No Full Stops in India by Mark Tully

I have read this book twice over the last few years..

I found it first in my cousin’s bookshelf many years ago and upon reading it I was quite amazed. Mark Tully’s perspective is surprisingly fresh as he wrote about the still nascent India in its 80’s. He wrote about topics that we all know about, have discussed them to death and topics that we just didn’t even think were worthy of any discussion anymore. Reading the book made me wonder how come I never thought like this. The India that Tully speaks about in this book is the true warrior that has survived carcass creating caste systems, regressive political riots, terrorism and television melodrama like no other country has. These are the same stories that we may have experienced before while living in this country or may have heard from our parents or grandparents as their interpretation of matters that roused public interest but absolutely devoid of any biases that taint our opinions.

Mark Tully was born into a wealthy English family in Calcutta and went on to work for 30 years in BBC. During his career he traveled throughout the country as a journalist and as a person who soaked in every incredible wisp of life that made India the unusual yet extraordinary country that it is. With the spirit of the country in his veins, he wrote 10 chapters about most major issues that gripped the pre-satellite TV era of our land. Some of those chapters include insights about the educated elite class of Indians edging away from the local traditions, about the Kumbh mela in Allahabad, the Operation Blue Star in Amritsar and even Ramayana, the epic TV series that took over the whole country.

These chapters bring out the true essence of India that the travel brochures or coffee table books about India fail to highlight. It is not a caricature of who we are as Indians and neither does it include any razzmatazz about Bollywood that is so synonymous with our lifestyle today. It is about who we are, what made us who we are and where is it that we’re heading as a young country without inhibitions or full stops in India.

I will surely read this book yet again as I have realized that it adds on to my perspective as I grow and understand yet some more from the vast pool of comprehension that this book provides of the social composition of my ever so dynamic country.

Read this book if there is a desi in your heart and even more so if you are a skeptic.. 

The Chemistry of Death by Simon Beckett

I read this book recently over a few days time while I was home alone in the evenings. That I might add may not be such a good idea, considering the fact that I did get a wee bit spooked out. Not that it is a book of ghost stories but it is a murder mystery that will definitely make you think ‘is here someone outside that door? Is it the gentle humming of the refrigerator in the dead of the night or just maybe little more than that..” I did lock up and checked many times over before my mind could rest in peace and continue reading.
 
The book is about a forensics expert David who thinks he has buried his past and started life afresh as a doctor in a small and quaint obscure Norfolk village. The past that reminds him of the loss of his wife and daughter creeps back to stare right at his face when women begin to get abducted and murdered in the most gory way as described in the book by the author Simon Beckett. The mystery ensues engulfing all the inhabitants of the village into a thick cloud of suspicion as the murderer had to be one amongst themselves. Would more women have to face death in the most horrid ways imaginable before they find out who is the deranged albeit conniving mind behind the series of murders that are unearthed shockingly, shaking the village out of its slumber? Find out more as I did towards the end of the book with an ending that I could have possibly not guessed.

Do "and" Die

We weren’t unfortunately born in the times of great historical unrest. We haven’t seen great battles being fought and won. No revolutions have made us think and no live performances by Bach or Mozart have enriched our ears and got us riveted. We haven’t experienced slavery and neither have we crossed deserts on foot just to see a glimpse of that forbidden face. We don’t die for love and don’t live for it either. So are we indeed as shallow as we seem? Perhaps!

We might not live in the times of great social and political unrest but ‘technological unrest’ for sure. Before we swipe our cards for the latest gadget, it is already outdated. Our struggles mount when we strive to make it on time to work every Monday morning and then throughout the week. We think and someone somewhere has done it already. Originality is rare and Google is what we turn to for guidance. Fine art, like a bottle of wine is just a commodity now. How could we possibly be profound when time is in fact money?

The era of great thinkers, artists, the men of valor and women of innate strength has passed us by to give way to us ‘Doers’. We don’t think. We do and quite a lot actually. We do work – multiple jobs at times. We do live mostly in the almost mechanical patterns already set for us. We do a lot of networking and we do win favors. We do rush almost always. For most of us, even love is not true. It is again something that we do. We are not the temple builders for they died ages ago. We are mere brick layers and that is what we do.

As is characteristic of this era, we do think a lot just for ourselves and for that exact reason I begin to wonder what my role is in this whole scheme of things. I will but unfortunately do and die too at the end. It is the ‘what will I do’ that I must figure out now and once it is all chartered out, I must do it with as much profoundness as I can afford and I must do it all. Am I too late in this realization when more than a quarter of my life has slipped away? Maybe so but maybe I am just coming of true age now. Not the golden age as I wish but the one where we do ‘and’ we die. So what do you do?