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This book teaches children to recycle

The TERI Press releases a new book for children, titled ‘Why Should I Recycle?’, to explain the principle of reduce-reuse-recycle.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

TERI Press, the publishing wing of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), recently released a book, Why Should I Recycle?. The book helps children understand the principle of reduce, reuse, and recycle, and how these principles can make the world a cleaner, healthier and better place.

Speaking at the book launch, Prabir Sengupta, Distinguished Fellow and Director, TERI, said “The overall perception about what is sustainable and what is not, what is ethical and what is not can only be taught through books.”

The launch of the book was followed by a panel discussion. The discussions deliberated on several issues, including the lack of availability of environmental literature for children, creating interesting books on green issues for kids, national policy perspective on environment and children literature, environmental education and the role of schools.

Introducing the book, Aanchal Broca Kumar, author of the book, said, “Teach the child not what to think but how to think, to bring about a difference.” Added Lata Vaidyanathan, former Principal, Modern School: “Attitudinal change is necessary to bring about a turnaround. Reading should be encouraged without testing or competition.”

Dr MA Sikander, Director, National Book Trust, said, “Promote reading as a natural culture and inculcate the habit in children at a very young age.”

(Picture courtesy daily.bhaskar.com)

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Gratitude at the grassroots

Researcher Sadashiv Tetvilkar’s newest book on ‘veergals’ (aka hero stones) talks about memorial stones as unique sources of local history.
by Shubha Khandekar

‘Rural Maharashtra is strewn with hundreds of Veergals (Hero Stones) at the boundary of the village or else, in the courtyard of a Shiva temple located on the periphery of the village. A group of four beautiful Hero Stones (fifth one is in the custody of ASI) at Eksar in Borivali shows in vivid detail a ferocious naval battle, which has been correlated to the text Chaturvarga Chintamani composed by Hemadri Pandit. He describes a decisive naval battle fought between Yadava King Mahadeva and Shilahara ruler Someshvara in which the latter was routed and killed in 1265. The details of infantry, cavalry, elephant force and battle ships shown herein enables us to understand the military strategy deployed in this battle. Someshvara was cremated at Eksar and the five Hero Stones were erected to commemorate his valour.’

Indefatigable hard core hands-on researcher Sadashiv Tetvilkar, who already has seven books to his credit, has now published Maharashtratil Veergal (Hero Stones of Maharashtra), which highlights the enormous potential of these memorial stones as unique, unconventional sources of local history, in combination with the rich and varied oral traditions of the region. Together with the more conventional methods of decoding historical evidence, such as texts, the book is a significant addition to the armoury of historians and archaeologists working on the early mediaeval past of Maharashtra.

These Hero Stones, often found together with Sati Stones erected to honour wives who committed sati after the husband’s death at the battlefield, are unequivocally the memorials erected to commemorate heroes who valiantly fought and died on the battlefield while defending and protecting the lives and properties of the communities they belonged to, from wild predators or human invaders. It is a humble and affectionate tribute paid by the commoners to their brave hero, so as to inspire future generations to follow in his footsteps.

What makes this effort significant is that this study fills up a huge gap in reconstructing local history, long felt but left unaddressed due to neglect and apathy. Part of the challenge lies in the fact that there is rarely, if ever, any inscription on the Hero Stones, and they are lying open to the skies, which makes it difficult to establish their context in time and space.

The book is embellished with colour and B&W photographs of outstanding samples of Hero Stones. Although the author insists that the Veergals included in his book are only a compilation of the possible sources, it has nevertheless opened floodgates of an exciting archaeological and ethnographic adventure that will unfold unseen aspects of early medieval history of Maharashtra.

Tetvilkar points out that Hero Stones are not unique to Maharashtra: they are found in great numbers in Karnataka, Goa, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Kashmir, Andhra, Himachal, Bengal and Gujarat, which highlights the cultural unity of India at the very grassroots. Hero Stones are rectangular slabs of hard stone, usually with three vertical panels decorated with low relief sculpture which is a continuous narrative of valour, sacrifice and magnanimity, through a battle scene, death and ascent into heaven. The sun and moon at the top indicates that the fame of the hero would remain undiminished forever.

Tetvilkar holds the view that some of these local heroes were eventually elevated to the status of gods and came to be worshipped by villagers, which explains the large number of local deities venerated in rural Maharashtra. The attributes of these heroes/gods and the myths and legends associated with them give us important insights into the lives, values and aspirations of the communities they belonged to. They also give us significant clues into the process of Aryanisation of the hinterland and the commingling of varied cultural traits and tradition. By enhancing the credibility of myths and folklore, they constitute a textbook of history from below.

Although Veergals have been known in India from the 2nd to the 18th centuries, a deep study has surprisingly been largely absent. Tetvilkar points out the contribution made to this field by famous anthropologist Gunther Sontheimer and strive to complete the job he left unfinished. The book is an outcome of the relentless energy with which he roamed over jungles and mountains, undeterred by heat or cold or rains, speaking to elders in the villages, gathering and classifying data and correlating this data with the published works of scholars.

Tetvilkar gives several examples of eye-witness accounts of the British who saw women voluntarily committing Sati after the death of their husbands at the battlefield, and the courage and quiet dignity with which these women embraced a painful death, which has been immortalised on the Sati Stones. Women have also been shown on horseback, or worshipping a Shivalinga along with their husbands after reaching heaven. A few Sati Stones also show the woman being coerced into following the Sati custom, and Tetvilkar analyses how Sati is Bengal was different from what it was in Maharashtra, and why Bengal was at the forefront of resistance to the custom.

At Degaon in Raigad district is a Hero Stone showing a ten headed enemy, but Ram, Seeta, Lakshman and Hanuman are absent. Blood from the severed fingers of the enemy is shown dripping over a Shivalinga placed below. Tetvilkar dates this Veergal to Shivaji’s times on account of the similarities with the known event in Shivaji’s life.

(Pictures courtesy Shubha Khandekar)

 

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Review: ‘An astronaut’s guide to life on Earth’

Chris Hadfield’s account of his astronaut life is a must-read for those looking to be (literally) transported to another world.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Growing up, a lot of us dream of being astronauts, just like we also dream of being actors, entertainers, doctors and truckers. Growing up, any job that lets us play with toys and props is cool.

Famous astronaut Chris Hadfield, however, held on to his childhood dream of being an astronaut close to his heart. In his book, An Astronaut’s Guide To Life On Earth, the former astronaut and one of the world’s most accomplished persons in his field, describes how he first dreamed of becoming an astronaut at age 9 while living in his native home town in Ontario, Canada. But like most other children who grow up and relinquish their childhood dreams for more realistic pursuits, Hadfield saw his dream through to a hugely successful, trail-blazing glory.

Chris HadfieldHadfield describes in humorous, engaging detail how he first dreamed the astronaut dream, after watching the telecast of Neil Armstrong descending on the Moon: ‘Slowly, methodically, a man descended the leg of a spaceship and carefully stepped onto the surface of the Moon. The image was grainy, but I knew exactly what we were seeing: the impossible, made possible. The room erupted in amazement…Somehow, we felt as if we were up there with Neil Armstrong, changing the world.

‘Later, walking back to our cottage, I looked up at the Moon. It was no longer a distant, unknowable orb but a place where people walked, talked, worked and even slept. At that moment, I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I was going to follow in the footsteps so boldly imprinted just moments before. Roaring around in a rocket, exploring space, pushing the boundaries of knowledge and human capability – I knew, with absolute clarity, that I wanted to be an astronaut.’

It is with the same clarity that Hadfield outlines the agonies and the ecstasies of his journey as a Canadian boy hoping to catch a break into NASA space programme, enrolling in military service to ensure a route to NASA, getting his glider license at age 15, turning down an opportunity to become a commercial airline pilot to focus on being an astronaut instead, getting through to the Canadian Space Agency, and finally, getting the break into NASA. He outlines his journey with insights into daily gruelling schedules, maintaining optimum fitness levels at all times (the slightest disorder or illness can get you off the programme), the relentless training and repeat training of a series of tasks as part of simulator exercises, and working with a team as an equal player who does not seek individual recognition but team success.

His stint as Commander of the International Space Station, however, made Hadfield famous all over the globe – not least because of the live streaming of pictures and videos that he engineered for transmission from the shuttle and the live tweets of important events aboard the spaceship, but for his performance (on guitar and without his spacesuit) of David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’, which became an instant hit online.

His book is an insightful look into the travails and joys of being an astronaut – he describes in vivid detail, for instance, about how zero gravity makes everyday, mundane tasks on space oddityEarth, like washing one’s hair or moving from spot to spot, a complete challenge to master. But his story is not just a superstar’s account of life aboard a spaceship and watching over Earth from a thousand miles away; Hadfield details in pitiless detail the amount of repetitive hard work in the course of training, the compulsive drive an astronaut must possess to be a team player, to practice every single task and routine over and over again and to leave nothing to chance when fighting a crisis. As a reader, you can’t help but be inspired, as he explains the mantra of his success, a philosophy he learnt at NASA: ‘Prepare for the worst – and enjoy every moment of it.’

Hadfield writes simply and with humour, bringing to life the incidents where he disposed of a live snake while piloting a plane, or breaking into the Space Station with a Swiss army knife, or even washing his hair with no-rinse shampoo aboard the spaceship. Readers will understand why being an astronaut is one of the toughest jobs in the world – and why all the hard work is worth it with just one glance at beautiful Earth from outer Space.

Rating for ‘An Astronaut’s Guide To Life On Earth’: 4/5. Buy the book at a discount on Flipkart.

Excerpt from the book:

‘Weightlessness doesn’t feel the same on a huge spaceship where you can move around freely as it does on a tiny rocket ship where there’s nowhere to go. Imagine floating in a pool without water, if you can, then endow yourself with a few superpowers: you can move huge objects with the flick of a wrist, hang upside down from the ceiling like a bat, tumble through the air like an Olympic gymnast. You can fly. And all of it is effortless.

But effortlessness takes some getting used to. My body and brain were so accustomed to resisting gravity that when there was no longer anything to resist, I clumsily, sometimes comically, overdid things. Two weeks in, I finally had moments approaching grace, where I made my way through the Station feeling like an ape swinging from vine to vine. But invariably, just as I was marvelling at my own agility, I’d miss a handrail and crash into a wall. It took six weeks until I felt like a true spaceling and movement became almost unconscious; deep in conversation with a crewmate, I’d suddenly realise that we’d drifted clear across a module, much as you might gently bob around in a pool without really noticing.

The absence of gravity alters the texture of daily life because it affects almost everything we do. Toothbrushing, for instance: you need to swallow the toothpaste – spitting is a very bad idea without the force of gravity or any running water to help stuff go down the drain and stay there. Hand washing requires a bag of water that has already been mixed with a bit of no-rinse soap; squirt a bubble of the stuff through a straw, catch it and rub it all over your hands – carefully, so it clings to your fingers like gel instead of breaking into tiny droplets that fly all over the place – then towel dry.’

(Pictures courtesy www.canada.com, www.nbcnews.com, blogs.windsorstar.com)

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Review: Advantage Love

Madhuri Banerjee’s newest book has an interesting plotline and two likeable characters, but is marred by some cliched, preachy storytelling.
by Sharad Panjwani

I’m not a huge fan of romance novels, but I don’t turn up my nose on them either. If written cleverly and with the right mix of empathy and humour, there really isn’t a genre that is more entertaining. You’ll notice this about romantic comedies, as well.

Madhuri Banerjee’s Advantage Love is her newest book after Losing My Virginity And Other Dumb Ideas and Mistakes Like Love And Sex. Personally, I found Advantage Love flagging in spots and a bit too preachy for my liking – despite an interesting premise.

Trisha Mathur, the novel’s heroine, is an independent-minded woman who believes in making her place in the world on her own talent and merit. The story begins with a debate that Trisha is participating at her college, JNU, against Vedant Kirloskar, the dashing, handsome son of a prominent politician. A meeting later, sparks fly between the two and they start a steady relationship. Though in love with Trisha and extremely dependent on her to make his fledgling political career take wings, Vedant is resistant to the idea of making a deeper commitment and refuses to discuss marriage and a future. The relationship ends on a sour note, with Vedant moving to Mumbai to focus on his political career.

Heartbroken, Trisha immerses herself in her job at the UNICEF and a few months later, happens to meet tennis star Abhimanyu Laxman, who is immediately attracted to her. She doesn’t immediately look to enter into a relationship with him, not wishing to get hurt again. But she rediscovers love with Abhimanyu, and just when her heart is healing, Vedant meets her again.

It’s not a bad plot by any means, but I had a problem with how predictably things happen in the book. You just know Vedant is going to break Trisha’s heart and there are umpteen hints of his imminent return, and the character Vedant is curiously one-dimensional. Besides, he has an annoying tendency to spout poetry when wooing Trisha – if that is what girls really like, then well… *starts learning poetry to use, just in case*. I liked Abhimanyu Laxman loads better, though – he is decent, more open to commitment and wears his stardom with ease and just the right amount of arrogance.

Madhuri displays a tendency to ‘tell, not show’ in her writing; instead of letting the reader understand plot development through dialogue and situation, she writes entire paragraphs blandly describing what the characters are feeling and why they do what they do. What’s more, there is too much sermonising about love and relationships, most of it through Trisha’s friend and mother advising her, and the conversations seem stilted. Personally, I wouldn’t want even my best friend talking to me thus: ‘I don’t want to procreate. And I don’t want to have any regrets. I don’t know if we’ll grow in the same direction over the course of years. No one does. Hell, even railway tracks that are laid parallel straight have to change course or be replaced. We are all continuously changing. But as long as we know that this is the path we want to be on and this is the person we want to share today and the now with, tomorrow and the future will sort itself out. When you say “I love you”, it’s meant as forever. There is no time limit that comes with love.’

And so on.

Maybe fans of romance novels will love this book, and I’m not suggesting they shouldn’t. Maybe others will enjoy this love triangle more than I did. For me, though, a little less predictability and a lot more twists and turns would have done the trick. I would have liked the girl to love and lose…but then I like an unresolved love story.

I’m going with 2.5/5 for Advantage Love.

‘Advantage Love’ is available for sale on Flipkart.

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Review: ‘The Diary Of A Reluctant Feminist’

This book is, without doubt, one of the most awful books to come out at the start of this year.
by Vrushali Lad | vrushali@themetrognome.in

Not all books one reads are good reads. Most of them are average, even tedious reads. But then you come across a book that is so bad, so futile, that every other bad book you’ve read in your life actually shines brighter in comparison.

Bhavna Bhavna’s The Diary Of A Reluctant Feminist is one such book. A look at the synopsis promised several good things, which prompted me to start reading it in the first place. The excerpt on the back cover goes thus:

‘The problem in my struggle for a divorce was in the small print – as with everything in my life it read “subject to my mother’s permission.” And since my mother was never going to allow me to divorce I was relegated to being an armchair divorcee…So I decided, after two years of being separated, to stop waiting for my parents’ elusive permission, and to take the initial steps in the painful journey myself. In this process, I was also branded a “feminist”, which in their view was marginally worse than being a “terrorist”…’

So far, so good. The problem actually began when I started reading it.

The problem with the book is: the whole book.

What could have been a (as promised by the publishers) “profoundly funny chronicle of a young woman’s attempt to get divorced…” is anything but. If anything, it is a whiny, outrageously cliched, lacking-in-the-essentials kind of book, with extremely lazy storytelling. In fact, subject to a few revisions and rewrites, this book could have been a bit closer to what it actually aims to be.

So the author brings out the entire jing bang of a large Punjabi family – a domineering matriarch heading the household, her obedient sons and their wives and children, how the arranging of marriages is a competitive sport, how traditions and customs set by the family’s elders are unquestioningly followed even after the elders’ deaths, how individual wishes of girls and women are never important, but the men get to exercise their rights, and so on. Unfortunately, the story does not rise about these elements at all.

I’m not saying nobody will like this book, it may find its fair share of admirers. Why I am not one of those admirers is because when I read a book, I want to be told something I don’t already know. I don’t mean I should be told an entertaining account of the Higgs Boson, for instance, but when I pick up a book about a woman wanting to tell her overbearing Punjabi family that she wants to get a divorce, I want to be a told the story that makes me 1) Sympathise with the protagonist, 2) See the (promised) hilarity in the several (often banal) exchanges between the woman and her strict parents, 3) Feel the woman’s tension as she tries and fails to save her marriage before deciding to separate from her husband, and 4) Most importantly, find a non-cliched representation of a loveless relationship of the kind we see often in the till-death-do-us-part milieu of Indian marriages.

Instead, all the reader gets is a series of cliches thrown at him one after the other, in a rambling account of the protagonist’s increasingly failing marriage, how her opinion has never been solicited even on matters affecting her life, how her family and indeed, all of society, gangs up on her once her singleton status is established, and how nobody gives her a chance at doing good for herself. Well, boo hoo. What is even more annoying is the sweeping assumption that this is what all girls in large Punjabi families go through – I’m not saying these things don’t happen, but since they do happen fairly regularly, what is the point of telling us just that? And while we’re on the subject, when will be stop caricaturing Punjabi families in this fashion? Aren’t there good, wholesome, uncliched stories about Punjabis to be told at all?

In short, I do not recommend this book at all. If you still want to read it, knock yourselves out here.

Rating: 1.

Rating scale: 1 = Awful; 2 = Slightly rubbish; 3 = Tolerable read; 4 = Good; 5 = Paisa vasool

(Pictures courtesy www.flipkart.com, www.theatlantic.com)

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Review: ‘Paperback dreams’

Rahul Saini’s newest book is a behind-the-scenes look at the (sometimes) murky world of book publishing and the writing process.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Rahul SainiIf you’ve been an aspiring author, a recently-published one, or worse, a rejected one, you must read Rahul Saini’s Paperback Dreams.

The thing with writing a book in India today is that one gets complacent even before one takes up a plot, or a story outline, or even a pen. “So much nonsense is being published every day, I can write better than that,” one says, secure in the ‘knowledge’ that publishers – all publishers – are simply waiting for one to finish their magnum opus so that printing of the book may commence. And when one’s book is out, all one has to do is sit back and rake in the royalties.

That is not so, as Paperback Dreams explains in funny, sharp detail. The book’s three protagonists – published authors Rohit Sehdev and Jeet Obiroi, and aspiring author and school student Karun Mukharjee – are presented in three parallel narratives, but are connected at various points in the story. All three are published by Dash Publishers. Rohit is a bestselling author who is being cheated out of his royalties, but he is initially too afraid to even have strong words with the publisher. Meanwhile, Jeet is cruising along with the success of his first book and his movie star looks, but he is constantly dogged by a dark secret about his book that he hopes nobody will ever find out.

Meanwhile, Karun has cracked the formula for the perfect love story – after a bit of research of best-selling authors’s works, he has finished his debut novel and is due to be published while still in school. However, he hits upon a Machiavellian plan to achieve his ends – not content to merely be published, he wants to ensure that he becomes the star for Dash Publishers as their other best-selling authors fall to the wayside.

Readers will recognise some of India’s spectacular publishing successes that Saini mentions off and on – there are references to Bhetan Chagat, for example. However, Saini’s paperback dreamslight-hearted take on the publishing industry also reveals several dark truths. It’s not all hunky dory in the publishing world – publishers routinely cheat authors of royalties, new authors’s books are not promoted or stocked in bookstores, debutant authors sometimes have to rewrite major plot points to please the publisher, and plagiarism is a common phenomenon. Also, as Saini deftly points out, it is really not that difficult to get published these days.

Overall, the book is an enjoyable read, but you will be a put off by several typos that suddenly appear in a few chapters in the middle of the book. Obviously, somebody’s been sleeping at the editing table. Other than that, you might also think that the Karun narrative is a bit simplistic, even clunky. It’s all okay till he devises his evil plan, but the methods he adopts and the results he gets seem a bit far-fetched.

The most relatable character is Rohit, for his low self-confidence, his obvious talent that he is reluctant to advertise, his constant whining about his problems while lacking the courage to take corrective action. So many of us are like that. How he finally tackles the publisher in a comical denouement would make for a good scene in a film. In fact, we rather suspect Saini wrote this book for celluloid, like a certain Mr Bhagat.

Rating: 3.5/5

Rating scale: 1 = Awful; 2 = Slightly rubbish; 3 = Tolerable read; 4 = Good; 5 = Paisa vasool.

Check out Rahul Saini’s Paperback Dreams here.

(Author photograph courtesy Rahul Saini, featured image www.compassbook.com)

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