India for a Billion Reasons

Ed. Amit Dasgupta.
Wisdom Tree.
Pages 222. Rs 3,495.

BRILLIANT colours and images attract you the moment you look at the book. Then you flip through it, and find more, and more, reflecting the many facets of Indian life, rituals, traditions, modernity, democratic processes, including elections, people and their festivals-all find representation in this volume.

India for a Billion Reasons

No, it is not yet another coffee table book on India. What helps India for a Billion Reasons carve out its own identity is a substantial body of text. The editor has wisely allowed many expert voices to reflect on slices of the Indian experience, yet the introduction by this diplomat writer, whose book Indian by Choice had been reviewed in these columns two years ago, serves its purpose by explaining the format of the book, and introducing the essays that together make the book. While many of them are young minds, some are young at heart, together they lure us to add substance to the attractive colour pages and draw us to the text.

Any picture book on India has to negotiate cliches, so does this, often quite successfully? Atri Bhattacharya contends that the “downside of the Indian experience is that it leaves us a little jaded for the rest of the world”. Anita Ratnam is seeped in the dance tradition, and it shows in her article. Anjum Katyal tackles the difficult subject of art from India, while Ritu Sethi writes on the unbroken tradition of the living crafts.

Powerful, colourful and beautiful pictures have their own story to tell, and the editor and publishers are to be commended for putting forth a fine, pertinent selection. Captions are generally informative, although those from pictures sourced from foreign agencies have captions that address foreign audiences, like the one that starts, “Indian heart-throb Shah Rukh Khan.”

Meenakshi Shedde’s take on Bollywood is personal and interesting. Pratik Kanjilal’s overview of contemporary Indian literature, incisive, with due emphasis on literature in the 50 languages that are written in India. The editor is the author of the article on food, enriched by both recipes and colourful pictures. Harpal Singh Bedi looks at Indian sports.

The black and white photograph of Milkha Singh winning the 400m race in Paris is lovely, and there is one of his son, Jeev, too. Rohan Mukherjee writes about Indian polity, Bibek Debroy on economics, Tarun Basu on the media, and L. K. Sharma explores the ascent to modernity.’The book has a rich fare for readers.

Quotes by people about what India means to them, illustrated with cartoon from Sudhir Talang are a good read. Visually, the book is rich, has diverse sources and some really stunning pictures. It will be widely gifted and displayed, and those who read it would gain a lot more than those who just flip through it.

This review of the book by  Roopinder Singh was published in the Spectrum magazine section of The Tribune on September 19, 2010,

I love teachers, I was born the son of a teacher, my wife is a teacher and I would have loved to be one. Why, some of my best friends are teachers!

Our teachers have tremendous influence in shaping our lives. I am grateful to all my teachers, for shaping me into what I am today.  One of the finest tributes to a teacher is a book called Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom. I wrote a review of the book, which I have presented to many of my friends. Please click there to read the review.

The Sacred Grove

By Daman Singh
HarperCollins.
Pages 237. Rs 200.

Reviewed by Roopinder Singh

ASHWIN is smart, young, opinionated, and confused-a bundle of contradictions, that is, a teenager of today. He lives in a small town, and is the son of a ‘big’ man, the district collector. As for his mother, we are soon informed that he is expecting. Soon after she realises that she is pregnant, she goes about “as thought she has been dropped from the Indian cricket team,” says the first-person account of the youngster.

The Sacred Grove by Daman Singh

Welcome to the world of a 13-year-old, as envisioned by Daman Singh. The author, a student of mathematics, now writes works of fiction.. Ashwin’s world revolves around his parents, servants and friends, in that order. Like many children, he doesn’t see his Papa much during the day. “He was asleep when I left for school. I was asleep when he came home from office.”

He aims to master ‘Counter-Strike’, a video game in which players join either the terrorist or counter-terrorist team. “Of course, we (his best friend Ravi and him) decided to be terrorists.” Both teams try to complete their respective missions while getting rid of the other team. The game has been gifted to Ravi by his parents for Children’s Day.

“Naturally, my parents gave me nothing,” says Ashwin who cracks the game in three hours and becomes a hero in the eyes of his classmates, his victory telegraphed over the grapevine with such efficiency that he starts receiving congratulatory calls by the time he reaches home.

While he can crack ‘Counter-Strike’, he needs help in cricket, which the staff at home is ready to provide, by bowling to him all the time so that he can bat. His driver, Rafiq, puts him in place and among the fielders for the first time. Rafiq also helps him with the game. They become friendly, and this results in his playing a major role in Ashwin’s growth.

Ashwin’s cocooned existence unravels as he grows up and spends more time with his friends, his visiting aunt and even his driver. Obviously, while solving mathematical equations and building statistical models, the author retains a keen sense of awareness about her surroundings, and thus there is an authentic feel about the book and its description of a small town. The main characters are wholesome and we tend to identify with them quite easily. Rafiq, Ravi, Ganesh, Soma, Gloria, Sadhna Ma’am, Ram Singh, Mishra the SP, we have met them all in our lives.

The author introduces us to the mysterious Sacred Grove, which Ashwin sees for the first time in the company of his friends. It becomes a school project for them and soon thereafter a flashpoint of violence for the local administration, which means his father, and the new SP.

How the idyllic setting of the town in which Ashwin is the crown prince is disturbed can well be a metaphor for the nation as the venue of an innocent excursion into the wild becomes a communally charged hotspot, which is exploited cynically by the politically ambitious. Along the way, some lives are lost, much property is burnt and looted, and the lives of many are scarred. Rafiq’s brother, the physically-challenged Rehan, who had also become Ashwin’s friend, is also killed in the subsequent violence.

When Ashwin seeks to understand the riot that has taken place, his father tells him: “Some people believe that other people are different. They consider themselves better than the others. They think that they deserve more than others. And they need to prove this to everyone, especially to themselves. A small problem between the two sides becomes a big problem. And then things like this happen.”

In the book, we see Ashwin as a rebellious and caring son, a loyal friend with streaks of pettiness, an indifferent student with flashes of brilliance, a nerd with love for cricket-in short as the kind of a youngster who we are all familiar with.

Ashwin’s tantrums and how his parents deal with them, the secret hideout, jealous friends, boring elders, the coming-of-age story of the book has it all. What raises it above its genre is the substratum of social tension that runs through it. Through the protagonist, the author says a lot as she explores relationships, inter-religious interaction, and the working of the bureaucracy.

The 13-year-old can see a lot of that is going on around him, and through his eyes, we see a lot. Spending a few hours with Ashwin is a good idea. You may even want to visit his world again. I do.

The review was published in the Spectrum section of The Tribune on August 22, 2010.

Please click here to read a review of Daman Singh’s earlier book Nine by Nine.

BlackBerry: The Inside Story of Research in Motion

By Rod McQueen. Hachette. Pages 320. Rs 495.

Reviewed by Roopinder Singh

BlackBerry: The Inside Story of Research in Motion

THE meaning of a word should be understood by the way in which it is used within its social context, said the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. When we speak of BlackBerry these days, we have not ‘Arundhatised’ the world with an unconventional capitalisation, but changed its meaning from that of a berry to an object that is the centre of a cult, in fact, the one that has become one of the defining symbols of business in action.

Research In Motion, the company that makes BlackBerry devices, calling them phones is too prosaic, is the best known and arguably the richest Canadian company, a trans-continental empire. It models, like Pearl, are considered to be the top mobile e-mail devices.

Talk about celebrity endorsement, President Barack Obama used his BlackBerry device for communication during his 2008 presidential campaign and became the first President of the United States to use mobile e-mail despite security issues. Marketing evaluators place this endorsement’s value between $25-50 million.

What is it that makes BlackBerry special? Rod McQueen had unfettered access to the people and facilities of BlackBerry and he spent four years meeting people. He gives us many answers in the book that proceeds in a fairly linear fashion as it describes how Mike Lazaridis family had to move out of Istanbul. The Greek family migrated to Canada. The author traces the school and college teachers, and fellow students of the founder and co-chief executive, of the company, and gives us their reminiscences as well as glimpses of the genius in the making. The University of Waterloo, Canada, became the incubator for many of his ideas and innovations. It was also an early proving ground and confidence builder for Lazaridis.

Right from the beginning, you get a feel of how the participants have collaborated with the author to narrate various episodes in their lives that have made the book readable. Research in Motion was incorporated on March 7, 1984. Over the next eight years, Lazarides hand-picked software specialists and the company worked on contracts for others, picking valuable experience and expertise.

Behind any successful entrepreneur is his finance person. Jim Balsillie, a graduate of Harvard Business School, did the financial engineering required to take the company forward after he joined in 1992 as vice-president of finance and business development.

BlackBerry’s ubiquitousness and reliability get another dimension as you explore the effort of the people who are truly gifted, daring and ambitious-the founder and his team. How did the BlackBerry name come about? A brand consultant came up with the idea, and the second B was capitalisation for symmetry! Not the most convincing of reasons, but it clicked. And so did the device.

Leapfrog, a wireless e-mail device was launched in 1998. It was launched as BlackBerry and since it was optimised for e-mail, it became a gadget that every corporate executive wanted desperately. That set the trend, and what fed it were good word-of-mouth endorsements from users, advertising, good service and innovative ideas.

The focus on the consumer is evident as we read about how the BlackBerry range has sold 7.5 crore devices used in more than 170 countries. However, along the way, there were problems, financial vicissitudes, a patent battle which is given in detail and accounting issues with the Canadian securities regulators. Both times the firm paid major sums of money to settle the issues.

Unprecedented access has given the author a remarkable insight into the people that have shaped the life at RIM and this is a fascinating read. A person with a right idea who knows that he alone can’t deliver it is very rare and Lazarides is a truly remarkable man who has turned his vision into a remarkable reality. How he and his co-CEO, Jim Balsillie, work together is truly a partnership to be cherished, as is the company’s democratic culture where much effort is made to listen to employees’ voices. Giving back to society is important and led by the twin CEOs, many company employees have funded meaningful projects around the city of Waterloo which continues to be the headquarters and the main recruiting ground for RIM.

As BlackBerry faces challenges from such powerful rivals as iPhone, and other smart phones powered with Google Android or Windows mobile operating systems, the company will need to continue to sharpen its innovative edge and deliver the best to users who increasingly expect multimedia experience from their BlackBerry devices.

Technological battle lines are drawn afresh ever so often and the army of techies at Waterloo prepares to win the battle, no matter who leads the charge of the Charge of the Light Brigade. But then, they have the advantage of having not one but two generals.

This review was printed in The Tribune on Sunday, July 18,2010

Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of Everyday Life, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door

By Lynne Truss.
Fourth Estate, London. Pages 214. Rs 199.

Review by Roopinder Singh

PLEASE, thank you, excuse me, sorry —  expressions that smoothen human interaction and become a way to get out of millions of awkward encounters every day. In our public schools, children are told that these are “magic words”, which they are, indeed. Manners matter. That’s a fact.

Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of Everyday Life

Some time ago, I held open the door and stepped aside to allow a lady following me to precede us while entering a building. Out poured three young men without so much as by-your-leave or a “Thank you”, sweeping us aside, confident in their swagger and unconcerned in their manner.

Their action simultaneously triggered emotions ranging from bemusement to outrage, to plain and simple rage-quite out of proportion of the un-civic act that had happened. A glance at the fellow victim showed a similar reaction in her too, along with a bemused, resigned look.

We had just come back from a holiday abroad and seen orderly traffic, courteous behaviour of people in packed mass transit stations, and the total absence of blaring horns. Now this! It was intolerable. It was just not fair. Why is it that we react so violently when we are confronted with a situation in which the other party acts as contrary to the rules that define good conduct and behaviour?

Good manners are basically rooted in empathy for the feelings of others. Naturally, a rude person is often taken as much more than a lout. Sometimes we even take a leap and erroneously equate uncivil with immoral.

We have a Hobbesian notion of a world without rules and good conduct and even thought we are in no danger of returning to what the 17th-century philosopher called “the state of nature”, where life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”. We want our world to be orderly where people are well mannered and courteous.

Lynne Truss, who wrote the best-selling Eats, Shoots & Leaves, on bad grammar in everyday life, now takes on bad conduct, in her book, which has been released in India now. The title, “Talk to the Hand, (because the face ain’t listening),” successfully introduces us to this delightful diatribe against the erosion of manners in everyday life. She is anecdotal, and also quotes from a variety of sources as she takes us on an instructive, opinionated and sometimes erratic tour of the manner-less world.

“Just as the rise of the Internet sealed the doom of grammar, so modern communications technology contributes to the end of manners. Wherever you turn for help, you find yourself on your own,” she says. Anyone who has to deal with an automated voice service, so much of a darling of banks, corporations and others of their ilk, will assert how maddening the process of navigating through their system is. We are seeking help, and we find that, to use Truss’ phrase, “there is an unacceptable transfer of effort.” The system is not designed to put the consumer’s requirements first, and is, therefore, frustrating.

Devices like mobile phones give us freedom, and also somehow create a situation in which we believe that we are in isolated bubbles even as we are in a crowd, we talk and others listen, we share all on Facebook and Twitter. Like the 1897 quote from The Times prophetically announced: “We shall soon be nothing but transparent heaps of jelly to one another.”

Truss does rant from time to time, and actually echoes us during our exasperated moments. Here is an interesting one: “The effect of all this limitless self-absorption is to make us isolated, solipsistic, grandiose, exhausted, inconsiderate, and anti-social. In these days of relative affluence, people are persuaded to believe that more choice equals more happiness, and that life should be approached as a kind of happiness expedition to the shops.” Rants, even those concerning boorish behaviour, get boring if they drag on. Sometimes they do so in the book. Occasionally you want her to say what exactly you should do in a particular situation, instead of just raving about it. Some examples are too British, even for Anglophile among us, and at times you long for the sure touch that was exhibited in Eats, Shoots and Leaves.

Truss, however, had touched on a subject close to the heart of millions of people who simply fail to understand the way the social order around them is devolving at a stunning pace. This is unacceptable. Tehzib or manners are fundamental to civilised societies and the last word on this must go to the American who wrote Etiquette in 1922, the famous Emilie Post: “Beneath its myriad rules, the fundamental purpose of etiquette is to make the world a pleasanter place to live in, and you a more pleasant person to live with. Amen”.

This review was published in The Tribune on July 4, 2010

Adrift: A Junket Junkie in Europe

By Puneetinder Kaur Sidhu.
Leadstart.
Pages 106. Rs 150.

Reviewed by Roopinder Singh

Adrift: A Junket Junkie in Europe by Puneetinder Kaur Sidhu.

SOMETIMES you can judge a book by its cover. The light-hearted graphic impressions of various important European landmarks, including items of food and drinks, standing out against a dark background-well, the story is like that only. ‘Life gone temporarily wrong’ becomes a backdrop. To escape it, the author wings her way to the Continent, making sure that the capital of romance, that certain Paris, is last on her itinerary.

As we all know, having friends and relatives at the right places helps, and Puneet, who traces her decent to the Arnauli family, certainly has them. Her sister gets her a ticket, the Captain of the plane puts her in Executive Cabin and so begins a journey that takes the reader to a tour-of people and their relationships; places, often taking the road less travelled by; and food, glorious food. The author’s wry wit is infectious, and she spares none, especially not herself.

Her thin wad of foreign currency has made sure that she will have to stay with people she knows, rather than hotels. Trading expertise for hospitality, she cooks Indian foods for her hosts, even though she herself likes to check out the local stuff and all kinds of beverages for which Europe is justly famous.

The account of a ‘Goa’ recreated in Germany, where “a certain suspicious odour, evocative of evenings in and around Manali, pervaded the air,” has a wistfulness about it, which finds fulfilment during a visit to Amsterdam and legally-purchased, bartender-rolled joint.

‘Mitfahzentrale’, a government-encouraged car pool service for travellers, literally gives wheels to her attempts to see more and takes her to Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Hungry, Austria and France. Each has adventures, succinctly told, and we join the author in exploring the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh, and share her agony in not being able understand them, in spite of a prior thorough reading of Irving Stone’s Lust for Life, a 1934 biographical novel on the artist.

We have a lump in our throat as she visits Anne Frank’s home and later, pays pilgrimage to the concentration camp at Dachu, the ground zero of Nazi horrors, and shares her voyeuristic streak as she traipses through not one, but two red-light areas. For a self-confessed control junkie, this junket in Europe would have been an experience of being set free, from all that bound her back home.

Even though it masquerades as an easy-read, it is a layered work and quite unpretentious. This tightly written book is rich in characters that pop in and out of the journey-Anne Aunty, Moni, Kristen, Zina, Joszef, Eszter, Sanjay, Gunjan, Kaushik, Georges. It is an interesting work, written by someone who has a good turn of phrase, and a dash of self-depreciatory humour.

Now, if only the author had not bound herself to those “cardinal travel rules” (you will have to read the book to find out which), there would have been another story! In any case, you will be happy to curl up and become a part of this journey of a plucky single woman who dared to travel alone and came back with these stories.

The review was published in The Tribune on May 2, 2010

History in the Making: The Visual Archives of Kulwant Roy

By Aditya Arya and Indivar Kamtekar.
HarperCollins.
Pages 304. Rs 4,999.

Reviewed by Roopinder Singh

History in the Making: The Visual Archives of Kulwant Roy

THE black and white of history, a rare clarity that we get with the perspective of distance in time, a feeling of connection with our past, and the nostalgia that it evokes. This book brings many emotions to the fore as you leaf through pages rich with images of an important moment in India’s history.

Images, à la sauvette or “the decisive moment”, became a modern mantra of photojournalism, in no small measure because it was the title of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s book of 126 photographs, and his long preface that provided the philosophical moorings to his pictures.

I really don’t know if Bresson, widely recognised as the father of photojournalism, met Kulwant Roy during one of his sojourns to India. Roy owned a studio near Delhi’s Mori Gate, and both captured decisive moments in the early history of the Indian nation. Roy was born in Bagli Kalan, near Ludhiana, in 1914. He learnt his craft in Lahore, and later took aerial photographs in the Royal Indian Air Force. The Tribune, then published in Lahore, gave him an early break.

Aditya read History (Hons) at St Stephen’s College, Delhi. He was also a keen photographer, and the secretary of the Photographic Society, of which I was a member too. He lived on the campus, courtesy his father, Dr V. Arya, our Hindi teacher. The lure of being behind the lens was strong enough to make him take up photography as a career, a journey that took him places, professionally and literally.

In a serendipitous moment, Aditya, egged on by his mother, finally opened the trunks left for him by his uncle, Kulwant Roy, a press photographer. Thus, he saw bundles of black and white photographs and negatives that literally made history come alive in front of his eyes.

Here were pictures of Muslim League meetings, INA trials and the signing of the Indian Constitution!

Jawahar Lal Nehru called the Bhakra Nangal Dam a “New Temple of Resurgent India”. Roy took photographs of the construction of this wonder that bring out the human dimension, in the form of thousands of toiling workers, to this infrastructural sculpture in concrete.

As we turn the pages, we see the leaders age in front of our eyes. We notice how they actually mingled with the people … and some incongruities, like the immaculately-clad delegates to the 1945 Simla Conference, being ferried by liveried but barefoot rickshaw pullers. Other feet, however, are clad in contrasting wingtip-brogues, Peshawari chappals, jutti’s and pump shoes worn by various persons in the book.

Different readers will gain various perspectives as they flip through the volume to which has a Foreword by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

As one browses through it, the feel one gets is of loving and meticulous care that has gone into this book, a design conspicuous by its minimalist approach and elegant touches, like showing the yellowed caption strips in the true yellowed paper they were typed on, Roy’s cameras and so on. Obviously, expenses have not been spared in producing this high-priced book.

Indivar Kamtekar and Aditya have provided the text that showcases this collection. Captioning such pictures would have taken a lot of effort. One wishes for more details, for example, the “Sikh colleague” with Jawaharlal Nehru on page 175 is Partap Singh Kairon, who has figured prominently on other pages of the book too. Some of the princes in the Patiala and East Punjab States Union (PEPSU) pictures, loosely titled as “Phulkian Union”, are misidentified, but these are minor quibbles.

Mention must also be made of the Aditya Arya Archive, which seeks to “digitise, document, annotate and preserve photographic archives in India.” As Aditya says: “Tales of marriage, births, deaths, mourning and celebration captured on film. Photographic archives are an invaluable source of knowledge and interest, our gateway to understanding the past and acquiring a perspective on the present, through diverse visual narratives.”

There were many Roys and each provided his own perspective and eye to recording events as they unfolded in front of his eyes. Of them, only Kulwant, who died in 1984, had an Aditya to turn his sepia bromides into a book that will grace many shelves, and keep alive the memory of the photographer and his work.

The review was published in The Tribune on April 18, 2010

Indian Persuasions: 50 years of Seminar: Selected Writings

Ed. Rudrangshu Mukherjee.

Roli Books. Pages 544. Rs 695.

Reviewed by Roopinder Singh

TO judge a book by its cover would be a transgression for whom only the written world matters. Yet, this cover comprises letters that when read together become the names of some of the finest minds in India, collectively representing a formidable intellectual legacy. Their coming together on the same page, so to say, shows the vision of the people who brought them together.

Indian Persuasions: 50 years of Seminar: Selected Writings

 Seminar is a magazine only in a strictly technical sense. It is far removed from the glossies that populate newsstands and purvey what purports to be opinion and information. Seminar, ever since its inception, has been a periodical that devoted itself only to one issue every month and encouraged experts to write on different aspects and express their views freely and frankly.

Raj and Romesh Thappar, the founders, brought out the first issue in September 1959, and kept it going till they both died in 1987. Romesh Thapar dallied with the Left in the 1940’s and 1950’s, and after spending some time in Bombay, where he was involved in films and art, he settled down in Delhi. His wife was his partner in every sense, and together with some friends, every month they brought out a new issue that provided fresh food for thought.

After their death, their daughter Malvika and her husband Tejbir Singh have kept the flame alive by continuing the legacy. Seminar provided a platform for new ideas, and it attracted the best—Nirad Chaudhuri, K.N. Raj, Amartya Sen, Nirmal Kumar Bose, and Beteille, have all contributed to it.

Rudrangshu Mukherjee, the historian who is editor with the Telegraph, has put together a collection of 60 articles divided into five sections:

1. Maximizing the Possibilities: Personalities, Parties and Politics
2.  Does the Centre Hold? Trends in Indian Politics
3.  Growing Out of Planning: Problems of Economic Development
4. Education the Nation: History
5. Other Themes; and Culture, Art, Identity.

India’s finest intellectuals find the space here to discuss various problems and issues. As we read them, we see how these articles are still as pertinent as they were the day they were written.

Perusing the volume, we find ourselves nodding our heads as the late Ravi Dayal describes Delhi as “a collection of villages, each with its own ways and mannerism, and altogether more provincial than stylish, integrated city of not so long ago”.

Krishna Kumar rightly focuses on the anti-rural bias in the Indian education system and points out that the rural school’s timetable is totally out of tune with the socio-economic routine of village life throughout the country. Robin Jeffery gives us a perceptive insight into Indian language newspapers. In India and History, Romesh Thappar gives an account of Indira Gandhi and her 19 years of rule as only someone who knew her well could have.

Reading the book, the reviewer often found himself looking at the end of each article to find out which issue it had originally been printed in. How Seminar brought out such insightful issues on relevant topics was something that one often wondered about as a student in Delhi when one was introduced to the magazine, became a reader and a collector. At first one only bought of immediate interest, then one started picking up those which could be of interest later, and soon all. For those who missed out issues, or are new converts, the magazine has an online presence and is now available in a digital format, as CDs.

One does not read such compendiums cover-to-cover in a linear fashion. One started at the beginning, which set the tone of the tome, but also dipped, skipped and jumped backwards and forward. The distinctive cover is typographical, echoing the technique used for the magazine since its inception—this book can thus be judged by its cover, since it reflects the content, while establishing a connection with the original magazine. The editor and the publishers deserve to be congratulated on putting together such a fine and relevant collection of essays. Indeed, this is a rich fare, to be savoured, mulled over, ruminated upon and revisited, much as people who have issues of Seminar tucked away in their shelves have been doing for over 50 years.

This review was published in The Tribune on Sunday, November 22, 2009.

In Search of Roots: Guru Amar Das and Bhallas

In Search of Roots: Guru Amar Das and Bhallas

Nanak Bani: Interpreted in Free Verse
By Harjeet Singh Gill.
Publication Bureau, Punjabi University, Patiala. Volumes I and II.
Pages 1,251. Rs 650 each.

GURU Nanak’s bani is his living legacy, the very core of the religion he founded. Even as we admire Guru Nanak for eschewing the complicated forms of language and embracing not only the common people but also their idiom, we marvel at the sheer poetry of his expression that transports those who read it or listen to it on transcendental level.

Over the years, there have been a number of serious attempts to translate the bani of the Gurus. The early work was done by Ernest Trumpp (1828-85), which raised a lot of hackles, whereas M. A. MacAuliffe (1842-1913) got a positive response from the Sikhs.

Dr Gopal Singh (1917-1990) wrote the first translation of the complete Guru Granth Sahib into English in the 1960s. Another translation by Manmohan Singh, which was published by the SGPC, followed soon. A decade later, Prof Gurbachan Singh Talib brought out a translation under the aegis of Punjabi University, Patiala.

Many people would be excited to know that now Prof Harjeet Singh Gill has applied himself to the task, especially in reference to Guru Nanak’s bani. A distinguished linguist and former professor and chairman, Centre of Linguistics and English, School of Languages, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, now he is Professor Emeritus at JNU, and has spent the last few years in Patiala.

In the two-volume book on bani, Gill uses the free verse to communicate Guru Nanak’s message. The following is a quotation from Raag Wadhans, Chhant:

The dirt of dirty deeds cannot be washed away

With ritual baths, with superficial ceremonies,

The only true bath is the bath of truth

When the heart vibrates with truth

When the devotee lives in truth

There is purity, there is perception

What Gill writes is clear and lucid and his interpretation of Guru Nanak’s bani introduces modern English-speaking audience to the Guru’s compositions. It marks a welcome break from the ornate compositions written in flowery language that have traditionally been used to translate gurbani. Gill conveys the Guru’s message with simplicity and fluidity and it would, perhaps, be too much to expect this translation to capture the glorious transcendence of gurbani, more so, since he is a scholar of language, not of divinity.

While most of Guru Nanak’s bani used common language, as opposed to the formal Sanskrit, at the same time his vocabulary comprised words from various local dialects and languages, which were used to express complex thoughts and concepts. It is thus imperative to get the meaning of the traditional interpretation, understand it, internalise it and then render it to another language.

Gill’s credentials as a linguist are tremendous. In fact, he is among the tallest scholars in the field internationally. At the same time he is candid in admitting that he has relied on his understanding of the Guru’s bani, rather than traditional research. Sometimes the seeming familiarity leads one astray, thinking of the word ahren as a hammer, rather than as anvil, a common mistake that is also repeated in the book.

Gill himself is acutely conscious of his limitations, and this is obvious from his preface where he says: “Being conscious of the fact that even the best interpretation/translation is only an approximation … I crave for the Guru’s indulgence, and above all, for his forgiveness, for the Guru alone can articulate his discourse in its multiple aspects of formal and conceptual constitutions … . In any case, no interpretation/translation can ever replace the sacred Guru Bani or the Guru Shabad with its cosmological reverberations in rhythm and resonance … .”

Gill’s earlier work, Baba Nanak, a revised edition of which has been brought out now, won him high praise for the free verse rendering of the life and times of Guru Nanak. Darshan Singh Maini and W. H. McLeod both liked it and indeed, it is a very interesting form, well carried out. Here he captures the essence of Guru Nanak’s life as well as his bani.

The covers of the three books take one back to his Phulkari from Bathinda, a classic he published while on the faculty at Punjabi University, Patiala, the same institution that has published these books. After exploring the world, he has returned to his roots, geographically, intellectually, and dare we say spiritually too. And we Punjabis are richer because of it.

This review of Prof H S Gill’s book by Roopinder Singh was published in The Tribune on September 6, 2006.