The Long Silence by Shashi Deshpande

This is a work of fiction for which author won the Sahitya academy award way back in 1990. These days I am trying locate quality Indian literature and Sahitya academy award is one such parameter to locate them. Last week I found this book in a bookstore and I just grabbed it.

It is a story of an urban middle class women, born in a small place but living in Mumbai, whose identity is trapped in being a wife and a mother, amongst other family relationships, who feels she has lived in silence all her life, only in the end to realize that it was her choice and not something others had imposed on her. It is actually not a story; these are monologues happening in the mind of the protagonist Jaya, as she is hits a point in life where things around her may change, status quo may go, although it does not happen in the end. It all happens in her mind, she keeps thinking about things that happened, that did not happen, that could have happened, that should have happened, that may happen and that may not happen. In a period of few days, she goes through all her life, talking about all her relationships with each and every member in the family and with other people around her, her hiding behind the veil of a wife and a writer.

Since the story is set in a period before and after independence, you may find yourself not relating to a few things. If you are an independent woman who has lived with her own identity, again you may not relate to it. But if you are a housewife, whose career as the author puts is home and husband only, and hence her dependence on the marriage, you may relate a lot to it. As far as men are concerned, am not sure how they would relate to it.

I found the writing style a bit confusing, she jumped with the speed of thought, moving between places and periods. The editing on the book could have been better, paragraphs and sections merge into each other. 3-4 parts of the books did not make any logical meaning to me.

Read it if you like to read the thoughts of a mind, lot of which you would identify with.

Unsung UP II – Amroha

Amroha is a small town in North West Uttar Pradesh, close to Moradabad. If you are driving from Delhi you have to take NH 24 and drive for about 100-110 kms and you reach this small town. I happened to visit it for a family function, though I must admit that June is a perfectly wrong time to visit this area.

Amroha got its name from Aam i.e. Mango and Ruha which is a variety of fish that is found in abundance here. We did pick up a whole lot of Mangoes, but being a vegetarian, obviously did not look out for the fishes. Before this trip my only association of Amroha was the writer Kamaal Amrohi who hailed from this town.

Like I always say if you go with an open mind, most trips would offer you a surprise and often a pleasant one. On this trip I discovered that this small town is actually the hub of manufacturing Dholaks and Tablas. There are numerous small scale manufacturing units that produce Dholaks and other percussion instruments. They use the wood from Mango and Sheesham trees to curve out the multiple sized and shaped hollow blocks which are later fitted with animal skin, mostly goat skin, so create the instrument. The manufacturing is completely manual and simple with each piece of wood cut and chopped and then carved and cut, followed by fixing the skin and then painting. It’s a small scale industry with each unit producing about 100 instruments a day, but the town as a whole produces somewhere around five to six thousand instruments. They distribute these instruments across the country and also export it to all major geographies. Being small scale they fall under handicrafts, and hence do not have to pay any taxes on the products they sell.

You can walk around in the bylanes and see the instruments being manufactured everywhere; some do only parts of the instrument, some do the whole and sum just assemble it and market it. Being a Muslim dominated area, there are lots of master craftsmen, who show their craft in making these musical pieces. It is amazing to see this place buzzing with all kinds of musical instruments. There are other handicrafts as well that come from this place like carpets or Kaaleens and wooden toys.

On the way to Amroha, you can also stop by Garh Mukteshwar on the banks of River Ganga. It is a place of religious importance where lots of Hindus come to take a dip in the holy Ganga. There is an ancient temple which has Shivalingas from ancient times, which have mythological stories associated with them.

I am not sure if I can recommend a trip to this place, but if you are passing by, you can probably stop by for few hours and have a peep into this town.

Discover Delhi – IV: Sulabh Museum

Sulabh museum, a one of its kind toilets museum had been on my list of ‘to be visited’ places for a long time. Now that I live in Gurgaon, it was not too far for me but it still took me 4 months to finally go and visit it. I have been a big fan of Dr Bindeshwar Pathak since the time I first read about him and in any innovation summit that I attended, I always asked why is he not there and why is his innovation not featured as a case study, but I guess he is beyond all this, busy doing what he has chosen as his mission in life, relieving mankind of manual scavenging.

Sulabh International museum of Toilets is located in one corner of Delhi in Dwarka on Palam Dabri road, you can locate it on Google maps, but when you reach there and ask for directions ask for Sulabh office and not museum, as most people know this complex as office and not museum. Outside the gate, very obviously is a Sulabh Shauchalya, or a public toilet, but to discover what is behind it you have to enter the office gate. At the reception one of the curators will welcome you and take you to the museum in the complex.

As of now the whole museum is located in one big hall, where you can spend good 2-3 hours learning about how we reached today’s levels of sanitation. There are some interesting facts drawn from the earliest history of toilets, tracing back its origins to Harappan civilization when there were underground sewage facilities and there for squatting toilets. The museum takes you through the toilets of ancient, medieval and modern eras. The oldest ones are depicted through some pictures and fact sheets, there are lots of models from the medieval era and there actual ones from modern world. There are interesting pieces where the height of laziness is depicted through toilets used by rich and famous. There are practices like human mobile toilets which make you wonder if they were really so. There are stories of phrases that came out of disposal practices. There is lot of trivia scattered throughout the jam packed hall. You can have a look at some of the futuristic toilets as well, some for your adventure trips and some that you can carry along and some that are bio degradable so you can use and throw.

Outside the hall there are demo toilets that have been developed by Sulabh, and the curator will very meticulously explain you the operation of each toilet and where and why that is used. For example there is small spiral open air toilet without a door, which gives the user a feeling of being in the open while hidden from all sides. There are toilets for areas where there are no laid sewage pipelines and hence the waste needs to be disposed or decomposed where it originates. When you listen you would wonder why this should not be done everywhere. There are pits that are made using the local material and can support a small family for years together. The cheapest toilet made with old gunny bags supported by Bamboos costs less than what we urban people can spend on a single dinner. Then they have a small laboratory where they are developing and testing new technologies. They are currently working on Duckweed based waste water treatment technologies. As you go around and reach the back of entry gate you see a small treatment plant which treats the human waste from the public toilet in the front and cleans the water to the extent that it can be used for anything but drinking, generates gas which is used in the kitchen and the solid waste left is used as manure, fed back to the plants.

They have created a door out of the human waste that has been kept for demo outside the museum hall. It is an experimental product which has nothing else as input except the human waste and glue. Their tests prove that there are no bacteria in the solid product and it is completely safe for use. They are working on making furniture out of it. Well if you can have products made out of elephant waste, why not human waste.

What I found delightfully amazing in the museum is the fact that all the staff members were not only proud to be working with Sulabh, were proud of what they have done and what they are trying to achieve, but they were all extremely polite and ready to share their knowledge and talk about it. They were talking like owners and treating the visitors like guests unlike most professionally managed places where most people are trying just to do their jobs and refuse to look beyond the precise job description. Each and every member of the organization was a delight to interact with. They were absolutely courteous in their conduct and very open in listening to ideas and sharing their thought processes. At the cost of being biased I got a feel of being at an absolutely Indian organization which has not yet been spoilt by the processes and mechanizations of the western or the modern world. Hats off for creating and maintaining such a culture right in the middle of the hustle bustle of a busy metropolis…

For more information on this museum and this 20,000 strong organization which has set records in constructing toilets and maintaining them across the world, do visit their website. I can assure you that you will find some amazing information about sanitation and you would want to get up and do something about it.

I would strongly recommend it to anyone, after all toilets is something that we all universally use every day of our lives. Entry to the museum is free and it is open Monday to Saturday from 10:30 Am to 5:30 PM, except national holidays.

Tourism Best Described

I was reading 'Branding India' by Amitabh Kant and came across this quote by former prime minister Vajpayee:

'Now we know why terrorism has hit tourism the most. Tourism is a foe of terrorism. Whereas terrorism feeds on intolerance, tourism breeds tolerance and empathy. Terrorism has no respect for human life. In contrast, tourism teaches us to savour and celebrate all that is beautiful in nature and human life. Terrorism seeks to erect walls of hatred between faiths and communities. Tourism breaks such barriers.Terrorism detests pluralism, whereas tourism celebrates it. Terrorism has no respect for human life. Tourism pays a tribute to all that is beautiful in nature and human life. Terrorism may have temporarily hit tourism in this metaphorical battle between the two. But tourism will make a major contribution to the eventual defeat of terrorism and all other manifestations of fanaticism.'

Can there be a better reason to promote tourism?

Coastal Karnataka: A rewinding trip

I was in Karnataka after 4 months, had last visited coastal Karnataka 5 years back and stayed in Mangalore some 7 years back. This time of course the trip was very different as we landed in Mangalore on a hot and humid May morning. We drove to Kundapura where we planned to stay in a river island resort, while stopping for lunch in Udupi.

The much hyped Mangalore Goa highway is a dangerous place to say the least. The two lane highway does not have any divider and has villages all along the highway. People on foot, on bicycle, on auto just walk past the road, without looking at either side, leaving the responsibility of their safety to vehicle drivers of highway. On the whole stretch we were close to knocking down a biker, came close to having a brush with few pedestrians and close enough to be hit bang on by vehicle coming from opposite direction. There is an urgent need for the over bridges for people to cross the road, and of course people need to be a little more cautious while crossing.

The backwaters of western coast have lots of islands, usually referred as river islands. They are in all kinds of sizes and shapes and some enterprising entrepreneurs have converted some of these islands into eco resorts, by built interesting cottages where you can be on top of the river flowing below you, amongst the trees that have been grown for generating fruits and in general the local flora. Some of these islands are big enough and support as small population of few thousands and they use boats as a primary transport to travel to and from the mainland. Some islands are only few acres and make a perfect size for a small resort. They have few cottages scattered across the island with a common kitchen and dining area with a caretaker to cook the exotic local food for you. To put your entire luggage in a boat and use it a primary means to travel to and from the island adds to the exoticness of the whole experience. This area is known for heavy monsoon, so if you are lucky you will get to see the heavy downpour falling on the backwaters and the plantations around you, it is almost like music to ears.

The beach is never too far from any of these places and since it is western coast, you can enjoy a nice sunset. The beaches are not too crowded and are long enough for you to go on a long walk and lose yourself with the horizon in sight. It is so peaceful to walk on the almost lonely beach that you tend to loose concept of time and distance. We walked on the Kodi beach which had only one big restaurant and miles of stretch on both sides inviting you for a long walk. There are no lighthouses and we could not see any big ships like the ones you see near Mangalore.

All in all a well enjoyed trip on a patch of earth that is still green and yet to be urbanized completely.

Being a Politician

Politicians are one species that most of us like to hate. In my conversations with people from more than twenty odd countries, I found that all of them unanimously and genuinely believe that politicians in their country are the worst. I wonder if there is any other class of people which generates such a unanimous opinion about themselves across all kinds of diversities. So much so, that the phrase Good Politician is always a perfect example of an Oxymoron.

Recent Lok Sabha elections gave us another opportunity to see the media focus on politicians, staking their claim to be in power and then re-aligning their strategies once they got the mandate from the public. As I sat through the hours of footage covering a whole lot of politicians and their election campaigns, read the reams and reams of paper on them and got all kinds of humorous messages in mail box, my mind started thinking of what it would be like to be a politician. What would motivate one to be a politician, assuming that most of us are not inclined to take it up as a career option, what would keep them going even in the age when most of their peer would have retired and are leading a laid back life, why would the rich and famous go and plead to the public to choose them as their leader. These are some of the thoughts that crossed my mind:

First of all to be a politician, you need extremely good health. You should be fighting fit to be able to work around the clock, be available to people and appear energetic enough to be able to lead people. If you look at the schedules of the politicians in last few months, you would admire their energy. Of course they say that power itself gives you the energy to go, but then your physical body has to co-operate with you. Imagine Advani going around the country and talking to millions and managing leaders both in his party and in the other parties at this ripe age, and also keeping himself abreast with all the current affairs and constantly creating a strategy in mind while responding to public via media. Imagine the high level of mental alertness required almost 24 by 7.

Next you need to have a very thick skin. You should be able to hear any comment about yourself and your intentions, let people speculate about your intentions, lets opponents tear you apart, but still be able to smile in public. At the same time you should be able to take in yours stride the potential positive things that are said to you that you may know are not true. You should be able to balance the praises and brickbats that come your way and be not driven by either of them. You should be able to listen to everything that is said to you and about you and not be impacted by either and do what you want to do. You should be ready for your friends turning foes at any time and be ready to kiss and make up with people who you are fighting today. You should be able to manage your emotions all the time unless you decide to use them to your advantage. Think of it how many of us can do that and virtually every politician does that all the time.

You need to be extremely good communicator, even if you do not have excellent language skills. You need to communicate with potentially everyone in the society, the people who would vote you to power, the media which keeps you under constant surveillance, businesses who fund you with an intention to help them back, your own people whom you have to hold together and your opponents who need to be kept in check all the time. How many of us can mange so many diverse set of people simultaneously and get them all together to be able to lead them and make them believe that you are actually serving them. You need to be able to let people decide, what you actually want them to decide.

You should be ready for a grind at least once in five years, if not earlier. Come election time and no matter how rich or famous you are, you have to hit the road, go through the grind, eat what you get on the way, with the people and be ready to rough it out. It may seem glamorous, but even after having chartered plans to your disposal, it is not easy to criss-cross the country, address rallies, meet the local workers who would have worked day in and day out for your visit, take stock of things while keeping an eye on what everyone else is doing, what media is saying and are they covering you enough or not. You are bound to fall off and on, you should be able to get up and start running again, till you either step forward or fall again.

You need to be multi-dimensional, you should be able to switch from topic to topic and have view on most of them and if required be able to change your views based on the situation. Today you could be from one constituency, tomorrow you may be asked to contest from another and you have to do it, connect with the locals, learn the local language, and convince people that you will take care of them. Today you may be asked handle one portfolio, tomorrow another and something else the next day, you are expected to not only understand all the nuances of the portfolio you handle but also give the best performance as expected by millions of people, who between themselves would have thousands of ways to measure you. You need to be extremely flexible and adaptable, both for the expectations from you and for the environment in which you may land up.

It is usually not apparent but you do need to have nerves of steel and a hell lot of grit to be able to be a politician. Any other qualities or characteristics that you think are required for being a politician…?

Jeffrey Archer in Gurgaon

I happened to attend a book promotion event at Landmark this Saturday, and the book being promoted was ‘Paths of Glory’ and the author was Jeffrey Archer. Now I must admit that I have not read any book by the author, but I know almost everyone I know has read some works of Lord Archer. Going by what I heard about him, I expected him to be a master storyteller and that is what he exactly turned out to be. I enjoyed myself completely at the event and for the first time saw a book shop full to the brim and people queuing up for taking his autographs.

Post the event I was thinking about what made him such a great storyteller. Like a typical VIP in India, he turned up late for the event, and then started by blaming the traffic for his delay. He started by talking about the book that he was promoting, stating carefully the parts that would excite the audience and make them get up and pick the book from the next aisle and read it as soon as possible. He spoke about himself, about his book, his struggle to get his first novel published, interesting anecdotes and everything sprinkled with a bit of humor. In future tense, he connected with the local audience and said he wanted to be transport minister in India, is writing a story based in India and spoke about R K Narayan and how he became a fan of his after reading his books. He took questions from audience, most of which were well anticipated questions. He answered every question with humor and honesty, when he had to say No, he said No. He took stock of the audience by asking them how many have read what kind of books, by asking how many write already and how many want to write in the future. Perfect communication, know who you are talking to, talk about them and their environment, talk about yourself in a way that they will buy you and your product. All this without being philosophical, without preaching and keeping the audience entertained. He managed to sell not only the book he just released but also the book that would come six months from now.

A master storyteller indeed…

Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity by Sam Miller

This book was launched almost at the time when I shifted my base from my favorite city Bangalore to Gurgaon, which falls under the umbrella of Nation Capital Region (popularly called NCR), and hence considered a part of Delhi. I have always been looking at books that I can recommend to the visitors to India, that they can read to know about the city and country that it is. Being someone who likes to write about my travels, this book was also about traveling within the city that you live in. So I picked up this book, to read about someone’s experience of traveling around this giant city, to re-connect with Delhi that I left behind some 7 yeas ago and to explore another style of travel writing. But what drew me most to this book was the fact that it was written by someone who actually walked around the huge city in a spiral and experienced the city. I always felt that in an ideal city, the distances should be such that the city can be covered on foot by an average walker, beyond that the cities should not expand. Of course in the big cities, it does not even apply to the sub cities or suburbs. During my travels, I like to do some early morning walks in the city to see how the city wakes up. There is no doubt that the best way to know the place is to walk around, stop at anything that catches your attention and talk to people here and there, the kind of people you may never meet otherwise.

This book is as much about the author as it is about Delhi. In fact in lots of places it is about the relationship that the author shares with the city. Sam went around the city, starting at the centre of the city today is CP metro station and then took an anti-clockwise spiral route to explore the city on foot. His complete journey was divided in 12 sub routes, which put together formed the planned spiral. He has just followed his route, and speaks about the places and people that he met on his way. It looks like that he deliberately does not talk about the popular tourist spots of Delhi, but he does mention the places which he think deserve a better mention in the guidebooks of Delhi, but have been neglected all along. He also writes amusingly about the people he met, some by design and some by default. He talks about some strange encounters he had with people during his walks which sometimes make an interesting reading and at times looks like stretching it too much. But probably the difference may be of a local and a non-local eye. Some things that we find very normal are usually not so to a foreign eye.

The book is written in a new way. The twelve chapters are from the 12 walks that the author did to write the book. From the way they are written it looks like that each walk was done in a day, barring a couple of chapters when the author had to break the walk and come back some other day to complete it. Two consecutive chapters are separated by an Intermission, where the author has put down his thoughts in various things about living in Delhi primarily coming from his own experience of living in Delhi. Most of the times these appear as random thoughts that occurred to the author as he was writing the chapters, and included them in the book. There are pictures, most of which have been taken by the author himself during the walks. Each chapter is begins with a map of the route that the author took, depicting the landmarks, topology, author’s route and events mentioned in the chapter. The events actually make author’s journey look quite adventurous. I definitely want to visit some of the parts mentioned and walk around to feel the place. The title of each chapter has been written in third person while the whole book is written in first person, probably required a bit more efficient editing. It may sound frivolous, but the font and the layout of the book do contribute to the overall readability and that is where this book could have been better. The photos are not aligned, the margin on the pages not properly designed, far too many foot notes which could have moved to the back of the book. The book has been written more like a blog with whole lot of research done on Google and references provided. Overall, I think the author could have gone a level deeper, flow could have been a little better, but nonetheless it is a welcome book, as it explores an area not many have dared to explore: Walking a mega city on foot. This also looks at Delhi as it exists today, rather than focusing too much on its glorious and colorful past only.

Weather you live in Delhi, visiting Delhi or simple interested in Delhi as a city, this book can make an interesting reading for you…

Sam, if you read this blog, I would like to go out on a walk with you sometime…:-)

Purpose of Education

Not by design, but for some reasons, since last three months I shifted to reading a lot of business magazines and the common theme of course across magazines had been Slumdog Millionaire, Lok Sabha elections, IPL and ongoing recession. But in not so highlighted way, lot of magazines carried stories on education. There was a story on executive education offered by most leading business schools across the world and how it benefited some of the managers. There are number of stories on how the industry wants the education system to prepare students for employability. Lot of industry leaders come out with the preparedness that they are seeking in their potential employees, as they want them to be productive as soon as possible.

This led me to think about the basic purpose of education in Life. The question I had, and I am sure this would have been discussed earlier many times over, is if employability is the only purpose of education or if it is more than that. I tried to look at my life back from the time I started my formal education to the time I was employed and my continued education on various fronts as I moved forward in life. I also thought about the way our education system is structured and what it imparts us during various stages.

In the initial stages of formal education, say till the primary education, the purpose of education is to impart us with widely accepted conventions of communicating with the world. This includes imparting us the knowledge of languages and basic rules of grammar. We are taught to learn the basics about numbers and how to add, subtract, multiple, divide and a few more operations. We learn the basics of social science, something about the plant and animal kingdom, a bit of poetry and a lot of stories, most of which give us the ability to visualize and dream what we probably can not see with our eyes. Basically we get acquainted with the world around us and learn the basics of communicating with this world. There is mix of knowledge and skills that we receive at this stage of education.

Moving on the senior school levels, we start looking at different subjects and get the basics of them. For example, if we study Botany we understand how the Botanists look at the world and how they classify it? It is still learning the conventions of the world of Botany but a level deeper than what we learnt in primary school. We appreciate the classifications of the world in terms of subjects. We study history to know how the world around us evolved to this stage, how our ancestors lived and how various civilizations evolved. We study geography to know the world as it exists today. We study science to understand the unseen and to probably be able to define the future one day. We study social science to understand the society that we live in, and the way it is structured. We start getting introduced to the literature and the world of various art forms. We study the applications of mathematics and some theory behind it. We play some sports and it’s the only place where we learn to operate in teams. Unfortunately we are not explicitly taught the interlinking of the various subjects at any stage. At this stage we understand the worlds of various subjects.

After the school, we choose our area of interest and go a level deeper into the chosen combination of subjects. We understand the nuances of the subject. Pure students look at the subject from learning perspective, they look at its evolution with an objective to potentially contribute to the evolution. The practitioners look at the subject from its application perspective and try to see how the humankind can use its application for improving the quality of life. E.g. a physicist may study the laws of motion and in the process study motion theories of movement of particles to movements of heavenly bodied in the universe, but an engineer may use these laws of motion to design a vehicle that can be used by people to move from one place to another.

On the sidelines, there is life that keeps teaching its own lessons. We learn from the place, society and company that we live in. The more no of places we live in the more we learn and the more we learn more we are open towards other people, cultures and places. We learn skills based on the events and surroundings in our lives, on the basis of interests that we get to pursue. We learn everyday, almost every moment from everything that we do and from everything that we see, hear, feel or touch. The trick is how much of it is added to our knowledge and how much are we able to convert into our wisdom. Everyone does it to some extent but some people do it more than others.

At any point in time, there are a few industries that are in high growth stage and they require specific skill sets in huge numbers. This is a very transient requirement in ever changing world. There are a lot of people who choose to respond to these transient requirements and equip themselves with the skills required, irrespective of their area of interest. The euphoria in the air says that if you are not equipped with these skills you are probably not prepared for a good future and a good life. In the process, the industry probably manages to the get the quantity of manpower that they need, quality is always a point of argument. But what looses is the subject area where the student would have been interested and might have made his or her best contribution. After a few years most good minds would get a feeling of going back and pursuing what they really want to do, some people manage to do it, some get lost in the rut of life. This is where the real education comes in play, people who would have gathered the wisdom from their education would be able to pursue their professions and their passions and lead a satisfactory life.

There is no undermining the fact that we need employment and hence we need skills that would make us employable. But then should the whole focus of our education be focused upon getting employed, or should it take a part of our time and effort to build our skills that would provide us employment. Should education not focus on providing us with the basic life skills and an open mind which is adaptive to the external changes while developing the inner core? Being employed is necessary for surviving, but living is more important than surviving and education should prepare us for a living a quality life.

A well rounded education gives us or should give us the knowledge, skill, attitude and an ability to be a learner forever. The skills that are in demand today are bound to be obsolete tomorrow, so at the skill level we should be adaptable and ready to learn new things at any point in time, depending on what field we are in and where we want to be. At the knowledge level, we should develop an ability to keep enhancing our knowledge by being open to learning from everything and everyone around us. We should learn from our experiences, be open to new experiments and experiences, while also absorbing from experiences of those around us. Attitude is something that always is a function of our grooming in initial years and in later years our ability to use our observations and experiences to define our behavior towards everything in life. A good education in the initial years can help us with an attitude that helps us in living a full and complete life.

Though they say that education is something that is a lifetime affair, but learning is more of a habit and that too an acquired one most of the times. Learn for no reason or for any reason, but as long as you are learning, without limiting yourself by the employability factor, the returns will also not be limited by the returns that the employment gives.

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

This book had been a bestseller for years now. Every other day you hear about the Hollywood movie being made on the book and for some reason or the other the book remains in news. I have met several people who have read the book and while reading (it takes a long time to read this 950 odd pages book), everyone wanted to go and sit in the Leopold café in Mumbai. Couple of years back on a business visit to Mumbai, I actually did go and sit their as a colleague was reading the book and desperately wanted to see the place. I kept looking at this book every time I visited a bookstore, but either because of the size of the book or because of its bestseller tag, I kept avoiding it. But now that I have lots of time on hand, I picked up this book and read it over last couple of weeks.

It is a story that keeps you glued to the book while you are reading it. Brilliantly written, it is a good mix of fact and fiction and all elements of a good story, some revealing facts, some emotions, a bit of romance, a bad guy with a golden heart, a mysterious underworld don, an adopted family and all this in well balanced proportions and spread across the length of the story. Still this story fits within the few years of the protagonist’s life that he spent in Mumbai. It’s a story of grit and determination of a person refusing to give up after all that he goes through, a story of someone who is a ready to learn new things anytime be it the language or be it the ways of doing a new business, story of someone who comes out of nowhere to Mumbai and becomes the face of Mumbai crime and can probably take lessons for the new recruits in business.

The book has many layers or rather stories, the common thread being the protagonist. There is a story of people living in slums and their day to day survival, their interdependence on each other, their ways and means to manage crisis, their trust and faith and their joys and sorrows. There is a story of illegal immigrants to Mumbai, mostly from first world countries, who are escaping from their own countries, usually have criminal backgrounds and find an anonymous existence here, their relationships with each other and with the locals, their lure for drugs, their vulnerability and their courage. There is a story of underworld, the way it operates in a truly global way, how it earns for itself, how it recruits, trains and rewards its people, how it manages everything with perfection and how they actually believe in what they are doing. There is a story of Mumbai city in itself, how it exists and why it is the melting pot for all kinds of people, especially the non conforming ones. Of course it is the story of the protagonist who has escaped from an Australian Jail and landed in Mumbai on a fake passport and with a fake name, who goes and lives in a remote village in Maharashtra for six months, comes back and lives in a slum for years working as a doctor curing slum dwellers and is then discovered by the underworld. He gets entangled in their web in such a way that he eventually becomes a key player in their game plan, runs black market operations in currency exchange, runs forged passport business, experiments in black marketing gold, goes and fights in Afghanistan and loves a woman from first page of the book till the last. Quite a life in one life…

As you read the book, you keep wondering what is fact and what is writer’s imagination. Author has not claimed anything to be true, but a lot of things written, in my opinion can be written only if you have gone through the experience. You may twist and tweak but you have to go through it to be able to so eloquently describe it. Author may have deliberately left out a lot of details, or added a few to fill the gaps hence created, but overall the story does look true. For an average reader, there are quite a few things to learn from this book, particularly about the operations of underworld.

It makes an interesting read, if you have the patience to read a long book. Towards the end you find it a bit dragging when he goes on to describe each and every wound on everyone’s body part, but otherwise it has been written in a way that keeps you interested to know what next, even when you reach the last page. Author is very good at depicting emotions, both his and of others, you would almost feel the feeling the characters are going through but at the same time he keep sit light enough for you to move on.

Read it…