After an arid summer, a few good books, as welcome as the first drops of rain, have arrived. The Buffalo Thief, a first novel by Yojana Sharma is unusual. Delving into source material that is obviously autobiographical, Sharma weaves a story about a young girl called Deepa (herself?), her blind grandmother who can read thoughts and look into the future, an aspiring writer called Raman who is trying to write a novel about a smuggler and, of course, the buffalo, lovingly called jhotta (shouldn't it be jhotti?). Jhotta is a muse of sorts as the raita made from her milk inspires Raman and he steals her for some time so that he can finish writing the novel.
Jhotta looms large in the background as the maid tells Deepa stories about a crazy old woman called Baoli and her equally crazy jhotta. One feels that these stories and the haunting refrain about Baoli maai are part of Sharma's childhood memories. It is a story of three generations of women Amma, her daughter Ma who has started a new life after herhusband's sudden death and Deepa whose search for identity does not culminate in marriage but economic independence as hinted by the discovery of the treasure
India is still high on the popularity chart of western travellers as a destination country. The reasons vary from romantic to practical. Trevor Fishlock a journalist who had been in India earlier as a correspondent, visited India and Pakistan, rounded off with a trip to Panagar. Reason? He had been brought up in a house named Panagarh in an English village and had always wanted to visit the small town. Though more than a hundred years have passed since Rudyard Kipling worked in India as a journalist, his views on this country still continue to influence English travellers. Fishlock is no exception as a reading of Cobra Road (John Murray) shows. This implies that his perspective is colonial though he shows an understanding of current socio-political issues.
Justine Hardy has been to India as a trekker in the Himalayan region and has written about itin an earlier book. Her current book Scoop-wallah Life on a Delhi Daily (John Murray) recounts her stint as a journalist with The Indian Express. Whimsical, humorous without a trace of bitterness, her experiences in India make for good reading if one does not take them too seriously. There is a sensitivity in her perception which is revealed in her account of life on a tea estate, the affluence and glamour overshadowed by fear of terrorism. Hardy is also influenced by Kipling and her attitude to her Indian colleagues at The Indian Express is condescending as they do not always speak correct English and the journalists vision.
An Admiral's Fall (Har-Anand) by Wilson John attempts to look at the reasons and circumstances behind Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat's dismissal. It starts from the dramatic way in which Vice-Admiral Sushil Kumar was summoned from Port Blair to the defence ministry and handed a letter which read that the President had promoted him as the chief of naval staff with immediate effect.What followedwas splashed in the national dailies and Niloufer Bhagwat's diatribe against the authorities gave the media a hot topic for discussion. In his book John goes into the origins of Bhagwat's behavioural pattern, accessing official documents such as the annual confidential report written by Vice Admiral S Jain in 1989 saying that though Bhagwat was intelligent and erudite, he was ``...overtly ambitious, power-hungry and much enamoured of authority and perquisites of office.''
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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