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‘The High Priestess Never Marries’ brings some mystery

The book is part of a duology on ‘Ila of the Kallady’ lagoon, and is accompanied by a picture book for children, ‘Mermaids in the Moonlight’…reports Asian Lite News

There is a short story ‘Conchology’ in her book ‘The High Priestess Never Marries’, which was the first time she had attempted to bring the mystery of Kallady’s musical lagoon into her work. For author Sharanya Manivannan the tale took years to write as she would keep glimpsing what it was supposed to be, but wasn’t able to gather the complete look until near the end of finishing that manuscript.

“I went to Sri Lanka immediately after the book was published; in fact, ‘The High Priestess Never Marries’ was launched in Colombo first. It was during this trip that something was seeded in my heart about the ‘meen magal’ as a personal and creative motif. A few months later I began returning to Batticaloa, too, where I had only been once before. These trips had as their overt intention researching the meen magal or singing fish phenomenon, but the deeper draw was to be in the place that my family is from, the place I did not get to grow up in or even visit because of the civil war in Sri Lanka,” says the author whose graphic novel ‘Incantations Over Water’ (Westland Publications) that hit the stands recently.

The book is part of a duology on ‘Ila of the Kallady’ lagoon, and is accompanied by a picture book for children, ‘Mermaids in the Moonlight’.

This author of seven books who writes and illustrates fiction, poetry, children’s literature and non-fiction says that she has been drawing and painting since her teens, and writing since she was a child.

“It did not seem unusual to me to bring these two together. It seemed so natural in fact that while I know when I began thinking about mermaids as a creative motif, I don’t know exactly why I chose the visual medium. The mermaids themselves are very visual in Batticaloa, of course: the symbol is across public facades everywhere.”

Recipient of the South Asian Laadli Award for ‘The High Priestess Never Marries’, Manivannan’s books — ‘Mermaids in the Moonlight’ and ‘Incantations Over Water’ were created during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Together, the books form my Ila duology. ‘Moonlight…’ is about a woman from the diaspora taking her child (Nilavoli) to the island and to the lagoon for the first time. During their boat ride, Nilavoli receives an inheritance of stories, which also gently help her to understand her culture and the civil war. The child and mother create a mermaid named Ila, and play with the possibility that she lives in the lagoon. In ‘Incantations.’, it is Ila who is the narrator. As a book for adults, it is a darker and deliberately complex work, going deeper into the region’s realities.”

Adding that when it comes to revealing herself through her characters, it is something that just happens sometimes, and is not really important for her.

“I write and draw primarily for my own solace or pleasure, so anything I feel or think about enters the work.”

Hailing from a country that witnessed one of the longest and bloodiest civil wars in the world, the author feels that it’s vital just not to forget, but also to have nuanced narratives — as well as to understand that the civil war is only over officially, but that scars and tribulations persist in different forms.

“Perhaps I’m aware of the literature and cinema out there because of my personal investment in the topic. Authors like Anuk Arudpragasam, Nayomi Munaweera, Sharmila Seyyid, Rajith Savanadasa, Michael Ondaatje and Shyam Selvadurai have written remarkable texts. One of my favourite novels is Shankari Chandran’s ‘Song Of The Sun God’, which is not about the conflict per se, but Tamil lives over decades. Tamil creatives and activists from India have a long history of appropriating the pain of communities from and of the island, and I would caution against most work by them. Exceptions would be Rohini Mohan, Meera Srinivasan, Swarna Rajagopalan and Samanth Subramanian, who work in different non-fiction disciplines.”

Recalling the emotions she felt while visiting Batticaloa for the first time a decade back, she remembers being ill and sprawled out asleep in one row of the van for 10 hours on the highway from Colombo.

“I can never forget sitting up just in time to see the mermaid arch at the entrance of the town. It was drizzling, and electric lights had been turned on in the late dusk. I saw the mermaid arch — it appears in both the books; it has three mermaids sitting atop it, greeting those who enter or leave the town — and my ancestral temple which is right beside it, for the first time.”

She also recalls that during that trip she sat on the front porch of the house that her grandmother had yearned for deeply and in the final year of her life kept saying that she wanted to see that porch one more time.

“She died without fulfilling that yearning. Still, that trip was difficult for me for various reasons, and I know that the only thing that gave me the courage to attempt to go back there was the pursuit of the mermaids. Being able to tell myself that I was going there out of curiosity about why the mermaid symbol is everywhere in Batticaloa except in the folklore gave me emotional scaffolding for a journey that all and exiles can undertake only at great risk to their hearts. I am profoundly fortunate and grateful — each time I went back, filled my heart, and the overflow of those feelings are what fill my pages.”

Stressing that she thoroughly enjoyed illustrating these books, and this aspect of creating them gave her much peace, the author adds that almost half of the art in ‘Incantations Over Water’ was created during the weeks of her father’s hospitalisation due to Covid-19 during the second wave.

“And in the one month after his demise — my family formally mourned for 31 days, as per Batticaloa customs — the book was finished just before this period ended. Immersing myself in the art buoyed me.”

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Jayasri Burman’s River of Faith, an ode to Ganga

This solo exhibition by Burman after more than a decade is an ode to the Ganga — a ‘subject’ she has been working on since 2004. She says is a way of reminding us to have faith in nature and its immense power…reports Sukant Deepak

She has vivid memories of going to the Ganga ghats in Kolkata every year. She might have been six or seven years old but the subtle yet imposing images never leave her — diyas on leaves moving gently with the river’s rhythm, men doing push-ups, shattered bangles being thrown in the water, people staring into nothingness, a group performing yoga poses.

“The sheer theatre in Ganga’s embrace got imprinted in my mind. The river ceased to be just an element for me. It became greater than everything and consumed me. The excitement and awe towards it have only grown over the years,” says artist Jayasri Burman whose latest exhibition ‘River of Faith’ opened in the national capital recently and has now shifted to Gallery Art Exposure in Kolkata (till March 1).

This solo exhibition by Burman after more than a decade is an ode to the Ganga — a ‘subject’ she has been working on since 2004. She says is a way of reminding us to have faith in nature and its immense power.

“We all saw how the bodies were dumped in the river during the peak of the second wave. The river took it all. Nothing changed its course, its purity, the belief people have in her… Even in the most traumatic of times, she did not disappoint anyone,” she tells.

Pointing towards the 84X216 canvas, she adds that if she could paint sound, she would try and capture the mystical notes of the river… But how does one express the many facets of the mighty river — its tranquillity, wilderness, movement and immortality.

“Ganga is how I attempt to compose the balance between its fluidity and the rootedness of the faith it evokes. Over 2020 and 2021, in the pandemic gloom, I have witnessed the abuse faced by Ganga on multiple occasions. Through my work, I wish to spread the message that it is a circle we all inhabit, and only if we nurture nature and not make her suffer, will humanity be able to live harmoniously,” says the artist who has observed Ganga at various places she flows.

Talking about the huge sculptures in the exhibition, Jayasri says while it took multiple years to conceive, she spent a year putting them together. First made with clay, they were moulded in fibreglass and later put in the wax mould before the casting was done with bronze, she said.

For someone whose work is not characterised by one particular style but is in fact an amalgamation of her numerous influences, she smiles that this has to do with the urge to learn constantly and evolve every day.

“How can one be a fulfilled artist? Every line I draw introduces me to a new facet of my skill and thought process. There is awe in every moment. Even a slight change in my life is reflected in my art.”

Talking about her fascination with mythology, she attributes it to the elaborate ‘pujas’ and ‘katha’ recitals at home when she was growing up.

“I would always wonder about the characters, did those things really happen? Slowly, they seeped into my art in one form or the other,” she remembers.

In these highly polarised times, when talking about mythology and Hindu gods and symbols can easily get someone branded, Burman stresses, “I live in India where every morning I wake up to my staff chanting. Dashboards on cars have idols of different gods. I strongly believe everyone likes to visualise the ‘power’ in the shape one likes to see and derive the strength. I was born in a spiritually awakened family.”

And when it comes to the Ganga, she says that she is attracted to it both as a believer and artist.

“In Benaras, I saw several foreigners doing the same rituals which we do. Now, many of them might not know the philosophy behind the ritual, but who are we to say that doing that they were not drawing a certain peace from doing that? Belief works in different ways. As an artist, the colours, the many hues, different shapes of objects, the figures of people from varied walks and their expressions out there narrate a little story to me.”

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Global passion for Russian literature

All Russian literature is not grim, pessimistic, plodding tracts and can hold its own, using a range of genres and styles to reflect the human condition and its times…writes Vikas Datta

Literary traditions take centuries to develop, let alone acquire a following outside their own linguistic realm. Russian literature, however, saw an accelerated rate to global popularity within 200 years.

After nearly a millennium of an oeuvre comprising mainly folk/fairy tales, or the odd historical chronicle, it started to make its presence felt from the early 19th century with Pushkin and Gogol, and then, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Tolstoy, Bulgakov, Pasternak, Nabokov, Akhmatova, and their ilk have ensured its continuing prominence across genres.

Dostoyevsky (Wikipedia)

But, Russian literature, especially of the “Classical School”, which comprises its best-known works, has also laboured under a rather unjust and fearsome perception.

Take views like: “This Vladimir Brusiloff to whom I have referred was the famous Russian novelist. … Vladimir specialised in grey studies of hopeless misery, where nothing happened till page three hundred and eighty, when the moujik decided to commit suicide.” (“The Clicking of Cuthbert” by P.G. Wodehouse)

Or: “Freddie experienced the sort of abysmal soul-sadness which afflicts one of Tolstoy’s Russian peasants when, after putting in a heavy day’s work strangling his father, beating his wife, and dropping the baby into the city’s reservoir, he turns to the cupboards, only to find the vodka bottle empty.” (P.G. Wodehouse again)

The Clicking of Cuthbert book cover (Wikipedia)

Then, vet James Herriot, in his memoirs, reveals how a colleague used to read the opening para of “The Brothers Karamazov” to lull himself to sleep.

Author Viv Groskop, whom we will return to later, observes some common views about Russian literature are that it is “deep”, “difficult”, or require a wider level of reference than the casual reader can aspire to. “You’ll never understand X if you haven’t read Y,” she says.

And then there is the issue of names. Groskop quotes a Danish academic, otherwise impressed by Russian literature, bemoaning: “Why do they (the characters) all have to have forty-seven names?”

While works such as the hefty “War and Peace”, and many other 19th-century novels, are probably responsible for the length part, and the “confusing” names are due to the Russian naming tradition comprising the patronymic, and the widespread use of diminutives, affectionate and otherwise, which needs getting used to, the issue of the content is not quite justified.

All Russian literature is not grim, pessimistic, plodding tracts and can hold its own, using a range of genres and styles to reflect the human condition and its times. Let’s look at half-a-dozen lesser-known works spanning the Golden Age to the present day, and subsequently available in English, which unfortunately leaves out writers such as Yulian Semyonov, creator of the Soviet ‘James Bond’ (unfortunately only one of the series is in English) and fantasy/science-fiction virtuoso Andrei Belyanin.

“Oblomov” (1859), Ivan Goncharov’s second novel, is especially known for how it takes its young titular nobleman protagonist 50 pages — around a tenth of the book’s length — to get out of his bed, in which he spends most of his life, onto a sofa.

Sinking into debt by refusing to take any interest in running his estate deep in the countryside, our slothful character spends the entire account trying to avoid any responsibility, including in love, despite the efforts of well-meaning and more focused friends, before passing on to his desired state of perpetual rest.

Known for taking the “superfluous man”, Russia’s unique contribution to literary archetypes, to a new high — or rather a low, if you contrast it with Pushkin or Lermontov’s creations — it is a trenchant satire on the state of Tsarist Russia’s aristocracy and shows why the revolution became inevitable.

“The Death of the Vazir-Mukhtar” (1928) — either the Susan Causey (2018) or the Anna Kurkina Rush/Christopher Rush translation — by Soviet literary historian and critic Yury Tynyanov, chronicles the last year of the early 19th-century Russian playwright, Orientalist, polyglot, and diplomat Aleksandr Sergeyevich Griboyedov after he returns to Moscow and St Petersburg following a successful diplomatic mission in Persia, and then returns to Tehran on a new mission when he dies in an attack on the embassy by an enraged mob protesting a new treaty.

Featuring a certain quirkiness in its style, i.e. the use of a heavy Russian bureaucratic language, with a spate of lyrical, psychological, and historical digressions, Tynyanov’s modernist theories of literature, comprehensive and sometimes striking psychological insights into many characters, even small-time, across a range of cultures — Russia, Caucasian, and Qajar-era Persia, it is a thoroughly well-researched piece of historical fiction.

“The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin” (1969), by dissident writer Vladimir Voinovich, is the picaresque tale of the absurdities that even totalitarianism cannot avoid.

It tells of a bumbling, unlikely soldier who is posted to a backwater on the eve of World War II, forgotten by his superiors and labelled a deserter, and how he holds off a squad of the German secret service — winning a medal, before getting arrested.

“Pretender to the Throne: The Further Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin” (1979) and “A Displaced Person: The Later Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin” (2007) see him brave out his interrogation, and then made to emigrate to the US, from where he returns as head of an official delegation during the Perestroika era.

Science fiction was always a favoured area for Soviet writers unwilling to toe the official line since it allowed them to use alien worlds to portray social and political situations disallowed in more realistic settings.

Amid a glittering lineup are brothers Arkady Natanovich Strugatsky and Boris Natanovich Strugatsky, whose over two dozen works, written in collaboration, have been quite influential in the genre.

Two which stand out are “Monday Begins on Saturday” (1964), about the personnel and activities at a Soviet research institute dedicated to studying magic and the supernatural, teamed up with the inept administrators who run it. “Tale of the Troika” (1968) continues the satire of the Soviet scientific set-up and its political superstructure.

Then, “One Billion Years to the End of the World” (1977; originally published in English as “Definitely Maybe”), which begins rather on a comic note and gradually gets more ominous as a bunch of researchers, both scientific and of social science, wonder why they are not let being allowed to work on, and their responses.

Among the post-Soviet period, there is Grigori Chkhartishvili alias Boris Akunin’s Erast Fandorin crime thriller series, set in the dying decades of Tsarist Russia, but that deserves an instalment of its own.

  • Vladimir Nabokov
  • Tiynyanov

And if you look for some way to acquaint yourself with the classics only, without reading them in their entirety, then Groskop’s “The Anna Karenina Fix: Life Lessons from Russian Literature” gives you an insightful look into 11 of them from “Dead Souls” to “Dr Zhivago”. It may inspire you to read them too.

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‘Indomitable’ story of Arundhati’s life as a banker

Did that mean people like me couldn’t dream? This book is written to prove that India can be the land of our dreams and it is our ability to reach out with the right attitude and the right ideas that will get us there…reports Asian Lite News

Growing up in the sleepy towns of Bhilai and Bokaro, Arundhati Bhattacharya never imagined that one day she would go on to chair India’s largest bank. It was sheer chance that she came to know of the bank probationary officers’ entrance examination through a friend. She applied, was selected and went on to have a glorious banking career spanning four decades.

Indomitable is the story of Arundhati’s life as a banker and the challenges she faced in a male-dominated bastion. She takes the reader through her growing up years and early education in the 1960s, getting to Kolkata for her college education and then into the State Bank of India, where she started her career. The life of a woman banker with a family in a frequently transferrable job isn’t easy. In Arundhati’s life, too, there were breaking points when she almost thought of quitting her career to balance her personal aspirations with her family’s needs. But she didn’t give up. Instead, she faced her challenges with humour and positivity and took up every assignment as a new chapter in learning and adapting.

In her role as the chairman of SBI, she steered the bank through some of its worst phases. She inspired confidence in the banking sector when the NPA crises led to a significant public trust deficit. Under her leadership, SBI metamorphosed into a customer-centric and digitally advanced bank while playing a pivotal role in national development. Some of her human resources initiatives included industry-first practices that were appreciated and later adopted by other banks.
Candid, lucid and humble, Indomitable is the story that will galvanize you to embrace challenges, break barriers, push forward and achieve greater heights.

“From a very young age I listened to many older people talking about migrating to the Western world as it was defined as ‘the land of your dreams’. First it was UK then USA and Canada and thereafter Australia and Singapore. I often wondered why India couldn’t become the land of one’s dreams. But I was told in India things don’t work unless you know people. That capital was scarce and that the multiple barriers to living out your dreams didn’t allow for anything other than a mundane existence to people coming from small towns with no backers or backgrounds.

Did that mean people like me couldn’t dream? This book is written to prove that India can be the land of our dreams and it is our ability to reach out with the right attitude and the right ideas that will get us there. Today’s generation is proving me right and I am so proud of them. So to all those who dared to dream – cheers! Hang in there and you will make it,” says the author, Arundhati Bhattacharya.

“Indomitable is the story of small towns, big dreams and greater achievements. Arundhati’s journey, growing up in the sleepy towns of Bhilai and Bokaro, getting into a challenging banking job and leaving her mark as an exceptional leader is an inspiring tale that will be etched in a reader’s mind for years. We are excited and privileged to be publishing this book,” says Sachin Sharma, Executive Editor, HarperCollins India.
Arundhati Bhattacharya is the first woman to chair the State Bank of India (SBI), a 210-year-old institution, India’s largest bank and a Fortune 500 company. Currently, she is the chairperson and CEO of Salesforce India, a cloud-based SaaS company, listed in the USA and headquartered in San Francisco.

HarperCollins Publishers India is a subsidiary of HarperCollins Publishers. HarperCollins India publishes some of the finest writers from the Indian Subcontinent and around the world, publishing approximately 200 new books every year, with a print and digital catalogue of more than 2,000 titles across 10 imprints.
Its authors have won almost every major literary award including the Man Booker Prize, JCB Prize, DSC Prize, New India Foundation Award, Atta Galatta Prize, Shakti Bhatt Prize, Gourmand Cookbook Award, Publishing Next Award, Tata Literature Live Award, Gaja Capital Business Book Prize, BICW Award, Sushila Devi Award, Prabha Khaitan Woman’s Voice Award, Sahitya Akademi Award and the Crossword Book Award.

HarperCollins India has been awarded the Publisher of the Year Award three times: at Publishing Next in 2015, and at Tata Literature Live! in 2016 and 2018.HarperCollins India also represents some of the finest publishers in the world including Egmont, Oneworld, Harvard University Press, Bonnier Zaffre, Usborne, Dover and Lonely Planet.
This story is provided by PRNewswire. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/PRNewswire)

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‘Translation, the best way to attract global audience’

Adding that more translations from twentieth-century Urdu literature are needed to demonstrate the literary backdrop in which contemporary works, whether in Urdu or English, are being written… says Musharraf Ali Farooqi.

xxxMuch more than a tale of two enigmatic individuals past their prime and beyond the underlying recital of love, honour and treachery, what his book ‘Between Clay and Dust’, shortlisted for The Man Asian Literary Prize 2012 and longlisted for the 2013 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, stood out for were the silences it evoked long after the last page had been turned.

Pakistani author Musharraf Ali Farooqi latest offering is for children — ‘Monster Folktales from South Asia’ (HarperCollins India), with illustrations by Michelle Farooqi. He says the idea was to find a monster from local folklore and employ an ‘overcoming the Monster’ plot to tell the story.

“As all the stories are from provinces in Pakistan, I hoped to engage school children across the country. What child would not like to have a local monster and a local hero to boast of?” says this author and translator, who is also the founder of the interactive storytelling program ‘Storykit’.

Talk to him about how over a period of time, and in the face of multiple entertainment platforms, folktales are escaping children’s lives, and he blames the modern school, as it exists today. He feels that engagement with stories does not fit well in the testing-heavy model of modern schooling, so there is little focus on stories.

“The constant academic testing also takes away the downtime children used to have after school. More online entertainment choices are available to kids today, but they are fundamentally different in structure from storybooks. Some of them use characters and story-like structures, but are in fact closer in form and intent to the testing mechanisms used at schools. They are designed for constant engagement, requiring a player to keep moving forward. They do not allow a child to pause, idle or think. In this, they represent the opposite of the engagement children can have with books.”

Considering the fact that in the past two decades, contemporary English literature from Pakistan has earned a massive reader base in India, he feels that for readers here, one factor is the natural curiosity about lives and stories from a common culture, only accessible through books and other media.

Adding that more translations from twentieth-century Urdu literature are needed to demonstrate the literary backdrop in which contemporary works, whether in Urdu or English, are being written, he says: “This consciousness is missing, even in Pakistan, where people think that reading Manto is enough to know what is worthy in 20th century Urdu literature. It is a sadly misconceived notion of twentieth-century Urdu literature.”

Further adding that Pakistanis need to read more Indian literature, particularly translations from the many regional languages, he says: “Urdu literary magazines such as ‘Aaj’ have a tradition of publishing contemporary Indian writers in Urdu translation and we need more such platforms both in Urdu and English.”

Even as Indian publishers have started bringing out more translations into English from different Indian languages, which are winning major literary honours in the country, the author says that it is thrilling to see this trend.

“My friends, the translation juggernaut Arunava Sinha and Daisy Rockwell, are making very important contributions to world literature through their wonderful translations of twentieth-century Indian literature. Similarly, I feel that a greater and more meaningful engagement for Urdu literature will come when we translate the many accomplished works from twentieth-century Urdu literature, which are not as much a part of the literary conversation today as they should be. Translations are the best and the only way to attract an international audience for our literature.”

The author, who launched the ‘Urdu Thesaurus’ (urduthesaurus.com), a mega project which he developed over a five-year period remembers that in his work as a translator of classical Urdu texts he often encountered words that could not be found in standard dictionaries.

“About 15 years ago, I began collecting dictionaries so that I could rely on them for the many uncommon words I encountered in my work. Dictionaries are typically very heavy creatures and I often wished there was an online dictionary to make my own work easy. Finally, I decided to do it myself. As synonyms were an important part of the project, I thought of beginning with a thesaurus first. There are fewer fields to fill in an electronic database. I am proud of the ‘possible synonyms’ innovation in the Urdu Thesaurus. But it remains a work in progress. It will be completed when it features the meanings of words and a dictionary of antonyms.”

Stressing that it was important to reexamine how languages are taught in Southeast Asian countries, he says that traditionally after children had learned their letters and speech, they worked with story texts to acquire proficiency in the language. Once that is achieved, the world of knowledge truly opens up.

“Short fables we find in the Panchatantra, parables from Gulistan and Boostan of Saadi, were all used for instruction. A whole world of information can be fitted into a story. And this capsule of knowledge can be easily comprehended and retained. Today, we have moved away from this instruction model. I hope to revive it in some way because I acquired proficiency in language from reading stories, not texts taught at school,” says the author whose last work of fiction ‘The Merman and the Book of Power: A Qissa’, was conceived as a trilogy.

“I am currently working on the next two books,” he concludes.

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Thomas Mathew to scribble Ratan Tata’s biography

He had worked in Kerala in a few departments and was a favourite official of Congress veteran K. Karunakaran, here in his heydays…reports Asian Lite News

Former senior bureaucrat and retired IAS officer Thomas Mathew will be penning the biography of Indian industrialist and Tata Sons chairman emeritus Ratan Tata.

Mathew retired from service as additional secretary to then-President Pranab Mukherjee in 2016.

He had worked in Kerala in a few departments and was a favourite official of Congress veteran K. Karunakaran, here in his heydays.

According to sources in the know of things HarperCollins has won the rights to publish the work to be spread over two editions at a cost of Rs 2 crore.

While the publisher has got the rights only for the print edition, the OTT rights and for film scripts and such other things, Mathew will hold the rights.

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‘The Eastern Gate’ on the backdrop of ongoing conflict in Nagaland

Alongside immense hope and aspiration, it is also home to immense ethnic and communal horrors – and a decades-old Naga conflict – and the high-profile peace process that involves four gateway states — Nagaland, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and Assam — and several million people…reports Asian Lite News

The recent killings of civilians in Nagaland in an army operation gone awry has led to renewed debate over the controversial Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA).

The Naga Peace Accord is in a state of uncertainty and the political situation in Northeast India is in the news again. But what is the story behind the headlines?

Award-winning author, media consultant and regional risk analyst Sudeep Chakravarti’s extensively researched “The Eastern Gate – War and Peace in Nagaland, Manipur and India’s Far East” (Simon & Schuster India) reveals the backdrop to the ongoing conflict, making the book critical to understanding the politics behind it.

Occupying nearly a seventh of India’s landmass and home to almost 50 million people, the region is a pivot for India’s Act East policy, and a gateway to a future of immense possibilities — from hydrocarbons to regional trade, the very harbinger of prosperity with threads over land and water, with the help of Myanmar and a surging Bangladesh, that could create a Silk Route for this century and beyond.

A bulwark of India’s security in the shadow of China, the region is a cradle of worrying climate change dynamics and migration and the crucible of India’s efforts at inclusive democracy.

Northeast India, the appellation often applied to India’s far east, is all this and more.

Alongside immense hope and aspiration, it is also home to immense ethnic and communal horrors – and a decades-old Naga conflict – and the high-profile peace process that involves four gateway states — Nagaland, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and Assam — and several million people.

A series of callous and unthinking governments and enduring suspicion against the all-knowing ‘Mainland’ have together made it a touch-point of brutalized aspiration, identity, conflict and tragedy. It’s among the most militarized zones in the world, with laws applied across vast geographies that offer the army and police both immunity and impunity. It’s a playground of numbing corruption and engineered violence.

This includes the cauldron that has been the Naga rebellion and the makings of peace, and the myriad rebellions that feed neighbouring Manipur’s political realities: an often-incendiary ethnic cocktail of Meitei, Naga, Kuki, Zomi. Only real peace as opposed to uneasy absence of conflict, and calm in both Myanmar and Bangladesh, will unlock this Eastern gate.

To this end, the book offers:

Inside stories and a ringside view of the tortuous, unsuccessful attempts at resolving the many enduring conflicts in the region.

Exclusive insights and interviews with rebel leaders, politicians, bureaucrats, policy-makers, army and police personnel, intelligence operatives, analysts, gunrunners, those in the narcotics trade, those privy to peace negotiations, and community leaders.

A clear and comprehensive examination of the present situation.

An up-close view of the Naga peace process.

A keen observer and frequent chronicler of the region, Chakravarti has for several years offered exclusive insights into the Machiavellian — indeed Chanakyan — world of the Naga and other conflicts and various attempts to resolve these. He now melds the skills of a journalist, analyst, historian, and ethnographer to offer a framework within which these conflicts — and the very aspiration of the people of India’s most diverse, dynamic and desperately hopeful region — needs to be seen.

Employing a ‘dispatches’ style of storytelling, Chakravarti’s narrative provides immediacy to, and understanding of, ongoing attempts to transition from war to peace, even as he keeps a firm gaze on the future. If Northeast India is a force of unstoppable nature and the nature of man, then “The Eastern Gate” is a tour de force that captures this story of our times.

Chakravarti is an award-winning author of several best-selling works of history, ethnography, politics and conflict resolution, including “Plassey: The Battle that Changed the Course of Indian History”, “The Bengalis: A Portrait of a Community”, and “Highway 39: Journeys through a Fractured Land”.

His other notable non-fiction works are “Red Sun: Travels through Naxalite Country”, and “Clear. Hold. Build: Hard Lessons of Business and Human Rights in India”, which won the Award for Excellence at the Asian Publishing Awards. He has written three critically acclaimed novels, and several short stories. His work has been translated into several Indian and European languages.

Chakravarti read history at St Stephen’s College, University of Delhi. Away from history, research, and writing, his other passion remains marine conservation.

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How Didi Beats Modi in West Bengal?

This is what the book explores as it examines why the BJP lost the plot in West Bengal and what this means for the next General Elections,” says Ghosal…reports Asian Lite News.

In the West Bengal elections of 2021, the longest state polls in the history of India, Mamata Banerjee won the khela, and the BJP lost the plot. How did this happen?

Political journalist Jayanta Ghosal, travelled to all the districts of West Bengal and unearthed certain key factors that helped the Trinamool win the state that he records in “Mamata Beyond 2021” (HarperCollins).

For instance, there was a massive gap in the BJP’s understanding of Bengali identity, which Banerjee was able to exploit. An ‘overdose’ of central intervention, ranging from paramilitary forces to intelligence agencies to target key TMC leaders, added to the BJP’s disconnect with voters. Increasingly, the state felt the divide between New Delhi and Bengal grow.

The book details how Banerjee was successfully able to portray herself as the ‘daughter of Bengal’ who worked tirelessly for the stat’s poor and disadvantaged. It also asks the question: with the state elections under her belt, what will be Banerjee’s path to the General Elections of 2024? Does she consider herself a candidate for the Prime Minister’s post?

“Is Mamata now the No 2 political brand in the country? What is her roadmap for 2024? This is what the book explores as it examines why the BJP lost the plot in West Bengal and what this means for the next General Elections,” says Ghosal.

According to the translator, Arunava Sinha, “This book asks some of the most important questions that will affect all Indians in the next two years leading up to the elections. Most importantly, whether Mamata Banerjee will pay a decisive role”.

“Mamata Banerjee is one politician that everybody is watching and curious about. From her sensational 2021 Bengal assembly win to her plans for 2024, this book goes beyond the headlines to bring us the true story of what makes Mamata Banerjee a fierce political opponent to the BJP in today’s India,” says Swati Chopra, Executive Editor, HarperCollins India.

Jayanta Ghosal, born in 1962, has been a political journalist for the past four decades. He has worked for the Bengali newspapers Anandabazar Patrika and Bartaman, TV channels ABP News, India TV, and is now consulting editor, India Today group. Most of his life has been spent in newsrooms. A journalist, writer, teacher and speaker, he is a student of the history, politics, and culture of West Bengal and eastern India. He has authored several books in Bengali about the region and is also a biographer of Mamata Banerjee.

Arunava Sinha translates classic, modern and contemporary Bengali fiction and non-fiction from Bangladesh and India into English. He also translates fiction from English into Bengali. Over sixty-five of his translations have been published so far in India, the UK and the USA. His recent translations include “The Sickle” by Anita Agnihotri, “Khwabnama” by Akhtaruzzaman Elias, and “Imaan” by Manoranjan Byapari. He was born and grew up in Kolkata, and lives and writes in New Delhi. He teaches at Ashoka University.

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Kashmir must fight real ally of obscurantism

Pakistan’s strategy on Kashmir “has never been static; always dynamic, attempting many times to remain ahead of the loop of response of the Indian establishment…writes Vishnu Makhijani

Pakistan is once again attempting to gain traction in Kashmir after the “severe loss that has come its way” with the abrogation of Article 370 and has resorted to its “flagship measure of attacking the softest target” in the state — the minorities — in the post Afghanistan scenario, says noted security expert Lt. Gen. Syed Ata Hasnain (retd).

This makes it incumbent that “a social movement within the Kashmiri Muslim community must emerge to display courage and empathy with the unfortunate members of their society”, he writes in a chapter titled “Afghanistan’s Inevitable Fallout On J&K” in a scholarly compilation, “Afghanistan – The New Great Game” (Pentagon Press).

“We are now witnessing a return to violent days once again in J&K. Those who predicted that events in Afghanistan would have a marginal effect on J&K and a return to the situation of the Nineties may be disappointed. It is an interesting study to examine how the effect of the successful takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban and the return of Pakistani influence has affected J&K,” writes Hasnain, who served 40 years in the Army, commanded the elite 15 Corps at Srinagar, continues to study the dynamics of J&K and is currently Chancellor of the Central University of Kashmir.

Pakistan’s strategy on Kashmir “has never been static; always dynamic, attempting many times to remain ahead of the loop of response of the Indian establishment. That is why the 5 August 2019 decisions by the Indian Government that amended Article 370 and abrogated Article 35A, besides other administrative decisions, resulted in the Pakistani strategy being stymied to an extent; it actually took Pakistan’s deep state by utter surprise,” Husnain writes.

A worried Pakistan knew that time was against it and “that if allowed to continue in the way J&K was progressing then all the time and energy invested over 30 years would be wasted,” he adds.

The developing situation in Afghanistan from March 2021 made it evident that the US would withdraw completely but it was expected that the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) would hold the fort and that the government of Ashraf Ghani would continue to rule, but from August 15, 2021 onwards, this assumption took a back seat as it became evident that the Taliban in its new avatar would rule Afghanistan, Hasnain writes.

“For Pakistan, it was evident that events could largely progress as per its own agenda in Afghanistan, even though Taliban 2.0 is no monolith and there is no guarantee that it would toe its line. Yet, J&K on the other front was becoming more important. It could not afford to await more brainstorming and preparation to trigger substantial instability there. Oct-Nov 2021 was the period when something could be done, otherwise the plan would have to wait until April-May 2022, and six months is a long time in such situations,” the author maintains.

The full withdrawal of the US from Afghanistan “gave Pakistan the leeway and flexibility to experiment on ways of returning to relevance in J&K after the 5 August 2019 decisions of the Indian Government. In J&K, everything remains seasonal. Delay beyond October 2021 would have meant that the efforts at revival of radical ideology, terror, and separatism, the three core elements of remaining relevant, would have been pushed to the next summer,” Hasnain writes.

Consequently, the choice fell only on “low risk, high dividend actions against the softest possible targets, which are either minorities or soldiers and policemen on leave and Pakistan lost no time in strategising with two factors in mind,” Hasnain writes.

“First, the need to once again gain traction in Kashmir after the severe loss that has come its way after 5 August 2019, and initiate this before the coming winter. Second is to exploit the inspirational, ideological winds flowing from the events in Afghanistan. The strategy appears to harp on enhancing the strength of terrorists through infiltration from multiple directions in the hope of success somewhere…The strategy progresses with the flagship measure of attacking the softest target in Kashmir, the minorities,” he adds.

Noting that almost 800 Kashmiri Hindu families still reside in Kashmir along with 1.5 lakh Sikhs, Hasnain writes that the “prevailing perception” in Islamabad is that “eviction of minorities from Kashmir helps to link its majority populace to Pakistan through a common religious ideology that harps on an obscurantist form of Islam”.

“The immediate impact of the targeting of minorities in Kashmir is social pressure for many of them to leave their home and hearth. That would be a victory of sorts for the perpetrators. It is at this time that the political and security communities in J&K must rise to give comprehensive assurances and work towards minority security.

“A social movement within the Kashmiri Muslim community must emerge to display courage and empathy with the unfortunate members of their society. They cannot be seen to be resigning themselves to the situation and succumbing to the diktat of terrorists and separatists.

“Political parties must set aside differences and the Army must make use of its outreach network. Kashmir cannot be surrendered to the will of murderers and terrorists,” Hasnain unambiguously asserts.

Lamenting that “too many people sit on the fence” in Kashmir and therefore urging them to move beyond positively is contingent upon how long the support can be sustained he writes: “This influence campaign cannot be done from Delhi. It needs people in Kashmir to lead and ownership must be taken by the Kashmiri Muslim community to defeat the obscurantist elements. Without leadership, it may remain just an expectation.”

“Intelligence must be stepped up and domination operations around pockets of minority settlements must be energized. This is a great opportunity to show resolve through strong and patient messaging. What happens now will set the tone for the future. Anticipating the next steps by the terror elements is also important.” Hasnain concludes.

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George Onakkoor Bags Sahitya Akademi Award

He was also a former Director of Kerala State Institute of Children’s Literature, the State Institute of Encyclopaedic Publications, and the Kerala State Literacy Council…reports Asian Lite News.

Multifaceted personality George Onakkoor was on Thursday awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award 2021 for his heart-rending autobiography “Hryudyarangangal”.

Retiring as Professor of Malayalam at the prestigious Mar Ivanios College here, Onakkoor, 80, is known for his novels, short stories, film scripts and also a travelogue.

He was also a former Director of Kerala State Institute of Children’s Literature, the State Institute of Encyclopaedic Publications, and the Kerala State Literacy Council.

He also served as the first non-official Chairman of the State Resource Centre.

In his long literary career, he has received numerous awards, including the Kesava Dev Centenary Memorial Award, Thakazhi Sahithya Award, C. Achutha Menon Award, Mother Teresa Award, KCBC Award, and the Kerala Shree Award.

He is a two-time recipient of the Kerala Sahitya Academy Award.

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