malicious sentences, by a drunk at a party, which she never bothered to verify. Only to marry a man who turned into a clichéd philanderer, fuelled by a large income and an unlimited supply of Viagra. Then the bubbly son once so easy to please transformed into a surly, uncommunicative adolescent.
A supporting cast includes a man through whom we learn that one may live with an intrusive fantasy but when the time comes to fulfill it, a lifetime of craving may prove unequal to a real relationship. A young woman shows us something of Croatian culture and expatriate life. There are real, imaginary and figurative serpents. We even get glimpses of the London bombings and the Tsunami.

As a book based partly in India, Ruth Padel’s observations are insightful. The diversity in the forests provides a context for the diversity in the gods. The nuances that pass between two Indians who meet for the first time will tell them more about each other in a few seconds than someone from another culture would ever know. But then, alas, we encounter an unlikely Englishman working in Indian forests who eats dal and rice for not just lunch and dinner but, and hard to imagine in reality, for breakfast too. He even cooks his own dal, because the plot requires him to be alone in the house.
The language in this book is clean and descriptive. Paragraphs pertaining to scientific matters stand out self consciously, a little like gleaming patchwork on rich tapestry and quite unlike the insider approach to science of others like, say, Ian McEwan. Ruth Padel is, after all, one of the most famous poets in the world, partly because of a short and controversial stint as the very first, ever, female Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford.
Disappointingly, all turns right in the end: the devil gets his due, and satisfying closure is experienced by every character.

My best books in 2010

The books I enjoyed most in 2010

Most of the books I read are sent to me by publishers and authors. Every few weeks I visit the bookstores looking for hot titles I might have missed – though when I hear or read of an interesting book I want to read, it’s usually much easier just to buy it online.

In 2010 I finally faced the sad reality that I will never be able to read all the books that I want to. Not even all the new books published in any given month; not even if I restrict myself to just the best Indian books of that month. There are just too many. Publishing a book has become easy. And there are so many people who write well, or have a story to tell, or who want to get in on a new business, who are now making use of the new technology to do so.
This makes it very hard to choose and I’m afraid I do so mostly using the well-known scientific eenie-meenie-mynie-mo method.
I have often been accused of liking all the books I read. The truth is that I very rarely write about a book which I can’t find anything good to say about. That’s ok, I suppose?
It’s hard to rate enjoyment of a book but I have picked the ones that held me bound to their pages by plot or prose and the ones I admired for their skill or knowledge. They are listed here alphabetically because I really can’t rate one over the other. By a coincidence, there is a combination: two are non-fiction; one is poetry; one is a children’s adventure story and one a collection of short stories. By a coincidence, there are ten on this list. Many are writers of small readership, some from thatched-roof publishers and some of the authors (my stepmother persecution complex compels me to admit) are known to me: three* happen to be dear friends. And there are three books I’ve added to this list which I wouldn’t rate as extraordinary. They are here because I liked them enough to buy several copies during the year as presents for friends who enjoy reading but would otherwise never have heard of them.

Bala Takes the Plunge by Melvin Durai
Lost and Found by CP Surendran
Makers of Modern India by Ramachandra Guha
Palpasa Café by Narayan Wagle
Plain Truths by Arun Kumar
Quarantine by Rahul Mehta
Sahyadri Adventure by Deepak Dalal
The Counsel of Strangers by Gouri Dange
The Goat, the Sofa and Mr. Swami by R. Chandrasekhar
Victoria & Abdul by Shrabani Basu

* Luckily reasonably big-ticket guys: CP, Deepak and Shrabani :-)

Dance with Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa by Ramya Sarma

Everything you always wanted to know about …
This book is about Bollywood dance in general, and specifically for aspirants of the TV show Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa – or for anyone who wants to learn this form of popular dance.
In the first section, Understanding The Basics, topics covered include how to handle stage fright, how to choose the right song, how to hide one’s flaws – and other matters that might worry you if you want to start and don’t quite know how. The second section, Put On Your Dancing Shoes, provides neat summaries of various international dance forms which have influenced Bollywood dance.
I found the presentation easy to follow and the photographs – there are a large number – very captivating and representative of the fun and glamour of Bollywood dance.
What I liked best about this book is the language. It’s easy to read and idiomatically flawless. Many who will read it would have had very little previous exposure to simple, direct and high-quality writing like this. Most of us in this country have no clue how to use prepositions or articles – for some odd reason most of us sit ON tables rather than AT them – so I believe that this book is very likely to teach more than just dance.
One thing that I found slightly jarring was the introduction by Saroj Khan. Actually the intro itself is a charming view of the celebrated choreographer’s career. What I found amiss was words like “thereafter” and “essentially” used in it, which I thought unlikely – but when I checked with Ramya Sarma, she assured me that Saroj Khan had indeed used these words herself.
Incidentally, Ramya herself is a Bharatnatyam dancer with endless years of practice and performance until she turned to writing.

The Case of The Man Who Died Laughing by Tarquin Hall

Vish Puri does it again
This is the second book featuring the Punjabi detective Vish Puri and, like the first, is great fun and a decent detective story. Vish Puri runs Most Private Investigators Ltd., and his operatives have nicknames like Tubelight and Facecream. The agency handles cases from matrimonial investigations and financial fraud to murder, and Puri’s high success rate ensures that his services are always in demand.
Vish Puri (like any good Punjabi) loves to eat, is free with the use of colourful language, and is a loving husband and father. He’s also a dedicated professional and a good citizen who even tries to get his driver to follow the traffic rules.
Like the first Vish Puri book, The Case of The Missing Servant, this one also has its roots in contemporary Indian life and culture, affectionately indulging its most ridiculous aspects. Primary background here are those classic urban Indian institutions of the laughter club and the corporate godman. And the setting incorporates the National Capital Region reality of beauty parlours, kitty parties, unstable power supply, preoccupation with the stock market, professional “Lizers” who one can hire to get things done, high court judges who own palatial mansions, and more. A prominent anti-superstition activist is murdered. Did that slimy, all-powerful Godman do it? Read on.

Sahyadri Adventure by Deepak Dalal

Excellent children’s books based in India
I’ve been a great fan of Deepak Dalal ever since I read his first book about fifteen years ago.
Deepak writes books for children in the age range ten to fifteen years and that was the interval my children were in when I first came across Lakshwadeep Adventure.
Over the years, we got to know his characters, Vikram, Aditya and Chitra as they raced through their school holidays – much as the dear old Enid Blyton characters did – experiencing one adventure after the other.
Deepak’s books are well written and he has a knack for keeping you on the edge of your seat. Just when you think the trouble has subsided – all of a sudden something happens again. It’s like a sine curve of excitement – irresistible to a young reader.
These books are also set in interesting and remote parts of India and Deepak himself being a trekker and wildlife enthusiast works the rugged environment and ecology factor in very well. So we have been with Vikram and the gang – all agog most of the time – not just in Lakshwadeep but also Ranthambore, Ladakh and the Andamans.

This new set of two books, Koleshwar’s Secret and Anirudh’s Dream, is set in Bombay, Pune, Mahableshwar and the areas around them.
What I liked most about them was that Deepak has used a device to take us into a Bombay that none of us who love the city know – one that existed so many years ago that the Fort that was a central landmark has vanished without a single trace - except for the large area in the city that still goes by the name "Fort".
Sahyadri adventure has high-quality historical detail, including legendary characters from the time. These two books would win my vote for the best reads of the year.

Once upon a time in Scandinavistan by Zac O'Yeah

Superpower India II
This a crime novel based in Gothenburg, Sweden.
But Gothenburg is now known as Gautampuri, because Europe has been colonized by India. India is now a great world superpower – much as it is in We Can Pull It Off by Suresh Taneja – but with a rather different slant.

Our hero is Herman Barsk – overweight, untidy and generally unlovable in all kinds of ways. He lives down an alley named Saar Vidia Naipaul Mohalla. His Eskimo dog, Bobby, is tragically no more, leaving poor Barsk all alone in this cruel world: his mum was dead; his father a random customer whose dick had proved too big for the second-hand condom that Barsk’s stingy mum kept recycling. And the crime now confronting him is a death – or several deaths – which involve a tandoor and suspected marination (in yoghurt sauce?) beforehand.

This book is a spoof in other ways too.
Sweden is now a tropical haven – the greenhouse effect has relocated the Sahara desert northwards; the Mediterranean dried up completely and Europe covered in sand dunes as high as the Eiffel Tower all the way up to central Denmark. Palm trees took root in central Gothenburg and by the time this story takes places, have begun to give lovely nuts and people have cancelled their holiday trips down south.
As for the Danes – they have accepted their fate without complaining, lit up a few joints, and become Bedouins. With the exception of a small group of nudists who refused to dress in caftans.
And Finns litter the streets of Masthugget. They constitute, technically speaking, a lower caste, their status far below that of native Swedes. Statistically, a significant number of them suffer from a Molotov cocktail of venereal disease, tuberculosis and grave brain damage.
Caste, in fact, is so crucially important that people change their names for social acceptability. One character, Rex von Spearman, was (according to his wife) actually born Sven Swenson. Oh and yes – he now happens to be impotent ... from excessive mobile phone usage.

And Sweden is a country in crisis, financial as well as spiritual.
The roots of the new administration are to be found in the Indian Administrative Service – the Nehruvian steel frame installed in decolonized India, by which thousands of lifetime administrators handled the welfare of billions. After they took over, there had been neither financial crashes nor any other large-scale problems in Europe.

Once you’ve stopped using your vomit bag – one of Barsk’s favourite hobbies actually – and controlled the guffawing, you might notice that this book is not just a crime novel, not just a spoof. It’s also a rather sharp anthropological analysis of cultural elements.
There are, for instance, certain things about India that are sure to live on and on: K.C. Das and Ambedkar, for example; the Dalai Lama, Jadhavpur University, green rabbit USE ME bins, Femina, Tehelka, matrimonial advertisements, and cheap restaurants serving Asian food. And yoga. And deep, abiding faith in karma.
And language has been colonized too: we have a BC (bad character) Committing Nuisance in a Public Place and more.
And there are certain things about Swedish lifestyle and culture that could not possibly last, barring a few faded beauties from old Bergman films. Even the old and solid doors are gone, to be replaced by doors of Bhutanese board. Swedish people now live in a broken-down native quarter, unhealthy from too few baths, eating too much meat, and boozing it up all day long.

Though I was charmed by the thinking that went into this book, I found it tedious for my taste – it just went on and on and I never found myself so engrossed in the plot that I longed to know what happened next. And a few tiny points niggled: “innerwear” is hilarious for sure – but why not “chaddis”, which, after all, has Oxford English Dictionary status? And what on earth had happened to Ikea?
Finally, with so many characters driving around in Volvos, it seemed that Zac O'Yeah had picked Volvo to represent the last remaining outpost of Swedish civilization. However, this book was actually first published in 2006, in Swedish.
And, aha, in May 2010 the Volvo car company was quite prophetically taken over by the Chinese – so there you go.

We Can Pull It Off by Suresh Taneja

Superpower India
This is the story of how India got rid of all its problems.
A group of youngsters rooted out corruption – and that changed everything. Starting with a small movement, and with a mixture of shrewd thinking and luck, it spun out to cover the country. A new energy pervaded the land, education became widespread, and in 2030, India was the ruling superpower in the world. Indians from our time looked back, feeling choked with emotion and bursting with pride in country.
The best thing I liked about this book was the strategy described here to achieve this miracle. It’s plausible and, within the parameters of our lives in India today, could even work.
I also liked the very strong positive values it portrays.
Deep and enduring friendship, and love and tolerance for family members are universally considered to be admirable qualities.
Patriotism, however, is not rated so easily. The feeling of high emotion associated with thoughts of country is generally restricted to exiled patriots. For us Indians, the tendency to be emotional about our nationhood and value it as a precious asset arises from the feeling passed on by the thousands who gave their lives for our freedom from British rule.
Sadly, such virtues are considered unsophisticated in the modern materialistic world. They tend to get lumped with other habits such as rising early, working with even-tempered discipline, abstaining from substance abuse and preferring sex only within marriage. Or in other words, maturity is often mistaken for lack of sophistication.
It’s perhaps for this reason that I found the presentation of this book rather rustic, and more suited to the vernacular than English. Or perhaps it was just the language it was presented in. Because, as a work of literary fiction, it has far too many grammatical and idiomatic errors.
This book is not likely to attain mainstream readership – but there’s no reason why it shouldn’t make an excellent plot for a superhit Bollywood film which might well turn out – who knows – to be the starting point for the change it describes.

Plain Truths by Arun Kumar

Plain truths by Arun Kumar

If you’re in Bombay on Tuesday 4 January 2011, don’t miss the launch of this book at Crossword Kemps Corner at 7 pm.
Here are three poems from the book to give you an idea what to expect:

Generational Journeys
Driving before daybreak to San Francisco airport,
I am reminded of childhood journeys in Kerala.
The taxi would arrive in pitch darkness from all of a mile away
To take us to the railway station just two miles away.

Panicker’s Taxi Service is always punctual,
My father would say. On the dot, he will arrive at 5 am.
The driver, a wisp of a man, still half asleep,
Would sit seemingly stuck to the steering wheel.

On this scenic highway, I hear my father’s words,
Recall the trips I made with him
To the railway station, and then on the train,
Slow journeys, a hundred miles in eight hours.

Then, I settle into a plane to New York city,
Just five hours across a continent, to see my son.
I am offered a chilled bellini and a plate of cheese
But I think of tender coconut water

And the slow train, and my father’s sweat-cooled arm.

When you leave
(For Vikram)
The porch light will no longer fight the darkness,
The night latch will, once again,
Secure the door,
And the house
Will shrink
A little
When you leave.

Parting
At work he was aloof.
An automaton of an executive,
A reputation for ice cold veins.
Then, I saw him at the funeral.
They had been high school sweethearts
Playing footsie in the library.
The panels of pictures at the entry traced the arc
Of a lifetime from rural Pano to Palo Alto.
Boyish farm lad and smiling girl friend,
Wedding, children, holiday journeys.
As he stood beside the black coffin,
Chin up, gray hair resisting the cold breeze,
A slight mist formed by his deep exhalations,
For a moment, that arc moved backwards.

The author, Arun Kumar, holds a management degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management.
When he’s not writing poetry, Arun Kumar works as partner and member of the board of directors of KPMG, one of the ‘Big Four' accounting, tax and advisory firms in the world, where he leads the United States (U.S.)-India practice for the organization and heads its business performance services division for western U.S.

It can't be you by Prem Rao

A book that will keep you up at night

This story starts with a corpse and a handful of suspects.

Colonel Belliappa, Maha Vir Chakra, had retired from the Indian Army.
Making use of his connections in the armed forces, he had set up a company that traded in arms. He lived in Coorg, where he managed his ancestral plantations, until he suddenly dropped dead one evening.
His partner in the armaments’ venture was the German beauty Elena, 33 years old and determinedly risen to the swanky diplomatic life from her humble origin as a plumber’s daughter in Berlin.
Elena, now Belli’s second wife, is not the only one with much to gain from his death – his daughter Shefali is 29 and could only marry her long-time boyfriend Rashid under threat of being cut out of her father’s will. And Pritam, 24, dopehead, is a wimpy understudy in a Mumbai architect’s firm; a sad disappointment to his father who would have much preferred a boy in his own mould. Their mother Dinaz is a silent but significant character and pervades each page though she had died tragically by falling off a cliff when the children were little.

Who killed Belli? Or was it suicide?

Now this is not one of your overworked whodunits in which some kind of eccentric character comes along, unravels various mysteries, applies cunning psychology, and apprehends the murderer with a flourish in the presence of all. In this book, each of the characters tells their own story and we learn who they are, what they do, and how their minds work, so we don't have to wonder what the great detective is thinking but can make our own judgement about motive, opportunity and guilt before the truth unfolds.

Telling separate stories in the first person works well to create a more intimate acquaintance with each one. However, a greater literary skill would have differentiated each voice and tuned it better to each one’s character. I found the narrative rather too homogeneous for this format. It Can’t Be You could also have done with better editing to sort out occasional awry sequencing and loose ends. And I found its sex scenes – slickly inserted and all – rather the stuff of big-boob-oriented adolescent fantasy.

What I did enjoy very much about this book is the insights it presents into recent Indian history and our armed forces. For instance, to learn what many in the know believe about why India was so badly beaten by the Chinese in 1962 – read this book! There is a lot of interesting information here which has faded from public memory and I felt happy that it was being revived. It was also a pleasure to read, in Belli’s story, the noble IMA credo: “The safety, honour and welfare of your country come first, always and every time. The honour, welfare and comfort of the men you command come next. Your own ease, comfort and safety come last, always and every time.” Ah – what values to live by!

As each character’s narrative progresses, the tension builds and though there’s no tremendous surprise climax ending, Prem Rao has been successful in creating good goose-flesh inducing prose.

Sadly, this captivating story is presented in a shabby, old-fashioned format – with font, margins, paper quality and other design parameters unlikely to have any but the most determined reader reach out and pick it off a shelf.

Lost and Found by CP Surendran

Sometimes life can be just so absurd
This is a book that combines literary quality with engrossing plot, an inimitable, wacky and rather courageous wit, and fluid narrative which hints, as you go along, that the author was probably enjoying himself writing just about as much as you are, reading.
The story takes us right into the “twenty-six-eleven” terror attacks on Bombay and profiles a young terrorist, Salim, his family back home in Pakistan, and a group of people (and a cow) with whom he becomes inextricably involved. If the larger plot is a hilarious spoof of one of Bollywood’s most clichéd themes, every smaller subplot also showcases the farcical inner realities of the complex and alluring city that CP Surendran once lived in.
This, of course, is the real Bombay, not the fictional Bombay Times, of which esteemed publication CP, as editor for many years, once did his bit perpetrating the vanities of. So here all you read has been stripped down to its most ridiculous, even the really holy unmentionables, like rape. And Islam.
The cow is a holy animal for Hindus but for reasons Shinde (the heroic autorickshaw driver who once drove blindfolded through the streets of Bandra) can never figure out, not the goat or the hen, though both come across as equally ancient, useful creatures.
Nirmal is an orphan and has led a rough life. He knows that begging is a kind of blackmail. You just had to make it sound like an appeal so that egos were not hurt.
Aseem is an artist who transforms his clients – very few of whom understand his own professional philosophy “The paint will take you only this far. What will get you ahead is discipline.” Says Aseem to Nirmal: “My love for Chanda is pure. One hundred percent pure – like bottled water.”
And Our Lady of Dolours steps in for a tiny cameo – displayed in her true form: Our Lady of Dollars.
Rajgopal is a minor porn-viewing character – but important in his own way for through him we learn that crucial truth well known to all Indian men – their wives’ friends are mental.
“If I knew where I lost it, I would have found it,” says the sultry newspaper Number Two Mrs. Kulkarni – sharply, but conscious that she was breaking her vow to be gentle and kind to menials.

I asked CP how much his hero, Placid, was him. After all, Placid was also a Bombay journo and one who, like CP, "hailed" from Kerala (that cartoon land of Communism).
He replied, “Quite a lot. Especially the insensitive bits about the man.”

Of course journalists are mad – everyone knows that, and here’s a headline that proves it beyond doubt: HINDU ORPHAN RAPED, MURDERED IN ORISSA: MOB MISTOOK VICTIM FOR CHRISTIAN.
And terror can be crazy too. Don’t be afraid, Salim wants to tell them. All of us were dead before we were born, remember?
Fear freezes Placid’s heart. Just the previous week he had read in the newspapers of a doctor who, tired of her lover’s demands, had chopped him in bits and put them in a suitcase. Placid foresees sharing a similar fate. Rest in Pieces. Wonderful. Very wonderful.

Best of all, this book reminds you several times as you fall into its lyrical passages that CP Surendran is a poet:

Placid clambered into the Kanyakumari Express, packed like sand in a bag with people, hens, mangoes, fish pickle, and the metal smell of urine in the aisle- a damp, yellowing, amoebic pool, collecting here and there on the floor, from which toxic fumes rose and spread in the steady heat of the incredibly high-resolution Indian sun.
And he rode the train like a rodeo for fifty-one hours, a detour in universal chaos: sped by stations limned by lanterns; past the phantasmagoria of stark backlit landscapes; round a barren river bed where an old man put his hand between the legs of a young girl squatting to pee; raced with cratered ravines lowered directly from the loft of Mars; past the mirage of one-horse towns suspended in dust and sunlight; shot by carcasses of cows hanging upside down from windows; past giant, bald trees clutching at the air as the train sped by; through emerald paddy fields kissing the straw feet of crucified scarecrows; skirted mustard fields that flamed as if out of Van Gogh’s brush; trundled past a procession of naked ascetics over a bridge in the gloaming. Visibly aged, Placid got off the time-travelling machine at the massive obduracy in stone, Victoria Terminus, which the British had built with that false sense of permanency so typical of urbane conquerors.

My most dominant feeling reading this book was one of pride – I’ve known and admired CP for about twenty years. And I must admit I was also quite relieved that I liked it so much and there was nothing stopping me from saying what I really felt.

Q: How long did it take you to write this book?
A: One and half years. The rewriting was the tough part.
Q: What was the germ of idea you started with … where did it come from?
A: At a Café Coffee Day in Borivili, Bombay. I saw a single middle aged woman sucking at her coffee like a lifeline and thought about her: Lakshmi.
Q: I mean besides “26-11” of course. But I was wondering how “26-11” affected you – can you tell?
A: 26/11 affected me like a horror movie. It was both real and unreal, and still is. Terrorsim is not politics. It is a personality neurosis of a few individuals. If they are lucky, in time, they are branded as patriots. I have nothing to do with either.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Working on how to survive moronic critics who can't read a book straight.

Many Lives Many Masters by Brian L. Weiss MD

The best that a "man" can hope for
Three months ago today, my father died. It was the first time that I had lost anyone I knew well and cared for deeply. I went through a series of intense and unexpected experiences that reminded me of this book. So it was at the back of my mind, and I happened to recommend it to my friend Anitha who is a doctor in Ireland.
I had read this bestselling book years ago and was curious about what Anitha, who is one of the smartest and most sensitive thinking people I know, would have to say. I was also a bit worried that I may have overrated it, so I read it again to see what I felt now, two or three hundred books later.
Many Lives, Many Masters is a case study written by a psychiatrist in the USA. He is having difficulty treating his patient, a lovely young woman named Catherine, and after eighteen months with no progress, he decides to try hypnotherapy, which he believes will work to help her remember long-forgotten incidents and bring her closer to resolution. During the course of several sessions of hypnosis, Catherine regresses into a series of past lives and this book is about her lives and about what happens between them.
I did enjoy the book this time round, and found it easy to read and inspiring. However, there were a few things that put me off slightly. For one, I believe that the concept of “Masters” should really transcend gender. But this book seemed to me rather male centric. I also didn’t care for the concept that there were beings who were “in charge” and who controlled things, and there was also a slight hint that they had it in them to distribute punishment if they felt inclined.
I prefer to think of the world as controlled by natural laws – and the phenomenon of natural cause and effect. Perhaps these are just different ways of looking at the same thing and perhaps truly evolved people could look at it like that.
I however suspected that the inflexion I objected to had been introduced – maybe not consciously – to make people from religions that preach retribution and male superiority feel more at home. After all, reincarnation is a distasteful concept to some, and it is the central theme of this book.
Another technical point: if one believes in Karma (or just that actions lead to consequences) then Catherine’s long string of lives as an oppressed person is illogical. We should have seen at least some lives in which she was the meanie. Hmm, yes, it is possible that those lives were there and didn’t come to the surface because her soul wasn’t ready to deal with them yet :-)
There’s more, but I think Anitha said it better than I could and, not surprisingly, she had spotted some finer points which I had missed. I’m pasting, verbatim, what she said:
I found it an easy read and quite fascinating. As a Hindu, I was taught to believe in reincarnation and that our present life sufferings are punishments for wrongs committed in past lives. However, I never truly believed in such things. So when I started reading this book, I found the story implausible. But as I kept reading, I began to believe what it said. As it is the case history of a patient written by a prominent psychiatrist, both of them non-Hindus and all hypnotic regression therapy sessions recorded by him, it appears legitimate. Also, I realized that I have no right to be sceptical about things I don't know about. As much as there is no scientific proof regarding reincarnation, there is no proof against it also. Perhaps, we have to realize that if things are unknown to us, it doesn't mean they don't exist. Since we cannot see what happens after death, we can only listen to such astonishing stories and believe in the good lessons they teach us. I'm still thinking about the book as I just finished reading it. I find the messages comforting and at the same time a little frightening in some ways. The philosophy about life, death, reincarnation, the different levels and so on are all quite comforting. Also, it is a consolation that we may meet our loved ones in future lives and that there is no need to fear death. On the contrary, I found it a little frightening that there will be future lives to pay debts, about masters and spirits around us, although they seemed to be kind souls who are only trying to help us. The case history is convincing enough especially as her description of past lives seem detailed and consistent, which gives it more credibility. Having said that, there are a few instances which I found a little far-fetched. For example, his description about Catherine going to the races with her father and winning all that money and donating it to the first street person she met; Catherine recalling the exact year in B.C.; the doctor's claim that his patient had no access to his family history regarding his father and son is not convincing as she works in the same hospital.
I wondered at times whether in his eagerness to prove his point, the author had lapsed into making these flimsy claims. Well I may be wrong about these, as I cannot be certain whether they are impossible or untrue. So maybe I should not dwell on such doubts.
On the whole it was stimulating to read this book and the explanation given by the masters about our purpose in life and I do think it will help people who read it take a positive and brighter outlook on life in general and on our fellow human beings in particular. I think Hindus and Buddhists will find it easier to relate to compared to people from some other religions. I am not aware if any other religion proposes reincarnation theory. But there will always be sceptics as there are people who always question anything and everything that can't be proven and it is a pity that the authenticity of Catherine's past lives cannot be verified from historical data. Whatever the case, I think on the whole, the underlying message of the book makes sense on a spiritual level and if we ponder over the messages from the Masters and take lessons from them, our lives may become simpler and happier.

To end, I wanted to also say that I went online looking for critical reviews of this book and found one which I enjoyed reading. I’ve reproduced the part I liked best:
I certainly do not impugn Dr. Weiss humanity, compassion, or his attempts to help his fellow humans. But by creating a quasi-religion based on clearly fallacious ‘recovered memories’, he destroys his own message by not providing any peer-review or replicable study of his outrageous claims.
Read like poetry, Many Lives, Many Masters is a brilliant modern parable of humanism—it clearly wants to guide people down a path that will help society gain understanding, peace and harmony. The problem is that it ...
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