Reflections

SHE WALKS, SHE LEADS WOMEN WHO INSPIRED INDIA { Life stories of 24 women from 6 categories of life, from Business to Sports, from Entertainment to Media } By Gunjan Jain FIRST, THE ONLY BUT SMALL NEGATIVE This is a book of women who inspire India : and while it is perfectly permissible as well as logical & feasible that Ex-Indians can inspire Indians; my personal opinion is that we should not highlight the success stories of people who left India behind, and took other citizenship – not when  there are innumerable stories of local successes – many superbly chronicled in this book itself. And given the quality and research of this tome which is no less that monumental, I thought lets brush the irrelevant and the negative out of the way before getting to other more relevant and positive matters. And in that, my belief is that Indra Nooyi and Mira Nair {The latter lives in the USA, though her nationality status is not clear to me} do not belong among this ...

This week saw the epochal movie Pink hitting the movie halls and cineplexes, a movie that stands out as one of the most hard-hitting movies to come out from the Mumbai film industry. This is a movie that looks at deeply ingrained attitudinal problems embedded in our society, problems which have eluded quite a few reviewers on this movie; I attempt to place my viewpoint on these ignored aspects in this review. This is a movie that is, to my mind, more about Men than Women; we need to see the story from this angle and engage with the highlighted problems in a deep introspection THE PLOT The plot is simple : three ladies meet 3 or 4 boys at a rock concert, share a drink or maybe two, go to dinner, and end up getting molested. A feisty one responds, and cracks a bottle right slam-bang on the “ gentleman’s ” head, and the three run. So do the four “ gentlemen ”, but then the nightmare starts for the ladies, as the threats and the intimidation starts. They are wrongly accused ...

THIS UNQUIET LAND – STORIES FROM INDIA’S FAULT LINES BY BARKHA DUTT THE INTRODUCTION This Unquiet Land is a book that stands out among all the other books I have read and reviewed on my blog, numbering more than a 120 at least. This is also a book that sets a narrative of India that is at complete variance to the one which the people of India would like to read which is that of a vibrant and fast growing India, an India that is on the road to its desired goals of Economic Growth and the promise of a future pregnant with positive developments and fast rapid emancipation of problems. This is a book that looks at the dark side, the unsavoury stories and realities of India, a side that we would much rather ignore, or a side that we would much rather leave to our fervent hope that things will get better. This is a side of India that is best represented by “out of sight, out of mind”; a side dealt with looking the other way. This book is a book that is deep and dar...