For many sensitive minds India has fallen on bad days within forty years of its independence. This crisis is the grist for Saberwal and Thapar who have put in book format a number of sub-themes they have previously written or talked about at various fora.
Shourie is the archetypal critic, cast in the mould of the 13th century Tamil savant, Seethalai Nayanar, literally “the pusshead saint”. This sobriquet he earn¬ed from his forehead being a permanently festering sore because of his habit of striking it with his stylo in exasperation over the illiterate idiocies of those around him. In his odd mixture of passion and reason, precision and prolixity, Shourie is in the robust tradition of polemicists of some centuries ago—Milton in his Latin tracts and the followers of Vedanta Desika and Appaiya Dikshitar in the South.
The Children’s Book Trust just having completed 25 years of publication has always been striving to bring out books which would appeal to children of different ages with varied interests and have succeeded to a large extent. The three books under review were Adventures on Golden Lake. Revenge and The Lure of a Zangrila. All three are fast-paced and exciting, gripping the reader’s attention and holding it.
There are very few books concerned with science or science fiction published in India that would interest children in the 12 + age group. CBT has endeavoured to and has been successful to a certain extent in this respect.
Indira Priyadarshini, Alaka Shankar’s eminently readable book, rich in bio¬graphical and historical detail, laced with ancedotes, is essentially the story of a girl by that name and how she grew from child to woman.
Shy, gawky and afraid of the dark as a little girl. Self-righteous and confident during her ‘Vanar Sena’ days. Elegant and poised as a bride. A beautiful, caring mother, full of games, puzzles and stories. A shrewd, tough politician and a doting grandmother. That was Indira Gandhi declared in 1977 according to a special gallup poll in America, as ‘the most admired person in the world’.