No comments about Prita Goes to India (Children Return to their Roots).

5 comments about City of Joy.

1. No other book I had ever read has ever made me more proud about the fact that I am an Indian or importantly, a human being. The moving story, that the author claims is based on facts is probably based on a true one. What is truly remarkable though, is the fact that this is probably not an unusual story or for that matter even an uncommon one! It happens, more so in India that anywhere else, despite 200 years of British rule the Western had not been able to take from these people what they prize most, their dignity. People trying to live a decent life, who hope to live with at least an ounce of self-respect going to great extremes to attain it.
   
   It doesn't surprise me to know this today, nor does it surprise me to know it took so long for the world to know this. What amazes me is that so many Indians have written such bad reviews about this book. It seems ironic that a book that tells a story about the majority of Indians who are uneducated is not appreciated by the minority that are. It makes sense though. This book doesn't directly attempt to glorify India's culture, its traditions or values. Instead it speaks about the bitter realities of a ghetto that almost all educated Indians with a modern outlook likes to pretend don't exist. These are the people that Westerners mostly interact with, these are the people who want to impress India to the rest of the world, and the truths in this book are not what they would think is impressive. It still impressive none the less. In fact it is more than impressive that even at the lowest of low of economic degradation a man can still try to live a life of dignity - the kind that every human being deserves to live with.
   
   IF AFTER READING THIS BOOK YOU SHED A TEAR, either of joy or sorrow, GO TO THE PEOPLE YOU LOVE MOST AND TELL THEM HOW MUCH YOU LOVE THEM, thank them for who they are and after that thank God for the beauty that is your life and lastly thank yourself because you are a wonderful human-being.



2. "...The 'City of Joy' shall be remembered as the best account of the life of the people in Calcutta's slums; of the city's never-say-die attitude. The book presents a very emotional account of the daily lives of the poor in the city, and makes the reader fall in love with these little heros, who daily fight the battle of life to mete out a subsistence existence. The book is an eye-opener to the people who have never faced the adversities of life. The author has done a brilliant job in portraying the poor with compassion and empathy. A true masterpiece..."



3. One of the reviewers below described the book as "cardboard cut-out disease porn" and that is the most apt, succint way to describe "City of Joy". The book dives into rampant filth, disease and raw physical suffering with about as much preamble and relish as any porn video dives into sex. It is about as uplifting as self-flagellation, and as inspiring as Fear Factor.



4. One of the best boooks of Dominique La Pierre, makes you see reality as is, the acceptance with joy of the life you are to live.



5. An outstanding book. Highly recommended as essential reading for any thinking person and any person who truely cares about the world and the plight of humanity.

2 comments about A Meeting by the River.

1. Isherwood takes on the ambiguities inherent in sexuality,religious devotion, and sibling relationships in a completelynon-polemical way. Easy to read, involving, and witty, the Isherwood way. A fifth star would be deserved if the book were a little messier--it does have a slight tendency toward "patness". But that's a minor quibble. END



2. After he moved in 1939 to Los Angeles, where he met Swami Prabhavananda, Christopher Isherwood translated many Hindu texts, wrote a biography of Ramakrishna (a nineteenth-century Indian mystic), and increasingly incorporated his newly adapted religious beliefs into his fiction. Those beliefs are ever-present in "A Meeting by the River," in which the author depicts two British brothers who serve as alter egos for his own spiritual and sexual longings.
   
   The story is simple and is established in the first few pages: living near the Ganges, Oliver writes to his brother, Patrick, and reveals that he intends to enter the Hindu monastery at which he has been studying. In Los Angeles for business, Patrick, whose wife Penny and their children live in London, departs immediately to India to see Oliver, find "out what kind of state he's in," and to prevent "this monstrously unnatural spectacle of a young Englishman being turned into a Hindu swami." Patrick, however, has a secret of his own: a lover, Tom, whom he left behind in Los Angeles.
   
   Conceptually, it is a brave book, but its execution is appalling. The book is often excruciating to read, and it's difficult to believe that Isherwood wrote such a book only three years after "A Single Man," which is a tour de force of incisive prose and controlled diction. Stylistically, the novel alternates between Patrick's letters--to Tom, to Penny, to his mother--and Oliver's diary entries. The epistolary sections transcend informality into the realm of chattiness; they are freckled with conversation tidbits, pillow talk, and exclamation points. ("You deserve the best, and what the best is, from your point of view, only you can say! Do I deserve you? I would never dare to claim that. But if you say I do, then I'll be the last to contradict you!") The diary entries, by comparison, are respites amidst the prattle, but even their loquaciousness threaten to turn these oases into swamps.
   
   What saves the book from being a total wreck are Isherwood's fascination with the atmosphere of the monastery and his post-Freudian portrayal of the two conflicted brothers. (The offstage character of Tom, on the other hand, is a somewhat embarrassing boy-toy fantasy whose presence seems rather pointless, while Penny and the mother serve as little more than recipients for Patrick's increasingly hysterical letters.) The book's ending, too, while altogether unsurprising, contains just enough ambiguity to allow it to be incongruously affecting. The last few pages offer a regretfully brief hint of what this novel could have been.

No comments about Magic Bus: On the Hippie Trail From Istanbul to India.

2 comments about India: A Celebration of Independence, 1947 to 1997.

1. Through the ages human beings have strived to record moments for posterity. This book is one in that chain and records brilliantly the beauty of the fleeting moment. Enjoy it is worth every cent of its price.



2. In the United States, diversity is now loudly and emphatically promoted. It is an integral part of the educational, business and political landscapes, worn as a badge of achievement and regularly mentioned in press releases. At times, it seems that people in the United States are acting as if they invented the concept.
   Which is no doubt surprising to people in the ancient state of India. Not only are there an enormous number of different ethnic, linguistic and religious groups, but they are also extremely intermingled. It is the point of origin of several major world religions and is the world's largest democracy. This diversity has not been all positive, when India gained her independence from Britain in 1947; the sectarian riots were ghastly. Millions were displaced and it is believed that hundreds of thousands of people were killed by their fellow Indians.
   This book is largely a photographic record of the years since India's independence. You see the squalor, wealth, diversity and optimism that is the essence of the Indian people. Modernity coexists with the ancient ways; there are pictures of oxcarts and nuclear reactors. Mothers in traditional dress stand next to daughters dressed in modern Western attire in upscale apartments. People are performing physical work in deserts and there are slums that look so squalid you can almost smell the stench exuding from the pages.
   The term economic miracle is one that can be applied to India. Despite all of the difficulties since independence: wars, famine and civil strife, India has risen to the status of strong economic power. In these images you can see how difficult that struggle has been and appreciate the size of the accomplishments of the Indian nation.

1 comments about Magic Bus: On the Hippie Trail from Istanbul to India.

1. Asia's overland route
   
   Hit the road, Jack
   Jul 20th 2006
   The Economist
   
   IN THE 1960s, thousands of free-spirits set forth on the world's wildest trail, stretching 6,000 miles across six countries and three religions. The Asian odyssey began in Turkey and, barring mechanical (or mental) breakdown, took in Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan before ending up in the revered destinations of India and Nepal.
   
   Rory MacLean retraces the steps of these "intrepids" to find out why the hippie trail became the journey of the age. The original flower children, he explains, wanted to swap the conformism of the 1950s for spiritual enlightenment. Inspired by the music of the Beatles and Bob Dylan, the works of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, and the social revolutions of the time, they flocked east aboard a patchouli-scented convoy of psychedelic buses, Bedford trucks and VW campervans.
   
   Thousands took to the road, fuelled by dope and the dream of nirvana. In 1968, the year the Beatles were meditating with the Maharishi in Rishikesh, there were 10,000 young foreigners in India. Five years later, that number were crossing the border from Pakistan each week. By the mid-1970s, Afghanistan, an easygoing paradise, welcomed 90,000 visitors a year.
   
   Mr MacLean is an entertaining guide, conjuring the flavour of the trail: the Pudding Shop in Istanbul catering for the travellers' "sugar-craving munchies"; the rose-scented, bug-infested Crown hotel in Delhi; pipes of Mustang at the Eden Hash Centre in Kathmandu; embroidered jeans, ankle bells, karma, peace and love.
   
   Yet "Magic Bus" is more than a series of travel anecdotes; it raises questions about how the hippies influenced the places they visited. In Turkey, the author learns how their rejection of materialism spurred their host's material prosperity. In Iran, he asks if their "casual morality" stirred the "stern Islamic reawakening".
   
   The popularity of the overland route declined when Iran's borders closed in 1979. Yet the trail gave birth to an industry which has packaged the globe. Independent travel is fashionable, students' gap years are becoming the norm, and guide books--the route was the starting point for the Lonely Planet empire--sell in huge numbers. Sadly, however, politics has, in one way or another, put the brakes on the magic bus.

2 comments about Days and Nights in Calcutta (A Ruminator Find).

1. This is one of the most unique travel books I've ever read. The first 165 pages are written by Canadian novelist & short story writer Clark Blaise and are followed by a 115 page section by his wife, Bharati Mukherjee, also a novelist & short story writer & Berkeley professor. The book originally appeared in 1975 and documents in two distinct voices a year spent in the company of Mukherjee's family in India, first in Bombay then in Calcutta.
   Blaise and Mukherjee met at a writers workshop in Iowa, married, and lived in Canada with their two children until their house burned down which left them homeless and prompted their journey east. Mukherjee spent her formative years in Calcutta and is returning to a largely familiar world but to Blaise everything is new. The first sixty pages of his narrative take place in Bombay and Blaise is never altogether at home there as they are staying with Mukherjees parents and her father is the uncontested head of the household. Blaise's trips into the city are flights from the congestion of stifling family life, his insights into the nature of Indian family life are in equal parts humorous and informative(the family does not even know the first name of a servant who has lived with them for years, nor do they show any interest in knowing). This view of India from an outsider given an insiders access is just one of many aspects of this book that distinguishes it from mere travel narrative. His initiation into the rituals and customs and (to him)peculiarites of Indian family life make for great reading. But the best section is the sustained amazement and energy of the 10-15 page description of Calcutta(where they have chosen to spend the better part of the year in a mission which caters to scholars) as he rides a rickshaw through its cluttered streets. Over the course of the year Blaise will meet many of Calcutta's elite including its most famous(to the west anyway)citizen, the film maker Satyajit Ray. Calcutta is the major city of Bengal, the eastern most province of India, filled with a proud and cultured people, and Blaise spends many fascinating pages analyzing both its culture and polotics:
   The Bengali has lived with the English longer than any Indian, and he has absorbed him,while keeping his own soul, with astounding ease. -p.122
   Blaise begins with illusions about India but over the course of his year in Calcutta he learns about its culture and people and the contact with this world different in every imaginable way from his own has a profound impact on him, the way he views the west, and the way he views his marriage.
   In counterpoint to Blaise's description of the year is Mukherjee's. She is a westernised Indian who has married outside,and according to her father beneath,her caste and in caste conscious India that is often an unforgivable offense. The Mukherjee girls(Bharati and her sisters)are brilliant and Bharati is beautiful and her novel, The Tigers Daughter, just published to rave reviews, has made her famous in her home country. Her year is marked by equally profound realizations which include increased self awareness of her own very personal way of blending if not bridging the two very distinct cultures of which she is a part:
   My aesthetic, then, must accomadate a decidedly Hindu imagination with an Americanized sense of the craft of fiction. To admit to possessing a Hindu imagination is to admit that my concepts of what constitutes a "story" and of narrative structure are noncausal, non-Western.-p.298
   But perhaps the most fascinating part of her section is her portrait of her former classmates who have stayed in India and married and now make up the elite. These highly educated women are nonetheless stranded in their homes and live cloistered social lives atop an India which has grown restless and intolerant of the wide divisions that separate the rich from the poor. Riots and robbery are always imminent realities. The women Mukherjee observes clothed in silk saris and gold bracelets and diamond earings in their gated community of mansions in the worlds poorest city seem trapped in a world that they know cannot last. They go on as if immune(or wishing to be) from all the realites around them, a social elite with money to burn but drained of contact and significance to the greater India outside their own very high walls.
   
   Rare book by two excellent writers & one that has not gone through too many reprintings so get a copy while you can. I especially like the sturdy(always good for a travel book) '95 Hungry Mind paperback edition with excellent cover art as well as updated prologues and epilogues by the authors.



2. In the first half of this documentary of a family's trip to India, Blaise paints an anti-feminist and harsh perpective of his wife's Indian heritage. At first compassionate, Blaise soon loses his readers with his inattention to plot and chronology. His story jumps from his time with his family in Bombay to Calcutta and the present with almost no transitioning explanation while his use of Indian words unknown to his reader are not clarified.

   If Mukherjee had written this book entirely, readers' interest may not have wandered as far. Bharati's interpretation of their journey is nostalgic and whimsical at the same time, telling of her return to India after a fourteen-year absence. She often visites the idea of what if; for example, what if she'd stayed behind in India and married an Indian? What if she'd led the traditional Indian life?
   I feel a bit sorry for her story being the secondary plot in this otherwise difficult book.

1 comments about Mumbai and Goa (Time Out Guides).

1. This is what I consider to be a very good travel book. It has a wealth of information, it is very well structured, plenty of details and above all there are a lot of pictures that gives you an idea of what the place might be like.
   This book definately gave me a lot of inspiration and made me want to go to Mumbai, which was good, beacause I had to.

5 comments about Burmese Looking Glass: A Human Rights Adventure and a Jungle Revolution.

1. Edith Mirante's travel goals are pretty much similar to mine - see and report honestly, ignore travel hype, live as the locals, learn about political constraints, try to be sensitive to my gigantic country's effect on people in places where there are few American eyes. Are the people I meet in danger? Are they happy? Are they above the level of survival? Are they threatened by officials? For the reader who routinely asks such questions, Edith Mirante is the ideal travel guide. She rewrites the definition of "intrepid." She goes where no Americans are allowed, walking for days on blisters to visit Karen tribespeople, traveling clandestinely in hill country for the chance to meet a famous druglord and understand how the "Myanmar" army thugs have forced hill tribes to grow opium in place of crops. She braves Thai jail in order to push the envelope, sensing the most profound truths may lie just beyond those travel restrictions. They often do. Everywhere she manages to go, she tells us whom she sees, and what she hears. Everything Edith does stems from relationships. Edith brings gifts to her hosts. She is polite. She is properly outraged when she discovers mistreatment of the people she visits. And most of all, she goes the extra distance to return and hold her own American government responsible for mishandling the regional situation to the point of destruction. Most of us will never be able to travel to the places Edith takes us. If we did, there would be still fewer of us who could understand what we found when we got there. Since I read this book a year ago I have been surprised by how often I hear news items about Burma. What I hear often echoes the book. There are the accounts of farmers enslaved by the Burmese government to dig a pipeline for an American oil company - the farmers are now suing the oil company for enslavement in American court. Two young Karen brothers have had their pictures on the cover of a large-circulation American magazine for their desperate attempts to win back their lands and safety from the "Myanmar" army, which demands the complete destruction of all hill tribes. A much-beloved Burmese leader remains under house arrest. And, of course, American citizens are regularly requested to boycott American firms doing business with the brutal Burmese government. Burma may be half a world from the West. But it is no longer sufficient for westerners to rely on ignorance. It may be argued that increased worldwide communication allows us to be compassionate in new ways. We cannot all go to Burma to find out what is happening there. That is why a book like this is so valuable. Edith Mirante has already been there. She has done some of the preliminary footwork for the rest of us.



2. Edith Mirante's travel goals are pretty much similar to mine - see and report honestly, ignore travel hype, live as the locals, learn about political constraints, try to be sensitive to my gigantic country's effect on people in places where there are few American eyes. Are the people I meet in danger? Are they happy? Are they above the level of survival? Are they threatened by officials? For the reader who routinely asks such questions, Edith Mirante is the ideal travel guide. She rewrites the definition of "intrepid." She goes where no Americans are allowed, walking for days on blisters to visit Karen tribespeople, traveling clandestinely in hill country for the chance to meet a famous druglord and understand how the "Myanmar" army thugs have forced hill tribes to grow opium in place of crops. She braves Thai jail in order to push the envelope, sensing the most profound truths may lie just beyond those travel restrictions. They often do. Everywhere she manages to go, she tells us whom she sees, and what she hears. Everything Edith does stems from relationships. Edith brings gifts to her hosts. She is polite. She is properly outraged when she discovers mistreatment of the people she visits. And most of all, she goes the extra distance to return and hold her own American government responsible for mishandling the regional situation to the point of destruction. Most of us will never be able to travel to the places Edith takes us. If we did, there would be still fewer of us who could understand what we found when we got there. Since I read this book a year ago I have been surprised by how often I hear news items about Burma. What I hear often echoes the book. There are the accounts of farmers enslaved by the Burmese government to dig a pipeline for an American oil company - the farmers are now suing the oil company for enslavement in American court. Two young Karen brothers have had their pictures on the cover of a large-circulation American magazine for their desperate attempts to win back their lands and safety from the "Myanmar" army, which demands the complete destruction of all hill tribes. A much-beloved Burmese leader remains under house arrest. And, of course, American citizens are regularly requested to boycott American firms doing business with the brutal Burmese government. Burma may be half a world from the West. But it is no longer sufficient for westerners to rely on ignorance. It may be argued that increased worldwide communication allows us to be compassionate in new ways. We cannot all go to Burma to find out what is happening there. That is why a book like this is so valuable. Edith Mirante has already been there. She has done some of the preliminary footwork for the rest of us.



3. While I enjoyed reading this book, I was continually confused by it. I am one of a few Americans who lived in Burma for several years during the same time period. I found many of the author's descriptions compelling, yet rather sensationalistic. Was she telling a fictional story or a factual one about the tribes and political causes of Burma? Unfortunately, I came away disappointed by this confusion. However, for a reader who has has spent little or no time in Burma, the book would definitely be an exciting read.



4. I read Burmese Looking Glass about one year ago, after I had visited the Thai-Burmese border refugeee camps. I wish I had read it beforehand! This is an immensely informative narrative covering many aspects of the complicated and tragic situation in Burma, from underground pro-Democracy activists to drug lords to jungle warfare and women warriors. Its somewhere between political intrugue, war journalism, and travelogue. Much of what she reports is consistent with what I have learned from Burmese students in exile and pro-democray activists in the US and Thailand. I admire her chutzpah and honesty in painting this portrait of a horrendous and confusing situation as well as of herself. I found it totally readable, exciting, and inspiring.



5. It took we a while to warm up to Ms. Mirante. As the story unfolds, one has cause to suspect a liberal, bleeding-heart hand wringer. But, this isn't any emotive flutterer afraid to mar her pedicure. This is a jungle-tramping, malaria-be-damned, human rights activist commando.

   In the late '80's, Mirante traveled to Thailand to enhance her art career. She soon became aware of the human rights abuses perpertrated in Burma at the hands of the Tatmadaw, the Burmese government army under the control of socialist despot, Ne Win. Putting her art aside, she quickly adopts the cause of the Burmese hill tribes subject to brutal repression and in fear of cultural obliteration. Mirante courageously risks life and limb as she illegally moves among the Burmese tribes recording their stories for disbursal to the outside world. Undaunted, intrepid, unfailingly committed, Mirante catalogs the abuses of Ne Win, offers hope and assistance to the refugees, and battles valiantly to make their story known.

   Though she casts some political aspersions stateside that she fails to adequately defend, Mirante manages to write this story without recourse to the shrill and idle finger pointing one might typically uncover in such a book. In fact, any doubts of this woman's admirable pragmatism are shattered when she admits to loathing the song, "We are the World". One is left thinking that she finds the song a piece of overwrought theater blissfully (and, perhaps, all too conveniently) ignorant of life in the human rights trenches.

   Edith T. Mirante is a remarkable woman deserving the esteem of every lover of liberty. She writes a good book and fights a good fight and, for that, I say more power to her.

5 comments about Calcutta: A Cultural and Literary History (Cities of the Imagination).

1. Unfortunately, this book, and the review of it offered by Ashutosh Chatterji, is more about defending Calcutta from the western view of it than it is about the "cultural and literary history" that is the title of the book. I bought this book in Calcutta so that I might have a more in-depth history of the place I was visiting. Instead, I got a book full of opinions and one-sided propaganda. This is definitely an Indian's nationalistic view of the city of Calcutta and not an objective history lesson, as the book's title advertises. Whereas Krishna Dutta is indeed a gifter writer, she, or her publishing company, should have come up with a less-misleading title. Next time, pick up the "History of the Republican Party" by Rush Limbaugh or "The Cultural History of Russia" by Josef Stalin - just kidding of course.



2. David Foley's response is typical of the self-important, know-it-all Westerner. Tell any amount of lies about Calcutta to these people (as the charity industry does all the time) and they'll believe it. Some of them will send money to Mother Teresa with tears flowing from their eyes; a few might even pack their bags and go out to save the poor heathens from themselves. (As Foley seems to have done.) But say one good thing about Calcutta and the Foleys of the world will condemn you for being 'nationalistic' or worse. Judge Krishna Dutta's book on its merits, not on the basis of what some self-appointed Western pundit thinks.



3. It was heartening to see C Sengoopta take on David Foley with some uncharacteristic vim - despite the fanciful spelling of his surname I presume he is a Bengali. We have let the world malign our fair city for too long - we are meek and we are reluctant/afraid to challenge the west. Ashutosh Chatterji says falteringly 'perhaps unwittingly' the perpetrators have heaped insult on Calcutta. He knows as well as I do it was Mother Teresa and her extra-ordinary propaganda machinery that caused Calcutta to have become a metaphor for extreme degradation and squalor. It is the likes of David Foley that seek only poverty in Calcutta who are dispppointed to find a book which talks about a different aspect of the city. Shock, Horror! If this book gets to be known what would the Foleys of this world do? What would happen to the billion dollar Catholic charity industry which feeds like vultures on other people's misery - real and supposed?



4. One of the best aspects of this book, in my opinion, is that it is definitely not a celebration of the city and its ways. In fact, at times, Dutta is blatantly unsympathetic towards what has been - but by and large, it is an unbiased work, grand in its scope, addresses intangibles like culture, and threads together events, perhaps inconsequential in terms of political history, but definitely meaningful in making the city a little bit more than the sum of its history and people.
   
   The book is well organized, and the text is lucid. The book spans the history of the city since it was a small village to Satyajit Ray - the Oscar winning film maker from the city. And though, throughout, the book is about people and events that shaped the city into what it is today, the author never losses sight of the fact that the book is not about any of them in particular, but what they meant to the city they lived in.
   
   It is also a book of strife and struggle, of fascination with a foreign culture, of assimilation, of unlikely but not untimely great men. It is a book of nuances, of idiosyncrasies and of little forgotten by lanes in a big city. It is a book, too, of cowardice and indifference, and of hatred.
   
   The details that the book captures can definitely be captured about any other place in any other part of of the world. However, the particular combination and degree to which these commonalities apply in the context of a place make that place a differentiated, not necessarily special - for that requires a personal identification - place, & this book, in my opinion, captures the 'flavour' of the city.
   
   And, just by the way, I do not like the city myself so much, fascinated as I was by its cultural and literary history.
   
   S!



5. The book starts off with a short but very enjoyable foreward by Anita Desai. And then Ms. Dutta takes over. It is obvious Ms. Dutta, does not live in Calcutta any more (she is a resident of London). For she has that detached enjoyment given to those who look back and decide what is enjoyable while the unpleasant parts fade into memory.
   She has done extensive research and the results are gratifying. Her writing is erudite as well as down to earth. That is not surprising, as we read when Macaulay introduced English as the official language, it was embraced the City's intelligentsia. Calcutta also produced some of the most virulent opposition to the British Raj as spirit of Independence took hold of the country. Of course the City is famous for its Literary figures and of the Performance Artistes. The author gives us a good review of those. A book worthy of being read by Indians and non-Indians but it will be specially cherished by Bengalis. For them, I would make it a must read.