Tag Archives: Biography

What picture comes to your mind when you think of a scientist? Well, when children are presented with this question and asked to draw a scientist at work, more often than not, they draw an elderly or middle-aged man wearing a lab coat and spectacles, mixing chemicals in fancy glassware. Alarmingly, the proportion of children who hold such a stereotypical mental image of a scientist seems quite large: 86.5% in a study done in 1998[1] and 78% in a more recent study[2]!

Whenever I imagine about war, images of the aftermath of war come to my mind. Everything is scattered around. I can see only those people and things that have somehow escaped from the bombings. I can see the ominous silence spread out after the heart-rending blasts. I can see the school which has nothing left now. I can see the children who had come to school with dreams in their eyes, with the belief that everything will be alright if they study.

B.R. Ambedkar: A Life in Books, is a very imaginative and accessible introduction to one of the tallest leaders India has ever had. The book, without being pedantic, provides a young reader a bird’s eye view of life and times of Babasaheb.  It does a fabulous job of introducing young minds to difficult themes such as caste-based discrimination, equity and justice.

The Puffin Book of 100 Extraordinary Indians, 100 inspiring stories of outstanding achievements, is a compilation of stories of different Indians across diverse fields from various eras.Arranged alphabetically, and seemingly written by different authors (no author has been credited), the book feels random.

Ram Nath Goenka was the publisher of The Indian Express. Arun Shourie was twice its editor. The two were the Dhoni and Jadeja of Indian journalism in the 1980s. It was a truly extraordinary partnership.In 1990 RNG, as he was known, passed away. I was asked to write his obituary by the paper I was working for then. It was quite an honour.

It is not easy to pen down in a book the journey of a multifaceted personality who spanned a century of the performing arts in India and Europe, with accomplishments in dance, theatre, film and television. The author of the biography Zohra! A Biography in Four Acts, Ritu Menon, acknowledges this challenge right in the beginning and articulates in the preface the locus of the book: ‘For Zohra, I thought I could situate her remarkable life and the choices she made in the equally significant and transformative junctures she found, or placed herself in, whether in Dresden or Almora, Lahore or Bombay, London or Delhi.

There are few book reviews that can begin with a ‘must-read’ recommendation and this is one. The book is an intimate capturing of an author’s journey into the dark abyss of mental illness, his inability to comprehend his reality and the world, the journey to come to terms with it—finding his way back to his words—writing this book and some more plays and then getting lost forever. This sense of loss is the kind of foreboding throughout the book—the loss of one’s capacity to write, to express in words their pain, confusion and suffocation—the loss of loved ones to an illness they don’t understand, a loss of control over one’s actions and thought, a loss of respect—loss seems to be a theme entrenched in the narrative.

Allahabad has had its share of books. From literary anthologies to histories to the fascination with the Kumbh Mela, this city, where the rivers meet has attracted the attention of insiders as well as outsiders. Huien Tsang, the Chinese chronicler, writes that he visited Prayaga now officially called Prayagraj in 643 AD, during Harshvardhana’s reign.

Amartya Sen requires no introduction to an Indian audience. Economist, philosopher, author, educationist, Public Intellectual Extraordinaire—call him what you will—he has loomed large. All of us have read his writings, be they profound academic contributions or more popular essays and pieces for general readership. The book being reviewed here, Home in the World: A Memoir, is a book with a difference. It is a memoir more than an autobiography. It starts, like it should, at the very beginning, when Sen was yet to be three and was on his way to Burma on a ship which hooted rather often, but then seems to stop, rather suddenly in 1963, just when Sen, not yet thirty, joins the Delhi School of Economics to occupy the chair being vacated by VKRV Rao…

Ritu Menon is among the pioneers of feminist publishing. Through Kali for Women which she co-founded with Urvashi Butalia in 1984, and later Women Unlimited of which Menon is the founder-director, she has provided a platform for women writers and new voices from South Asia, Palestine, Britain, Europe, America and other lands…

Complementing Gandhi’s famous autobiography and structured as an inter-woven narrative, Restless as Mercury: My Life as a Young Man, an edited life story, is a monumental endeavour, and an experiment in creating a new genre. The book is both deeply illuminating and challenging…

1991 is often referred to as the year when India faced severe political and social instability due to the rise of divisive identity politics in the aftermath of the Mandal and Mandir issues. The year also marked the country facing serious economic crisis which compelled…

Stuck in her twenty-something body, Manjula Padmanabhan is a misfit amongst her friends and family. Getting There: A Young Woman’s Quest for Love, Truth and Weight-Loss is a memoir about a woman in erstwhile Bombay who is unable to find peace despite all…

The tradition of writing memoirs by civil servants has been handed down by the colonial administrators to their successors in the bureaucracy of independent India.  Sardar Jarnail Singh too has penned a memoir of the fateful eight years of his life in the Prime Minister’s…

It is now usual to think about the Vietnam conflict of the mid-20th century…

Rebellious Lord is a delightful account by Meghnad Desai of his journey from middle class Vadodara and Mumbai to a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and then to the London School of Economics, and a life in academia and Left politics in the United Kingdom…

This autobiography is the journey of a distinguished Police Officer RK Raghavan, who handled events/cases impacting recent political history of the country. He frequently hit the media headlines, from the tragic assassination at Sriperumbudur of a former…

When a pioneer of the women’s movement in India opens up the window box of her memories, one can expect some startling revelations and some valuable historical perspectives. Devaki Jain delivers on both counts, making this candid and charming book an inspiration for its readers…

Why I am not a Hindu Woman is Wandana Sonalkar’s autobiographical reflections on Hinduism as a religion, as an upper-caste Marxist feminist, and in the context of India’s socio-political journey in the last seventy three years, particularly in the shadow of Hindutva majoritarian politics…

These lines of John Donne may sound hyperbolic to the modern reader. However, they define like no other lyrics can the enchanting love-story of Krishna Paul and the celebrated writer Joginder Paul. A story narrated through conversations between Krishna Paul and Chandana Dutta…