Tell Me A Story

By Rupa Bajwa
Picador/Pan Macmillan.
Pages 206. Rs 499.

WE listen to stories. We tell tales. Our lives have many stories, some of them tangled. We look at the world of others as a yarn that is unfolding in front of us…. Rupa Bajwa has an uncommon felicity with language and a rarer ability to look into the lives of ordinary people, relate to their world and narrate their story with candour, as readers of The Sari Shop, one of the most- acclaimed first books by an Indian author, are well aware.

Her second book is no sequel to the famous predecessor. It is a multi-layered exploration of the story of Rani and her world, a tale that took a good eight years to get to the readers’ hands. As all those who read The Sari Shop will remember, Bajwa engrosses herself in the world of her characters, and thus here we have the protagonist Rani, who dropped out of school in Class IX and works in Eve’s Beauty Parlour in Amritsar. She lives with her father Dheeraj, who is now old and ailing. Her brother Mahesh, his wife Neelam and their son Bittu are also in the same house. Mahesh works in a power loom factory and the one niggling worry for the family is money.

This constant financial pressure on the family tells on ties, and thus Neelam, much embarrassed by the lack of money in the household she has married into, becomes a penny pincher and a shrew, even as she dotes on Bittu, the apple of her eye.

Rani too loves her nephew and tells him stories, which she spins for him every night. They are gripping, but since he sleeps before the tales end, there is no need for to finish them, a reflection also of the life of Rani and her family, a continuing story of a marginalised existence with nothing much to talk about.

Eve’s Beauty Parlour is where much of the initial action takes place, and you nod your head in empathy with Rani when she feels flummoxed by the posters of women modelling international beauty products. “Their looks, their skinniness, their impractical makeup and clothes — none of this made sense to her. Secretly Rani felt they could not have much common sense.”

Drudgery has many shades, and for Mahesh the air-conditioned environs of Rani’s workplace contrast sharply with the oppressive, noisy and dehumanising power loom factory where he works. This he begins to resent.

Bajwa portrays Dheeraj with compassion and empathy. He is a lonely figure, somewhat lost in a world where he has been cast aside from his job as an accountant, fairly content with his state of being, yet yearning to escape from the humdrum existence he is caught in, something that he manages to do briefly. A broken water tank brings about a crisis in the household and tears the family apart. Rani leaves Amritsar for Delhi and starts working as domestic help with Sadhna Memsahib. For most people who grow up in small towns, Delhi comes as a shock. There is so much happening, so many choices to make, relationships to negotiate with people who dance to a different tune.

Rani’s employer Sadhna is a ‘stalled novelist’, nursing a fractured leg. From the shelter of her house Rani sees the arty world of Delhi, journalists, writers and artists, where people want to be seen at the right places and at the right time, even if it is a memorial meet, who think nothing of using others for their own ends, who lack consideration…. Sadhna’s, make that the author’s, observations on the ‘bindied and bearded’ intellectuals, her the not-so-gentle digs at the OMG culture and the pretentiousness of the Fab set are bound to raise some hackles.

The rich and the poor live alongside each other in India. So do they in Rupa Bajwa’s book. She is candid and compassionate. The author who won the XXIV Grinzane Cavour Prize for best first novel in June 2005, the Commonwealth Award in 2005 and Sahitya Akademi Award in 2006, has given her readers another novel, one that has stories that reflect the chaos of life. Readers will squirm and sometimes smile even as they enter a world they seldom connect with. It is a journey that starts as a trip into the unknown, and slowly becomes an excursion into the story of life.

This review by Roopinder  Singh was published in the Spectrum section of The Tribune on May 13, 2012.

You may also like to read an interview with Rupa Bajwa that was published after she won the the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2009.

Sikhs in Latin America: Travels among the Sikh Diaspora

By Swarn Singh Kahlon. Manohar. Pages 361. Rs 1,100.

Reviewed by Roopinder Singh

IS it a scholarly work, or is it a travelogue? It’s a bit of both, with historical, ethnographical and geographical strains thrown in for good measure. This is one book that cannot be slotted easily. But then, it is difficult to classify the author too. He is a Punjabi who spent most of his working life in Bombay and Calcutta, studied in the US, and now makes Chandigarh his home. This is his first book, and he has been working on this subject for a long time.

Kahlon is fascinated with early Sikh immigration and he has reached out to an area which has not been the focus of any such study, Latin America. As the author says, “One is unable to fathom how and from where they got the information way back in the end of the 19^th century about the existence of some of the countries they migrated to,” yet off they went, in search of a better life for themselves and their families. These immigrants were largely men and most often they married local women, thus their families spoke local languages, maybe some Punjabi for a generation of two, and little or no English.

It was during the British Raj that the Sikhs spread out all over the world, often as a part of the British Army, or police forces. Often they migrated to various British colonies. But this was not always the case. I remember seeing a picture of a turbaned Sikh supervising building the Panama Canal, in an exhibition in the New York. Apparently many spread out from there and for at least a section of them, all they could do was to walk along the railway track till they found food, shelter and eventually work. Many got employment on the railroad, and often set up small business when they had saved enough money to be able to do so.

The author travelled to these Latin American countries. He did a tour of Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil in 2005. A year later, he did another one in which he covered Belize, Mexico, Cuba, Panama and Ecuador. He met descendants of the original inhabitants in these countries and has examined the Sikh diaspora in each of these nations by giving each a chapter. It is in reaching out to these primary sources that the author strikes his distinctive note. He has got oral accounts, documents, newspaper clippings, passports, etc. which have been appended with the book and which provide fascinating vignettes of pioneer’s lives.

We meet Dan Singh who went from Calcutta, the principal port in India then, to the place he knew as ‘Tina’. An unscrupulous captain took him and his compatriots to Fiji, but they sued him and eventually went to Argentina in 1911, where they faced an adventurous future and a tough life. Then there is George Singh, who became the Chief Justice of Belize in 1998. His father, Bawa Singh Mann had migrated to what was then British Honduras just six decades earlier.

The gurdwara has always been the fulcrum around which the life of Sikhs, especially emigrants, revolves. Often, it becomes a religious centre, a cultural club and an education centre all rolled into one. The story of how a gurdwara was set up in which nation varies from each group to the next, but the importance that it remains constant.

Early emigrants were overwhelmingly male and there were practically no Punjabi girls they could marry. They married local girls, and although they clung to their Sikh identity, their children and grandchildren were gradually assimilated. However, they retain a keen interest in the culture of their ancestors, as we find from the author’s interviews. Kahlon has written a remarkable book that defies easy slotting. There is, no doubt, that he treads a path seldom travelled, and never with the kind of dedication and resources that Kahlon has invested in the book.

We can expect this volume to spark interest in this long-forgotten Sikh diaspora. It has much that later-day researchers will use for their studies.

This review was published in the Spectrum magazine section of The Tribune on Sunday, April 22, 2012.

The Wings of Time

By Salma Mahmud
Har Anand Publications. Pages 152. Rs 395

Reviewed by Roopinder Singh

IT does not take a long life for someone to be remembered, it is how much impact that a person leaves which makes others reminisce about him even much after he is gone. Accomplishments, associations and the memories that a person leaves- all form the intangible legacy of the memory of a shared life.

The Wings of Time by Salma Mahmud

Of all those who reminisce, for none are those memories as bittersweet as they are for the family members. Salma Mahmud’s biography of her father, Dr Muhammad Din Taseer (1905-1953), started as a journalistic endeavour when The Friday Times asked her to write about her father’s friends. Why? Because they constituted the most important writers, academics and critics ofPakistan. “Writing about them was nothing short of a traumatic experience. I felt I was drowning in a sea of sorrow and regret. Each one of them was an uncle for me, be he Uncle Victor, or Uncle Som, or Uncle Najji or whatever.” She persevered and has presented to the readers an account of the times seldom dwelt upon. The 1930s was the period when a large number of Indians went to the hallowed halls ofOxfordorCambridgeuniversities to study. They came back, generally speaking, equipped with an excellence in English and western education, as well as, often, a keen involvement in their mother tongue. Some, like MD Taseer, returned not only with a PhD in English fromCambridge, but also with a romantic interest in a British lady. In this way, we are introduced to Christabel, the author’s mother, whose sister, Alys was later to marry Faiz Ahmad Faiz, then a lecturer in a college inAmritsarwhere Taseer was the principal. Alys came toIndiaon the same ship as Jewell and Margaret in 1938. They all were to makeIndiatheir home.

In a delightful aside, the author explores the genealogical tree of her mother and thus we find out that Christabel came from a French Huguenot family that had to migrate toBritainafter they were hounded because of their religious beliefs.

As we explore Taseer’s life, we find in it familiar places,Amritsar,Delhi, Simla andSrinagar, along withLahorewhich dominated the later part of Taseer’s life. Amritsar, a vital centre of commerce and education at that time, Delhi, with references to Lodhi Gardens, Simla with its Mall, and Lahore that is now as much a stranger to the readers in India as the first three cities are to readers in Pakistan.

Marked by literary renaissance, poetic rebellions, coupled with political upheavals that changed the course of history, these were indeed interesting times and the Taseer family was in the middle of them. Through the family’s perspective, we have a macro view of the world around them. The structure of the book is unusual. In the first four chapters, we have a unique collection of individuals who dominated the intellectual life of the subcontinent.

A S Bukhari, Sufi Gulam Mustafa Tabassum, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Colonel Majit Malik, Badruddin Badar, Tajbans Khanna, Prof Hamid Ahmed Khan, Dr Aftab Ahmed Khan, Syed Abid Ali Abid, Allama Iqbal, Somnath Chib, Iqbal Singh, Victor Kiernan`85 names that are well known and these individuals contributed in various ways to the literary richness of the sub-continent.

Then we have Taseer himself. A rebel at heart, he was an educationist who was also an Urdu poet of distinction. He was awarded a PhD byCambridgeUniversityin 1935. One of the founders of the Progressive Writers’ Movement, he later fell out with those at the helm. He insisted that his daughter learn Urdu and Persian, even though it was English that was her primary interest. The man that emerges from the pages of Salma Mahmood’s book is the kind of cosmopolitan Pakistani, a much-endangered species inPakistannow. How much so? The answer comes sadly from the assignation of Dr MD Taseer’s son, the Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, who was assassinated only last year, for his opposition toPakistan’s draconian blasphemy laws.

Salma Mahmud’s account will find resonance on both sides of the border.

This review was published in The Tribune on March 25, 2012

Encyclopedia of Hinduism
by Ed. Kapil Kapoor.
Rupa & Co. Pages 7,184.  Rs 21,000

The editors have drawn on over 2,000 scholars for contributions. The encyclopaedia does not confine itself to religion alone, and has in it entries on art, history, language, literature, philosophy, polity, sciences, and even women studies

Hinduism has a hoary past, and countless attempts have been made to understand the faith, its precepts and practices. Indeed, the list of scholars who have worked on Hinduism is as long as it is impressive. It is an ocean into which many have taken a dip and explored what they found, yet they were always acutely aware that what they had grasped was merely a microcosm.

The sheer span of this set of volumes is enough to make you exclaim. Handsomely produced, they bear more than a little resemblance to the most famous of all encyclopaedias, the one that, unlike this set, still spells its name with an ‘a’. Like Encyclopaedia Britannica, this encyclopaedia too has a US connection, but more on that later.

Encyclopedia of Hinduism

The Foreword by the redoubtable Dr Karan Singh neatly sets the stage for the reader, and is in itself an illuminating essay on the ethos of Hinduism. As he points out, “Hinduism calls itself the Sanatana Dharma, the eternal faith, because it is not based upon the teachings of a single preceptor, but on the collective wisdom and inspiration of great seers and sages from the very dawn of Indian civilisation.”

Increasingly, we have seen that Indian scholars abroad contribute significantly to scholarly studies of religion and history. Brij Vilash Lal, Professor of Pacific and Asian History, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, at the Australian National University, edited The Encyclopedia of the Indian Diaspora. Produced in Singapore, it gives a fascinating account of Indians abroad. Much of the recent work on Sikh scholarship has been done by scholars abroad, especially in California.

Here too, it is the US-based India Heritage Research Foundation, which became the enabler of this project. The University of South Carolina provided the academic infrastructure for the compilation of this encyclopaedia.

The ‘foreign hand’ enabled scholars, connected with India, to work together for years and along with several other offices in India and abroad, they produced the 7,064 entries. The submissions by contributors were edited by a team of 24 editors at Rupa, led by Dr Kapil Kapoor, who was a Professor at the Centre for Linguistics and English, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He also helped set up the Centre for Sanskrit Studies at the university, and held important positions there.

The editors have drawn on over 2,000 scholars for contributions. The encyclopaedia does not confine itself to religion alone and has in it entries on art, history, language, literature, philosophy, polity, sciences, and even women studies.

The inclusive nature of the selection of topics makes for an interesting mix, and a perusal of some of the entries shows that the contributors have taken considerable pain in ensuring lucidity and depth. The language used is non-intimidating. Once you get past the diacritical mark, so essential for universal understanding, makes familiar terms appear esoteric even to a common Indian reader’s eye.

The English-reading younger generation, too, will have a ready source of knowledge, and will thus be helped along in the wish to learn more about an ethos that we take for granted, simply because we are born into it, but know precious little about.

In these volumes, you will find concise entries as well as good bibliographical references. These will lead them to other sources where they can study the subject in greater depth, especially since the entries encompass a fairly wide canvas that include major Indic traditions, including Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism.

The volumes are richly produced. The publishers have eschewed the matt finish of Encyclopaedia Britannica, for a modern one with glossy paper and full-colour printing.

Obviously, the publishers have pulled out all stops in printing and production, and the result is obvious for anyone who goes through the volumes.

There have been a number of encyclopaedias of Hinduism over the years, and many even have the same title. It remains to be seen exactly where this particular set finds its place and how it stands the test of time. There is, no doubt, however, that many libraries abroad and in India will be interested in the set. The publishers have been conservative in pricing the set, and thus it is easy to imagine it in many homes, as well.

This review by Roopinder Singh was published in the Spectrum section of The Tribune on February 19, 2012

Books, conventional as well as electronic, took us to worlds beyond our individual immediate. Readers took to memoirs as well as fiction, even as they sought perspectives, both Indian and Western, to understand life and people

Books and Beyond: Desi, with a ‘phoren’ touch

THE story of the man who contributed the most towards moving us from words printed on paper to those on electronic screens became a runaway bestseller of 2011. Steve Jobs gave us the devices that changed our reading habits, and here he was, being celebrated not only in his preferred media, but also in the conventional pulp book format. Reports of the ‘death of the book’ have been greatly exaggerated. Readership expanded, and both traditional publishers and e-book publishers gained.

Internationally, authors too gained, since they were now being courted by both kinds of publishers. Of course, those who wrote really good books, like the Delhi-born Siddhartha Mukherjee, added new feathers to their cap. This doctor-author got fresh recognition for his last year’s much-acclaimed book, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. While on his side of the pond, he won the prestigious 2011 Pulitzer Prize in the general non-fiction category, on the other side; he also bagged the Guardian First Book Award just before the year ended.

The writer of tomes Arun Shourie’s Does He Know a Mother’s Heart? touched the heart of everyone who read the story of his family’s battle with disabilities. We had yet another book, and another controversy, on Mahatma Gandhi, with Joseph Lelyveld’s Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and his Struggle with India.

Arundhati Roy, the great cerebral controversy queen, published a book without writing one, and thus we had Broken Republic: Three Essays. Talking of writers who published books without writing them, the king of the bestseller charts continued his winning streak with Khushwant Singh on Women, Sex, Love and Lust, which was compiled and edited by Ashok Chopra, as was Agnostic Khushwant: There is No God! which came out near the end of the year.

The man who has changed what the word ‘bestseller’ means for Indian publishing, Chetan Bhagat, built on his reputation by selling lakhs of books within days of releasing Revolution 2020: Love. Corruption. Ambition. Often books that critics love don’t make that much of an impact on bestseller lists. Among the top-10 list we consistently have two other Bhagat titles — 2 States: The Story of My Marriage and The Three Mistakes of My Life. Talking of numbers, we now have Nielsen BookScan which is gathering data from book stores and publishers nationwide.

We seek new understanding of the new world order and this has brought new books like Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within by Shishir Gupta and The Good Muslim by Tahmima Anam.

On the fiction front, Amitav Ghosh won much acclaim with his detailed and multi-layered work River of Smoke, Aravind Adiga gave us Last Man in Tower, Aatish Taseer Noon, and Tarun J. Tejpal The Valley of Masks.

Memoirs formed a significant part of our reading appetite, be they those of the veteran journalist S. Nihal Singh who wrote Ink in my Veins, or No Higher Honour by the former US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. Chandigarh’s own Abhinav Bindra teamed up with sports writer Rohit Brijnath and gave an interesting account in A Shot at History: My Obsessive Journey to Olympic Gold.‘Business tycoons gave their accounts of their lives, be it Vinay Bharat Ram whose From the Brink of Bankruptcy: The DCM Story made it to the bestseller list, or real estate magnates Ansals and DLF.

Yes, while international publishers sold many books to Indian readers, including some through various kinds of electronic devices and e-book readers, it was the traditional book that ruled the roost, and largely Indian authors found resonance among avid readers.

This article by Roopinder Singh was published in a special yearend issue of The Tribune titled 2011: The Year of Uprisings

Geek Nation: How Indian Science is Taking over the World
By Angela Saini.
Hodder & Stoughton/Hachette.
Pages 288. Rs 499.

A well-informed look at the world of science in India today

INDIAN techies have made a place for themselves the world over, so much so that they have eclipsed the achievers from their mother discipline, science. The IITs and other scientific institutions owe much to Jawaharlal Nehru who insisted that every Indian citizen should develop “scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform”.

Geek Nation: How Indian Science is Taking over the World

It is common to see snapshots of contrarian symbols of India, rich/poor, advanced/backward, educated/uneducated and so on. It takes a passionate observer to go beyond them, which this writer has done in her journey to the land she believes was the birthplace of the geek.

The story goes back to 700 AD, when the Bakhshali manuscript is believed to have been written. It is one of the earliest scientific texts in Asia, and is now at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, the author’s alma matter.

The author is a master’s in engineering and science journalist, and the combination makes for not only an engaging read but also a remarkably well-informed look at the world of science in India today. She takes us to the Vikram Sarabai Space Centre, and to a “small Hindu town of Melkote”.

Through her we meet the 88-year-old Prof. Udupi Ramachandra Rao, a space scientist and former chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation. The redoubtable Naryana Murthy, who needs no introduction, Dr Pravendra Nath, a molecular biologist working on genetically modified bananas, Vandana Shiva, the scientist-turned activist who is leading the anti-GM fight in India, and a host of other committed individuals who give us many insights into scientific research in India.

Many of us know the tale of how someone’s blunder was the cause of Indians getting major exposure in the international stage, but the story bears revisiting. It was in the mid-1990s that Western governments and business woke up to the fact that many of their mainframe computers used programmes in which only the last two digits of the year was mentioned. Thus, as far as the computers were concerned, the year 2000 could well be 1900, 1800, whatever. With the year 2000 approaching, millions of lines of code had to be written, or all kinds of problems could arise in various sectors, including banks, airlines, public utilities, even nuclear installations, which used old mainframe computers, and more importantly, code written for them.

Indians were better qualified than others to do this because of their technical education as well as their knowledge of English. By the time the millennium bug had been tackled, Indian techies were an established force. However, Indian programmers were known to work like drones, and were not known to be innovators. But this is changing. While many IIT students are burned out by the time they get there, and how there is a movement within the IITs to counteract it, by creating Technocracy, a new group designed to give everyone the chance to build practical skills in their own time. Initiatives like this and increased funding have resulted in more focus on research, and a larger number of patents being issued to IITians.

Saini explores how science and religion co-exist in India, so much so that there are many who claim that scientific knowledge has it origins in ancient Indian texts. She meets Sanskrit scholars and sees their blueprint of an ancient aircraft described in the Vaimanika Shastra, translated by G.R. Josyer, in 1946. She also finds the paper by five researchers at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengalaru, who ripped apart the text.

If religion has many believers in India, so does science. Sometimes I wonder how we can accept brain scanner, or a “mind-reading machine”. The writer investigates the claims of C.R. Mukndan, the machine’s inventor, and finds no validation for his invention in the international scientific community. Yet, the “scientific” evidence based on this device is cited, and accepted, in courts.

We know of Lavasa when its environmental transgressions hit headlines. The author talks of it as the first city designed for Generation Y. She also talks of how people who were displaced because of this development throw stones at cars going in and out of the area.

We are informed about the e-governance initiatives that are being undertaken, even in courts, of cutting edge research in medicine and genomes, of mindsets regarding patents, even visit the 97th Indian Science Congress, where Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made his “The empires of the future are going to be the empires of the mind”, statement.

The writer combines pragmatism with passion. Through this journey we learn to appreciate the possibilities of change around us, and it leaves us looking at the future quite positively.

This review by Roopinder Singh was published in the Spectrum section of The Tribune on July 3, 2011.

EYE-CATCHER

Japuji Sahib: Prayer of the Soul

By Ranjodh Singh.

Wisdom Collection, Ludhiana. Pages 96. Rs 995.

Japuji Sahib: Prayer of the Soul

JAPUJI Sahib remains Guru Nanak Dev’s most popular composition which has a unique position in the minds of millions of Sikhs as well as the world at large. It holds a special attraction for scholars and devotees, and has been translated into many languages. The author gives the meaning of the text in both Gurmukhi as well as English. An accomplished photographer, he has chosen images on which the text is transcribed with care to appropriately reflect the thoughts expressed in the stanzas on which the text is printed. Paintings by artists like Sobha Singh, Kirpal Singh, GS Sohan Singh and Jarnail Singh have also been used to illustrate the volume. The lavishly printed coffee-table book, the royalties of which go to a charity, will find a place on many a book shelf.

—   Roopinder Singh

This write-up was published in The Tribune on June 26, 2011

A NEW literary publishing company was born last week. Penguin Canada’s former boss and author David Davidar and Rupa Publications India Managing Director Kapish G. Mehra announced the birth of the Aleph Book Company, a joint venture. Aleph will have its headquarters in Delhi.

Rupa Publications’ managing director Kapish G. Mehra (left) and noted publisher-writer David Davidar at the launch of their joint venture, Aleph Book Company, in New Delhi last week

The following are excerpts from Roopinder Singh’s exclusive e-mail interview with David Davidar:

Since when have you been thinking of launching your own publishing house?

I’ve been thinking of launching my own publishing company for about six months now.

What made you tie up with Rupa?

Over the past few months, I had conversations about my future plans with nine companies in total. While eight companies approached me, I approached one. After all the talking was done, there were three options to consider – some of them wanted me to be CEO or publisher of their firms, some wanted me to start an imprint for them and some were interested in backing (financially) the company I was proposing to start.

Of all the companies, Rupa checked the most boxes for me – they were one of the country’s leading publishing firms and, in my opinion, sold and distributed their books better than anyone else (importantly, they owned their distribution infrastructure, so they could distribute Aleph’s books effectively); they were happy to partner with me to start a new company; their publishing was completely different from the sort of publishing I was proposing to do, so the books the two firms put out would complement each other; we shared a common vision of where we wanted to be five years from now; and I had a high degree of trust in them as potential business partners – this last qualification was especially important to me.

What kind of books will Aleph be publishing?

Broadly speaking, upmarket literary fiction and non-fiction.

How will Aleph titles be different from those published by Rupa?

While Rupa is a strong mass-market publisher, Aleph will be a literary publisher.

Which authors do we expect to join the Aleph stable?

I can’t tell you yet, but we will be announcing our first list in December and will publish three-four months later.

Is your novel Ithaca on schedule? Who will be publishing it in India?

Yes, it is. HarperCollins will publish it in September.

Will you have a role in Rupa publications as well?

Yes, I will be a consultant to Rupa on editorial matters and publishing strategy.

How do you see the future of digital publishing in India? What kind of digital platforms will Aleph be embracing?

I think digital publishing will play a very large role in Indian publishing a few years hence. It hasn’t caught on in the way it has in North America, for example, but it will only be a matter of time – two years at the outside. Aleph will explore every form of digital publishing available – straightforward e-books, enhanced/interactive e-books, standalone e-books, and anything else that might come along.

Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and his Struggle with India
By Joseph Lelyveld. Harper Collins. Pages 425. Rs 699.

LONG after he was assassinated, Mahatma Gandhi lives — in the hearts of those who regard him with awe; in the minds of those who read his works and seek to follow his path; on the lips of politicians of all hues, who profess to be his followers; and in the pages of writers and researchers who mine his teachings and life as a part of their literary pursuits.

Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and his Struggle with India by Joseph Lelyveld

Joseph Lelyveld is the latest, and by far not the last biographer of the man whose own collected works run into a 100 volumes of around 500 pages each.

“Sage, spokesman, pamphleteer, petitioner, agitator, seer, pilgrim, dietician, nurse and scold (sic)-Gandhi tirelessly inhabited each of these roles until they blended into a recognisable whole,” says Lelyveld even as he follows Gandhi’s footsteps through South Africa to India and England.

Since Gandhi meticulously documented his life, and his thoughts, like other biographers and commentators, Lelyveld has relied heavily on them. With the benefit of having lived in South Africa and India for significant periods of his professional life, he has also explored the making of the Mahatma. He says that it was in 1908, 15 years after he came to South Africa that “the ambitious, transplanted barrister becomes recognisable as the Gandhi who would later be called the Mahatma.”

Those who deify Gandhi often ignore the fact that it took him long years of self exploration, exposure, and grappling with issues to come to the stature of a leader who finally helped to oust the British colonial rulers out of India. Through the book, we see a man who is sensitive to the slights inflicted on him and other Indians by the whites, but not so much to the plight of the majority community in South Africa. After a protest, he expressed indignation at being interned with the native blacks of South Africa. Does this make him a racist or just a human being with flaws? It depends on your point of view, but remember, this is a transitional phase in the life of a person who would truly achieve greatness later.

Many readers will be richer by reading about Gandhi in South Africa, and indeed, the author has treated his subject with inquisitiveness as well as empathy. The book was almost banned before it hit the Indian shores. Credit must be given to the Central government which took a mature stand and has allowed the book to come into the hands of Indian readers.

The controversy regarding the correspondence between Mahatma Gandhi and his German friend Hermann Kallenbach, which has been quoted in the book and innuendos about Gandhi’s sexual orientation, served to pique the reader’s interest to a degree that led to record sales. The letters are there, as is the fact that they had a close bond. Many Indians are comfortable with intense same-sex bonding sans any sexual connotation. Westerners often read it differently, and the author is sensitive to various interpretations.

Overall, during this period, we find Gandhi taking his first tentative steps towards politics, and the ups and downs that come with treading this path. Two telling pictures, one of Gandhi and his wife Kasturba leaving South Africa, and another, besides it, of the two six months later, in Bombay, show the sartorial metamorphosis of the man (three-piece suit to a dhoti-kurta), and reflects the change in his focus.

As for the Indian experience, we have heard it, read it and seen it, but when the author interjects into the narrative, it brings a present tense into the book, which can both be refreshing as well as a bit disconcerting. As we journey across continents with Gandhi and Lelyveld, we go on a journey that is familiar, yet interesting because of twists and turns in the tale, and because of a fresh set of eyes describing the experience.

Gandhi’s greatness does not need any certificates. While it is often stressed that he accomplished much, what is sometimes ignored is his zest for exploring various facets of life. Gandhi was a multi-dimensional personality—he had many quirks, some imperfections and a variety of fads.

Lelyveld joins the rather well-populated ranks of Gandhi biographers. He brings a different perspective, and it is for the readers to either accept or reject his contentions.

We often forget that a book is judged every time it is read. Every reader approaches a book with his or her own perspectives, understanding, background and involvement. Readers will find the journey it takes them along of interest.

The reviewed by Roopinder Singh was published in The Tribune on May 15, 2011

Seven Plays on Sikh History by Sant Singh Sekhon
Trans. Tejwant Singh Gill
Sahitya Akademi.
Pages. 562 Rs 300.

Reviewed by Roopinder Singh

SANT Singh Sekhon (1908-1997) taught English, yet it was his writing in Punjabi that earned him great name and fame. One of his twelve full-length Punjabi plays, Mittar Piara, won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1972. It is only fitting that India’s premier literary body has now published a translation of his plays in English.

It comes as no surprise that the theme of seven of these plays was based on episodes in Sikh history. Sekhon’s mother had Singh Sabha inclinations, thus the child grew up in an environment where even more than normal emphasis must have been placed on heritage and lore of the Sikhs.

Seven Plays on Sikh History

The wide canvas of Baba Bohar takes us on a journey from the times of Guru Gobind Singh to Independence. The bohar tree that has withstood the ravages of time and has been witness to history tells it all to young boys.

The writer uses his poetic license, and history is a backdrop to his creativity. The play resonates because it is drawn from the familiar. Banda Bahadur, however, goes beyond history.

Vada Ghalughara, or the Great Holocaust (called Big Holocaust in the book), was a siege of the Sikhs by the forces of Ahmad Shah Abdali in 1763 between the villages of Raipur and Gujarwal in Punjab, which resulted in thousands of deaths, many women and children among them. Sekhon weaves in popular narrative in the play, and remarkably enough, ends it on a positive note.

In Waris we meet Waris Shah, whose Heer has made him immortal for those who know Punjabi, his love Bhagbhari, and the Fauzdar with a glad eye. The decay in the Lahore court after the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh is the focus of Bera Bandh No Sakio (They could not Anchor the Fleet). The same theme continues in Moian Sar Na Kai (The Dead were not Aware), in which Sekhon also makes a powerful plea for unity among Punjabi people.

Sekhon fulfilled his desire to write a play “on whatever contacts there might have been between Lenin and Indian patriots”. Mittar Piara (The Beloved Friend) came out of this endeavour. Bhai Santokh Singh and Bhai Rattan Singh are “infused with the self-sacrificing spirit of Gurbani. They have come to grasp the theory and practise of Marxism,” says Tejwant Singh. These Gaddhar leaders participate in the deliberations of the second Comintern, and then interact with their beloved friend.

A translation is expected to remain true to the spirit of the original. This is where the translator, Tejwant Singh Gill, shows both commitment and skill. As one reads the plays, one can feel the Punjabi original even through the English text.

The translator’s introduction not only gives us information about the writer, it is also a critical commentary on Sekhon’s work, and a glossary. The Punjabi plays of Sant Singh Sekhon deserve to be read by those who can’t read them in their original language. Now, they will be able to do so.

This review was published in the Spectrum section of The Tribune on April 10, 2011.