Shantaram- A Book Review

Books have a profound affect on me. I mull over each of them for a long time after I finish reading savoring the way a story is told or at some things that are said. And I continuously read one after the other picking books intrigued by a review or the content in the blurb. Most of the books gifted to me are about dogs. So when this gift from a colleague reached me, I unwrapped the gift wrapper and looked at the bulky book with trepidation. The title Shantaram, very Indian in nature, also did not match with the Australian author’s name, Gregory David Roberts. The blurb was interesting talking about an escaped convict from Australia who had settled in Mumbai and among several other things he had done, being part of Mumbai mafia was one. I kind of guessed the story might be about the adventures of the author. But as I read this opening paragraph,

“It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realised, somehow, through the screaming of my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn’t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it’s all you’ve got, that freedom is an universe of possibility. And the choice you make between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.”

I reeled under the impact of this profound statement. I plunged into the book. The book is autobiographical and unfolds the remarkable story of an Australian fugitive finding a new life in Mumbai. Gregory David Roberts , the author, was convicted in Australia for armed robberies that he had participated in order to feed his Heroin addiction. He breaks out of the highest security prison in Australia and escapes to India on a fake New Zealand Passport. He lands in Mumbai, becomes associated with local people and makes lot of friends. He goes with the name Lindsay. He meets a local tourist guide Prabakar, who finds him a place to live in a slum away from the eyes of the law. The slum people refer him as Linbaba. This slum is to be his home for the next few years where he runs a makeshift first-aid center in the slum. He also lives in Prabhakar’s village for six months and is rechristened as Shantaram by Prabhakar’s mother. Eventually, he engages in criminal activities like smuggling and counterfeiting, and even starts gun-running to Afghanistan. Going through a tough life is one thing, but putting it down as a book to which readers can relate to is another matter. The author’s writing career before his Heroin days in Australia comes to help. The book is also unique because it is one of the rare real stories in which a foreigner has taken a deep plunge into the deepest of Indian society’s complexities and also done a successful job of understanding the underlying unifying theme. Of course he admires Indians for what they are but never hesitates a moment before showing things that are obviously wrong.
Interspersed amid the numerous characters like Rukhmabai, Prabakar, Karla, Didier and Kader are the sweat and grime, dirt and squalor, disease and fire and extreme poverty - all narrated with genuine affection, passion and generosity. This love and generosity towards the characters and circumstances is what sets Robert’s work apart. What could have been a mere narrative of poor people’s lives is transformed into an extraordinary story.
The other aspect of this book is the details the readers get about the systems that operate in most of the world. The police, currency, gold, drugs, prostitution etc. At no point in the book they overwhelm the main story though. And the best of all are the one-liners from several characters in the book, especially from Karla and Didier, that leave you pondering over them for a long time.
Shantaram is not just a book about crime and criminals or about the slum life. It is a spiritual journey into life itself.

Rang De Basanti- Film review

My two- week rest at home post hospitalization did some wonders to me. Though I have operated from home attending office work through Blackberry and Internet, it still gave me ample time to take care of the two German Shepherd pups that have just come to my home a week back and to watch movies in my home theatre. A friend of mine who dropped in left two dozen DVDs with me. I have watched a dozen, most of them the usual love triangles, separations and coming together at the end. But for one movie, Rang De Basanti. What a movie it is and how wonderfully it is told. Indian cinema has sure come of age.

Director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra brilliantly merges three plots in the movie. The first is about a group of friends from completely different backgrounds , their bonding and the carefree lifestyle they lead. This is the generation X. The second plot is about the past, when freedom fighters sacrificed their lives during the struggle for Independence.. The third plot is the parallel drawn between Indians ruled by the British and Indians ruled by corrupt politicians today. The message is subtle at first , but echoes piercingly before it reaches its finale. The parallel is drawn so brilliantly that it neatly fits into the story.

The film opens with Sue McKinley (English actress Alice Patten) quits her cushy job in London and comes to India to film a documentary based on the lives of freedom fighters- Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Raj Guru, Azad and others. Her Indian contact, Sonia (Soha Ali Khan), introduces her to her own group of friends. They are DJ (Aamir Khan), who, despite having completed his studies five years earlier, still hangs out on campus, Karan (Siddharth), the son of a corrupt industrialist,(Anupam Kher), Aslam (Kunal Kapoor), who battles with his family which opposes his friendship with Hindus, and Sukhi (Sharman Joshi), a harmless half-wit who has everyone in stitches with his comical behaviour. Sue recognises something in the group that suggests they would make ideal participants in her documentary. Between them, four of the six roles are covered. For the fifth, Sue chooses a radical Hindu, Laxman (Atul Kulkarni), whose inclusion is not without tension, and Sonia takes the role of the only female revolutionary, Durga Vohra.

Initially the friends are indifferent to the subject, but along the way they are forced to confront their own attitudes, bringing about a remarkable metamorphosis. And when their common friend dies in MiG crash they are shattered. But more shattering was to come when the Defense Minister blames the pilot and defends the spare part suppliers. The friends plot and kill the defense minister. They then enter a radio station and confess their crime on radio and the reasons for doing it. The commandoes storm the building and kill all of them.

Without being in any way preachy or using worn out cliché dialogues, the director Raykesh Mehra turns the spotlight on the youth and exhorts it. Eventually, when we come out of the theatre , one message lingers. It is encapsulated in a line used by one of the characters in a moment of quiet contemplation and repeated in the climax. No country is perfect. It needs to be made perfect. The profound relevance of that line applies not only to India but to most of the world today. Be sure not to miss Rang De Basanti. It is a classic film without the pretensions of an art film.

The FountainHead - Book review

If a question is ever posed to me on whether any author has so heavily influenced me as to drastically alter my life’s philosophy, I will answer, “ not one but two”. When I was in the budding twenties, I chanced upon The FountainHead by Ayn Rand in my university library. The book jolted me out of my several strong convictions and had turned me into a more logical, objective and individualistic person. I immersed myself immediately into devouring Ayn Rand’s books and once I read Atlas Shrugged my outlook was sealed. The other influential author was Richard Bach, introduced to me by one of my colleagues Prabhs, when I was in blossoming twenties. Bach made me turn more romantic and carefree about life. While the fictional Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged was my first love, the real Leslie Parrish, actress in 50’s to 60’s and soul mate of Bach immortalised through his novels, was my second and still going strong. Though both Bach and Leslie have broken my heart and a million others by calling it quits in 1999 after being soul mates for more than 20 years.

While I have re-read several books of Rand over the years, The FountainHead was one exception. The reason being that somewhere during the late 80’s, the book lost the first few pages. That has put me off from the book as I always read a book starting from the author’s foreword. I was also reluctant to buy the book again hoping that I will be able to retrieve the lost pages. Two-and-a-half decades later, when I realised Bach’s magic was not working in being able to retrieve the lost pages, I bought a freshly printed book a week back.

It is amazing that The FountainHead was published in 1943, weaving the main characters around the philosophy of objectivism, which even now several consider as a radical philosophy. The novel is about how individualism is a corner stone of human life and how the creator’s ego has to be taken care of. Howard Roark, an architect and the protagonist of objectivism is a creator par excellence. The heroine Dominique is his mirror ego. Roark lives his life on his own terms. Completely unpretentious by nature, he neither humbles nor gratifies himself. His work speaks for him. He is neither driven by compliments nor is flattered by a compliment. However, the world around him misinterprets the ego of this creator as arrogance. The world is sometimes too happy to celebrate the fall of a hero, who stands for what he believes. Even in the most extreme hardships, Roark doesn’t compromise on what he believes is right. This is the battle we all face every day of our lives and most of us all too soon cave in and hold on to self made justifications.

The main antagonists of objectivism are Ellsworth Toohey and Peter Keating. Ellsworth is the man who had identified the means to control and gain power by manipulating men. He uses the pretension of altruism to form a community of the weak minded second raters. He requires more and more power by breaking men. He instinctively senses and quashes the force of individuality in men. Individuality is something that he considers a threat to the society, a dark force that he detests. It is this force that he sees in large quantity being personified in the form of Howard Roark. Ellsworth personifies the society and Peter Keating the immoral second rater.


Peter Keating is that smart boy who is admired for being successful right from childhood. But he is never true to anybody, including himself. He needs somebody to help him make decisions as he is always unsure about what he wants. His insecurity leads him to committing sins, small ones at first, and as he moves on the ladder of success, he ruthlessly tramples on many people to reach his objective.

In the end Howard Roark triumphs.

The novel usually jolts people who feel the idea or philosophy behind the book, Objectivism, selfish. But as one thinks deeply and rationally it makes perfect sense. When we look at history, it is those people who defied authority, society and conventional thinking and who stood by their ideals and what they believed is right even at the prospect of death, it is those people who have charted the progress of humanity to a better future. Charles Darwin, Galileo, Isaac Newton, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Bill Gates, Gorbachev, are some of the examples who stood fast in what they believed and caused a revolution in the progress of humanity. While every person cannot become a Gandhi or Gates, if the philosophy of objectivism is embraced by all, it can make the world and the workplace a better place.

Being a second rater or follower is not a sin. Lack of originality is also not a sin. But lack of originality with lack of integrity and contempt for the creator is an unpardonable sin.

This novel can change your life—for the good, as it has changed mine.

Gandhi - Film Review

I was channel surfing on the Republic Day and noticed some DD channel telecasting the movie Gandhi. I eagerly selected the channel but alas, it was the Hindi dubbing version. I was disappointed as my proficiency in the language is limited to comprehending Amitabh Bachan’s dialogues in Zanjeer. My disappointment has not come from not being able to watch the movie. I have watched it more than a dozen times. The movie is such a top of the charts one, not only in production excellence but also in brilliantly portraying one of the greatest leaders this World has ever seen, that you do not want to miss any opportunity to watch it again and again. So I have settled for the DVD and my home theatre, watching the movie yet again. Even on the Nth time, the movie does not fail to move me emotionally and mesmerize me for its production brilliance.


The movie is a biography of Gandhi, compressing half-a-century into a three hour powerful, dramatic and quite authentic epic. In his screen debut, Ben Kingsley is incredible as Gandhi. He actually resembles Gandhi with make-up and he portrays the character with great sensitivity. The film essentially highlights Gandhi's work in South Africa in the early part of the 20th Century in which he effectively frustrated and thwarted the British in many of their discriminatory policies of governance, and then his long non-violent crusade for independence in India.

There are several scenes that are brilliantly filmed. The Dandi march is one of them. The amazement of the British at Gandhi’s plans to march to Dandi to make mere salt and the way the march infuses a fervour among people are excellently filmed. The Jallianwala bagh massacre is another. General Dyer’s casual remorseless remarks to the inquiry committee infuriate every Indian and portray the ruthlessness of the British in brutally suppressing even peaceful demonstrations. The episode of Gandhi in Hunger Strike ( Satyagraha) to bring some sanity to the frenzied mobs killing each others on religious basis during the post Independence riots in Calcutta and the city coming to senses after a week brings tears to our eyes. The greatness of the man in influencing millions of blood-thirsty frenzied people just by his hunger strike comes out starkly.


The director Richard Attenborough has not deviated from history to make any character lively and yet he has made the film into one of the most acclaimed films. It will be hard for anyone to surpass Kingsley's performance as the incarnation of a famous person. He deservedly won an Oscar for his performance as did the picture as best picture.

On this day January 30th , when this greatest man was assassinated by a religious fanatic let us all recommit ourselves to nurturing religious harmony and respect to diversity in our children.

Papillon- Book Review

I read some books again and again. Not immediately though. Re-reading is done once every few years. I am always surprised to find some new insight even when I am reading it for the 4th or 5th time. Must be because as you age you mature like wine and things that you would skip with out a thought five or ten years back would hold you by neck and shake you now. Or it could be that I am a slow learner.

So when I read Papillon , ( someone who claims to have known French told me that it is pronounced with both LL s and N silent) may be 5th or 6th time after I bought the book some time after the movie with the same name was released late 70s, the extra-ordinary character of Papillon gets revealed more and more. The strong will to survive at any cost and break free from the inhuman French penal system, the goodness of the person not to succumb to the wild pleasures and passions of convicts in prisons, always standing for his friends and helping them even in life threatening situations, perseverance, endurance and never never even for a moment neglecting his goal- the Break. The character was portrayed brilliantly in the film by Stev Mcqeen as Papillion and Dustin Hoffman as his friend Dega.

This book hits the reader real hard. Right from the opening line ""It was a knock out blow— a punch so overwhelming that I didn't get back on my feet for fourteen years...".Papillon is a real life account of the author Henri Charriere ( in the picture here) who was wrongly sentenced for a crime he didn't commit, when he was 25. The book is an account of the years he has spent in French Guiana and the attempts to escape. In one attempt he sails a small boat along with his two friends more than a 1000 miles and reaches Trinidad and Columbia. As fate would have it, he is handed back to French authorities who puts him back in French Guiana, this time in a solitary confinement . His story describes the nine escape attempts he made from jail, finally securing his freedom in Venezuela. The suffering and anguish that he endures during his 13 years in captivity leaves the reader breathless and in awe of the courage this man possessed. You finish reading Papillon and you put the book down feeling that anything is possible.

The Road- A book review

Cormac McCarthy !! Never heard of him, was my first reaction when the book The Road was presented to me by my teen daughter, Monica. I flipped through the pages and was further disappointed as there were one-liner long conversations and more than necessary gaps between paragraphs. I was sure it was a ploy by the publisher to make the book look bulky enough to attract potential buyers while on travel. Monica was anxious that the precious euros she had spent on the book at a Paris airport did not rouse my immediate interest. I could not have been more wrong in my assumptions. What a book it is. And what a writer McCarthy is. I have never come across any writer better than McCarthy who can write prose that sounds like poetry.

The Road is a tale of a boy and his father stumbling across the cold, wretched, wet, corpse-strewn, ashen landscape of a post-apocalyptic world, six or seven years after a horrific disaster, probably a nuclear war, which incinerates most of the humans and the landscape that might once have been America. We follow father and son as they walk , pushing a shopping cart, scavenging through empty houses and gutted cities, hiding and running away from gangs reduced to cannibalism and sub-human madness. Their destination is South. The father has just two bullets in the gun for their protection or for killing themselves.

Neither the man nor the boy is given a name. They are referred as “the man” and “ the boy”. The tenderness between them and constant haunting fear gives an animal urgency to their long march. McCarthy maintains the pace by keeping each scene barely more than a paragraph long. And the gaps between paragraphs can be a gap of a few minutes to few days. This has given the book a raw power and rhythm, as if the book was not composed of sections but stanzas in a poem. Every time father or son moves more than a few feet away from the other, a panic intrudes as we read. It is the tense chord of the lost child suspended in our heart, the worst thing about to happen, and McCarthy does it again and again. Few will be able to read The Road without running to hold their own children close. The mother of the boy is only in the memories of the man. The scene is not described but it is implied that she committed suicide losing her will to go through the horrors of the new world.

As we read, we are constantly reminded of the lost human world. All the lost possessions of the human race litter the pages of this novel as garbage and junk. It is haunted by the constant memory of the world before the apocalypse. The shell of that world is still partially there, empty houses and stores and other structures. Highways, bridges, railroad tracks are all still there and may still be there, as the man explains to the boy, for hundreds of years to come. But the human world, the world that created those objects, is wholly gone.
There are other humans too on the land. They appear as wrecks stumbling along the road, or bands of refugees marching military style with yoked slaves in tow, or a small family group that locks up refugees in the basement and cannibalizes them one by one. These are the “bad men.” The boy often asks his father who the good and the bad men are. He is worried by some of the acts his father has committed. The father kills a man who holds a knife to the boy’s throat, and he refuses to give food to various people they pass. He refuses because he wants to ensure his son’s own survival, and they have nothing to share.
The man has no idea what he and the boy will do when they reach the South. He doesn’t expect to be rescued, to find “good” people who will take him and the boy in. Every human being they run across is a danger, to be avoided. Moreover, the man is ill. He coughs up blood, and over the course of the novel he weakens. He knows he is going to die and the boy knows that too. The man knows the boy will outlive him and at first he thinks about killing the child to save him from the horrors of the new world, but ultimately he knows he cannot kill the boy, even out of love. He loves the boy too much.
Finally they reach the coast and then South. The man dies and the boy is taken in by a family. Despite all the despair and pessimism, The Road ends on a note of muted optimism.
The novel is a warning to the World that our own recklessness may destroy everything, not just in the materialistic sense but also in the Spiritual sense.

Banker To The Poor - A book review

The book Banker To The Poor by Muhammad Yunus, a Professor of Economics in Bangladesh shatters several myths surrounding the principles of banking. Yunus has dedicated his life to make his vision a reality. With unstinted commitment to his vision, he has made the poorest of the poor in Bangladesh improve their economic status through micro-credit. Started in 1983, Grameen Bank established on the principle of credit as a basic human right and the concept of collateral to a loan favours only a few privileged, the bank now disburses 2.5 billion dollars of micro-loans to more than two million families in rural Bangladesh. Ninety-four percent of the clients are women and repayment rates are near 100 percent. Around the world, micro-lending programs inspired by Grameen are blossoming, with more than three hundred programs established in the United States alone.

Muhammad Yunus also exposes the International Donor Institutions way of functioning and how they only feed the International consultants, suppliers and donor agency officials. The book is also Muhammad Yunus's memoir of his life from childhood to adulthood and how he decided to change his life in order to help the poor and the challenges he has faced in establishing Grameen Bank. He practically dispelled the myths associated with giving credit to the poor. The commercial banks always insist on collateral and suspicious that poor will not repay and so do not extend loans. Truth is the reverse. It is the rich who cheat the banks by not repaying loans claiming their industrial units have become sick. This also very well applies to India where 40 billion USD was written off by National banks as bad debts by industrial units. For Muhammad Yunus, it is a crusade in "putting homelessness and destitution in a museum so that one day our children will visit it and ask how we could have allowed such a terrible thing to go on for so long." The definitive history of micro-credit direct from the man that conceived of it, Banker to the Poor is necessary and inspirational reading for anyone interested in economics, public policy, philanthropy, social history, and business. And above all to understand poverty and how the Poor desperately want to come out of it to have Roti, Kapada, Makan ( Food, Clothing and House) all 365 days.

The World Is Flat

Though I had this book presented to me over a year ago at a corporate event, I had put it down after 10 pages. Recently, I had an opportunity to attend a lecture by Friedman and this has kindled my interest in the book. However, in the end his 45 minute address was far more interesting than the 450 page book. The book excites the reader for a moment with insights and the next moment frustrates as the narrative loses the focus.

Friedman basically is a cheerleader for globalization. Friedman writes that the world has now entered the era of "Globalization 3.0. The Globalization 1.0, which ran from 1490 until 1800 and was driven by mostly European countries through colonization by force and Globalization 2.0 starting 1900 was led by US multinational companies driven to look abroad for markets and labor. That has ended around 2000, replaced by the individual of every race and country with the aid of global fiber-optic network that has made us all next-door neighbors -- connecting, competing, collaborating.

In particular, Friedman is obsessed with one of the greatest recent economic phenomena- the outsourcing of services and information-technology work to India. However, Friedman over estimates its novelty. Globalization or level playing field ( flat world ) is not new. Manufacturing outsourcing to China, supply chains from diverse countries has been in vogue for the last 2 decades. Like wise the start of Dell from scratch taking on the mighty IBM, or Apple’s i-pod that has swept away all the personal audio players from market have been possible because of the level playing field only. What must have intrigued Friedman to make this journey to India is to understand how can a Jerry Rao, Azim and the like from a Third World country could have been an international success. Friedman has been Foreign affairs columnist of New York Times for long and we can understand the reason for his dismay at suddenly discovering outsourcing to India and China will affect the western economies.

If one can bare with the emphasis on first person ( the “I” in the key board must have worn out) and at times dragging monologue, the book will be lively and provocative to all those who remained locked up in a cup board for the last decade.

The Bourne Ultimatum- Film review

The Bourne Ultimatum is the last of the Bourne trilogy by the author Robert Ludlum. The first book Bourne Identity and the second Bourne Supremacy were also best sellers and adapted as films with the same titles.

But this last film of the trilogy directed by Paul Greengrass is the ultimate in film making. The full affect of the film is felt only after coming out of the theatre as throughout the entire near two hours of the film, one's heart throbs in the throat. Even the comfort of an automatic full reclining sofa seat with a liveried waiter at my elbow in one of the most luxurious cinema halls in Melbourne could not stop me from just sitting at the edge of the seat completely gripped unmindful of the luxury pervasive all around. It is a classic film in the action genre and will certainly be regarded as one of the best action films ever produced.

Matt Damon as Jason Bourne is terrific consumed by his intense desire to find out about those who have turned him into a soul less killer machine. He closes on the Treadstone group with the help of a clue from a journalist. But Bourne encounters hit men who are hell bent on snuffing out any one who comes into contact with him. The action scenes are breath taking and Paul Greengrass uses camera in a very novel way to make the fight sequences chaotic but at the same time giving a feeling to the viewer of being there as a part.

Though the book came out long before the Patriotic Act of the US, the story line jolts us to the stark reality of what happens when a rouge intelligence agency usurps power to order assassinations and sanction torture with no questions asked, all in the garb of protecting its citizens. When the CIA investigator asks the Treadstone director where and when it will end, the director replies, “ when we have won.”

The film ends with the agency being exposed to the Senate.

The film is a masterpiece.

Everyone Loves A Good Drought- Book review

The book Everyone Loves A Good Drought by P Sainath was first published in 1996 and was reprinted several times later. I bought the book only a few weeks back. As I began to read, I was numbed to the point of depression. The book is a compilation of articles Sainath penned during 1992 , when on a Times of India fellowship he has toured some of the poorest districts in the country to know how the poorest of the poor citizens of free India eke out a living in rural areas. While each article focuses on an individual or a small group, it becomes clear to the reader that there are millions and millions of people in villages under similar conditions. Sainath takes head on the myth being spread by the government and the media that poverty is at least receding in India. Sainath dispels the myth in this compelling account of the realities of rural poverty. In a style that avoids sensationalism and sticking to the facts through well-researched accounts of the living conditions of the majority of Indians, Sainath brings out the apathy, idiocy and gross injustice of the government machinery to the open. And the incredible courage with which the poor battle to lead a life with dignity.

Everybody Loves a Good Drought is full of insights into what is wrong with existing development processes in highly inequitable poor societies. The book also has occasional sprinklings of “what went right” experiences. The book is divided into sections and each article is a story. There is a story of a super hi- tech coal mining project in one of the most backward regions- Godda in Bihar, which creates jobs for not more than 1300 people- many of them from outside the region. Meanwhile, the foreign consultant, a Canadian MNC, has been involved in transactions worth Rs. 645 crores, out of the total outlay of Rs. 966 crores. The mine destroys the lives of people living in 12 villages. Another article brings out how in a loan mela cows were given to a tribe not realizing that the tribe does not consume milk products at all but consumes beef. The cows ended up as dinner and the members of the tribe in a life long debt trap.

Then there is the case of the residents of a village called Chikpaar. The village was first acquired in 1968 for the MiG jet fighter project for Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). The 500 families were evicted and they moved to another location (on the land they owned themselves) and resettled there, nostalgically naming the new village as Chikpaar. In 1987, the families were evicted again for the Kolab multi- purpose project. The villagers again resettled at another place. However, they received eviction notices for the third time for another development project. Needless to say, the displaced persons were paid a pittance as compensation that too after several years.

Then there is this incredible story of villagers being evicted every time the army conducts a firing exercise and paid one rupee fifty paise a day, that is less than 5 cents a day for the pains. A government official himself demands from the author: “What if residents of Malabar Hill in Bombay have to evacuate each time the navy has an exercise ? And are paid Rs. 1.50 a day for their pains ? This is happening here because the people are tribals. Since this is a backward, cut- off region.”

Sainath also exposes the politics in declaring an area as drought hit and the political-bureaucratic-contractor nexus in cornering the drought relief funds.
There are stories upon stories like these- Sainath has captured an entire landscape of people. Through story after story , the book attempts to correct the `event' approach which the majority of the media, government and society at large take to view India's problems simplistically as singular aberrations, rather than taking a broader `process' approach, which looks less at immediate causes.

Finally the book is a scathing indictment of the educated elite in this country. The Indian elite, specially the middle class, which has climbed the ladder of opportunities and prosperity that come with this very ‘development’, has kicked the ladder. In other words, the middle class has climbed on the heads and shoulders of the poor in India, and has forgotten them.

A must read book.

Palagummi Sainath is the son of India's former President V V Giri’s daughter and has dedicated his time to reporting on rural issues.

Flags of Our Fathers- A review

I have grown up on Clint Eastwood in adolescence and later when a little bit matured admired Speilberg. So when the two blend their cinematic creative juices, nothing could stop me from viewing the film – Flags of Our Fathers.

Flags of our Fathers follows the lives of three surviving members who raised the American flag in 1945 a second time atop a hill in a tiny island Iowa Jima and how the government used these three individuals and the media to sell war bonds to the American public. The film is very critical on the way war is sold to the public.
The film depicts war scenes to make the viewer understand that there's nothing glorifying about killing or to be killed on the battlefield. The only thing that matters is that you protect your friends in the battlefield and that they protect you. One of the characters, Ira Hayes , the native American ( Indian) says in the film, “ They fight for their country but they die for their friends.”
Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford and Adam Beach played by John "Doc" Bradley, Rene Gagnon and Ira Hayes respectively were partly responsible for the second American flag raising that graced newspapers and magazine covers all over the world.The photograph has become an iconic image of hope and American victory in WWII. But hold your breath- it is literally stage managed. When US marines took over the Island Iowa Jima in the Pacific off Japan in 1945 after a fierce and brutal battle , the American flag was raised on top of the hill. The flag was small and not imposing. So the commander sends a larger flag later and Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal snapped off this shot when the flag was being raised a second time. The photograph was all over the front pages of the US newspapers. The US government quickly sizes up the nations’s mood and parades the surviving members of the flag raisers in a cross-country tour to sell war bonds.
But the applause for heroism showered upon the three men is at odds with their own personal realizations that thousands of real heroes lie dead on Iwo Jima, and that their own contributions to the fight are only symbolic and not deserving of the accolades heaped upon them. Each of the three must come to terms with the honors, exploitation, and grief that they face simply for being in a photograph.

Clint eastwood uses flashback such extensively that one gets sometimes confused. The film is not an anti-war film but comes close to that genre.

Review of eimona, a novel by GB Prabhat

eimona- a novel by GB Prabhat

Review by Ramana Dukkipati


Religions have doctrinized it. Philosophers have theorized it. Physicists have formulized it.
It is “ Every thought and every action, however minor it may be, will have a bearing in the future somewhere, someplace.” And mathematicians have proved it. ( Norma McCorvey, a woman from Dallas won a case on her right to abortion resulting in a sharp decline of crime in New York 20 years later. Source-Freakonomics)

GB Prabhat through his latest novel eimona has changed the future. Irrevocably. By making his readers pause and ponder.

What is eimona? I scurried to look up in a dictionary but couldn’t find it. Puzzled I was that an author gave a title that has no meaning. I started reading the book sometime around 9 in the night and when I leaned back closing the book, it was 2 am. It was a gripping tale told in a racy style with pungent satiric humour. It is a tale about all around us, about all of us- the new age kids in the new age economy who are the new age economy multi-millionaires in young urbane India, whose fortunes and personal wealth obscenely rises and falls everyday inexorably linked to the stock market ticker tape.

So what is eimona? It is a world that is topsy-turvey, where the normally abnormal is normal and the normally normal is abnormal. When marriages are solemnized with lawyers drawing up contract papers on property, when husband and wife need to have separate bed rooms with a connecting door because each needs his or her own space, when men and women who would have been called debauchers and sluts for frequently changing sex partners are now called liberated single men and women, when visiting a shrink becomes common as visiting a dentist, when a child wanting to watch nature, play snakes&ladders or chess and not showing interest in online chats or computer games is considered a problem child and is diagnosed as suffering from anomie, well… that is the world of eimona- the reverse of anomie, an affliction where the social interaction is markedly different from the normal social norms. So when the normal social norms are abnormal, that is the world of eimona. It is not somewhere-over-the-horizon-future menacingly racing towards us. It is the present – pervasive all around us.

The Protagonist of the novel Subbu, an 80 year old, watches with amusement and dismay this present day world of eimona. He lives in Chennai with his grandson Bharat and his beautiful wife Indu, both young and working in Multi-national companies and their 8-year-old daughter Maya. Bharat is always indecisive like a Buridan’s ass which died of starvation because it couldn’t decide which bale of hay it wants to eat. Indu is strong willed and a winner always. Both Bharat and Indu have stock options, earn more than 150000 dollars each in salary. They watch everyday their stock price and calculate the wealth , not the combined wealth of both but each individual’s wealth. Maya is full of childhood innocence and is attracted to nature, loves to play chess and snakes and ladders and dislikes chatting online or playing games on computers. So she is diagnosed by a shrink as suffering from anomie. Subbu fiercely tries to protect her. The author ends the book with a brilliant twist.

The author’s views on free markets, the poor , capitalism are aired through Subbu. The principle pillar of capitalists’ and free economy protagonists’ theory and practice that rewards will be proportionate to the value people create and inequality is the natural result, Subbu asks, “ so what happens to people who begin in capitalism with nothing in their pockets?”

The author warns of the chilling effects of inequality if not addressed urgently. The oft repeated remark of the new age economy millionaires is that we earned our wealth lawfully. We pay taxes on every rupee we earned. We have a right to possess it. We are responsible citizens. The police must protect us. To this a police man asks Indu how many are rich and how many are poor in this country. Will all the policemen and soldiers be enough to protect the rich from the poor. How about people who created free market? Are they responsible? How about availability of quality education only to the rich? Is that very responsible.?

The book makes the readers reflect about themselves and an urge to slow down in this maddening race to success and prosperity overwhelms.

A must read book.

The Birth of a Nation- A Review of Condemnation

The film Birth of a Nation is acclaimed as one of the 100 best Hollywood films ever produced. It was produced by D W Griffith in 1915. With great difficulty and months of search, I finally got hold of a DVD of the film. As I watched the film, I felt revulsion and anguish at the unadulterated racism, portraying the Afro-Americans as lustful rapists and looters and glorifying the Ku Klux Clan.

Birth of a Nation is an adaption of Thomas Dixon’s novel, The Clansman. Technically, the film is a masterpiece considering it was produced in 1915. Griffith’s editing is flawless and his use of camera was very novel. He has alternated close-ups and long-shots from varying camera angles and use of frames gives the film a classic touch. It is a silent film. The film is a testimony to Griffith’s genius, but alas a diabolical genius. Like Nazis, who have used films to raise the anti-semitic feelings of dominant population resulting ultimately in genocide, Griffith too tries to raise the passions of Southerners against the Blacks.

The film begins with the tale of Phil and Tod Stoneman of Pennsylvania who are visiting their school friends, the Camerons of Piedmont, South Carolina. A love affair develops between the Stonemans and the Cameron’s sisters. These love affairs are interrupted by the Civil War. The Camerons boys join the Confederate army while the Stoneman boys join the Union army. It is during the war that the younger Camerons and Tod Stoneman are killed. After the war, the father of the Stoneman’s is elected to Congress and “agitates for the punishment of the South.”
The Reconstruction period starts. From here on Griffith portrays the Negro characters as hooligans, looters and rapists. He tries to convince his audience that the blacks who outnumber the whites in Carolina prevent whites from voting and capture the legislature. The entire portrayal of the Reconstruction days showed the Negro when freed from white domination, as arrogant, lustful, and villainous. Negro Congressmen were pictured drinking heavily, sleeping in Congress with bare feet upon the desks, or lustfully ogling white women. But, in addition to this general attack on the recently freed Negro, The Birth of a Nation depicts in the most graphic terms the individual threat that freed Negro men posed to the South--white women! Griffith’s creation of the character of Gus, the freed Negro servant of the Camerons as a black skinned renegade who pursues Southern women for sexual purposes, represents the arch stereotype of the Negro man as “sexual monster.” These scenes were constructed to justify the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. Through many twists and turns, the film finally reaches its climax when the Klan metes out justice to the Negro militia.
Griffith will be remembered for long as a person who took his Southern Prejudices to a film and tried to instigate the Whites against Blacks.