Publish with Us

Follow Penguin

Follow Penguinsters

Follow Penguin Swadesh

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?

Read the whole book and go down the rabbit hole

Hole books are early chapter books for children transitioning from picture books to longer books. The stories are contemporary, Indian and with protagonists who are the age of the potential readers, facing dilemmas and challenges which the readers would be familiar with.

 

The two new Hole Books added to the collection, A Pinch of Magic by Asha Nehemiah and Nida Finds a Way by Samina Mishra, carry this task out to perfection. Here is a sneak peek into both books. There is no way your child won’t want to read these after being thrown into the middle of some thrilling action from both the stories.

 

~

 

A Pinch of Magic

 

A Pinch of Magic FC
A Pinch of Magic||Asha Nehemiah

Appa should have known better than to ask Veena for help. Because whenever Veena was asked to help, many strange and unexpected things happened.

Take the time Veena’s mother had asked for help with oiling her bicycle.

‘Just one single drop of oil right here,’ Amma had pointed to the spot on the bicycle pedals. Shailaja Seshadri was getting ready for the Blue Mountain Bicycle Rally. ‘One. Single. Drop,’ she repeated firmly.

Veena, of course, wanted to be of as much help as possible. So she oiled every single point she could find. And to be safe, she used a few drops of oil each time. Then she tied a lucky charm on to the handlebars. She really wanted her mother to win the race.

The next day, a few minutes after starting the race, Amma found her fingers slipping off the handlebars and sliding off the brakes. Even worse, the lucky charm flew off when she started cycling fast, and got stuck in her nostril. Amma had to stop without even finishing the race.

So though he knew that he could be asking for big trouble, Veena’s appa didn’t know what else to do. Or who else to ask. His wife was out cycling with a group of friends. His sister, Malu, had left the house at dawn, muttering something about a spoon. Only he and Veena were at home, eating breakfast.

 

Nida Finds a Way

 

Nida Finds a Way FC
Nida Finds a Way||Samina Mishra

‘I want to ride a bicycle!’ Nida sang out. Her small hand—quite big for a seven-year-old, she thought—was folded into Abba’s large one as they walked together through the streets of Abul Fazal Enclave.

The large hand quivered and tried a strange move, as if it wanted to hold not just the small hand but also the wrist, maybe the entire arm.

 

‘NONONO!’

 

Abba stopped walking. Nida looked up. His eyes were round like pooris, his beard twitched nervously in all directions, like the traffic on the street.

‘Do you see this road?’

Nida looked down at the road. It was black, like most roads. Many kinds of wheels rolled past—scooter tyres, car tyres, rickshaw wheels, bicycle wheels.

‘Do you see this traffic?’

Nida looked up. A red Maruti was overtaking a faded white tempo. A motorcycle was swaying to the right, a rickshaw swerving to the left.

‘No cycling for you!’

Imran went past on a cycle much too big for him, riding scissor-style. He was in Nida’s class.

‘Nidaaaa! Look, no hands!’

Show-off, thought Nida and turned to Abba. ‘No, not like that,’ she began.

‘I don’t want to ride like that.’

But Abba’s eyes had become rounder, his face had become red.

Nida sighed. She knew that face. Abba the Worrier, they called him at home. When Nida climbed up the ladder that led to the water tank, Abba flapped his arms in panic.

When Nida came home from school with a scraped knee, Abba lurched about the house looking for Betadine.

People and Places in The Book of Cultures

It’s time to make new friends from different parts of our planet and go on adventures near and far with 30 stories bursting with intrigue, curiosity and wonder! Sift through the beautifully illustrated pages of The Book of Cultures and become a globetrotter as you travel from Japan to Peru and South Africa to Denmark, and learn about diverse cultures, customs, traditions and more.

Here’s an excerpt from this book about the Maldives Island in which Akilah, along with her sea creature friends, try to save the island.

*

The Book of Cultures || Evi Triantafyllides, Nefeli Malekou

Akilah loved water. So much, that everyone called her a sea creature. She had an entire life under water. She went for long swims with her best friends, Stingray, Parrotfish, Turtle and Barracuda. In the sandcastles she built, she hid treasures she collected on their adventures. Sometimes, she even prayed under the sea.

When she found out that her island was slowly sinking, she wasn’t that worried. “Breaking news: Global warming means that icebergs are melting and sea levels are rising. The Maldives Islands, only a few feet above the sea, are in danger of disappearing under water forever,” the news anchor warned. There’s so much splendor under water, life there would be a delight, Akilah thought. But only she felt this way. “Some islands have already gone under water!” her parents confirmed. Even the neighbor, Ms. Sing Song, whose laughter penetrated through their walls, had become awfully quiet lately.

Akilah came up with a spectacular idea. Stingray, Parrotfish, Turtle and Barracuda joined to help, too. Soon, Akilah and the fish had built a wonderful underwater island. “Everyone can move here. We can call it the Island of Hope,” she said. She even made two houses next to each other, so that they could hear Ms. Sing Song laugh again.

But the more time she spent at the Island of Hope, the more she realized it simply wasn’t home. When she tried to sketch, the paper melted, and her crayons lost their color. And eating was particularly hard—water made the food all soggy. “Yuck!”

“I don’t want to leave my house,” she admitted. “We need a new idea. And this time, we need all the fish force we can get.” Stingray, Parrotfish, Turtle and Barracuda called their friends from across the Indian ocean. Within hours, so many fish squeezed and squished next to each other, you could barely see the ocean’s blue. If only these many people could help, she thought. Wait a minute, I know. “I have a message. It needs to be delivered to all corners of the planet. Please pass it along,” she asked the fish. I really love my home. I don’t want to lose it. But rising seas might make it sink under water. If every single one of you made even the smallest changes, then my house, the Maldives and the environment could be saved! What do you say? Will you help?

That night, the fish swam and swam. They passed on her message to thousands of other fish, who passed it onto millions of other fish, hoping that soon, it would reach buddies all across the world, just like you.

**

Now here’s a glimpse of Ella’s birthday in Denmark.

Before you go, peep into Suhail’s and Neha’s surroundings in India.

***

Introducing you to China Room’s Characters

In this unique tale of suppression and suffering the distinctive traits of the characters is what holds the attention of the reader and brings poignance to the narration. Here’s a quick look at the characters that make China Room the fascinating tale that it is.

~

China Room FC
China Room||Sunjeev Sahota

Mehar

Mehar is the first character we are introduced to in the book. She enjoys a life as carefree as any child until news breaks that she is to be married to a man she has never met at the age of 15. Following this marriage, she starts living in a small room with two other women. The three of them were married to three brothers in a single ceremony, but they cannot identify their husbands. Mehar constantly develops tests and theories despite the risk to determine which one is hers. Any questions related to the identity of the brothers are rebuffed, and Mehar soon discovers that all her efforts for clarity and independence only bring danger and threats.

Mehar is one of the two protagonists of China Room.

The Great Grandson

Fast forward to 1999 and an unnamed young man from the UK, lonely, alienated and isolated, ground down by the relentless racism (overt and hidden) and the violence of the life he has experienced, culturally estranged, finds himself in the throes of a heroin addiction. Despite knowing little of India, he finds himself in the family home in the Punjab to address his addiction prior to starting university. During his stay he meets a young local woman who he strikes up a friendship with and this changes the path his life takes thereafter.

He is Mehar’s great grandson and even though his story unfolds in less detail than hers, he is the second protagonist of China Room.

Mai

Mai, being a widow, is the matriarch and prototypical overbearing mother-in-law to three new brides. She is a hard and unrelenting task master to everyone she comes across including her own sons. She has sequestered the girls from contact with the men—except when she summons them to a darkened chamber at night in the hope that they become pregnant with a son. She is a tyrannical figure who makes everything about the young girls’ lives oppressive and hard, the work, the claustrophobic veils and small suffocating areas that they had to work in and sleep. She guards the identities of her sons from her daughters-in-law fiercely.

Harbans and Gurleen

The other two new brides that married into the family along with Mehar. Gurleen is a meek and diligent worker, while Harbans likes to grumble and banter. They, along with Mehar, spend their days doing chores. Mehar considers them both her sisters.

The Three Brothers

The three brothers, of which one is our protagonist Meher’s husband, are an enigma in this story. The author doesn’t reveal too much about them so they are as much of a mystery to the readers as to their spouses, but they seem to be detestable characters. They are described as individuals who are sweaty and carry strong odours, to the extent that it is their individual body odours that Meher uses to identify them. They work hard all day and physical labour is their main contribution to the family’s economy, but there is something quite despicable about their overt masculinity.

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.

Daydreamer Dev loves volcanoes!

Daydreamer Dev loves volcanoes…and daydreams of course!

Forever daydreaming-that’s Dev. Sitting in class or watching the clouds from the roof of Kwality Carpets, he floats off to places all over the world and has wonderful, bizarre adventures.

Mild-mannered schoolboy Dev is no stranger to survival in extreme environments. Classroom trances and home-made flights of fancy take him all over the place-what other kid could have visited Amazon rainforests, summited Mount Everest and crossed the Sahara? Along with the challenges of all this, he also needs to avoid the wrath of teachers and make Amma and Baba proud . . . Not so easy when your brain lives elsewhere!

**

Dr Ira wore dark-rimmed glasses and had a soft, round face and a gentle voice. Dev could imagine her speaking calmly as the Titanic went down. She listened carefully to Amma and adjusted her glasses to read the two pages supplied by Dev’s headmaster. Dev imagined himself shrinking very steadily so that by the time she looked up, he would be gone.

‘Dev, what do you think about all this?’ Dev realized that he must still be visible. ‘Ma’am, I think it’s very bad that Mrs Kaur needs to write so many notes,’ Dev said. ‘Amma doesn’t like them, and Baba must spend his time lecturing me about concentration and teaching me the meaning of words like “lamentable” and “deplorable”.’

‘Would you be able to tell me about one of your daydreams, Dev?’

Dev told her about the time he hit a six off the final ball at Wankhede Stadium to win the match against Australia, and about riding on a dolphin.

Front cover of Daydreamer Dev
The Astoundingly True Adventures of Daydreamer Dev || Ken Spillman (Author), Suvidha Mistry (Illustrator)

He was launching into another story when she interrupted.

‘Do you have some good friends, Dev?’

Surprised that she wanted to talk about his friends, he told her about Vihaan, Adil and the best of friends ever, OP—Omprakash, as only Mrs Kaur preferred to call him.

Dr Ira asked more questions and looked over his school reports. Eventually, she sat back and looked as squarely at Amma as a round-faced woman could manage.

‘It would be valuable if I could spend some time with Dev alone on another occasion. Would that be all right, Dev?’ Dr Ira paused and when Dev did not say no, she went on. ‘Let’s be clear—daydreams are normal. But recently, there has been some good research on what is called “maladaptive daydreaming”. This is when fantasy tends to takeover. And when fantasy takes over, it can get in the way of everyday things, such as education, or the jobs people do.’

Amma was like a sculpture. She was sitting bolt upright with her head tilted and her lips squeezed together.

‘Dev seems well adjusted socially,’ Dr Ira said.

‘And he’s managing at school. But Mr Bannerji and the school counsellor believe he is gifted and might do very much better.’

The sculpture beside Dev became Amma again.

She nodded vigorously. Dr Ira leant forward.

‘I’d like to explore this a little. Maladaptive daydreamers tend to imagine worlds and stories as relief in times of stress or boredom. In Dev’s case, I suspect it is boredom. But the ability to daydream so vividly that you experience a sense of presence in an imagined environment can be addictive. I can work with Dev to help him develop some strategies to manage it.’

The word ‘maladaptive’ came as a relief.

Evolution was all about adaptation. Dr Ira probably thought Dev needed to adapt, to evolve.

At least he wasn’t going to have an operation or an electric shock.

‘It will be quite painless, young man,’

Dr Ira assured, as if reading his thoughts. ‘Think about it like this. Active volcanoes don’t erupt every day. In fact, most of them very rarely erupt. Your daydreams can rumble away in the background and that’s healthy. We can try to limit unwanted eruptions that affect your education. Does that make sense?’

Actually, it did. And Dev rather liked volcanoes.

*

For ages 7+!

Sita in Chitwan National Park!

Sita is in Chitwan National Park in Nepal!

As big as 1,78,000 football fields, Nepal’s first protected national park is home to over 550 species of birds; awe-inspiring animals, such as greater one-horned rhinoceroses, Bengal tigers, clouded leopards; and a confident, brave girl called Sita.

Sita dreams of being a nature guide like her baba. With a spring in her step and a group of eager tourists, she unravels the secrets of the forest. But when she wanders astray and comes face to face with a mamma rhino, will this eight-year-old be able to listen to the stillness of the jungle?

Join Sita in Chitwan National Park, a magnificent UNESCO World Heritage Site!

**

There were no female nature guides in Nepal until one woman challenged herself to do something that no woman had.

Meet Doma Paudel, the first female nature guide in Chitwan.

Sita: Hi Doma! I am sure everyone is excited to learn that there is a real-life me! Tell me more about yourself, Doma.

Doma: I was twenty-three years old when I became the first female nature guide in Chitwan, Nepal in 2007. In 2012, I founded Nepal Dynamic Eco Tours to promote sustainable ecotourism. I support wildlife victims and conduct awareness programs on forest conservation. There is always something that keeps me busy.

Front cover of Sita's Chitwan
Siuta’s Chitwan || Vaishali Shroff (Author), Kalp Sanghvi (Illustrator)

Sita: Wow! You wear many hats, Doma! My baba inspired me to become a nature guide. Who inspired you?

Doma: My family’s house in Sauraha is along the border of CNP. Elephants destroyed our bamboo and grass house a few times. Rhinos, deer and wild boars ate our crops. Once, a sloth bear attacked my father. Coming from a poor family, it was hard to recover from these losses. In 2004, we lost our beloved mother to an unexpected rhino attack; she had gone to the forest to collect firewood for the house. But I still love animals and forests.

My  mother  treated  me  no different  than  my  brothers.  She always  encouraged  me  to  follow  my  heart  and  step  out  to  do something for society. In school, I was part of the Green Club and participated in plantation and garbage collection events. That’s where my journey to be a nature guide began and I never looked back.

Sita:  Did you have to undergo special training to become a nature guide?

Doma:  I received training from lots of places including the National Trust of Nature Conservation. I learnt the history of Nepal and Chitwan National Park, the protected areas, all about animal behaviour, safety rules, hospitality, culture, responsible tourism and a lot more!

I was the only female among twenty-five male guides. No one wanted to go with me into the forest because they thought I was not  strong  enough  to  protect  tourists  and  other  guides  from wild animals. But I did not give up. On the first three-day walk I was assigned, a rhino charged at us. I used all my knowledge and training to protect my guests from the rhino. Since that day, everyone knows me as ‘the one who is not afraid’!

Sita: That’s incredible! I once saved a tourist from a rhino attack too! What does a day in the life of Doma Paudel look like?

Doma:  A nature guide’s life is full of excitement, adventure, challenges and risks. In peak season, I am at my office by 6 a.m., planning safaris and tours for our tourists over cups of tea. My guides and I show Chitwan’s beauty and wildlife to our tourists and the last safari ends by 5.30 p.m.  At 6 p.m., all of us get together to share our day’s encounters and stories. No two days in the forest are the same and that’s the most exciting part of my job. When  there  are  no  tourists,  I  organize  events  to  raise  awareness  on conservation efforts  and  the  participation  of  women  in  conservation among our communities and schools. We also visit other national parks to constantly update ourselves.

Sita: What do you love about your job?

Doma: I love that I get to be in the midst of nature and wildlife all the time.  I learn something new about the forest every day.  Just like you, I love meeting new people from different parts of the world, Sita. It’s a very special feeling to know that you have taken more and more people closer to nature and made them feel more empathetic towards nature and its biodiversity. I am an ambassador of nature and proud to have inspired many women to become nature guides and make families believe that it’s not just a man’s job. And I don’t miss a chance to meditate in the forest—it’s the best place to do so!

Sita: Thank you, Doma. You inspire me to not give up on my dream!

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.

 

Why does man get wrinkles and a stoop?

L. Somi Roy is here with a collection of endearing and vibrant retellings of Manipuri myths told for the first time ever to the outside world! Do we know why man gets wrinkles and a stoop?

Here’s why! Scroll down for a short extract from one of the 12 fascinating tales from Manipur passed on by balladeers and grandmothers over hundreds and hundreds of years!

‘O Paobirai, my ancestor! Your grandchild humbly offers you a basket of rice and a human every day. Please accept my offering.’

 

*

Finally, it was Man’s turn. Now, Man was very lazy and tardy and so he came very late to the gathering. He did not know what lifespans each of the animals, birds, fishes and insects had requested. As he came into the presence of his creator, Soraren looked at the latecomer with annoyance. Man said nervously, ‘Lord of the Sky, my Creator, I humbly request that my kind and I may live for fifty years. Please grant us a lifespan of fifty years.’

Front cover of And That Is Why
And That is Why || L. Somi Roy (Author), Sapha Yumnam (Illustrator)

Very well,’ said Soraren in an irritable voice.  ‘Your wish is granted. You, Man, shall have a lifespan of fifty years. And it is just as well since you are late and the last to come and I have only fifty years left to give out.’

And  Man  gratefully  took  the  last  remaining  fifty  years  and  hurriedly went along his way. And that is why, Dear Punctual One, you must never be lazy and always be on time.

After all the living beings had received their lifespans, they set out on their journey back to their holes and burrows and nests and houses on Earth.  On the way, Man met Monkey and Elephant.  Man asked them, ‘Monkey and Elephant, how many years did each of you ask for and how many were you granted?’

They replied, ‘We both asked for a lifespan of a hundred years each and it was granted. How many years did you ask for?’

Soraren, who was also known as the Eternal Creator, lived in great happiness with the other mighty beings and together they knew no pain or sorrow or even illness or death

Hearing  their  reply,  Man  did  not  answer  but  started  to  cry  instead.  He  wept  loudly  and  large  drops  of  tears  rolled  down  his  cheeks and snot ran from his nose. It was all really quite awkward, Dear Embarrassed One.

Seeing  the  very  wet  and  messy  and  unhappy  state  Man  was  in,  Monkey  and  Elephant  did  not  know  whether  to  be  sorry  or  embarrassed for him. Finally, they asked, ‘Man, why are you crying?’

Man  burbled  through  his  tears,  ‘I  thought  the  Creator  was  angry with me since I was late. I was afraid. So, I did not ask for many years. I asked only for fifty years. And I got the last fifty years the Eternal Creator had left. And now I will have to die before you both.’ Saying this, Man sobbed all the more. He bawled even more loudly than before, if that was possible.

Monkey  and  Elephant  rolled  their  eyes  and  looked  at  each  other  and  said,  ‘Do  not  cry  any  more,  Man.  We will each give you twenty-five years from our lifespans.  This  way,  you  will  have  one  hundred  years  altogether  to  live.’  For,  as  everybody  knows,  Dear  Arithmetical  One,  fifty  and  twenty-five  and  twenty-five  make one hundred.

Man happily agreed.  He  wiped  away  his  tears  and  Elephant  helped  him  blow  his  nose  with  his  long  trunk.  ‘Oh, thank you, Monkey and Elephant!’ said Man through his tears. ‘Let us go to the Eternal Creator. Let us tell him what we have spoken about and request him to give his approval to our arrangement.’

So according to the elders, Soraren decided that he would give all the living beings a lifespan each

Monkey and Elephant agreed. Together with Man, they went back to  Soraren  and  told  him  everything.  Upon hearing their words, Soraren thought in silence. ‘Very well,’ he spoke at last. ‘If this is what you have all agreed upon, I will allow it. And I have no more years to hand out.  Man will now live for one hundred years. For, as everybody knows, fifty and twenty-five and twenty-five make one hundred.  But  this  lazy  and  tardy  creature  called  Man  must  never  forget  the  generosity  and  kindness  of  Monkey  and  Elephant.  He  must  be  reminded  in  the  future,  for  all  his  tomorrows, and for all generations to come till the end of time, that  the  lifespan  I  had  granted  him  was  fifty  years  but  that  he  received  twenty-five  years  from  Monkey  and  twenty-five  years  from Elephant.’

Soraren  then  looked  at  Man  and  declared,  ‘Man,  here’s  the  thing. You shall keep your looks and stand upright as I have made you for the fifty years that I first granted you. But once you cross the age of fifty and start to live the twenty-five years you have received from  Monkey,  your  skin  will  wrinkle  and  fold  like  Monkey’s  so  that  you  may  never  forget  you  are  living  his  years.  And  once  you  cross the age of seventy-five and start to live the twenty-five years you have received from Elephant, your back will bend and you will stoop like Elephant so that you may never forget you are living his years. Let this be so.’

And  that  is  why,  Dear  Curious  One,  once  Man  has  lived  his  fifty years, he gets wrinkles like the Monkey, and once he has lived seventy-five years, he gets a stoop like the Elephant.

*

 

error: Content is protected !!