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Literary Review
BOOK WATCH
ANITA JOSHUA
93 and going strong
Why I Supported The Emergency: Essays and Profiles, Khushwant Singh, compiled and edited by Sheela Reddy, Viking, Rs. 450.
With Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi donning the jacket of a Khushwant Singh book titled Why I Supported the Emergency, one cannot be faulted for mistaking it to be the columnist’s confessional on that one chapter of his life
that sticks out like a sore thumb. But, as Singh says in a recent interview, the title was a “sales ploy” and there is just a five-and-a-half page essay on the subject that he penned some years ago for one of his columns.
Given the expectations that the title raises, the book is a disappointment on this count, for, Singh doesn’t dwell much on his decision and pedals the Gandhi loyalists’ line of how Emergency was welcomed at first because of the discipline it ushered in. Though he mentions the excesses, his submission is that the opposition invited the Emergency upon the nation with their call for “total revolution”.
This apart, the book is a collection of essays that have appeared in his columns across several newspapers over time. As always anecdotal, they cover a wide range of subjects from L.K. Advani — whose nomination paper Singh signed in 1984 in the aftermath of the anti-Sikh riots — to kissing; an account of the row kicked up by his kissing the teenaged daughter of the then Pakistani High Commissioner to India, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi.
If only editor Sheela Reddy had included the dates on which these essays were written, then it would have been easier to set them into perspective. And, it wouldn’t have been a difficult task since Reddy acknowledges the meticulous manner in which Singh’s secretary Lachhman Das files away his meanderings.
Adam's cookbook
A Guide for Gentlemen Chefs, Laxmi Dhaul and Gitanjali Khanna, cartoons by Mario Miranda, Niyogi Books, Rs. 395.
This is a book that has evidently been written for a lark; often over poolside gossip. While conceding that the world’s greatest chefs are men, Laxmi Dhaul and Gitanjali Khanna are taking the cue here from their own men; husbands who think they
can cook but….
With the help of cartoonist Mario Miranda and nonsense verse, the two have put together a cookbook to suit the various categories of men. So, there’s something here for all sorts of men: dull-brained, mama’s boy, bloodthirsty, henpecked (all chicken dishes), Casanova, toothless, workaholics, and the happy-go-lucky. Since the book is aimed at greenhorns — possibly on their maiden venture into the kitchen — the recipes are nothing particularly fancy and could come in handy to all.
Compassionate capitalism?
A Better India A Better World, N.R. Narayana Murthy, Allen Lane, Rs. 499.
Since he toyed with the idea of joining politics when he returned to India in the mid-70s, wonder why the founder-chairman of Infosys Technologies Limited, N.R. Narayana Murthy, hasn’t taken the plunge, now that he has validated some of his bel
iefs on a smaller canvas through his experiment with “compassionate capitalism”.
What ails India has been diagnosed time and again, and as Narayana Murthy states in many of his lectures — 38 of which have been included in this collection — the need of the hour is to address the malady through not just word but action. He has prescribed some solutions to the various problems facing the nation, but, by his own admission, there are no quick-fixes. It is a long road; one that is not particularly well travelled in a country where short-cuts have become the norm.
Compassionate capitalism is a recurrent theme in his lectures as Murthy makes out a case for the government moving out of all activities barring defence, external affairs, home and macro-economic policies. But the question that begs an answer is whether this would necessarily ensure the emergence of the India he envisions, for, the recent past has seen the private sector playing a greater role in education and health — to name a few — and making the services just that much more dearer.
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