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Foreign idea of freedom

Born in a Karachi slum, Sharif Barkati became obsessed with American ideas of love and freedom at a very young age. He began to dream of a public place in the city that did not follow the rules, where people would be free to say and do whatever they wanted under open skies, away from the conservative eyes of Pakistani society.

With the help of his friend Afzal – and TJ, an extremely wealthy Pakistani-American – Sharif was able to realize his dream in the form of a colossal compound on the Karachi coast, full of bars, cafes, clubs, and the people of Karachi strolling about, hand in hand.

They called it Little America.

Now in prison, Sharif tells the story of his life in a letter to his favourite novelist, hoping that he will turn it into a literary masterpiece. At once a rollicking journey around the mind of a man desperate to be free, an allegory of the neo-colonial endeavour, and an investigation of the desire to emulate the perceived superior while desperately trying to hold on to one’s own cultural identity, Little America asks the question: What, really, is freedom, and what can be sacrificed in its name?

Here’s a taste of the book. Read on to get a glimpse into Sharif’s life while he was a young boy still forming his ideas about such worldly matters.

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Little America Front cover
Little America||Zain Saeed

I kept asking Baba what that was, all the touching and the kissing on TV, at the cinema, and he pulled at his moustache, and thrusting out his bony chest—not more than five feet off the ground—told me it was just a thing Americans did, told me they would all go to hell.

I had no friends, you see. No brothers. I stayed at home and memorized my time tables and ABCs and God is Great and spoke to no strangers, because Baba told me I was supposed to become a big man. I missed out on the gossip of the slum boys, and the schoolboys (I went to a school beyond the trash, in the city, God bless Baba), never partook in the stealing of video tapes, comparing sizes of appendages; missed out on it all. I ached with curiosity, but I was a good boy, and I was going to be a big man—and that is what I became!—and I was sure it was all for my own good. I accepted the censorship as a necessary thing.

But like a climber infatuated with the top of a mountain, I was smitten, enthralled by the power those images held over a cinema full of grown-ups. I had no idea what it meant, what it led to. It was simply the coming together of two bodies, so close, so close, closer than I had ever seen in the quotidian, that fascinated me, led me to daydream in English class on a sunny day, wondering what made a

thing wrong, what made it right.

I used to have a baby sister. As I think about it now (forgive the drops of sweat that have smudged these lines) I realize that I do not remember my mother ever sprouting a belly before she gave birth to her. I had no conception of it—I simply could not see it!

On the day in question, Baba told me to leave the house for a few hours, go play with friends I didn’t have. He told me that when I came back, there would be someone in the house who would call me Bhai. I picked up my English books, and did as I was told, skipped out of the house thinking imagine that! Imagine that! Me! A brother!

When I came back at sunset, nothing had changed, except for a splash of blood on the bed sheets. Baba sat hunched in a corner. I remember Amma, like a punctured balloon tied to a bedpost, sprawled

on the mattress. She lay there all day with her eyes closed. I did not ask, and I was not told. Imagine that! God making a dead baby! I thought about it a few years later, after I’d discovered the magic present in the bodies of all women, and I wondered if my parents’ distrust of hospitals had caused the death—oh, how I fumed!—their lack of education, their insistence on having a pregnant woman pray five times a day, their backward, Pakistani ways. I know now, of course, that life is simply like this, everywhere—it just seems different based on where you imagine it from—but when I was still convinced of my parents’ blunders, it shoved me clattering closer to the idea of Little America indeed.

In the weeks and months following the little one’s day of birth, our one-room house got bigger in the mornings and afternoons, because Amma no longer walked around, humming, and Baba went back to the office. Before I forget: he worked at some lawyer’s firm as a typist—he couldn’t read or understand English, just knew what every letter looked like and where to find it on the typewriter. His employers knew as much, had hired him for that exact reason, so that he could type up sensitive handwritten documents and not have a clue what they said. He used to bring home scraps of these typewritten documents, ones on which he’d made mistakes, and ask me what they meant. I could not tell him much more than that they mentioned large sums of money and the names of the people who had it, along with several other sentences that I was simply not cut out to read. I think this might have inspired my desire to read in the following years—I wanted to be able to tell Baba everything, let him know what his employers would not: the importance of his work, his worth, his ability to affect the lives of strong people.

He worked so hard, my friend. Sometimes he did not come home till eight in the evening. On these days, with Amma having taken to the bed, I had time after school unsupervised, so I took to renting out films from Lucky Video. Baba had started giving me money for lunch ever since Amma’s sadness (Rs 10 a day) and I used it to rent out love stories, for I realized early on that that is where most of the kissing would be. With the lack of food in my body, I grew even thinner, but stopped short of disappearing, and

that was enough.

I’d bring the film home. I’d tiptoe around the house, around Amma’s slow breathing form, whispering ‘Amma! Amma!’, a part of me wishing her to wake up, the other part hoping she’d stay asleep so I could watch my movie. I’d sit next to her head on the mattress, not touching, but feeling content in the slight movement of the foam of the broken mattress whenever she moved. Her eyes never opened, and if she noticed me she did not say, continued her mourning curled up on the bed.

On those afternoons, it was just me and the TV and the VCR, and the volume turned way down low.

Oh the things I saw!

Oh the love I felt!

Oh the joy, the joy!

Sadness, too—who enjoys a mother in strife?

But children cope. Do they not, my friend?

Ma Anand Sheela leaves Bhagwan

In her latest book, By My Own Rules, that she has dedicated to everyone who helped her get through the life, Ma Anand Sheela has given a glimpse of her past through the eighteen rules she follows in her life. Here’s an excerpt from the book where Ma Anand Sheela writes about how Bhagwan’s love made her confident and fearless in life. She shares an anecdote of the time in her life when she was torn within, and it had become difficult for her to choose between the inner truth or to forget everything—her values, the responsibility, and the people in the community—for Bhagwan.

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By My Own Rules || Ma Anand Sheela

Faced with this distress, I remembered the advice of my parents. ‘Every person must follow the inner truth. No one needs to be afraid of their feelings.’ Their teaching became my guiding light. I knew that I could not compromise with the values they had ingrained in me. I did not want to sell my soul in the name of love. I could not be with my beloved Bhagwan any more. I could not breathe near him any more. It was time for me to leave Bhagwan. I trusted my instincts and followed my heart. I believed that everything would turn out to be fine. I returned all his expensive gifts, which had been an expression of his love, with a goodbye letter.

My parting caused a wave of disappointment and shock. Something no one expected had happened: Bhagwan and Sheela, who had been one heart and one soul, who had stuck together like the sun and the moon, had finally separated. Bhagwan was deeply disappointed in me. My leaving the commune hit him at the core. At the same time, he had to fortify his position in order to retain the trust of his people as many others were contemplating leaving too. Negative stories were spread about me and I was vilified. I had always been aware that many people were jealous of me and wished to be in my place, trusted and loved by Bhagwan. They had the opportunity now.

With my decision to leave the commune, crazy accusations began doing the rounds. Friends and followers of Bhagwan gave vent to their pent-up emotions over me. Bhagwan had always been a master storyteller. The crazy accusations against me were like fire in dry straw and I was ablaze. This fire became the touchstone of my life as well as of his teachings. I was accused of various crimes. I eventually ended up in prison.

After thirty-nine months in prison in the United States, I understood the essence of Bhagwan’s teachings. Bhagwan used every opportunity to train the consciousness and repeatedly created situations in which he tested the limits of our trust and love. He talked about meditation, of love, life, laughing and acceptance, all his life. These are beautiful words and very easy to live by once we are integrated in a harmonious community. Every person can meditate and be satisfied when life is going well. However, alone in a cell, in prison, isolated and rejected by the rest of the world, the true strengths of a human being become apparent. Only negative things were written about me. Hatred and contempt reflected in the faces of the people I met.

I did not know whether I would survive the next day or ever see the sun again. These were the darkest days of my life. The only thing that I could do was to find trust and clarity in myself and to accept life as it was. Despite all the hurtful accusations, my love for him proved indestructible. His teaching was like a precious diamond to me that reflected the beauty of life, without which everything would be empty and dry. Today I am aware that I went through fire out of my love for him.

**

Written in Ma Anand Sheela’s own words, read her story By My Own Rules to get a glimpse of how she negotiated with several situations in her life.

Gul and Cavas amid the storm

In this spectacular book, Tanaz Bhathena brings forth the journey of Gul and Cavas, who are much more than lovers. With a willingness to keep fighting, through pain and hardship, the two fight all odds and eventually achieve their goal. Through her strong characters, Bhathena attempts to reconstruct what India might have looked like without the British at its helm.

Here’s an extract from the book about the conversation between Cavas and Juhi, who endured a brutal marriage to King Lohar.

*

Rising Like a Storm || Tanaz Bhathena

I fall silent for a long moment. “Who else is in this prison?”

“Right now, it isn’t full—if the guards’ gossip is to be believed. Raja Amar had initially signed an order to free the cage victims being held here. After Shayla took the throne, she overrode the order, deciding she was better off reselling them at the flesh market. Didn’t make much off them, from what I hear. The mammoth turned out to be a liability, trampling half his handlers. He had to be put down. The peri she sold escaped his merchant owner by killing him in the first week. The merchant’s family demanded compensation from Shayla, which she, naturally, didn’t give. Now, apart from the shadowlynx, which even the guards are afraid to approach, this prison holds only me, Amira, and you.”

“Amira’s still alive, then.” Relief briefly flickers in my ribs. “Gul had nightmares about you both.”

I wonder if she’s still having them. I won der who’s taking care of her now.

“Amira’s alive,” Juhi says. “And she will prob ably remain so until Gul is captured.”

If Gul is captured,” I correct. “She won’t make it easy. She’s stronger than she was before. I’ve felt her magic.”

“Which is why they got to you first, didn’t they? So that they could draw her here to Ambar Fort?”

“That was my fault— I went to attack Alizeh,” I say, my guilt like salt rubbed over an open wound. “Gul’s too smart. She won’t take their bait and pay the price for my stupidity!”

“Oh, Cavas, I wish I could believe you. But you don’t believe yourself.”

In the darkness, something prickly crawls across my foot, a bloodworm that I kick off in the sharp blue light of the shackle.

“I wish I could tell her not to come,” I say.

“Can’t you?” Shrewdness returns to Juhi’s voice, reminding me why I didn’t trust her the first time I met her— why I still don’t feel wholly comfortable confiding in her.

“What do you mean?”

“You said you felt her magic. That’s very specific.”

We’re complements. It would be easy to say aloud. But the prison’s walls likely have ears and I don’t want my words falling on the wrong ones.

Juhi seems to understand. “Try,” she whispers. “Try to tell her.”

I close my eyes, breathing deeply, my mind entering that eerie, meditative space that makes my skin glow, that takes me back to Tavan’s darkened temple. I make my way to the shadowy sanctum, where Sant Javer waits alone, watching me calmly. I hesitate, feeling shy. Gul, I know, has spoken to the sky goddess several times, but I’ve never done so with the saint I’ve worshipped since I was a boy.

My tongue eventually unties itself and I wish him an “Anandpranam.”

“She isn’t here, my boy,” Sant Javer says softly. “She hasn’t been here for a while.”

My already fraying nerves teeter on the edge of breaking. “Gul?” I call out. “Are you there? Gul!”

The pain makes it difficult to concentrate and so does the distance. Barely a moment goes by before I’m opening my eyes again, my head resting against the wall where I collapsed.

“Juhi?” I whisper.

“Still here,” she says. “You began glowing for a bit and then you collapsed.

What happened?”

“It didn’t work,” I say. “I couldn’t reach her.”

And I’m terrified that if I do reach Gul, all I’ll hear in return is silence.

**

Karma—Thinking and acting

In his book Karma, Acharya Prashant answers various questions posed to him by his diverse audience over decades. Offering an enriching kaleidoscopic perspective to readers, this books traverses alleys through interactions based around human conditions, confusions and questions related to one’s identity, one’s actions, and how to take the right actions. Read this excerpt from the book on when to think and when to act. It answers a question asked to Acharya Prashant: ‘I do not express my thoughts because I am socially restrained. I am afraid of being judged. Can I free myself only by deeds?’

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Karma
Karma || Acharya Prashant

There is no more a final arbiter than action, deeds, life. What else is life but a continuous flow of actions? One finally has to give oneself the liberty to do it. Talking as a precursor to doing is all right, acceptable, but talking as a substitute to doing is evil.

If you want to use talking or thinking or discussing as a preparatory method before leaping into action, it is okay. Sometimes, the beginner needs that. Sometimes, everybody needs to think a little before taking a leap. Other times, one needs to talk to herself, sometimes to others. All that is understandable. But if one becomes a professional thinker specializing in nothing but thought and deliberation, and therefore vacillation and inaction, then it is merely self-deception. Also, I must warn you against the temptation to be fully sure at the level of thought. No absolute clarity is possible at the level of thought. Thought can bring you a certain level of clarity. It would be a relative level.

So, if you insist that unless you are totally clear with your thoughts you will not move, then you have ensured that you are never really going to move; then you will always have a reason to think a little more because thought by its very design can never be fully certain. An iota of doubt will always be residually present, and you can very well exploit that last iota to keep stretching the thought.

This is where faith is important. Faith is needed, so that you can act without being fully certain. At the level of thought, thought is still raising its habitual objections, but you say to thought, ‘You might not be clear. I am clear.’

Have you ever found thought coming to a final conclusion? That which appears like concluded tonight reopens for discussion tomorrow morning because a final conclusion would mean the death of thought. So, why would mind ever lend itself to conclusion? Thought would always leave a little scope for doubt to remain. And then, based on that doubt, that uncertainty, more thinking can be justified.

So, think if you must, but never expect thought to come to a solution. Thought is useful, but in matters of living, loving, and Truth, the utility of thought is limited. Do not try to overexploit thought. You will end up being exploited.

If you are saying that social restrictions, etc., are preventing you from enacting what you know, then you will have to weigh the security that you get from social conformity against the suffering that you get from this willing avoidance of your destiny.

What is bigger, your demand for security or your love for Truth?

This answer will determine your life.

*

To know in depth about Karma, what it means and how it functions, the ways of choosing the right action and the results that come from those actions, read Acharya Prashant’s Karma.

A delicious romance in a co-working space!

Simi is a marketeer for a furniture company.
Ranvir is an analyst at a finance start-up.

At BizWorks, a swanky co-working space, their paths aren’t meant to cross. But as circumstances bring them together, again and again, they find it harder to deny the spark between them.

Scroll down for an excerpt from this story of a sweet and delicious romance set in a co-working space in Bangalore.

*

Champak, made his grand entry— the strap of his satchel bag taut across his chest, his round glasses slipping off his nose, his sharp, hawk eyes darting around to take in everything.

Champak, the all-knowing, overachieving, obsequious, boss’s chamcha, was taken aback by the sight of Simi at work.

‘You’re here already!’ he exclaimed. He made a dash to claim the seat opposite Simi, to her inward groan.

‘Why do you have to sit here?’ Simi frowned. ‘There are so many other seats.’

Front cover of Strictly at Work
Strictly at Work || Sudha Nair

‘It’s motivating if we can see each other.’ His fake smile grated on her nerves. ‘Healthy competition, you know. . . ’

In their old office, Champak had sat a few cubicles away from Simi, but even then, he had constantly kept an eye on her and anyone who came into her cubicle. He knew everything—how late she came in, how long she took for lunch, how early she left.

He bragged about his skills, always trying to ingratiate himself with the boss and bag the best campaigns. Now, he was right in her face. There was practically no escape! Deepa waltzed in right after him. ‘Hey!’ Deepa twirled around and took in the new place, looking just as much in awe of it as Simi had been.

‘This is wonderful!’ ‘You’re late,’ Champak exclaimed. ‘You?’ She groaned. ‘Couldn’t you find another place to sit?’

If Simi called Champak a prick, Deepa called him a flirt. Deepa was the designer on the team, and Champak was always at her desk with some changes or the other. ‘What better place to see you all the time.’ He grinned at Deepa.

He thought he was flirting with her, but on the contrary, he was irritating the heck out of her. Deepa rolled her eyes.

‘More like see and hear us all the time,’ she muttered under her breath. He was such a pest! ‘Now we can’t even talk in peace,’ Deepa whispered to Simi. Deepa was right. But that didn’t stop their whispered raptures about their window seats and proximity to the break room and restrooms. ‘Girls, does either of you have a red gel pen?’ Champak asked, setting up his laptop, a notebook beside it, and three coloured markers neatly arranged on the side. Ugh! He was so irritating!

The git! Both of them ignored him and got to work. Simi continued to work on her presentation slides, thanking her stars for the charger or she wouldn’t have been able to do anything until now. At 10 a.m., they all got up and headed to one of the small conference rooms for the meeting. She gave her presentation on the new social media campaign for the Pumpkin chair. Champak interrupted her on almost every slide with questions and suggestions for improvement.

‘I think green will look better for that message,’ or ‘A stronger punchline would make a better impact!’

She tried to keep her cool and not get pulled into the black hole of his questions. Every time Champak opened his mouth, she felt a tightness in her belly, as if he was going to expose a mistake that she’d inadvertently made and make her look like a fool in front of everyone. Sometimes their boss, Nandan, picked up on Champak’s suggestions, but today, it looked like even he wasn’t in the mood for interruptions. ‘Let her complete her presentation, Champak!’

Nandan said finally. That made Champak shut up through the rest of the slides.

**

Sudha Nair won the Amazon KDP Pen to Publish 2017 contest for her debut novel, The Wedding Tamasha—a tale about love, family, values, and traditions.

 

A journalist’s janata journal

Vir Sanghvi’s has been an interesting life – one that took him to Oxford, movie and political journalism, television and magazines – and he depicts it with the silky polish his readers expect of him. In A Rude Life, he turns his dispassionate observer’s gaze on himself, and in taut prose tells us about all that he’s experienced, and nothing more for he’s still a private man.

He unhurriedly recounts memories from his childhood and college years, moving on to give us an understanding of how he wrote his biggest stories, while giving us an insider’s view into the politics, glamour and journalism of that time

Here’s a glimpse into his book.

~

 

A rude life FC
A Rude Life || Vir Sanghvi

As Advani had predicted, the BJP did well but not as well as Janata. It got 85 seats while Janata got 143. (The Congress got 197, far more than any other party but around a hundred seats short of a majority.)

The BJP said it would support Janata but even together, the two parties did not have a majority. They needed another fifty seats and they got them when the Left parties agreed to support them from outside.

This three-cornered alliance was full of contradictions. The 1977–79 Janata government had fallen, at least partly, because Janata members objected to the Jan Sangh’s communal roots. The BJP was even more of a Hindu party now than the Jan Sangh had been in 1977. Would this not be a problem? And what about the Left? Was it comfortable being part of a three-cornered arrangement with the BJP?

The only person for whom the alliance made sense was L.K. Advani. He would be remembered, he believed, as the man who had taken the BJP from a mere two seats in parliament to being the kingmaker at the next election.

There was yet another complication. Janata was not the old Janata Party any longer. It was now the Janata Dal, composed of some of the old Janata veterans but supplemented by a new party of Congress defectors led by V.P. Singh and Arun Nehru. The two sides did not get along. Chandra Shekhar, from the old Janata, for instance, had total contempt for V.P. Singh whom he viewed as a characterless opportunist.

How was this all going to work?

I was deeply skeptical about the prospects of any arrangement lasting. Till that point, India had mostly been run by governments with majorities in the Lok Sabha. Mrs Gandhi had briefly lost her majority after the Congress split in 1969 but even though she knew that she could count on the communists to back her, she had called a mid-term election (where she won a majority) as soon as she could.

Our sole experience with coalitions was the disastrous 1977 to 1979 period when politicians frittered away the goodwill that had got them elected and forced the electorate to recall Indira Gandhi, her transgressions during the Emergency forgiven.

I did not believe that this government would last even for a year. Apart from the contradictions between the BJP and the Left, there were too many differences within the Janata Dal itself.

I went to meet Chandra Shekhar at his ‘ashram’ (a large estate; ‘ashram’ sounded nicer than ‘pleasure palace’) in Bhondsi on the outskirts of Delhi. I had known Chandra Shekhar during my Imprint days because a friend of mine, Kamal Morarka, was a dedicated Chandra Shekhar supporter who boosted his prospects even when the Rajiv wave was at its height.

Chandra Shekhar believed he should be prime minister. He had opposed the Emergency and later had been the centre of all opposition to Indira Gandhi. He believed that with the Congress out of power his time had finally come.

I told him I didn’t think he had the votes. Besides, V.P. Singh had led the campaign against Rajiv (Chandra Shekhar had refrained from personal attacks) so the media expected Singh to be the next prime minister. Chandra Shekhar did not agree with me but looked grim.

I have no idea what happened next but TV footage showed Chandra Shekar, Devi Lal (a Haryana leader) and others laughing delightedly before they went into the meeting of the Janata Dal parliamentary party. After the meeting was called to order, Chandra Shekhar was called on to speak. He said he proposed Devi Lal for prime minister.

Devi Lal was then asked to accept the nomination. He said that he was honoured to be nominated but felt that the position belonged to V.P. Singh.

V.P. Singh then got up. He did not nominate anyone else. He grabbed the job and ran with it.

Obviously some deal that excluded Chandra Shekhar had been struck. Devi Lal had agreed not only to accept V.P. Singh as prime minister, he had agreed to deceive Chandra Shekhar as well. They had made a fool of Chandra Shekhar in front of the parliamentary party and the TV cameras.

Afterwards, Chandra Shekhar told the press that he had been betrayed which may have been the understatement of the year. But even he did not realize how completely he had lost out. When the ministry was sworn in, Chandra Shekhar’s supporters were sidelined or kept out. Yashwant Sinha, who was told he was only a minister of state, walked out of the swearing in and drove straight to Bhondsi to confer with Chandra Shekhar.

I met Chandra Shekhar a few days later at his MP’s bungalow in Delhi. He was livid with V.P. Singh and with Arun Nehru who, he said, had plotted the deception. Oddly enough, he felt no rancour towards Devi Lal without whom none of this could have happened. The way Chandra Shekhar told it, V.P. Singh had publicly declared that he wanted no position. But his followers had made it clear that they would not accept Chandra Shekhar. So Devi Lal had been chosen as a compromise candidate.

Either, Arun Nehru took Devi Lal aside after the consensus was arranged and told him to give the job to V.P. Singh or the whole exercise was a con job from the very beginning, intended only to make a fool out of Chandra Shekhar. He preferred the first explanation. I thought the second was more likely.

The problem with V.P. Singh was that he was a little like Arvind Kejriwal is today. Financially upright, soft-spoken, competent and capable of evoking strong emotions among his supporters. But he was also a man without any core beliefs, without any long-term loyalty (except to one or two political friends) and without any transparency. Even Advani who was vilified by the secular media was a relatively straight person.

If he said he was going to do something, he usually did it. V.P. Singh, on the other hand, was capable of such duplicity that if you asked him what day of the week it was and he said Tuesday, the chances were that it was really Friday. But he was charming, intelligent and entirely plausible at first. I had admired him in my Imprint days and I could see why he was now such a hero to the media. But how long, I wondered, before the media discovered how hollow he was? How long before the early popularity faded?

A walk in the shadow city

When Taran N. Khan first arrived in Kabul in the spring of 2006-five years after the Taliban government was overthrown-she found a city both familiar and unknown. Shadow City is an account of Khan’s expeditions around the city of Kabul, a personal and meditative portrait of a city we know primarily in terms of conflict.

Here’s an excerpt from the book:

—-

In the bluster and immensity of war—the one that began in 2001 and the ones before it—it is easy to forget that Kabul existed 3000 years ago. Years after I arrived, I read a description of the city that seemed to ring true. ‘Like some people, certain cities suffer from amnesia,’ it said. ‘Not that they have no past. Rather, this past, no matter how glorious it may have been, will have left so few reminders, so few architectural vestiges, so few visible traces, that it remains something obscure, if not completely invisible.’ In this ‘amnesiac city’, I found that walking offered a way to exhume history—a kind of bipedal archaeology—as well as an excavation of the present…

Exploring Kabul, I found, required the same principles that help in the reading of mystical Persian poetry, in the relationship between the zahir, or the overt, and the batin, the hidden or implied. This works on the tacit understanding that what is being said is an allegory for what is meant or intended. To talk of the moon, for instance, is to talk of the beloved; to talk of clouds across the moon is to talk of the pain of separated lovers; to talk of walls is to speak of exile. Such wandering leads through circuitous routes to wide vistas of understanding. Like walking through a small gate into a large garden. It is also a useful reminder that in this city, what is seen is often simply one aspect of the truth. What lies behind—the shadow city—is where layers are revealed…

Kabul is an island, or so it appears to the outsider standing on one of its nondescript, potholed streets. It deceives you with its high walls streaked with brown mud, punctuated by steel-topped gates. It hides behind the fine mist of dust that hangs over its streets and homes, so that the city appears as though from the other side of a soft curtain. Like a mirage, a place that is both near and far away…

Shadow City || Taran N. khan

A walk through the history of Kabul would begin where the city itself began—a settlement by a river, at the heart of which is a citadel. Inside the walls of this Bala Hissar, or High Fortress, was a city in itself, with barracks, homes and bazaars. Over time Kabul expanded along the southern bank of the river that flows between the Koh-e-Sher Darwaza and the Koh-e-Asmai. The remains of Kabul’s thick wall radiate over the sprawl of the Sher Darwaza; they are said to date back as far as the fifth century…

Kabul was captured by the Tajik rebel leader Habibullah Kalakani, who was derisively called Bacha-e-Saqao (son of the water carrier) because of his humble roots.16 Kalakani’s reign lasted only nine months. By October 1929, Amanullah’s cousin Nadir Khan had managed to retake Kabul. He was declared king and attempted to introduce more measured reforms. But he also met a bloody end and was assassinated while attending the graduation ceremony of a high school in Kabul. His son Zahir Shah took the throne in 1933. He was to be the last king of Afghanistan, ruling for forty years.

Through these political changes, Kabul continued to spread further on the north bank of the river, with the suburb of Shahr-e- Nau laid out in the 1930s. Its orderly grids of houses, surrounded by gardens and high walls, contrasted with the congested lanes of the Shahr-e-Kohna. Embassies and foreign missions of the nations that were establishing relations with Afghanistan through the 1940s were set up here, beside the residences of Kabul’s upper and middle classes.

Through the 1960s and 1970s, the capital grew steadily, due in part to migration by rural families from the provinces. Walking through its streets, it would have been possible to see houses and shops expanding the city’s edges, spreading to both sides of the Kohe-Asmai, climbing over the slopes of its hills. By the early 1970s, Kabul was the mostly peaceful capital of a small country, home to around half a million people. And then everything changed.


Part reportage and part reflection, Shadow City is an elegiac prose map of Kabul’s hidden spaces-and the cities that we carry within us.

Prelude to politicization

In this fascinating book, Hisila Yami traces her journey from being a young Nepali student of architecture in Delhi in the early eighties to becoming a Maoist revolutionary engaging in guerrilla warfare in Nepal. Yami was one of the two women leaders who were a part of the politburo of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), which led the People’s War in the country that changed the course of its history forever.

Read on to take a glimpse into the remarkable life of a this incredible woman when she was just beginning to form her political opinions.

~

 

Hisila
Hisila||Hisila Yami

I was eighteen years old when my future husband, BRB, asked me this question: ‘What is your aim in life?’ I had just finished a game of tennis and was standing in front of the tennis court at New Delhi’s School of Planning and Architecture (SPA) hostel. BRB, then twenty-three, had come to SPA for a master’s degree in architecture. He had completed a BArch (bachelor of architecture) degree from Chandigarh. I was then a second-year student of BArch at SPA. Apart from studies, I was enjoying several other pursuits: I was learning classical music at Mandi House, the centre of art and culture in Delhi, and transcendental meditation in Defence Colony. I remember having replied spontaneously: ‘Why have an aim in life? Let life flow freely.’ This was the level of my apolitical thinking.

Being in the heart of Delhi during the Emergency (1975–77) imposed by Indira Gandhi, we hardly felt its pangs as our elite college kept its distance from politics. We used to entertain ourselves with dances and special dinners on weekends. I was blissfully unaware that, under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA), many political activists were being hunted down. I had vaguely heard about the forceful sterilizations ordered by Sanjay Gandhi during that period. My peers and I were concerned, but only to a certain degree, when there was a drive to evict squatter settlements in an attempt to beautify Delhi.

During that time, I recollect the launch of a new fizzy drink called Double Seven (77), meant to commemorate the end of the Emergency in 1977. It was an Indian soft drink launched by the Janata Party in place of Coca-Cola, which we missed a lot. The Janata Party had come to power after the Congress, under the leadership of Indira Gandhi, lost the election. I remember my friends making fun of Prime Minister Morarji Desai for drinking his own urine as a form of medical therapy. They used to call it ‘Morarji Cola!’

Although my parents, Dharma Ratna Yami and Heera Devi Yami, were politically active in Nepal, I had little knowledge of politics. Being the youngest of seven children, I had had a pampered upbringing. Even when I lost my mother at the age of ten, I was never made to feel her absence because my sisters and brother took good care of me. Amongst them, Timila Yami, my second-eldest sister, stood out as she was the one who got me admitted to Central School (Kendriya Vidyalaya) on the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) campus in Kanpur, which is where she was studying electrical engineering. At that time, I was twelve years old and joined the seventh grade. The year was 1971. Since I was a minor, it was with great difficulty that she got permission to put me up in the IIT girls’ hostel. All the girls there treated me like their little sister, possessively telling me to eat this and not that. They taught me the art of simple living. Indeed, I saw established scientists and engineers clad in simple kurta-suruwal and slippers. This was in great contrast to what I had seen in Kathmandu, where most of the people were overdressed. Alongside studies, I participated in sports, cultural activities and debates in school. During those days, I was bubbling with energy—a jack of all trades and a master of none.

I remember stumbling upon a magazine called Manushi while pursuing BArch in Delhi around 1979. It was an English feminist magazine edited by Madhu Kishwar and Ruth Vanita. Soon, I started attending their meetings. I think gender awareness seeped into my being at the IIT Kanpur girls’ hostel, where I saw many strong, intelligent women compete with men. Girls were allowed to visit the boys’ hostel and vice versa. The atmosphere on the campus was quite egalitarian. This was in contrast to the rest of Uttar Pradesh, which had a predominantly patriarchal setting. Maybe this was why I was drawn to Manushi. I wrote my first feminist article and letter for this magazine.

Influenced by Manushi, I wrote my first English poem:

 

Inside the Four Walls

Inside the four walls you will hear

Cracking of fire splinters

Scrubbing of utensils, floors

Crying, wailing of hungry babies

Followed by hushing.

Inside the four walls you will hear

Thuds, jerks, beatings

And growling of male voice

A faint voice pleading

Moaning, sighing and dying.

Who knows what goes on inside the four walls!

Inside the wall of a ‘secure home’ she is to fall.

. . . except those martyrs unheard and unsung.

Pleading from societal graves their daughters to waken!

 

Even though the politics of gender began to make sense to me, I was not yet politically sensitive. I was not even aware of the reason behind the India–Pakistan war of 1971. All I knew was that when the siren sounded, we had to make sure all lights were switched off and the entire area was pitch-black. This was to prevent Pakistani warplanes from spotting us.

I remember listening to a speech by Indira Gandhi in 1975. Her helicopter had landed on the grounds of IIT Kanpur amid great anticipation. Around the same time, I had overheard some students in the IIT hostel whispering about the presence of laal bhaiyas which, I later learnt, meant Naxalites. I had heard them talking about Mao Zedong and the Naxalite movement. The lower clerical staff and radical students fondly remembered the leftist professor A.P. Shukla who used to fight for their rights on campus. He used to say that IIT was a white elephant, where students from all over India came to study for a government-subsidized fee but after graduation went off to serve the cause of American imperialism. I was told that Professor Shukla had been imprisoned and tortured during the Emergency.

Every summer, we used to go back home to Kathmandu. I remember asking my father one day in 1972, when I was thirteen years old: ‘Father, who do you like, Indira Gandhi or Mao Zedong?’ Instead of answering my question, he said, ‘Do not ask such questions.’ That put an end to my political inquiry for the time being. Looking back, I realized that none of us was introduced to politics during his lifetime. At that time, King Birendra ruled Nepal with absolute power but under the disguise of a party-less Panchayat system. Perhaps my father’s loyalties towards the monarch prevented him from answering my question.

Ayurveda: medicine without side-effects

This book is not a defence of Ayurveda. A sound, scientific framework of healthcare that has saved countless lives over 5000 years does not need defenders. It needs champions, and to be given wings. In a world that needs Ayurveda more than ever, Dr G.G. Gangadharan, who has been researching both the theory and the practice for the past thirty-five years, shows in his book the logic behind the science.

Let us take a look into some essential tips from this book, so that you can find the secret to greater happiness through balance and long-lasting health.

~

Ayurveda Front cover
Ayurveda||Dr G.G. Gangadharan

The plant that the West calls Rauwolfia serpentina is known in Ayurveda as ‘sarpagandha’. Ayurveda has been using it for centuries for the treatment of high blood pressure without any side-effects. Modern scientists have researched this plant and identified a master molecule named reserpine. They extracted it

from the plant, synthesized it in a laboratory and used it to make medicines that would reduce blood pressure. The medicine achieved this objective, but also caused side-effects that included depression and suicidal tendencies.* After many fatal incidents, the medicine had to be retracted from the market.

There’s a larger story behind this phenomenon—what I call the ‘Sarpagandha Syndrome’. To understand this story, we need to know how nature works and how Ayurveda has moulded itself to fit into nature’s contours.

Nature, Wholeness and the Dynamic Equilibrium

We know that nature abhors a vacuum. Let’s also acknowledge that nature abhors the lack of wholeness. At every point in time since the formation of our planet, every life form and substance found in nature has remained in a state of dynamic equilibrium— within itself and also with respect to its environment. If there is a momentary imbalance in that—for instance, if an unstable isotope is created—nature quickly restores the substance to its whole and natural state.

Meanwhile, nature uses chemistry to change biology over vast periods of time, so that every life form continuously evolves to a higher level of resilience.

Since nature sets such exacting standards for itself, is there any wonder that Ayurveda trusts it implicitly? By extension, Ayurveda trusts every plant and human body to be whole and complete. In the human body, this dynamic equilibrium is maintained by, among other phenomena, homeostasis; Claude Bernard, the father of experimental physiology, called this self-regulating ability the milieu interior. Since the human body and other natural life forms are designed this way, any imbalance in the human body—that manifests as a disease—can be addressed by using the restorative power of nature.

When we take a step back and look at the entire universe, we realize that nature is awe-inspiring. We realize that every life form is a microcosm of the entire universe. Since humans tend to be self-obsessed, let us rewrite that sentence as follows: The human body is a microcosm of the entire universe. The matter of the universe is in the human body and what is in the human body is in the universe. After all, astronomy tells us that the atoms that make up our body were produced inside a star. We share chemistry with the universe and, therefore, everything we find in it is potentially therapeutic for us.

So for the vaidya—the practitioner of Ayurveda—our planet is a boundless pharmacy. This makes the vaidya a bridge connecting the whole nature with the whole human being.

We will now look at how Ayurveda embraces the wholeness of the plant while also treating the human being in its entirety. In simpler terms, Ayurveda does not reduce a plant to its constituent bio-molecules. Nor does it reduce the human being to a set of ailing organs. Life is undoubtedly enabled by molecules and organs, but life is experienced in its entirety. Therefore, the processes that nurture and preserve life must be wholesome.

The first sign that Ayurveda is wholesome is the fact that its medicines do not cause side-effects if used appropriately.

No Side-Effects

Yes, Ayurvedic medicines cause no side-effects. The brazenness of this claim is made apparent by the fact that many allopathic medicines have a list of side-effects that’s longer than the list of chemicals used to make them. Despite painstaking research that can last years—including clinical trials on various life forms and multiple iterations of development—allopathic medicines have been unable to shrug off the bane of unwanted externalities. Take antibiotics, for example—every generation of antibiotics is made stronger so as to vanquish newer generations of more resilient superbugs. This also means that every new generation of antibiotics takes a stronger toll on the human body, with the side effects becoming starker. In such a dynamic domain, Ayurveda continues to use medicines free of side-effects, conceptualized and created many centuries ago. How has Ayurveda achieved this?

Well, Ayurveda studies plants in their entirety. Roots, stems, bark, flowers, fruits and leaves are understood—as constituent yet interconnected parts of the plant—and the therapeutic value of each part is understood. That done, Ayurveda identifies the best way to extract the plant’s essence for human use.

Any part of any plant has hundreds of types of bio-molecules, such as alkaloids and saponins. In many cases, only one bio-molecule among these is capable of acting as the master molecule that combats the ailment. While allopathy will isolate, extract and synthesize this bio-molecule, Ayurveda will extract the

entire part because it believes that the other bio-molecules in the plant negate the side-effects caused by just one of them.

This throws new light on the Sarpagandha Syndrome mentioned earlier. The plant sarpagandha behaves like a team, whereas reserpine behaves like the star player of that team, who is completely lost without his teammates.

The long and short of it is that Ayurveda trusts nature’s design to be more holistic than its counterpart, the human design, and by embracing nature’s holism, it manages to do away with potential side-effects.

Having said that, let’s make another statement that, which at first glance, may appear contradictory: We don’t take all parts of the plant or even everything within a single part of the plant.

All we are saying is that molecular-level selection of matter leads to problems. So, in Ayurveda, the vaidya removes those parts of the plant that are neither necessary for treatment, nor easily ingested by the human body. Through well-considered extraction methodologies, the physician makes the therapeutic qualities of the plant accessible to humans.

 

Guru Nanak: Passing of the torch

Sarbpreet Singh left the shores of his homeland, Sikkim, and went to America in his early twenties. When he learned about the lives of the Gurus, the trials and tribulations they faced, and the glorious story of the Sikh Empire, he felt his spirit soar like it never had before. Following his interest, in The Story of the Sikhs, he penned down the rich historical context that defined the foundational principles which guided Sikhs during the era of each Guru.

Here’s an excerpt from his book about Guru Nanak, who spent his entire life fighting injustice, superstition and ritualism, passing of the torch to Guru Angad.

*

The Story of the Sikhs || Sarbpreet Singh

One winter’s night, during heavy rainfall, a part of the wall of the Guru’s house collapsed. The commotion woke up the household, including both of his sons. Several of the Guru’s most devout Sikhs also gathered, many sleepily rubbing their eyes, shivering under the coarse shawls they had tossed around their shoulders to ward off the rain and the cold. The Guru decreed that the wall be fixed immediately!

There was much hemming and hawing and shuffling of feet. Some wondered privately if the Guru was going senile. Finally his sons mustered the courage to speak. ‘It is past midnight father and bitterly cold. Please go back to bed. In the morning we will engage a mason and labourers and take care of this.’ The Guru merely looked at the group and said, ‘Why do I need masons and labourers when I have all of you?’ Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when Lehna stepped up, inwardly laughing at his foolishness. After all, what was the need to repair the wall at once?

Lehna got to work under the watchful eye of his master as the rest of the Sikhs, including Sri Chand and Lakhmi Das, returned to their warm beds. Lehna diligently rebuilt a large section of the wall and found the Guru looking over his shoulder as he worked. ‘It is crooked Lehna,’ said the Guru. Without a moment’s hesitation Lehna tore down the wall and started again. This time the Guru let him build it and examined it critically when it was finished. ‘You built it in the wrong spot Lehna! You are going to have to move the wall.’ Uncomplaining, Lehna threw down the wall and started to build it for the third time.

It was dawn by then and the Sikhs began to wake up. Some gathered around Guru Nanak’s house watching Lehna work. Finally, when the wall was completed, the Guru once again expressed dissatisfaction and commanded Lehna to tear it down yet again. Some of the Sikhs began to titter. The Guru’s sons mocked Lehna, calling him a fool for obeying such unreasonable orders. Lehna went back to his work unperturbed.

Lehna continued to serve his master for three more years in this manner. Guru Nanak grew increasingly fond of Lehna and spent a lot of time instructing him. The Guru’s sons had grown jealous of Lehna’s deepening relationship with their father and began to openly express their dislike for him. The Guru, sensing the depth of the animosity, decided to send Lehna away to Khadur. Of course, his disciple left with no hesitation and started to live a disciplined life of prayer and meditation in his hometown, garnering great respect from the locals. Although he was distraught at being separated from his master, he never complained, certain that Guru Nanak must have had a reason for sending him away…

Finally came the fateful day when the Guru assembled everyone on the banks of the Ravi and formally anointed Angad as his successor.

14 June 1539 was a warm summer’s day in Punjab. A strange scene unfolded on the banks of the river Ravi, which flows by the town of Kartarpur. Guru Nanak was surrounded by his family and his beloved Sikhs, but he was doing something most unusual, even disconcerting. Surely unbefitting an elderly patriarch whose followers loved him and respected him like none other, Guru Nanak rose from his seat—the Guru’s seat—and to it he led Angad, who looked embarrassed and nonplussed. Guru Nanak, with a reassuring smile, gestured towards the Guru’s seat and bid Angad to sit. Angad looked reluctant, but being the most obedient of his master’s followers, he gingerly lowered himself into the seat. To the assembly’s astonishment, Guru Nanak reverently placed an offering of five paise or pennies and a coconut before his disciple and prostrated himself before him. The assembly gasped audibly. The Guru rose and turned to Bhai Buddha, another of his beloved disciples, a solemn man, who had been known as ‘Buddha’ or the wise old man, since he was a precocious lad! Bhai Buddha, on the Guru’s command, anointed Bhai Lehna’s forehead with a Tilak or saffron mark, signifying royalty. The torch had been passed. Visibly and dramatically. The humblest of Guru Nanak’s disciples, Bhai Lehna, now known as Guru Angad, was now his successor.

**

Now that you have had a glimpse of the life of Guru Nanak, who had paved the path of spirituality for many, read in detail more about other Sikh Gurus in Sarbpreet Singh’s The Story of the Sikhs.

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