Akhtar's book launch called off

Close on the heels of Shoaib Akhtar's book launch function being cancelled in Mumbai, another function which was to be attended by the Pakistani speedster on Tuesday for promotion of his controversial biography has also been called off.

The launch of the book was to be hosted by Landmark and HarperCollins Publishers India in the evening but has now been called off, a communication from the organisers said on Monday without giving any reason.

Sources said that the event has been cancelled because of unforeseen circumstances.

Two of Akhtar's promotional events in Mumbai had been cancelled though no official reasons were given.

Former India skipper Dilip Vengsarkar was to release Akhtar's biography " Controversially Yours" at the Cricket Club of India (CCI) premises on Sunday.

Full report here Times of India

Controversy claims Shoaib book launch

The scheduled release of Shoaib Akhtar’s book in Mumbai on Sunday has been cancelled, with the organisers giving no reasons. Former India skipper Dilip Vengsarkar was to release Akhtar’s autobiography ‘Controversially Yours’ at the Cricket Club of India (CCI) premises. “The event has been cancelled,” confirmed a CCI official, without assigning any reason.

According to sources, the sudden cancellation may be because of less than flattering remarks about Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid in the book. Akhtar has made many controversial claims, such as Tendulkar did not have the ability to finish matches in the initial stages of his career. Meanwhile, a protest was held in suburban Dahisar on Saturday against Akhtar, for his comments on Tendulkar. Protesters carried Akthar’s posters on donkey-backs.

Full report here Indian Express

NCP, Sena lock horns over Akhtar book

Worried that the Sharad Pawar-led NCP may steal a march over the Shiv Sena in connection with Shoaib Akhtar's autobiography which reportedly contains controversial remarks about Sachin Tendulkar, Sena leader Uddhav Thackeray asked Dilip Vengsarkar to keep away from the book release function.

Akthar's autobiography was to be released at a function in Mumbai on Saturday. However, the event was cancelled even as the 'Rawalpindi Express' gave interviews to the electronic media about the book.

Akhtar has lashed out against his own team members in the book and is understood to have made remarks about the Indian batting master, who he claimed was afraid of his bowling as the delivery speed was over 150 kph. Uddhav is believed to have sent instructions to Vengsarkar to keep away from the controversial cricketer as Akhtar's remarks against Tendulkar have triggered a global backlash. Former Pakistan captain Wasim Akram has ridiculed the remarks and said it was an attempt to market his book before its official release on Sunday.

Full report here Times of India

Akhtar's autobiography must inspire others!

Now that Pakistan pace ace Shoaib Akhtar's book, Controversially Yours, is virtually assured of bestseller status, will other players take inspiration to write autobiographies? Here are some title suggestions... 

Pakistan fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar's recent and controversial autobiography made me think. If he can 'write' a book, why not Indian Test cricketers?

Here are suggestions for autobiography titles:
The Great Wall of India, My Very Very Special Story, Viru's Gunning for a Six, Yuvi's Six Appeal and Saving for a Raina Day.

The English way
At least nine cricket books were written after England regained the Ashes in 2005. I wonder how many will be written after Andrew Strauss' men dethroned India to reach the No 1 Test ranking. Some zany ideas for autobiography titles for them: Eat, Pray and Cook, It Rings a Bell, My Broad, Broad Ways, Swann Song, Waltzing with Strauss, Fox Trott and Flint off his game?

Some ideas for Australian Test cricketers: Fast bowler Trent Copeland getting a wicket off his second ball in Test cricket at Galle inspired me with this novel notion. Why not title his biography, Cope Lands a Winner? Then I saw Peter Siddle in the Australian dressing room sitting between Ricky Ponting and Mike Hussey. The title of his bio/ghosted autobiography sprung to my mind: Siddle in the Middle.

Full report here Mid-day

Akram tears into Shoaib Akhtar

 Former Pakistan captain Wasim Akram on Saturday ridiculed Shoaib Akhtar and his controversial biography, which has made several tall claims, saying the pacer was a "problem" when he was an active player and remains just that even in retirement.

Akram pooh-poohed Shoaib's claims of making Sachin Tendulkar uncomfortable with his pace in the Faisalabad Test in 2006 and also rejected some of the other allegations he has made in the book titled 'Controversially Yours'.

"I remember Sachin's one innings when he was 16 and touring Pakistan. Sialkot Test was Sachin's 4th Test. He made his debut in that series. There was a lot of grass on the pitch. Waqar and I bowled very fast. Waqar, I think, was 19 and Sachin was 16.

Full report here Times of India

Shoaib Akhtar turns back the clock!

A new chapter to the history of one of the most controversial cricketers to ever grace the game was added as Shoaib Akhtar’s autobiography was launched in India on Friday.

Akhtar is supposedly the fastest bowler that the game has ever seen and is best remembered not only for bowling missiles that had stumps after stumps flying all around the ground but also for his antics off the field which included fights with the PCB,  many disciplinary hearing and suspensions. His long run up to the bowling crease was as talked about as his driving around in an expensive sports car when on tour. He was the ultimate ‘Rawalpindi Express’!

But all this is about to change with the release of ‘Controversially Yours’. This is what he will always be remembered for from now onwards.

From the excerpts that have been released to the media, the book marks Akhtar’s journey from an economically deprived childhood, when his family couldn’t even afford new clothes for Eid, to breaking into the Pakistani team, to becoming the man that broke the 100mph barrier.

Full report here Express Tribune

Taseer on Partition and Pak violence

Few people of Aatish Taseer’s generation have experienced Partition as much as he has. For the majority, on either side of the India-Pakistan border, it survives as a defining political rivalry. For some, with its tales of migration and loss, it is a painful episode in the family’s history. But for the half-Pakistani author, who was brought up in New Delhi by his Sikh mother, the Partition of 1947 was a lot more than that.

For Mr. Taseer, now 30, the relationship with his father had everything to do with Partition and the enmity it cemented. His father was Salman Taseer, the former governor of Pakistan’s Punjab province who was killed by an Islamic extremist, his own bodyguard, in January.

For the elder Taseer, who lived in Lahore with his Pakistani family, having an Indian connection – a son born from a short-lived relationship with an Indian woman and who called India his home – proved problematic for his political career.

Long before the assassination, this and disagreements on the nature of Pakistani society and politics, of which the younger Taseer was critical, strained relations between the two. By the time the governor of Punjab was killed, father and son were no longer on speaking terms.

Full report here WSJ blogs

Elegant but limited

Aatish Taseer’s latest novel, Noon, despite being a slim and incredibly easy book to read, is not an easy one to describe. It is composed of four unequal parts, each longer than the last, with a prologue and epilogue. All the sections are bound together by the presence of Rehan Tabassum, the child of an Indian Sikh woman and a Pakistani Muslim father (similar to Taseer’s own life), although some sections are from his first-person perspective, and others from a third-person perspective.

Through the four stories of Noon, a reader follows Rehan from his early childhood all the way to the present day. A reader is walked through an evolving, triangular relationship between Rehan, his mother and his grandmother; the changing social dynamics between India’s new business elite and the decay of its old, compromised feudal lords; an investigation into a robbery; and finally the power play within a politically and economically powerful family in Pakistan. Closely observed, and finely told, the stories have atmosphere and resonance.

Full report here Mint

DSC Prize 2012 Longlist announced

The longlist for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature for 2010 was announced in Delhi today. There are 16 books on the list.

The list has both established as well debut novelists. There are also three translated entries. The five member jury each selected three works, revealed jury member Ira Pande. She said the list includes works from South Asia's cultural diversities as well as books that reflect urban as well as rural landscapes. There are two books on Afghanistan.

The shortlist will be announced on October 24 at the Shakespeare Globe in London, while the $50,000 prize will be given during the Jaipur Literature Festival in January 2012.

"I am delighted that the DSC Prize is able to provide a global platform to recognize such fine works and present them to a wider audience," Manhad Narula of DSC said.

The longlist:
Omair Ahmad: Jimmy the Terrorist (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin India)
U.R. Ananthamurthy: Bharathipura ( Oxford University Press, India, Translated by Susheela Punitha)
Chandrakanta: A Street in Srinagar (Zubaan Books, India, Translated by Manisha Chaudhry)
Siddharth Chowdhury: Day Scholar (Picador/Pan Macmillan, India)
Kishwar Desai: Witness the Night (HarperCollins/HarperCollins-India)
Namita Devidayal: Aftertaste (Random House, India)
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni: One Amazing Thing (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin India)
Manu Joseph: Serious Men (Fourth Estate/HarperCollins, India)
Usha K.R: Monkey-man (Penguin/Penguin India)
Shehan Karunatilaka: Chinaman (Random House, India)
Tabish Khair: The Thing About Thugs (Fourth Estate/HarperCollins-India)
Jill McGivering: The Last Kestrel (Blue Door/HarperCollins-UK)
Kavery Nambisan: The Story that Must Not Be Told (Viking/Penguin India)
Atiq Rahimi: The Patience Stone (Chatto & Windus/Random House-UK, Translated by Polly McLean)
Kalpish Ratna: The Quarantine Papers (HarperCollins-India)
Samrat Upadhyay: Buddha's Orphan (Rupa Publications, India)

Review: A Tangled Web

review 

A Tangled Web: Jammu and Kashmir
Ira Pande
HarperCollins India
Rs. 699
Pp 304
ISBN: 9789350291542

About the book:
Founded in the mid-nineteenth century, the state of Jammu and Kashmir brought together areas that are culturally, linguistically and geographically diverse: Jammu, Kashmir, Ladakh, Gilgit–Balkistan and what is now Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. It is in this genesis, perhaps, that the seeds of the current unrest lie. And the key to peace in this volatile region is in an understanding of this diversity. A Tangled Web: Jammu and Kashmir attempts to do that by tracing the journey of the land from being paradise on Earth to a paradise lost.

The essays here familiarize the reader with the conflicting views on history, politics and autonomy pertaining to the region, and examine the various political, cultural, economic and social issues at play. Also included are features that voice the concerns of ordinary men and women who have borne the brunt of decades of unrest; as well as commentaries on the beauty, art and food typical of the area; and photo features that capture the ethereal and unique essence of a troubled Eden.
As analysts and politicians, academics and artists try to make sense of an increasingly volatile situation, A Tangled Web offers an insightful perspective on what is undoubtedly an area of great strategic and geopolitical significance.

Reviews:
Valley of masks Pioneer
The Jammu & Kashmir issue has been with India since Independence. It would be an understatement to say that it is a very complex problem. It has many dimensions — political, economic, regional, ethnic, religious and, most importantly, foreign. Notwithstanding four military invasions by Pakistan and many well-intentioned and not so well-intentioned efforts by the so-called international community and the Indian Government, the problem has not only remained unresolved but, over the period, has only become more complex. The tangle needs to be unravelled and as the title of the book suggests, it is yet another effort to do so. Not an easy task by any means!

It must be said to the credit of the editor, Ira Pande, that she has done the best that could be done given the difficulty of putting together in a book form these many contributions from authors who have their biased views. If the object of the book was to give the reader better understanding of the complexities involved, I am afraid that has not been achieved. Instead, after reading the book, an average reader is likely to become more confused.

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Reviews: Good Food, Good Living

review

Good Food, Good Living
Karen Anand
HarperCollins India
Rs. 299
Pp 192
ISBN: 9789350291108
Paperback /

About the book
What are the best foods to try in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur? How do you judge wines and pair them with Indian foods? What would you order in Paris if you were a vegetarian? And which cheeses would you shop for abroad if you were carrying home a hamper? These are among the many foodie questions answered by Karen Anand in her collection of food writings published over the years and compiled in this informative book.

Savour the flavours from around the world and catch up on global food trends. Also enjoy the special collection of recipes from different corners of the world woven into the articles.

Reviews:
Practical gourmet guide Business Standard
Karen Anand may not know this but she owes a debt of gratitude to a learned Telugu Brahmin and a Sikh economist. Had P V Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh not courageously demolished the licence-permit raj and liberalised the economy 20 years ago, her career and this book would not have found a market, for a variety of reasons. First, a book on lifestyle and one so blatantly titled would have been considered mildly politically incorrect in those pseudo-socialist times when to be poor was glorious (at least from the politician’s point of view). Second, there would have been few takers for this book since the Indian middle class (a) couldn’t have afforded many of the good things she writes about and (b) wouldn’t have had access to them even if they could. Third, the rich would access these things overseas and wouldn’t have needed Anand’s advice to do so.

So it is no surprise that the earliest of these essays, a compilation of her newspaper articles, date from 1993. It would be easy to dismiss this book as warmed-up leftovers but the publishers clearly hope to catch the rising tide of sophisticated consumerism “at the flood,” so to speak.

Today, it is almost ironical that two men with conspicuously simple lifestyles have enabled the urban, westernised upper middle class to chatter insouciantly about sauerkraut, sushi, the travails of accessing good avocado or asparagus or Camembert or Brie and the comparative virtues of Kendal Jackson versus Cloudy Bay, all of which they can consume in India.

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Cookbook Corner Hindu
Ever wondered what’s on your plate at a sushi bar? Wish you knew your Camembert from your Gruyere? Gourmet specialist, chef and food critic Karen Anand presents the essential guide to navigating the sea of haute cuisine and introduces you to exciting new culinary territory. This foodie’s bible is sure the satiate the palate of even the most exacting connoisseur.

This is for all those venturing into the culinary arena for the first time: brides, bachelors and others new to Indian cuisine. Right from tips on how to equip your kitchen, to step-by-step instructions about basic processes to planning menus, Rohini Singh guides you through your first steps in the kitchen. Essential armour for all those setting up a kitchen, this book is sure to be splotched and stained with happy memories.

Preview: Ithaca

review

Ithaca
David Davidar
HarperCollins
Releasing on September 27

About the book:
In the early years of the twenty-first century, sweeping changes are taking place in the publishing industry and its key players must do everything they can in order to survive. Litmus, an independent literary publishing firm in the UK, is one of the companies that are struggling to keep afloat. The onus of ensuring that it remains viable falls upon its publisher, Zachariah Thomas, who also edits its most successful author, Massimo Seppi, whose quartet of novels, featuring angels and archangels, has sold millions of copies worldwide.

Unfortunately for Zach and for Litmus, Seppi dies unexpectedly; without its star it appears that Litmus’s chances of surviving the economic downturn and the unwanted attentions of a giant corporation that is intent on taking it over are practically non-existent. Unless Zach can mine the Seppi legacy for one last gem that will give the company some breathing room to regroup and chart out a strategy for the future … As he travels the world on his quest to stave off the disaster that threatens, the reader is given an unforgettable glimpse into the turbulent, exhilarating world of international publishing – a world that has rarely featured in fiction.

David Davidar is the author of The House of Blue Mangoes, which was a New York Times Notable Book, and The Solitude of Emperors, which was short-listed for a regional Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

"Tragedy helped me become a writer"

An experience with pain allows me to understand how other people are feeling

Aatish Taseer is a British-born writer and freelance journalist. The son of newspaper columnist Tavleen Singh and the assassinated former governor of Pakistan's Punjab province, Salman Taseer, he grew up in New Delhi. Holding strong views on political heirs — be it in India or Pakistan — he says: "It's very bad and an attack on talent, hard work and merit." Aatish feels people are disappointed when the society rewards a person's family connections and class. "If that's the reason why people can hold high positions, it will ruin the environment," he says. His debut book, memoir-travelogue, Stranger to History: A Son's Journey Through Islamic Lands, published at the age of 29, was an insight into his uneasy relationship with his late father. Aatish's novel, The Temple Goers was the story of an individual trying to discover himself. Noon (Harper Collins), launched recently, is about a young man who grows up trying to create an identity that transcends the one divided across India and Pakistan.
The author speaks to Gulf News in an exclusive interview.

You wrote in Noon: "The gaps in my life were too many, the threads too few." Was this an inference to your personal life?
No in that the narrator is speaking. But yes, somebody in England also said to me recently that the way my book is structured, it is as if it's the shape of the way people's lives have started to look — with a lot of fracture, disruption and upheaval.
My life has certainly some of that element in it. But it could be true of me as to many more people.

How much of Noon is fact and what percentage is fiction?
It's hard to say that, because there are always characters, models and situations, which become the origin and give you the idea for a story. But the resemblances to my life are mainly superficial. The resemblance — this half Pakistani and half Indian narrative — makes people think that it is for real. It's not. For the large part it is fictional. There's only a crust of non-fiction.

Full interview here Gulf News

Suffering and its source

Arun Shourie says he has realised that nothing can be done about the main cause of suffering, but it teaches him how to deal with consequences

.Does He Know a Mother's Heart
Arun Shourie;
HarperCollins; Rs 599

The title of Arun Shourie's latest book, Does He Know a Mother's Heart comes out of an incident involving the philosopher J. Krishnamurti.

“The book deals with the question we all connect at sometime — ‘Why do we suffer?',” said Arun Shourie in an interaction at the Reliance TimeOut recently. Shourie launched his book in the city at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) with former Infosys CEO Narayan Murthy and IIM-B Director Pankaj Chandra.

“I looked at the explanations given in texts like the Bible, Quran, Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita and Brahma Sutras. I have also taken up explanations given by people like Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Ramana Maharishi. But I have found that none of these explanations really speak up for themselves.”

His questioning stems from his experiences with his differently-abled son (who has cerebral palsy) and his wife, who is afflicted by Parkinson's disease.

Once, while meeting with Krishnamurti in Delhi, the philosopher asked him to bring his son along, with whom he would spend time talking. On a few such occasions, Krishnamurti would ask Arun where his wife was and each time Arun would make up some “silly excuse” for his wife's absence. His wife meanwhile refused to meet with spiritual gurus as her “hopes were raised again and again, and again and again they are shattered.”

Full report here Hindu

The spiffy truth fantasy

When tired philosophy comes wrapped in grand storytelling

This is not my story. It is the story of a book I have read.

It is not a long book. Some people would read it in the time it takes to look up the Wikipedia entry for Ayn Rand, even though every sentence in it is meant to be one of the eternal truths, crafted with the conviction of the philosopher, the grandeur of the illusionist, and the immutability of the artist, who will never tell in 30 pages what can be told in 330.

Many were the tests I was subjected to. I cast aside the doubts that arose from the congruency with Rand’s Anthem, where, too, the protagonist—his name also alphanumeric—eventually rises in revolt against the submerging of the individual “I” in the collective “we”. I even suppressed my giggle successfully on reading that you do not find the master, the master finds you. For my easily distracted mind instantly replaced the prophet figure in the book with Rajinikanth.

Full review here Mint

Apolitical elite class is dangerous: Tarun Tejpal

With tied hair, a nonchalant air and salty humour, Tarun Tejpal might come across as a cool dude, but actually he is quite fastidious. The man behind India’s most path-breaking journalism, Tehelka, Tejpal has just come out with his latest book, The Valley of Masks.

With an audience comprising Shashi Tharoor, LK Advani, Sharmila Tagore, Soha Ali Khan, Urvashi Butalia, Jaishree Mishra, the book launch at Taj Mahal Hotel,  saw the capital’s literati in full attendance.

Introducing the book, Sahitya Akademi winner Nayantara Sahgal sent the audience cracking when she said, “when I picked up his first book The Alchemy of Desire, people said it’s sheer porn, of course I read it and discovered a highly compelling story of obsessive love.  ‘The Valley…’  is very different from his previous books as it’s a fable set in the Himalayas.”

In a world where fundamentalist terror has become a harsh reality, the book – his most profound and imaginative till date – examines the pathology of perfection.  “I have an obsessive need to observe collective space. Even as we become more global, in an absurd paradox there’s a growing insularity – Hindu right wing extremism, Norway killings – what is the pathology that leads perfectly intelligent people down that road that seems inspirational and redemptive  but end up in a perilous place?” the author poses a rhetorical question.

Full report here Hindustan Times 

A cover story

With the advent of e-books, book cover designers talk about the winds of change

Admit it, we judge books by their covers. Books are like people. They come dressed in different outfits. Some are sombre old men in black. Some others are inscribed with the topsy turvy letters of youth. Authors of books are celebrated but the designers who make the covers are too often forgotten.

With the advent of e-books, will book covers become a thing of the past and turn cover designers into an endangered species? In the city, the world of book cover designers is buzzing about the winds of change. “I hope I get to do a lot more than just the cover. Maybe multiple covers for each book?” says Kedarnath Gupta, an independent illustrator for Hachette India. Bena Sareen, 42, Creative Designer, Penguin Books, India, adds that she is excited at the possibility of interaction that e-book covers will allow.

Most designers have chosen this field as a vocation. Shuka Jain, Art Director of Harper Collins, who ventured into book designing because it combined her two loves — art and books — too says that she is far from worried about the virtual encroachment. Sareen adds that she was an avid sociologist for many years before a chance meeting with a graphic design professor in the US convinced her that this was a profession she could pursue. Gupta, on the other hand, went from daytime copywriter who doubled as an illustrator at night for six years, to a full-time illustrator recently.

Full report here Indian Express

Speaker gets his tongue back

Somnath Chatterjee had once lamented that after becoming Speaker he hardly spoke in Parliament: “Now I only use two sentences: ‘Please go back to your seat’ and ‘Please sit down!’”. If you have watched Lok Sabha proceedings, you would understand his exasperation. But like a good headmaster facing unruly schoolkids, Chatterjee spiritedly persisted in his attempts at managing rowdy parliamentarians. Now the distinguished advocate and parliamentarian once famed for his perceptive speeches has got his tongue back and has given us a personal account of his times in his autobiography, Keeping the Faith.

Contaminated by media hype, I expected it to be a tell-all book about his expulsion from the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which he had served diligently for four decades. Happily, the book is not about that. He has one chapter on it, 18 pages in an almost 400-page book. Even more happily, that chapter does not disappoint.

This is Chatterjee’s story of the politics of his times. It starts with his father N.C. Chatterjee’s college days, curves through his success as a lawyer and parliamentarian, sweeps through Somnath Chatterjee’s own childhood and youth, his training at the Bar in Cambridge, England, and his joining politics. We get glimpses of his family life in the brief, matter-of-fact way that comrades admit to having families.

Full report here Deccan Chronicle

Balance sheet of the British Raj

It is crude to declare that Britain ‘ruined’ India, as the Congress oath of allegiance asserted in 1930, writes Roderick Matthews in The Flaws in the Jewel: Challenging the myths of British India (www.harpercollins.co.in). India is still fertile and full of natural resources, not least of which is her population, he reasons. “British rule did not destroy these assets. However, it did fail in most of its attempts to develop India, except in terms of an educated political class, in which it succeeded brilliantly.”

Tests of a modern government
In the author’s view, the British had no interest in ruining India, and levying the Home Charges could never have done this by itself. He concedes, however, that the proportion of military expenditure within the government’s budget, frequently 50 per cent, helped determine what kind of governance the Indians actually got.

“And unquestionably at the widest strategic level the imperial authorities did not need to stimulate India beyond a certain level of prosperity; holding her was enough. This was not exactly ruination but these deficiencies were enough to disqualify Britain as a guardian power,” Matthews observes in a concluding section of the book titled ‘the balance sheet.’

Full report here Hindu

Fractures in world economy

After the global financial calamity struck in 2008, many analysts put the blame on the uncontrolled credit expansion in the United States that preceded it. But E.H. Carr reminds us that complex historical phenomena are rather like an accident that takes place during a misty night when a driver speeds along a slippery road, a pedestrian crosses it, and the brakes of the motor vehicle fail. What exactly caused the accident?

Fault Lines: How Hidden
Fractures Still Threaten
The World Economy
Raghuram Rajan
Harper Collins
Rs 499; Pp 288

Land of inequalities
The merit of Raghuram Rajan's work is that he traces the many fault lines that lay beneath the surface not only in the American economy, polity, and governance, but also in the increasingly distorted economic and financial relationships between nations. Rajan begins with the American scene. America is a land of opportunities, but they can be taken advantage of only by those who have the resources, physical as well as human. Because these resources are unequally distributed, it is becoming a land of growing inequalities. In 1976, the top one per cent of households accounted for 8.6 per cent of income, but by 2007 this had shot up to 23.5 per cent. And in 2008, seven out of 10 Americans had stagnating incomes. Because of the strong commitment to the free enterprise system, the country is also rather backward in the safety net it provides for workers. But a democratic polity cannot completely ignore them, and there is something of a moral commitment to help the needy.

Full report here Hindu