Is Nepal about to become South Asia’s first failed state? Many recent visitors to Nepal from the West, including senior World Bank officials, seem to think so. India, too is concerned; if its publicly articulated assessments are less categorically pessimistic, it is for reasons not too difficult to understand.
The division of the British Indian Empire into India and Pakistan was the result of the interaction of many complex processes within India itself, in Britain as well as the global situation after World War II.
Childhood days are generally remembered with nostalgia for the moments of fun, adventure and friendship of a magical past. It is a time of love and laughter, of shared secrets and friendly quarrels, and of the snug reading of books alternating with the boisterous playing of games. All this and more is brought back to the reader through the pages of the book, An Elsewhere Place: Boyhood Days in Hazaribagh.
This is quite unbelievable—a full length book on grammar in this age of abbreviated texting—SMS, Messenger, WhatsApp and the like, when grammar and punctuation are fast becoming obsolete! Indeed, books today are being consciously written without punctuation, and in a mishmash of languages like Hinglish a la Radio Mirchi style, for all age groups.
Lucy Meets AI is the sequel to the book entitled Lucy and the Train: Tryst with Sustainability* authored by Anandajit Goswami and narrates the second adventure of Lucy. This stand-alone volume is really a wonderful yet learning read for the booklovers, irrespective of their chance to flip through the earlier adventure of Lucy, described in the earlier volume.
Kanwaljit Deol’s novel, The Year of the Hawks, grabs you by the throat and draws you panting into the lives of two adolescents engaged in the charming competition of who can touch his nose with his tongue and other such now forgotten pastimes of youth, unaware of the murky goings on in their village in the dead of night. Then they spot a dead body and report it to the police.
Despite our efforts to help him, Oliver’s anxiety at being left alone only increased in the years he lived with us. His storm phobia reduced him to a shaking, inconsolable mess, and it took him hours, sometimes days to recover’. A concerned relative or friend could have said this about a person suffering from an anxiety disorder or extreme depression.
With 1.1 million schools, 143 million students and 4.9 million teachers, the government school system in India is one of the largest and most complex public systems across the world. The past three decades have seen an exponential rise in the number of schools and enrolment due to various government initiatives.
The enigma around motherhood has produced much interest among feminist scholars who have highlighted social construction of the same. The two books under review, carry forward the feminist tradition with a specific focus on the Indian context.