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Category: Excerpts

The beginnings of a friendship and a business idea

Posted on by vanyajaiswal

Harpreet Grover and Vibhore Goyal met in college and then spent the next decade of their lives building a company before exiting successfully.

One way to tell their story is this: they had a dream, they followed it and, then, through perseverance, they made it come true.

But that’s not really the truth. Like everything in life-at least everything worth having-it wasn’t that simple. There was blood, sweat and tears, there was loss of capital, loss of friendship and even a loss of faith along the way. This is a tale of grit-of a company built in India by two Indian-middle-class-twenty-somethings-turned-entrepreneurs-written in the hope that you can avoid the mistakes they made and learn from what they did right.

Here’s an intriguing excerpt from Let’s Build a Company that reveals how the duo’s entrepreneurial journey started.

**

I started my first business in the fourth standard—with no funding, in my dad’s scooter garage.

 

Back in 1990, four-storey buildings in our neighbourhood in Pitampura, west Delhi, used to have scooter garages; small spaces that could just about fit in a scooter and a cycle. All my pocket money went into renting Super Commando Dhruv, Nagraj, Bankelal and all the other Hindi comics that were popular then. I had a friend who was couple of years older, and we would rent comics together and then swap them. Once a month, our parents would also let us buy some.

 

Between the two of us, we had about fifty comics, which, we soon realized, were more than what the shopkeeper had in stock at any given point in time. An idea hit us: why not give out our comics on rent and make some pocket money? The shopkeeper loaned them out for Rs 1 a day, and we could charge half the rate. We had no bills to pay, no family to feed. We just wanted some pocket money. So I asked my dad to take his scooter out of the garage and thus began our comic- book business! We had almost every kid in the neighbourhood coming to us to rent comics. It went on well for about three months. Then my dad got transferred to another government- bank branch in Patiala and our business had to shut down. That was my first taste of what I would later realize is termed ‘entrepreneurship’.

 

While I was growing up in Patiala, Vibhore was failing seventh-standard maths. His parents decided that he needed to get coaching to ensure he cleared his exams. They also wanted him to learn the value of hard work. So Vibhore started working in a garage, repairing bikes to earn pocket money. As he grew older, his fondness for computers grew and, along with school, he started teaching C++ in a local coaching centre. (By the time he got to college, he knew more coding than final-year computer science graduates. This would really come in handy when he helped me clear our first-year course in Fortran.)

 

front cover of Let's Build a Company
Let’s Build a Company || Harpreet S. Grover, Vibhore Goyal

Cut to 2000, when I was accepted into IIT Bombay, a letter came home stating that all first-year students would have to share a room. I thought it would be a good idea to reach a couple of days in advance and take the best of the two beds. When I arrived, I found this geeky guy already there with his trunk placed below the better bed. Vibhore Goyal had beaten me to it and set the tone of our friendship for years to come.

 

Both of us had enrolled in the five-year dual degree civil- engineering programme. While Vibhore was disappointed with his rank (he had hoped to crack the top 100), I was delighted just to get in.

…

The five years at IIT Bombay were eventful and we ended up spending a lot of time together. From the second year onwards, Vibhore had a bike, which I would borrow—only to slip on the road and smash the headlight. We would then go together to get it repaired. In the third year, Vibhore got an internship in Pune; I went to meet him on the last day so that we could lug his computer back together—he drove the bike back to the institute while I sat behind holding a big CPU between us on a wet highway. Another thing we always did was go to the station to drop the first person who was going home at the end of semester. Vibhore’s parents would send him an AC first-class ticket, and he would find someone to sell it to. He would then buy a general ticket to go to Jaipur and pocket the rest. I always found this funny, not to mention enterprising.

 

By the time we graduated, Vibhore had spent time working on a high-tech start-up based out of IIT Bombay and landed a job with Microsoft’s research division. Meanwhile, I had tried to start a brand for fresh fruit juice with my classmates Ritesh and Rahul, and failed. We bought a mixer but trying to figure out the economics of how many carrots provided one glass of juice proved to be too much trouble. I finally landed a job in Inductis, a data analytics company. After the final interviews, the company took us to a five-star for a buffet. There, they asked me if I already knew all the questions they had posed in the interview. Apparently, I had the highest score across interviews. I said no. They said, then you are quite stupid, because we asked the same questions we asked last year. That got my mind buzzing and I spent most of my final year creating a document titled ‘BePrepared’, which was a compilation of interview experiences of final-year students.

 

While together in IIT, Vibhore and I had discussed starting a company, but our ideas were always up in the air. Also, it was clear in our minds that we wanted to get a job after graduation. After all, that’s why we had come to IIT in the first place.

**

 

 

 

Poems to keep us going

Posted on by ashmita

‘Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.’

― Leonard Cohen

 

Time and again, in many known and unknown ways, poetry has saved the world. Singing in the Dark does the same. We want to share with you some poems that keep us going through the worst of days:

 

Dawn of Darkness – Ngugi wa Thiong’o

I know, I know,
It threatens the common gestures of human bonding
The handshake,
The hug
The shoulders we give each other to cry on
The neighborliness we take for granted
So much that we often beat our breasts
Crowing about rugged individualism,
Disdaining nature, pissing poison on it even, while
Claiming that property has all the legal rights of personhood

Murmuring gratitude for our shares in the gods of capital.
Oh how now I wish I could write poetry in English,
Or in any and every language you speak
So I can share with you, words that
Wanjikũ, my Gĩkũyũ mother, used to tell me:
Gũtirĩ ũtukũ ũtakĩa:
No night is so Dark that,
It will not end in Dawn,
Or simply put,
Every night ends with dawn.
Gũtirĩ ũtukũ ũtakĩa.
This darkness too will pass away
We shall meet again and again
And talk about Darkness and Dawn
Sing and laugh maybe even hug
Nature and nurture locked in a green embrace
Celebrating every pulsation of a common being
Rediscovered and cherished for real
In the light of the Darkness and the new Dawn.

 

Front cover singing in the dark
Singing in the Dark||Nishi Chawla, K. Satchidanandan

 

Apocalypse – Annie Zaidi

Waves do not come dashing against the noontide
They tiptoe in
and out with the smallest dose of pain
taken from the cabinet you left dusty
on purpose
so nobody guesses how much you hoard
The wretched manage to show up
across the shatterproof glass of time
to class office factory godown
boat ocean horizon end time
with a slouch and a glower of expectation
Your eyes are fleet
testing
weighing
catlike
on nights when the tide rises
and rises and the rain quietly falls,
as promised, it comes
It sits
gleaming on the roof
with creature eyes
offering no sign
no pause for breath
no cause or rules
about arks: no ones or twos
it offers no map
A thing
squealing its lack of defence
mouse like, it comes to nibble
the cheese of your world

It arches
head and back
now signals: here
I am
Take me at this flood
or there I go

~

Bumblebees – Amanda Bell

There was no need to fret about the bees—
their fragile nest, unlidded
as I pulled weeds beneath the apple tree,
their squirming larvae naked
to my gaze and to the sun.
They watched me from the border
while I hastily replaced the roof,
before returning to rethread
the fibres of their grassy home.
In the cleared weeds I see
their entrance and their exit,
how their flightpaths sweep
the garden in an arc, stitching up
the canvas of this space, as if
they could remake the world
which lies in shreds around us.
The dome moves, as I watch it,
the stretching of an inchoate form—
when morning comes
it glistens with white dew.

~

Singing in the dark is a beautiful anthology of poetry that comes at a time when we need poetry more than ever.

An introduction to reading Amartya Sen

Posted on by vanyajaiswal

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen is one of the world’s best-known voices for the poor and the downtrodden, and an inspiration for the proponents of justice across the globe. He has contributed almost without peer to the study of economics, philosophy and politics, transforming social choice theory, development economics, ethics, political philosophy and Indian political economy, to list but a few. This book offers a much-needed introduction to Amartya Sen’s extraordinary variety of ideas. Lawrence Hamilton provides an excellent, accessible guide to the full range of sen’s writings, contextualizing his ideas and summarising the associated debates. In elegant prose, Hamilton reconstructs Sen’s critiques of the major philosophies of his time, assesses his now famous concern for capabilities as an alternative for thinking about poverty, inequality, gender discrimination, development, democracy and justice, and unearths some overlooked gems.

**

What can we draw from Sen’s ideas as we struggle to deal with the present crisis and try to remake our world following it? In bringing out Sen’s main contributions to economics, politics and philosophy, this book distills his groundbreaking framework for a new form of political economy, the need for which a crisis like Covid-19 brings sharply into focus. This political economy would be based on freedom-enhancing capabilities’ analysis and public action focused on specific injustices within revitalized democracies. Sen’s work, and that of his collaborators, especially Jean Drèze, is thus vital for the future of democracy in India (and elsewhere).

 

The best way to ‘read’ Amartya Sen, I suggest, is as a series of courageous theoretical and practical innovations regarding how better to solve instances of injustice via the support, revitalization and reform of democracy, especially in India.

 

India, the largest democracy on the globe and the oldest in the developing world, is rightly proud of its postcolonial achievements in terms of formal democracy. Yet, this record has not translated into substantive democracy, that is, the kind of achievements in quality of life across the board that would empower all of its residents to take advantage of both its growth in GDP terms and the successful maintenance of formal democracy.

Front cover of How to Read Amartya Sen
How to Read Amartya Sen || Lawrence Hamilton

 

The Covid-19 situation in India is a powerful illustration of this lack of empowerment. India’s associated abrupt and severe lockdowns have accentuated the inequalities and deprivations of its massive population. Although the highest infection and death rates are still in the wealthier megacities of Mumbai, New Delhi and Chennai, the virus is now spreading fast in more rural areas in the east and south of the country. And it is the urban and rural poor who feel the full force of the three-pronged crisis. The abrupt loss of livelihood due to associated job losses is creating a very dangerous mix of viral spread and impoverishment. The poor, migrant workers, for example, who make up a huge proportion of the Indian population and economy, come from historically disadvantaged classes and castes and work very low-paying jobs without legal contracts. They live hand to mouth. The original decision to abruptly lockdown India left them marooned far from home, without shelter, work and sustenance, bar the incomplete coverage provided by the public distribution system (PDS) and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). Overnight, this generated a mass migrant exodus, which has been compared to the great migration during Partition (Deshingkar 2020). And, as the disease spreads east, for example, it is those who eke out basic subsistence in the poorest states, such as Bihar and Jharkhand, with high population density and much weaker medical infrastructure, who will be under the most severe threat of food insecurity and infection (Drèze 2020).

 

All told, the poorest, most precarious and least powerful sections of India’s population have been largely abandoned by the Indian state in their time of need. The arrogance and indifference to the plight of these lower caste, uneducated, labouring people brings into sharp relief the extreme inequities Sen has fought for more than half a decade to overcome (Mander 2020).

 

In the second edition of Drèze and Sen’s magisterial account of the various things that have plagued public policy for development in India, especially in areas such as health, education, social security, environmental protection, economic redistribution and so on, they argue convincingly that these components of development depend on public action. Effective public action is not possible without significant change to how it is thought about and implemented in India. It depends on high standards of governance both in the determination of where and why extreme deprivations exist and how best to keep corruption at bay and accountability to the fore. It is an indictment on successive Indian governments over the last two decades or so that, despite high levels of growth, its latest social indicators are still ‘far from flattering’. China may have been less successful at keeping famines at bay, but in terms of social progress – from ending poverty to the provision of decent education and functional toilets – it has been far more successful than India. Moreover, as regards most relevant social indicators, India is still worse off than many of its much poorer south Asian neighbours, such as Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and Sri Lanka. With the sole exception of Pakistan, India has the lowest life expectancy, the highest child mortality rate and the highest fertility rate. In terms of sanitation and child nutrition, India fares worse than all of its neighbouring countries. Its rates of female literacy are amongst the lowest in the region. And, staggeringly, over 40 per cent of India’s children are underweight, compared to 25 per cent in Sub-Saharan Africa (Drèze and Sen 2020).

**

 

 

The ego and the victim complex

Posted on by vanyajaiswal

The universe has bestowed limitless powers and infinite siddhis on the human consciousness. Along with being effective and successful in the personal and professional spheres, the purpose of human life is also to ensure the complete blossoming of the individual consciousness. In Celebrating Life, Rishi Nityapragya shares the secrets that can help you explore your infinite potential. He offers an in-depth understanding of how to identify and be free from negative emotions and harmful tendencies, and how to learn to invoke life’s beautiful flavours-like enthusiasm, love, compassion and truth-whenever and wherever you want.

Here’s an excerpt from this profound book about overcoming the negative tendencies of the mind.

**

On the basis of past events, many people have the habit of blaming themselves. Small mistakes they have committed in the past lead them to form strong judgements about themselves, resulting in a sense of guilt, regret and self-blame. The exact opposite of that happens when some people develop the self-pitying tendency of blaming others for their miseries. They believe strongly that people are doing things to deliberately hurt them. This is called the victim consciousness, self-pity, the ‘poor-me’ attitude. The ego that makes you blame yourself is guilt complex. The ego that makes you blame others is victim complex. Both these flavours of the ego are extremely harmful—they are impediments to the blossoming of your life. Realizing your mistake is good enough; you don’t need to keep blaming yourself. Turn that pinch into a sense of commitment and resolve not to indulge in the same mistake again. Guilt is a wasted feeling. In the realm of consciousness, if you want to be free from any harmful habit, from negative tendency, from klisht vrutti, you need inner resilience and a sense of commitment connected with intense shakti (power), almost like a space rocket breaking the shackles of gravity by acquiring escape velocity and plunging into outer space. The guilt makes you feel bad about yourself, drains your energy, breaks the strength of your resilience and commitment.

 

People keep falling into this vicious cycle: they make mistakes, indulge in negative tendencies, feel guilty about them and blame themselves, but in a little while commit the same mistakes again. In order to attain freedom from negative tendencies, what you need is a strong, unwavering commitment, maintained for a substantial amount of time.

 

Guilt plays a counteracting role in this process. It destroys the strength of your commitment, which is necessary for you to break free of harmful tendencies.

Front cover of Celebrating Life
Celebrating Life || Rishi Nityapragya

 

The game of the victim ego is exactly the opposite of this. But before we go there, I want to remind you to be non-defensive and urge you to courageously look at the truth of life. Nature, existence, the universe, the Divine has given us so much. Let us take an example of this lifetime alone. From the time you took birth till today, in the so many years that you have passed in this physical body, look at how many wonderful things have happened to you. How much abundance has been bestowed upon each one of us! From getting the beautiful tool of this physical body, through which we are experiencing this wonderful life, to our family members who trigger so much love and a sense of support and security in us. Look at the variety of colours, flowers, fruits, vegetables, grains and spices nature has given us, for us to enjoy them all. Look at how the sun, the moon, the seasons, the seas, the wind and the rain have played their magnanimous roles in making your life so rich. In the ups and downs of this rollercoaster ride called life, look how the unseen hand of the Divine has always protected us. In the most challenging situations too, through different sources and in the form of different people, help has always come for you. But this extremely dangerous flavour of the ego, the victim consciousness, the sympathy-seeking, self- pitying, poor-me attitude, does not allow you to celebrate, appreciate or even acknowledge all these gifts of life. It tends o magnify your losses. When extraordinary benefits come your way, your victim ego never asks, ‘Why me?’ But as soon as something goes wrong, this poor-me runt starts cribbing and makes your life miserable.

 

In comparison with the positives of life, the negatives are minuscule, but the victim ego focuses on the negatives and puts on the glasses of self-pity and blame, through which this beautiful world begins to appear ugly, manipulative, almost demonic. People act according to their own tendencies, preferences, likes and dislikes, but when the victim ego colours your vision, viparyay takes over. Random, unintentional, insignificant gestures by people around appear to you as intentional and manipulative. These two flavours of the ego, guilt and victim complexes, have one thing in common: they thrive on blaming. This tendency to blame takes away your ability to respond to what is happening now. It does not allow you the freedom to drop the negativities and be free. It takes away your openness to celebrate life. In the process of blaming others, one completely disregards this basic, fundamental principle of life: ‘To keep your mind happy, pleasant and positive is your own responsibility.’

**

 

 

 

The trappings of an unconventional life

Posted on by vanyajaiswal

Saeeda Bano was the first woman in India to work as a radio newsreader, known then and still as the doyenne of Urdu broadcasting. Over her unconventional and courageous life, she walked out of a suffocating marriage, witnessed the violence of Partition, lost her son for a night in a refugee camp, ate toast with Nehru and fell in love with a married man who would, in the course of their twenty-five-year relationship, become the Mayor of Delhi. Though she was born into privilege in Bhopal-the only Indian state to be ruled by women for four successive generations-her determination, independence and frankness make this a remarkable memoir and a crucial disruption in India’s understanding of her own past.

 

 

**

 

front cover of Off the Beaten Track
Off the Beaten Track || Saeeda Bano

Why did I think of writing the story of my life? Well, the entire credit goes to my friend Sheila Dhar, whom I met during the most eventful time in the history of our country, back in September 1947. When she saw the unusual situation I was grappling with during those tumultuous days of Partition, it made a deep impact on Sheila’s impressionable mind. She was quite young at the time; I came across to her as an unconventional woman – one who had chosen to take the road less travelled.

 

As time went by the circumstances I was dealing with became more exceptional. Sheila was witness to all this. She was older now, mature enough to understand what was happening in my life. Perhaps that is why she encouraged me to start writing. 

 

…

 

Little did I know that one day my circumstances would change so dramatically that by 1947 I would become famous as the first Indian woman to read news for All India Radio’s (AIR) Urdu service. And bless Sheila Dhar, she got me to write this book.  

 

…

 

On the 13th of August I was to reach office by 6am and read the 8 o’clock bulletin in Urdu. Mrs Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, sister of Independent India’s first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, had been a frequent visitor to Lucknow. She was Beevi’s good friend and because of that I met with her quite often. She treated me like a younger sister. During one such meeting I mentioned I had sent a written application to AIR Delhi for a job. Mrs Pandit was a keen supporter of women’s rights and immediately asked me to give a copy of the application to her. ‘I will try and see what I can do.’ She then sent the letter to a certain Dr Syed Hussain in Delhi with instructions that ‘the work should be done.’ And so it was. How could Syed Hussain not honour Vijayalaxmi Pandit’s orders? That is how I came to Delhi. 

 

I was ready to deliver my very first news bulletin on air on the 13th of August 1947. Prior to this, no woman had been employed by either the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) or AIR Delhi to work as a news broadcaster. I was the first woman AIR considered good enough to read radio news. Of course they had to train me and I was taught how to first introduce myself on air with my name and then start reading the bulletin. The quality of my voice was appreciated. The feedback I got was that listeners were quite impressed by the style in which I delivered the news. The Statesman newspaper even published a few words of praise about me. I believe some people said I must have planted this story. But that’s pure conjecture. 

 

…

 

I am always grateful to the Almighty that people were eager to hear me read news on radio and appreciated my work. But I never gave this public acceptance undue importance. Hundreds of letters would pour in from various parts of the world in praise of my voice. Several gentlemen even expressed a desire to marry me! Though some of the listeners went as far as to curse me, asking that now that Pakistan had been formed why was a traitor like me still living in the enemy state? From this side of the border, some my own countrymen would write in saying, ‘Get out of our country, go to Pakistan.’ 

 

After a while, this continuous barrage of reproach ended, but hordes of letters continued to arrive regularly. I didn’t give them too much weightage nor did they get to my head. I met and mingled with everyone but I did not know how to tell witty jokes or interesting anecdotes, sing or even make delightful gossip at a social gathering. 

 

…

 

We were in the midst of our discussions when Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru saw us. He came over to where we were and asked, ‘What are all of you doing? Have you had breakfast? You guys have to get here so early in the morning, you must be famished. Come over to Teen Murti House… I will give you brown bread to eat… homemade brown bread.’ 

 

Who could refuse the Prime Minister of India? We reached Teen Murti House (former residence of the first Prime Minister of India) and were made to sit in the front veranda on the top floor. Spread out in front of us were the verdant Mughal Gardens and sitting next to us, Nehruji himself. He was busy giving precise orders to the waiter to bring brown bread, cheese and God knows what. Though we were in seventh heaven my mind was preoccupied. I was worried sick and kept wondering where Asad and Saeed could be. Panditji buttered the warmly toasted brown-bread himself, then he sprinkled it lightly with salt added a dash of pepper and asked, ‘Have you ever eaten bread like this?’ 

 

‘No I haven’t,’ I replied, thanking him politely as I took the slice. 

 

He then made another toast for me, which I ate as well. But by now I was extremely anxious. Here was the Prime Minister of our country, being hospitable and there I was worried sick with thoughts of where my children could be. Panditji saw the concern on my face and asked, ‘What is the matter? What is bothering you?’ 

 

‘My son is lost.’

 

‘How old is your son?’ 

 

‘Eleven.’ 

 

‘Eleven year old children do not get lost… he will come. Have your tea, it is getting cold.’ 

 

In my heart I so wished Asad and Saeed could have been with me. They would proudly remember this moment, when they ate toasted brown bread prepared by the Prime Minister of India, who made the effort of sprinkling salt and pepper on it himself before handing it around to us. These thoughts were racing through my mind as we finished breakfast. Then we took permission to leave. As we were walking out, Panditji said, ‘An 11-year old cannot get lost. You’ll find him.’ 

 

I did a courteous adab and thanked him for his reassurance. As we reached YWCA I saw Asad and Saeed sitting there waiting for me. 

**

Worlds apart but together with love

Posted on by sanjeeta

‘We are full of stories’, writes Ravinder Singh as he opens up his collection of love stories from vastly different lives. Stories create empathy, they open up the seams of our capacity for wonder and compassion, and broaden our understanding of the vagaries of human lives. In You Are All I Need, twenty-five authors share their stories and their worlds with us. Today, we bring you a few of those:

 

‘Something in the Rain’ by Kaustubhi Singh

I take a little walk in my cubicle for one last time because I’ll be given a clearance today. I sit on the brown wooden chair I used to kick when I was so miserable that the doctors had to tie my hands up. Alcohol was my escape. The idea of alcohol was not pleasure but an escape, because when that warm liquor burns your throat, it starts dissolving the hurt stuck down there and slowly numbs you so you don’t feel the hurt. Heartbreak isn’t beautiful; it isn’t some literature; it’s not listening to sad songs or something like that. It’s feeling okay for a minute and then starting to feel their ghost around you, their touch on your skin. You miss them, you miss them so much that you choke on your memories with them.

Dr Mayank Sharma, my shrink, almost my age, tells me that it will always hurt, and it will make one cry and scream till one’s nose is blocked and eyes puffy; that hurt is inevitable but it will hurt less, and I will see and understand why someone did what they did. And I think I understand. When I look back to the day Robbie left me for another woman, he said he had grown out of love and I stood there thinking: Where did I go wrong? But thinking about it now makes me realize I did everything to truly belong to Robbie. I changed myself for him, I changed my ways and choices for him when I should have let him love me for who I was, because that’s what love is, that’s what love is supposed to be—loving someone for who they are.

 

‘A Tender Ray of Love’ by Nandita Warrier

She was six; he was eight. He found her irritating and called her a ‘complaint box’; she found him obnoxious and called him a ‘monster’. They fought in every get-together.

…She was twelve; he was fourteen. He secretly detested her scholarly attitude; she was swept by his charm and wrote about him in her secret diary.

…She was eighteen; he was twenty. She aspired to be a doctor; he was determined to be one of the ‘Men in Blue’.

Their paths were growing apart, just like their personalities. They rarely met, and when they did, she was more awkward than before. He didn’t seem interested in her and she was torn whether or not to share her feelings with him.

And then something happened. He did something terrible—unforgivable! She had held him in such high regard all along, loved him with all her heart, but he had treated her like trash. She was shattered.

…She was twenty-seven; he was twenty-nine. She was a bright, young surgeon winning people over; he was a lost and bitter soul, spewing venom at everyone.

She was twenty-eight; he was thirty. She was full of dreams; he was broken.

Front cover of You Are All I Need
You Are All I Need||Ravinder Singh

That night, she slept early because she had a morning duty in the ICU. That night, he slept late after emptying a bottle of sleeping pills.

Just as Ramya reached the hospital, she was summoned to the OT for an emergency procedure. ‘Suicide attempt,’ someone whispered. Dr Iyer was instructing the team when Ramya joined them in her OT scrubs. She threw a casual look at the patient and immediately recoiled. It was Rohan! Oh no, how could this be? Memories from her childhood, locked away in some corner, defiantly barged in, making her want to sob.

He looked so pale and pitiable—a mere shadow of the handsome young man she remembered from their last meeting years back! Rohan had had everything going for him—what could have possibly gone so wrong? Sensing her discomfort, Dr Iyer enquired, ‘You know him?’

‘Family friend,’ she uttered nonchalantly, hiding the wave of sadness sweeping over her.

 

‘Love in the Times of Marriage’ by Aparajita Shishoo

When Adil saw her across the room, his heart skipped a beat. He couldn’t take his eyes off Meera’s radiant face. He decided to walk up to her.

‘Hi,’ Adil said.

Meera was standing alone, enjoying the party her friend, Kanika, had thrown. Meera turned to look at Adil and smiled back at him with a soft ‘hi’.

Adil continued, ‘You seem to be the arty-farty type. What are you doing at a filmy party?’

Meera was a bit tipsy by that time, so she retorted, ‘I am definitely farty, but with some arty. What about you?’

Adil laughed out loud at her candour and asked her again what she was doing at such a party.

‘I am fishing for some juicy stories for my publication. You?’

‘I am trying to make some juicy stories!’ Adil winked at Meera.

Meera laughed and asked, ‘Are you flirting with me?’ ‘Are you noticing?’ Adil said.
Meera shot back, ‘I am ignoring . . . I don’t flirt with boys who have just entered puberty.’
‘Oh! That hurt . . . really hurt!’ Adil said, imitating a heartbreak. ‘By the way, I am twenty-five, well beyond my puberty years.’

Meera laughed again at Adil’s dramatics, and they continued their conversation.

Adil was a cinematographer in the Hindi film industry and the camera was his first love, but right now his own lenses were fixed on Meera’s face. ‘So what brings you to Mumbai?’

‘Change,’ said Meera, after a pause.

…At the other end of the room, Kanika noticed the chemistry between the two and was happy that her friend was finally enjoying flirting and chatting up guys.

 

Lose yourself in stories that will stay with you for a long, long time. 

The comfort of a bunker

Posted on by vanyajaiswal
Insomnia || Rachna Bisht Rawat

A retired General is haunted by voices of dead men.
Soldiers from two enemy nations manning posts in freezing Siachen form a strange connection.
A young Lieutenant dying in the jungles of Arunachal is watched over by three men, one of whom would have his destiny changed forever.
What is the dark secret held by a Major and his men operating incognito in Kashmir?
What surprise is a train bound for Agra bringing to the all-male bastion of 13 Para?
Who are the invisible people a little girl awaiting brain surgery in the Lansdowne Military Hospital talks to?

From the bestselling author of The Brave, 1965 and Kargil comes a book that will take you into the olive-green world of army cantonments, through stories that will delight and disturb in equal measure.

Here’s an excerpt from this perceptive collection of army stories.

 

**

One morning, Satyapal told Javed that he would not be on guard duty the next day. He and Rifleman Ramesh had been detailed for a routine check of communication lines. Every ten days, three soldiers were sent to check the wires that kept the telephone connection, between the post and the company headquarters about two kilometres away, running. The post and the HQ each had the responsibility to maintain 1 km of the communication line—to ensure the wires were intact and working, not broken or buried in the snow. Since their very lives depended on it, the soldiers carried out the task with complete sincerity.

The empty jerry cans that had been used to cart kerosene to the post were put to good use here. They were filled with snow, which would quickly freeze into hard ice. The heavy jerry cans were then used as support for the telephone lines, which were tied on top of them, so that the wires would not get buried after heavy snowfall.

‘We plan to leave by 8 a.m. and return before noon,’ Satyapal told Javed, who nodded. Every soldier on Siachen knew that the weather usually turned late afternoon, so all activities were planned in such a way that the soldiers would be back in their bunkers by lunchtime.

Javed had received a letter, brought by a new soldier reporting on duty from leave. His daughter was unwell, he told Satyapal. ‘I can’t do anything for them from here. I feel so helpless,’ he said. He sounded sad that morning.

‘Don’t worry, saathi, she will be fine. Children keep falling sick all the time,’ Satyapal consoled him. Soon after, Satyapal told Javed he would now see him after a day.

‘Khuda hafiz, saathi,’ Javed called out to him. ‘Apna khayal rakhna.’

‘You too, Javed Bhai. And don’t worry so much about your daughter. I am sure she is absolutely fine by now,’ Satyapal reassured him and, with a casual wave of his hand, stepped inside his bunker.

**

The next afternoon, a sudden avalanche took the soldiers by surprise. Icy winds screamed outside their huts, as they huddled together inside their bunkers, drawing comfort from each other’s presence and from the warmth of the kerosene stove.

Around 2 p.m., Javed was in his sleeping bag, rereading his wife’s letter. Omar, the designated cook for the week, was cooking rice to go with the meat tins they planned to open for lunch. Their four other soldier comrades were playing cards, and radio operator Rifleman Faizal Sharief, quiet and withdrawn by temperament, was, as always, sitting in a corner by himself, listening to Skardu Radio. ‘Do Hindustani sipahi Siachen Glacier ki Rana Post mein baraf ke neeche zinda dafan,’ the newsreader was saying. None of the soldiers was paying attention to the news but the moment they heard Siachen mentioned they all started listening.

‘Aawaaz unchi kar, Faizal,’ Javed called out, placing the letter under his pillow.

The woman reading the news in her crisp Urdu was not giving many details, but she clearly stated that three Indian soldiers had been caught in an avalanche that afternoon. While one had been found, two were reported missing, presumed buried in the snowpack created by the avalanche.

For a moment there was abject silence in the bunker. Then, one of the card players spoke: ‘So we have two less enemy soldiers to fight. The glacier got to the bastards before we did. Achhi khabar hai. Miyan, tum patte baanto.’

The four of them chuckled loudly and got back to their game. They did not notice the disquiet that shadowed Javed’s face, but Faizal was watching him thoughtfully. ‘Apne niche wali post ke bande lagte hain,’ he said to Javed. ‘Isn’t that Rana Post? Javed bhai aap toh baat karte ho na unmein se ek se?’ Faizal sounded concerned. Javed just nodded.

Javed remembered that Satyapal had to go and check the communication lines that day and desperately hoped that he was not among the men missing.

**

First love, first heartbreak and a slice of life

Posted on by vidhi

Love, heartbreak, family complications and the nuances of relationships – Jennifer Niven tackles it all with her captivating prose. Through reminiscence or present lived reality, Breathless resonates with us all. Relive your own special moments with an excerpt:

—

I stand for a long time, staring out over the water, black and endless except for the glow of lights in the far distance. And this, I know, is the mainland. It might as well be light-years away.

I wait for a boat to appear. I wait for Miah to come.
I wait.
I wait.

Suddenly, I don’t feel the rain on my skin or my hair or my clothes because the only thing I feel is the ache in my heart. An ache like I’ve never felt before. It’s both terrible and beautiful. And it fills me. It fills me.

We were supposed to have more time.

We’re always supposed to have more time.

I sink onto the bench, which is damp and which leaves me damper. At some point the rain stops completely. I look up and the stars overhead are a carpet of light. There’s this feeling I have here. Miah’s a part of it. But he’s not all of it. It’s the summers of childhood when I was eight, ten, twelve. And those kinds of beautiful moments where everything is full of love and light and possibility.

I rest one hand on the wood of the seat and my fingers bump into something cool and smooth. I look down. A shark tooth. The largest one I’ve ever seen. And there, drawn around it, a circle.

***

I turn back up the path and walk toward the inn, shark tooth in my pocket. Through the trees, the porch lights shine like beacons, like lanterns illuminating the way to the world beyond. I go up the steps, feet splashing in the little dips inthe wood. I slip on my shoes, brush the hair off my face, but otherwise I don’t bother. This is me, take it or leave it—wet and rumpled and missing Miah.

“Claude?” Mom’s voice calls out to me from the end of the porch. She is perched on the edge of the swing, as if she’s been watching for me. I walk over and sit down beside her, a lump in my throat as large as the ocean.

“Everything okay?” she says. And she knows. I can see it in her face.

Breathless Front Cover by Jennifer Niven
Breathless || Jennifer Niven

“It will be.” But my heart doesn’t believe it.

She takes my hand, and the swing rocks back and forth, back and forth, as we listen to the rain.

At 9:53, I feel it. The island is emptier because he’s no longer on it.

I don’t want to go home yet, so I head to the beach, not caring if I run into alligators or snakes or wild hogs. Under the trees, over the dunes, onto the sand, until I’m beneath the moon and all this sky. I’m too restless to sit. I drop my bag and kick off my shoes and walk. The tide rolls in like thunder and I’m the only one here.

I walk for at least a mile. I’m trying not to look at the lights in the distance, the ones that are the neighboring islands. Because beyond those islands is the mainland, and on that mainland is Jeremiah Crew, who didn’t say goodbye.

***

 

Breathless is a beautiful celebration of the joys and pangs of stepping into adulthood, and moments that are uniquely memorable to us all.

Invaluable dissenters in troubled democracies

Posted on by penguin

What is the value of freedom of speech and dissent in a democracy today, and how does it affect the very pillars of this system of governance? These are difficult questions, often leaving us with no answers. T.T. Ram Mohan navigates these tensions in his book:

 

We don’t like dissenting voices and we don’t like to express dissent. Authority, in particular, doesn’t like to be questioned or challenged. And people don’t like to challenge or question authority because they know there’s a price to be paid for doing so. We are exhorted by wise men and women to ‘stand up for what is right’ and ‘speak truth to fear’. We are careful not to heed these exhortations. Our survival instincts tell us otherwise. It’s far more rewarding to stay quiet, nod assent or, better still, practise unabashed sycophancy.

 

In recent years, we have heard a great deal in India about intolerance and the supposed muffling of dissent on the part of the present government. Governments everywhere do try to stifle or manage dissent in varying degrees and in different ways. But the situation is not very different in other spheres of life, such as the corporate world, the bureaucracy, non-government organizations or even academia.

 

This is truly a sad state of affairs. Dissent is invaluable. We need dissent, whether in government or in the other institutions of society, in order to ensure accountability of those in authority. Dissent is also vital for generating ideas and solving problems. It is only through the clash of ideas that the best solutions emerge. Herd mentality or ‘group think’, as it is now called, is the surest recipe for mediocrity and underperformance. Institutions must be designed to protect and foster dissent.

 

Since dissent is all too rare, it’s worth celebrating dissenters. In this book, I profile seven of them from different walks of life. The personalities I have chosen are not necessarily the most famous or the most effective dissenters. The American linguist and intellectual, Noam Chomsky, would have easily qualified. So would the economist and Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz. But these are celebrities whose ideas are quite well known. I have chosen to write about individuals whose dissenting ideas may not be known to many. Ideally, I would have liked to meet the individuals in person or at least interview them over the Net. Alas, I had no luck, except with Kancha Ilaiah.

 

I have not attempted to be comprehensive in my treatment of these personalities and, indeed, lay no claim to being familiar with all of their works. They are all so prolific that whole books could be written about them. Rather, I have focused on some of their works or themes just to capture the flavor of their dissent.

 

In what ways are these dissenters questioning the mainstream view? What challenges have they mounted to the establishment? How have they managed to shape public perceptions on important issues? These are the questions I have attempted to answer. The impact the dissenters in this book have had is quite modest. Roy has been able to influence policy on large dams and the rehabilitation of displaced individuals. Stone has contributed to the anti-war sentiment in the US and to the conspiracy theories about the assassination of President Kennedy. Ilaiah has raised awareness of the inequities in the Hindu order but hasn’t had much luck in stopping the Hindutva juggernaut. U.G. Krishnamurti has got people thinking seriously about spirituality and the pursuit of enlightenment. Varoufakis languishes on the margins of European politics. Irving is a virtual pariah amongst historians and in the mainstream media. Pilger’s journalism thrives mostly on the Net.

 

The value of these dissenters is to be judged by positing the counterfactual: If it were not for the likes of them, how would the establishment have behaved? These individuals may not have been able to change the dominant narrative. But they have, at times, been able to apply the brakes on it. That is a valuable contribution.

 

With the possible exception of Irving, the dissenters in this book have been professionally and financially successful. This suggests that despite the hostility of the establishment, there is room in the market economy for dissent of high quality. Indeed, as I note later, it is the celebrity status of these dissenters that acts as a protective charm and keeps them from being trampled on. The moral in today’s world seems to be that if you want to express serious dissent, make sure that you are rich and famous enough to be able to afford it.

 

Rebels With a Cause does the difficult work of explaining the real value of dissent, and therefore, a democracy. Read it here.

Are you breathing correctly?

Posted on by swara

There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being than breathing. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences.

Journalist James Nestor travels the world to track down men and women exploring the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo, and covers modern research that shows that that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can jump-start athletic performance, rejuvenate internal organs, even halt auto-immune disease.

Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath is here to transform how we perform our most basic biological function,

Read on for an excerpt from this extraordinary book:

 

Breath || James Nestor

The freedivers told me they’d previously been “most people.” Their transformation was a matter of training; they’d coaxed their lungs to work harder, to tap the pulmonary capabilities that the rest of us ignore. They insisted they weren’t special. Anyone in reasonable health willing to put in the hours could dive to 100, 200, even 300 feet. It didn’t matter how old you were, how much you weighed, or what your genetic makeup was. To freedive, they said, all anyone had to do was master the art of breathing. To them breathing wasn’t an unconscious act; it wasn’t something they just did. It was a force, a medicine, and a mechanism through which they could gain an almost superhuman power. “There are as many ways to breathe as there are foods to eat,” said one female instructor who had held her breath for more than eight minutes and once dived below 300 feet. “And each way we breathe will affect our bodies in different ways.” Another diver told me that some methods of breathing will nourish our brains, while others will kill neurons; some will make us healthy, while others will hasten our death. They told crazy stories, about how they’d breathed in ways that expanded the size of their lungs by 30 percent or more. They told me about an Indian doctor who lost several pounds by simply changing the way he inhaled, and about another man who was injected with the bacterial endotoxin E. coli, then breathed in a rhythmic pattern to stimulate his immune system and destroy the toxins within minutes. They told me about women who put their cancers into remission and monks who could melt circles in the snow around their bare bodies over a period of several hours. It all sounded nuts. During my off- hours from doing underwater research, usually late at night, I read through reams of literature on the subject. Surely someone had studied the effects of this conscious breathing on landlubbers? Surely someone had corroborated the freedivers’ fantastic stories of using breathing for weight loss, health, and longevity? I found a library’s worth of material. The problem was, the sources were hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years old. Seven books of the Chinese Tao dating back to around 400 bce focused entirely on breathing, how it could kill us or heal us, depending on how we used it. These manuscripts included detailed instructions on how to regulate the breath, slow it, hold it, and swallow it. Even earlier, Hindus considered breath and spirit the same thing, and described elaborate practices that were meant to balance breathing and preserve both physical and mental health. Then there were the Buddhists, who used breathing not only to lengthen their lives but to reach higher planes of consciousness. Breathing, for all these people, for all these cultures, was powerful medicine.

**

Inhale.

Exhale.

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