Book Review

WHY I SUPPORTED THE EMERGENCY - Essays and Profiles - by Khushwant Singh

Saturday, 02 May 2009 12:49 Ushasri Ponnaganti

‘The Emergency has become a synonym for obscenity. Even men and women who were pillars of Emergency rule and misused their positions to harass innocent people against whom they had personal grudges try to distance themselves from their past in the hope that it will fade out of public memory forever. We must not allow them to get away with it,’ says Khushwant Singh, while fearlessly stating his own reasons for championing the Emergency.

THE WINNER STANDS ALONE - by Paulo Coelho

Saturday, 02 May 2009 12:48 Ushasri Ponnaganti

One of the recurrent themes in my books has been the importance of paying the price for following your dreams. But to what extent can our dreams be manipulated? During the past few decades, we have lived in a culture that has privileged fame, money and power. Many of us have been led to believe that these were the only values worth pursuing, unaware that the real, behind-the-scenes manipulators remain anonymous. These manipulators understand that the most effective power is the kind that goes unnoticed by anyone - until it is too late, and we are trapped. This book is about that trap. In The Winner Stands Alone, three of the four main characters allow their dreams to be manipulated:

STILLBORN by Rohini Nilekani

Monday, 06 April 2009 10:40 Ushasri Ponnaganti

Even after crashing into a Bangalore State Transport bus and ending up in a hospital bed, Poorva Pandit is nothing if not highly alert, her senses darting from the extremely good-looking, amber-eyed doctor to the hushed case of the malformed, stillborn foetus.

26/11 MUMBAI ATTACKED by Harinder Baweja

Monday, 06 April 2009 10:39 Ushasri Ponnaganti

Edited by Harinder Baweja

Bringing together careful research and critical commentaries of renowned journalists and police officials, 26/11 Mumbai Attacked explicates the reality behind the brazen attack on India's sovereignty in November 2008 when ten heavily armed terrorists held an entire city to ransom by the sheer force of their zealotry. The scene-by-scene accounts, incisive analyses and an exclusive interview with a LeT representative along with a description of its training camp in Muridke, Pakistan, reveal how the failure of Indian intelligence agencies landed Mumbai in the quagmire of terrorism.

ALL THE WAY TO HEAVEN - An American Boyhood in the Himalayas -- by Stephen Alter

Friday, 27 February 2009 03:33 Ushasri Ponnaganti

When Stephen Alter is asked the simple question Where are you from, originally? he hesitates. Although he is in almost every way an American - granted with a trace of British accent - he has an unexpected reply: My real home was in India, a hill station called Mussoorie, seven and a half thousand feet up the Himalayas. That was where I was born and raised... It is a landscape, and a time, that haunts him still - the mountains, the view of the high Himalayas beyond Mussorie, stretching all the way to heaven.

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