Wednesday, January 05, 2005

NEHRU The Invention of India - Shashi Tharoor

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. -J.D. Salinger, writer (1919- )

Shashi Tharoor has this uncanny ability of bringing a new perspective to almost anything out there. Numerous books must have been written on Jawaharlal Nehru over the past five decades yet Tharoor finds something new to write about him in his almost 300 page long book and he does so with amazing finesse.

I heard him introduce this book during a book signing at Stanford and was completely bowled over by his charismatic and charming personality. His hold over the language amazed me then and it had me reaching for the dictionary frequently as I read through this book now. The book itself is a wonderful summarized take on Jawahar's upbringing and how it influenced him in years to come, his growing into a full fledged nationalist freedom fighter after his return from England, his leading India to Independence and beyond. Tharoor provides interesting perspectives on the Nehruvian policies and what worked and what didn't work for India over the past five decades since Independence.

The book also provides a lot of interesting tidbits that would not be mentioned in prescribed textbooks in school but probably played a big role in how India of today has shaped up. Overall the content is very interesting and provides for a definite read.

Sunday, January 02, 2005

Wakefield - Andrei Codrescu

The initial plot of this book looked interesting so I picked it up from the library, hoping that the book would be as intriguing as the brief prologue: Wakefield, the protagonist of the novel, is paid a visit by the Devil who has come to fetch his soul. Being well read, Wakefield knows from history that the Devil likes to strike deals with humans so he proposes to live an 'authentic' life for an year and let the Devil be the judge of the authenticity. If the Devil is pleased he would let him go else take his soul. The Devil likes the proposal and lets Wakefield go on this journey to finding his authentic life. Wakefield is a motivational speaker and travels places each time improvising what he is going to talk about. The first half of the book covers him traveling from place to place giving his usual lectures. The second half covers his travels to California from the East on his favorite Oldsmobile. There are bits and pieces where Codrescu touches upon real life issues in the contemporary world but his overall handling of the book is at best patchy. The book feels like an endless rumble strip... the author touches upon one topic after another with hardly any correlation or storytelling. It just felt great to fall of the end and put a stop to the misery!