The cacophony of bizarre food combinations across the streets of India has almost taken over the concept of healthy food practices. Amid this, yoga guru Dr Hansaji Yogendra’s The Sattvik Kitchen, published by Rupa, is a forthright work that takes you back to ancient food practices and Ayurveda.

As the subtitle reads, The Art and Science of Healthy Living, the book endows a holistic approach to ayurvedic diet along with modern evidence based nutrition. From Basil-Broccoli Soup to Sprouted Green Gram Salad and Strawberry Oats Smoothie to Mixed Dal Parathas, the book not only provides you with the recipes but also stresses on healthy cooking tips together with nutritional benefits. 

Besides, Dr Hansaji Yogendra’s book emphasizes on the traditional methods of food preparation and the advantages of using traditional cookwares like iron and copper vessels. The narrative portrays a balanced approach, knitting traditional wisdom with contemporary scientific understanding.

The author, through her book, sheds light on the principles of Ayurveda and highlights the metamorphic potential of adopting ancient food practices. She explains how our body reacts to food in terms of timing, quantity, manner of consumption and seasonal considerations. The book adeptly reintroduces ancient home remedies tailored to address various contemporary health issues. 

Dr Yogendra, in her book, decodes the importance of nutritional knowledge to optimize both immediate and long-term health outcomes. It provides deep insights to understanding the intricate relationship between food choices and overall well-being, weaving Ayurveda with practical perception. 

The book not only celebrates food philosophy but also offers a practical view into weight loss, well-being, and the profound impact of dietary choices on both physical and emotional aspects of our lives.

If you are the one looking to embrace healthy food habits without compromising on modern delicacies, then this book is a must read! The book is a roadmap to navigate the challenges of the modern day kitchens. 

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Mike Marqusee’s War Minus The Shooting is a seminal book on cricket and its influence on culture and politics in the Indian sub-continent during the 1996 Cricket World Cup. Amar Devulapalli’s book The Deccan Powerplay, published by Rupa, sounds like a similar exercise with its clear subtitle, “Reddy, Naidu and the Realpolitik of Andhra Pradesh“. The ambitious sounding subtitle crumbles under the weight of belied expectations of a scholarly treatise on the political interplay between the Reddys, the Kammas and the erstwhile united Andhra Pradesh. One can blame it on one’s own hopes and excuse the author of the lapse since the book has just three people to discuss: YS Rajsekhara Reddy, N. Chandrababu Naidu and Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy.

The chief protagonists here are YSR and his son, the incumbent Chief Minister of bifurcated Andhra Pradesh, Jagan Mohan Reddy. The lone villain, and one crafty as a fox if ever there was one, is Chandrababu Naidu. The book devotes a chapter to the corruption cases against Naidu, for which he was arrested in September 2023.

In crafting the narrative, the other heavyweights of Telugu country are discussed in passing, as peripheral players. N.T. Rama Rao does get the starring role, as befits the Telugu star of yesteryear and the founder of the Telugu Desam Party. But even this is fleeting. The Congress, which ruled the state till bifurcation, is portrayed as a faction-infested animal — so what if YSR stayed in the party both as loyal soldier as well as a seasoned yet dynamic general?

The book sets out to demolish the halo surrounding Naidu as the man who brought Information Technology majors to Hyderabad, nay Cyberabad, by beating Bengaluru. His breaking with NTR is depicted as a shrewd, calculated gambit to displace the TDP founder, who was also his father-in-law. 

The book is replete with this and more Naidu nitpicking. Naidu took no bullshit from politicians or journalists. He gave it back to the scribes when needed, apart from his favourite media groups, one of the reasons they were not very happy kowtowing to him, 

as the book suggests. Instead they would make ostentatious bows to any political alternative merely for being less brusque than the now-out-on-bail former CM. 

The book picks apart every claim Naidu ever made and portrays him as an opportunist. The problem with this is possibly because Naidu preceded Jagan Mohan as the rump AP’s last CM and had presumably used every trick in his arsenal to discredit the younger contender.

With Assembly elections due this year, this book reads like a party pamphlet and comes across as a political weapon among the undiscerning. An Instagram handle could have been more useful to this end. But for such a grandly-titled book: the anticlimax is swift and painful.

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Indian thriller author, Fawaz Jaleel’s Indian political thriller, Nobody Likes An Outsider hit the market in March 2021. The book has been receiving rave reviews from both readers and critics since its release. Now, the book has got another achievement in the form of Foxclues India Prime Authors award.

Set in Begusarai, Nobody Likes An Outsider traces the death of a young Indian politician and his personal assistant. A young CBI team led by Yohan Tytler is called to investigate the murder. The book travels between 1970’s to 2020 across significant events that took place in the modern history of India and Bihar. The climax reveals a very sensitive yet lesser spoken about aspect in Indian politics and demographics.

This is Fawaz Jaleel’s debut novel. However, he has written three short stories in the past – From The Land Of Palaces, The Legend of Birbal’s Bull, and Alternate Identities. These stories were published in anthology books by Write India publishers and Juggernaut. 

Foxclues received more than 3000 nominations for the award out of which Nobody Likes An Outsider made the cut. The book has also been optioned by a Mumbai based production house to be converted to a series.  Presented by delhi-based publishing house, Kalamos, Nobody Likes An Outsider continues to attract a good readership. 

Born in Vilakkudy Kerala, Fawaz Jaleel did his schooling in the island nation of Bahrain before moving to Chennai for his post graduation. He completed his graduation in Journalism from Madras Christian College and post graduation in Development studies from Azim Premji University. 

The sequel of Nobody Likes An Outsider is set to be released in 2022. Currently, Fawaz is working on another political thriller series based on geopolitical events with a focus on Indian politics. He also has a comedy-thriller about India’s housing market set to be released in the coming year.

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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Arundhati Roy’s second novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is utopian and crammed with intense antagonism. It exposes the difficult times we live in and manages to shake us out of our comfort zone

By Binoo K John

These are dystopic times. If it’s not noir, it’s not a novel. Everywhere there are graveyards and people are dying or on the verge of death. This year’s Palme D’Or at Cannes went to Swedish director Ruben Ostlund’s The Square which Time magazine describes as “a sly sardonic picture about a dashing museum curator whose dysfunctional institution is a microcosm of the larger world… What does it take to jog the upper classes out of their comfortable insularity?”

In fact, the job of a novelist is the same as that of a filmmaker and the sooner he/she can rattle various classes and castes out of the insularity, the better. But pulling people out of their comfort zone is a tough creative act. Far away from the film festival circuit,  another novel based in the South Kerala coast written by the up and coming Anees Salim and published this month by Penguin-Hamish Hamilton— the same  publishers of Arundhati Roy (Is June the dystopia month  to outgun the cruelty of April?)—also envelopes us in a dark sad world in which  one of the main character is dying, dying, almost dead, wakes up from the dead, goes for a walk on the beach and finally dies again with a flourish which  has  a finality to it.

Anees Salim also loves the graveyard like Arundhati Roy. His graveyard appears unsurprisingly after the casual flip of the first page of the deceptively titled The Small Town Sea. To quote: “The graveyard Vappa was taken to was an unruly garden, carpeted with a thick layer of dead leaves. I had been there before… the undergrowth was like Pygmies jungles, studded with thorns as if they were guarding the dead from the living.” The graveyard appears again a bit later as if to confirm the finality of various deaths.

June being the month of dystopia, the master of them all, Arundhati Roy arrives with her own graveyard, (cruel joke to take us to a graveyard after we waited 20 years to read this and with the gleefully ironic words “Utmost happiness” in the title) which is also like the Swedish film—a microcosm of a larger world.

Arundhati Roy participates in a rally supporting Kanhaiya Kumar in 2016. Photo: Anil Shakya

Roy’s graveyard has no match in recent memory. Mainly because this Nizamuddin (where this writer goes to buy beef more as a sign of rebellion than craving!) graveyard is also a place to live, not just to die. Right there on page one, the graveyard comes alive. “She lived in a graveyard like a tree. At dawn she saw the crows off and welcomed the bats home. At dusk she did the opposite. Between shifts she conferred with the ghosts of vultures that loomed in her high branches.”  Some writers like Salim look at the undergrowth and others like Roy look at the high branches. Some graveyards are for the dead. Others for the living.

Roy’s novel betrays the burden of expectation, the burden of portraying an India that some of us like the author believe is getting ruptured  by hate lines, the burden of drawing out a metaphor for this regressing country, the burden of standing up to all that, the burden of having changed journalism into a sword that she twisted into the rib cage of various governments, the burden of standing alone, a waif of a girl against everything, with only the power of her intellect, the unflinching daring and  total mastery of the language to sustain her.

In terms of polemic and sarcasm and the big sword that she pierces into the heart of the ruling establishment, nothing has been written in India to match this

Utmost Happiness at various stages, burdened by unrelenting polemic, almost sinks (which would have left us with Utmost Sadness) with the weight of drawing out this India, but the power of Roy’s intellect, her felicity with language, the ease of her sarcasm and bitter ironies all hold up the novel and sets it up for another shot at the Booker.

From page one it jogs us out of our comfort zone, takes us from the graveyard of Nizamuddin to the graveyards of Gujarat, of Kashmir as if the darkness of a hijra’s world with which the book starts wasn’t enough. At the release of the Italian edition of the book in Rome which this writer attended, Roy said that boundaries run through all the characters in her book. The Hijra Anjum of course crosses the boundaries of gender, her friend Saddam Hussain the boundaries of religion, a Hindu having taken on the Muslim identity, Kashmir of course not knowing where its boundaries lie and so on. (“In Kashmir when we wake up and say ‘Good morning’ what we actually mean is ‘good mourning’”) The novel thus exists in the cusp of being and nothingness. Through it all Roy trolls the undergrowth so to say, scooping up the dregs of society trying to give them a name and a meaning.

Roy’s focus no doubt are the forgotten underdogs of society whom the emerging India has pushed to the margins and is making an effort to forget them as well. “Their stories are being erased. Even in Bollywood their stories are no longer told,” Roy says.

Brimming with anger, Roy’s novel is completely scatological as well, liberally using the words forbidden by the moral classes that dominate today’s discourse, as if to dare them. Even the bright yellow Amaltas flower that blooms in Delhi says “fuck you” to the sky over and over again. 

In many sections, the novel reads like an extension of her powerful polemical essays which for the last two decades send shivers down the spine of the political class who like draughtsmen were drawing out the details of the police-CBI-military raj to replace the license-permit raj which we all despised and threw away. “The violence of exclusion and the violence of inclusion is part of the Indian project,” she says.

The novel is a parade of the unwanted and the forgotten. Roy builds up for us an India we have almost forgotten in our rush to catch up with the GDP numbers and the Repo rate. We have used whiteners over the scripts of the unwashed, Roy seems to say and offers us this novel spilling with vitriol and sadness. (Why else would the copy I got be wrapped with two jackets, as if to contain all the acid within?)

Brimming with anger, Roy’s novel is completely scatological as well, liberally using the words forbidden by the moral classes that dominate today’s discourse, as if to dare them. Even the bright yellow Amaltas flower that blooms in Delhi says “fuck you” to the sky over and over again.  In case the western reader fails to understand all the Delhi gaalis that liberally italicise the text, the author gives the translation as well, which considerably helps those like this author who use these words on the streets and the parlours of Delhi without really understanding their underlying mysteries.

In 2011, Hazare went on an indefinite fast to push for the passing of the Lokpal bill. Photo: Anil Shakya

In terms of polemic and sarcasm and the big sword that she pierces into the heart of the ruling establishment, nothing has been written in India to match this. Jantar Mantar, Nizamuddin and Old Delhi are her favourite hunting grounds. Roy goes to Jantar Mantar to completely demolish Anna Hazare and Kejriwal (Aggarwal in the novel) for what the author terms a pretend war against corruption. “Like a good prospector the old man had tapped into a rich seam, a reservoir against public anger and much to his own surprise had become a cult figure overnight.” To Anna she credits part of the middle class sense of entitlement and anger against the underclass which sustains many governments in India today. “Doodh maangogey to kheer dengey! Kashmir maangogey to chiir dengey!”

A Booker winner is entitled to take this majestic leap of faith to create a modern-day classic. Too many complications and complexities, the product of such ambition, destroy the flow of the book. Much of the stuff could have been done away with but which editor can suggest this to Roy without being put down?

Roy sees Delhi as very few have, and big novels are set in big cities. She sees the city as an evolving story. As a modern Indian novel in English, (most Indian novels are set in various comfort zones so as not to disturb its target audience) for its scale, its understanding of the larger hidden Indian story, its complete empathy with the underclasses, its utter scorn for the pot bellied ruling classes and their devious take-over schemes, the book is a classic. With this and some earlier novels, we can hope that the Indian English novel is finally liberated from, the concerns of the ruthlessly greedy middle class.

Few novels I have read or read about, have so totally identified with the deprived and the sad. Was she telling the unseen or telling the stories we refuse to see? Either way, Roy has given us a masterpiece to talk about for many years. If not anything, we all need to feel angry for a lot of things.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text](An extract from The Gift of Anger by Arun Gandhi, internationally renowned activist, speaker and grandson of Mahatma Gandhi)

By Arun Gandhi

We were going to visit Grandfather. To me, he was not the great Mahatma Gandhi whom the world revered but just “Bapuji,” the kindly grandfather my parents talked about often. Coming to visit him in India from our home in South Africa required a long journey. We had just endured a sixteen-hour trip on a crowded train from Mumbai, packed into a third-class compartment that reeked of cigarettes and sweat and the smoke from the steam engine. We were all tired as the train chugged into the Wardha station and it felt good to escape the coal dust and step onto the platform and gulp fresh air.

It was barely nine in the morning, but the early sun was blazing hot.  The station was just a platform with a single room for the stationmaster, but my dad found a porter in a long red shirt and loincloth to help us with our bags and lead us to where the horse buggies (called tongas in India) were waiting. Dad lifted Ela, my six-year-old sister, onto the buggy and asked me to get in next to her. He and Mom would walk behind.

“ I’ll walk too,” I said.

“It’s a long distance—probably eight miles,” Dad pointed out.

“That is not a problem for me,” I insisted. I was twelve years old and wanted to appear tough.

It didn’t take long to regret my decision.  The sun kept getting hotter, and the road was paved for only about a mile from the station. Before long I was tired and sweat soaked and covered with dust and grime, but I knew that I couldn’t climb into the buggy now. At home the rule was that if you said something, you had to back it up with action. It didn’t matter if my ego was stronger than my legs—I had to keep going.

Finally we approached Bapuji’s ashram, called Sevagram. After all our travels, we had reached a remote spot, in the poorest of the poor heartland of India. I had heard so much about the beauty and love Grandfather brought to the world that I might have expected blossoming flowers and fl owing waterfalls. Instead the place appeared fl at, dry, dusty, and unremarkable, with some mud huts around an open common space. Had I come so far for this barren, unimpressive spot? I thought there might be at least a welcome party to greet us, but nobody seemed to pay any attention to our arrival. “Where is everybody?” I asked my mom.

We went to a simple hut where I took a bath and scrubbed my face. I had met Bapuji once before, when I was fi ve years old, but I didn’t remember the visit, and I was slightly nervous now for our second meeting. My parents had told us to be on good behaviour when greeting Grandfather because he was an important man.

My parents and Ela stayed just a few days at the ashram before heading off to visit my mother’s large family in other parts of India. But I was to live and travel with Bapuji for the next two years, as I grew from a naïve child of twelve to a wiser young man of fourteen. In that time, I learned from him lessons that forever changed the direction of my life.

Bapuji often had a spinning wheel at his side, and I like to think of his life as a golden thread of stories and lessons that continue to weave in and out through the generations, making a stronger fabric for all our lives. Many people now know my grandfather only from the movies, or they remember that he started the nonviolence movements that eventually came to the United States and helped bring about civil rights. But I knew speaking reverentially about him, and I imagined that somewhere on the grounds of the ashram was the mansion where Bapuji lived, surrounded by a swarm of attendants.

Instead, I was shocked when we walked to another simple hut and stepped across a mud-floor veranda into a room no more than ten by fourteen feet. There was Bapuji, squatting in a corner of the floor on a thin cotton mattress.

Later I would learn that visiting heads of state squatted on mats next to him to talk and consult with the great Gandhi. But now Bapuji gave us his beautiful, toothless smile and beckoned us forward. Following our parents’ lead, my sister and I went to bow at his feet in traditional Indian obeisance. He would have none of that, quickly pulling us to him to give us affectionate hugs. He kissed us on both cheeks, and Ela squealed with surprise and delight.

“How was your journey?” Bapuji asked.

I was so overawed that I stuttered, “Bapuji, I walked all the way from the station.”

He laughed and I saw a twinkle in his eye. “Is that so? I am so proud of you,” he said, and planted more kisses on my cheeks.

I could immediately feel his unconditional love, and that to me was all the blessing I needed. But there were many more blessings to come.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]It isn’t often that you see a little girl, all by herself, crouched on a bench in a remote corner of a park.

I looked around. The park was moderately occupied for a Saturday evening—kids screaming with joy on colourful swings; oldies holding their walking sticks and padding slowly on the zigzag tracks; young couples hiding behind bushes, landing watchful kisses on each other—and yet, no one seemed to notice this girl.

She would be no more than twelve, or thirteen perhaps. She had her legs drawn up to her chest and her head rested on her knees. Her long hair shrouded her face almost in entirety.

As I approached her, I realized she was crying. A knot tightened in my chest. I took a seat next to her. Her curved back moved up and down as she sobbed. Her right hand flew to her nose, wiping it, and at that moment, her face tilted a little to my side. She grew conscious of my presence and shifted her head to the other side, ceasing her sobs for the time being.

From the little that I saw of her face, she came across as a pretty child, hailing from an affluent family. Her dark blue jeans, with the Zara tag sticking out, bright pink T-shirt and a pair of brand new magenta Crocs confirmed my assessment.

Carefully, she turned her head and still finding me there, jerked it back to the other side. I smiled. ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘You can cry.’ She remained quiet. ‘Crying is good,’ I said, craning my neck to catch a glimpse of her face. ‘It helps dissolve some of the pain.’ She said nothing but shook her head vigorously, her long and soft hair swaying all over.

I figured she was crying because her father probably refused to give her a toy or something. I knew these rich kids; they could never be happy. We had plenty of spoilt kids like her in this neighbourhood of south Delhi, who wanted nothing less than heaven on Earth.

In the western part of the sky, the sun shone brightly. It would take more than an hour for dusk to arrive. Although her sobs had ceased, the kid’s posture remained unchanged: legs up to her chest, arms wrapped around her knees and face turned to the other side. ‘Are you okay now?’

She lifted her head, ran a clumsy hand across it and for the first time, turned to me, nodding just a little. She looked like one of those cute kids from the advertisements on TV. She had a perfectly round face, big eyes and exceptionally flawless skin. Her eyes were soggy and the skin below it wrinkled. She curled her lips and another bout of tears emerged.

‘Why are you so sad? What happened? Tell me, I’ll help you.’ She shook her head again. ‘You can’t help me. No one can.’

‘Try me,’ I said.

She gave a loud sniff and wiped her eyes. Now my heart went out to her. It is heartbreaking to watch kids cry. ‘Okay, let me guess,’ I said, moving closer to her. ‘Your father didn’t get you a . . .  a . . .  Barbie doll?’She frowned, wrinkling her nose and narrowing her eyes to slits. ‘I’m not a kid! I don’t cry for such foolish reasons!’I frowned. ‘Not a kid? How old are you?’ ‘Thirteen. ’‘So well, you are a kid.’

She shrugged and looked ahead. I smiled and shook my head. Perhaps, calling a kid a kid is not a cool thing. But at least this conversation managed to disrupt her sobs.

‘Oh, by the way, I didn’t even ask your name.’

She looked at me, her head tilting just a bit as though in pride. ‘Akshara Malhotra.’

‘And my name is Harvinder,’ I said. ‘But you can call me Harry.’

‘Why should I call you Harry if your name is Harvinder?’ I sputtered a quick laugh. ‘Because that’s my nickname. I like it. Don’t you have nickname?’ ‘No.’

‘Actually, you don’t need one. You have a pretty name.’ Her face glistened, a flush rising up her cheeks. ‘My mother gave it to me.’ And the flush disappeared as quickly as it came. Tears welled up in her eyes again. My heart thudded in my chest as the sudden realization hit me. She nodded, slowly choking on her sobs. ‘She… she died.’

(Excerpted with permission from The Girl Who Knew Too Much by Vikrant Khanna, published by Penguin and priced at Rs 139)[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]In a treat for authors, celebrated writer Jhumpa Lahiri explores her relationship with them

By Ramesh Menon

When you buy a book, do you look at the way it has been clothed in a cover? How often does it decide if you would buy it or browse through it? How does a writer look at the cover of a book they have authored? Do we ultimately judge a book by its cover?  This and many other questions get answered in Jhumpa Lahiri’s latest offering, The Clothing of Books (Penguin). 

As you pick it up, you wonder why a celebrated author who won a Pulitzer Prize would want to write an exclusive book on what book jackets means to her, readers and writers. She gently explores her relationship with her book covers—sometimes as a writer and sometimes as a reader. She remembers vividly all the wonderful books she read and its covers that enthralled her. She unravels the complex relationship between text and image, between the designer and the author and the instant feelings on seeing the art work and how it changes as time passes. She acknowledges that sometimes it is a commercial decision taken by the publisher who has eyes fixated on sales and how writers end up having fights over the way the cover looks.  She talks of how ambivalent emotions take over when a new cover is being designed and is to arrive soon. She often frets feeling vulnerable about how the book will be criticized and analysed or even forgotten. She says: “My reactions are various, visceral. Covers can make me laugh or want to cry. They depress me, they confuse me, and they infuriate me. Some I can’t quite figure out, they leave me perplexed. How is it possible, I ask myself, that my book has been framed in such an ugly or banal way?”

How do we stack books on our bookshelves? We often stack it in a way that only the spine shows. But Lahiri would rather display them with the jacket fronts facing out rather than the spines.  She says that if kept in a row, books are discreet and reserved. But faced-out jackets are conversely extroverted, uninhibited and unique as they demand attention saying: Look at us.

She once saw one of her book covers in a bookshop and went excitedly to take a closer look only to discover that another publisher had used the same cover for another book for an author she did not even know.

Authors will understand every bit of the book, but ordinary readers who are enthralled with Lahiri’s earlier works of fiction like Interpreter of Maladies, The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth and The Lowland, might find it disappointing as the award winning author is celebrated for her fiction.

We realize after reading the book that we never gave the cover so much of importance. But for Lahiri, it means the world: “A cover appears only when the book is finished, when it is about to come into the world. It marks the birth of the book and, therefore, the end of my creative endeavor. It confers on the book a mark of independence, a life of its own. It tells me that my work is done. So, while for the publishing house it signals the arrival of the book for me it is a farewell… If the process of writing is a dream, the book cover represents the awakening.”

(The Clothing of Books, 71 pages, by Jhumpa Lahiri is published by Penguin and priced at Rs 199)[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Shilpa Shetty Kundra and nutritionist Luke Coutinho’s book The Great Indian Diet – Busting the fat myth tells us that there’s no need to look beyond borders to tailor the perfect diet 

By Niti Singh Bhandari

Increasingly people are getting more and more aware about illnesses and their relationship with what we eat. All the delicacies consumed by us are converted into their basic components of carbohydrates, fats, minerals, potassium, magnesium, sodium, albumins and so on for the body to perform various functions. An imbalance in any one compound, mineral or vitamin manifests in the form of serious illnesses.

This is why the approach to food needs to be holistic and well-informed, and we must think before we jump onto the bandwagon of any food diet that is restrictive in its outlook. Also, for diets to be long-lasting, you need to relish your food and have enough for your body to feel satiated.

Accomplished yoga practitioner, actress, businesswoman and full-time mother Shilpa Shetty Kundra joins hands with her nutritionist, Luke Coutinho, who is also a fitness expert and cancer specialist, to debunk food myths and fad diets in her first book, The Great Indian Diet – Busting the Fat Myth, that promotes traditional Indian food and ingredients easily available in the Indian kitchen.

There is nothing in the Indian diet that is not healthy, and interest in foreign foods is in fact putting on our plate all that can mess with our body. The further the food is from the farm to the kitchen, the more damages it causes to us. Out goes wonder food quinoa—and others food fads promoted in the West—in favour of food that is locally grown and produced. An anecdote early on in the book concerning film actor Madhavan—who had visited a famous food camp in Austria, only to be told by the nutritionist to go back to India and consume the traditional Indian diet—puts things in perspective.

“Many Indian foods, especially whole grains, lentils, legumes, nuts, lean vegetables and healthy fats do not rapidly spike insulin levels, and instead convert your body into a fat-burning machine,” writes Shilpa. Ghee belongs to this category of fat-burning food, and Shilpa writes down her own recipe of making ghee, which should be handy for the next gen, although many Indian households have elders who have been making ghee at home.

Depending upon your age, weight and sex, the minimum daily energy requirement for an adult human being is 1,200-1,800 calories, and the book lists out non-veg and veg meal plans for this.  

At the heart of the book is an impassioned plea inspiring Indians to eat more and more healthy locally-grown food. By glorifying all ingredients commonly available in the Indian kitchen, and by enumerating the essential benefits of the spices and the food combos cooked in Indian homes, the book’s commonsensical approach is appealing.

Expect to get more knowledgeable about the Indian food ingredients by reading the book. However, for specific queries like how much of egg yolk to have (which the book strongly recommends!) is something that can be answered by only a personal consultation. At one point, the book rubbishes the benefits of soya, and strangely, elsewhere recommends soybean oil and soy foods. Also too much is made out of the art of visual realisation. It is good to remain positive at all times, though the idea that by imagining a perfect body we shall achieve that by not laying serious emphasis to what we put on our plate is rather over-optimistic.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

The Great Indian Diet – Busting the fat myth
Author: Shilpa Shetty Kundra and Luke Coutinho
Publisher: Random House India
Printed pages: 180
Price: Rs 299[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Journalist Shazi Zaman digs up a mine of historical resources to delve into the psyche of the Mughal ruler in his book Akbar

By Meha Mathur

Mughal rule under Babur, Humayun and Akbar might be a distant era for us, 400 years later, but it suddenly seems so close to us as far as societal and religious concerns go. Socio-political aspects of Mughal life, which hitherto mattered to us more as facts in history textbooks, now appear in a new light as scholars dig up reams of literary sources and shed light on thoughts that occupied individuals’ minds—their worries, jealousies, whims and fancies. As also a liberal outlook.

Journalist and history graduate Shazi Zaman has now written a landmark novel—Akbar—for which he has relied on original sources of the era. The book is written in Devnagari, in dialects used at the time (predominantly Persian, Hindi, Rajasthani and Brij), making it a painstaking read. But it’s worth the effort for history enthusiasts. Coming from a history aficionado-journalist, who vouches that every episode mentioned in the novel is based on real-life incidents gleaned from works dating to Akbar’s era, including his confidante Abul Fazl’s Akbarnamah, the book is also an authentic biography.

It’s another matter that like other emperors, Akbar, too, was touchy about his image and how future generations would perceive him. The author says: “Akbar was not just any emperor… he was a ruler who knew he was creating history. And he ensured how the future generations should look at this history. All the paintings in the tasvir khana—what we call Mughal miniatures—and royal buildings were done as per his wishes, and each and every word of Akbarnamah was written with his permission, and his perspective.”

Akbar’s quest to understand religion is the focus of the book. His impatience with Ulema, his keenness to understand the tenets of other faiths, his pampering of Hindu and Jain religious leaders and Christian preachers, much to the annoyance of Muslim clerics and even the Caliphate in Turkey, the futile attempts of Christian missionaries to convert him and his founding of Din-i-Illahi constitute much of the subject matter.

“The presence of so many faiths does not give me a moment’s peace. This outward paraphernalia weighs on me…. Acting with wisdom and discarding old ways is far better than the arguments of these lowly persons….. To be a Pir implies the ability to understand others’ pain and help remove it, not to grow beard, don a choga and create ruckus by debating worldly matters,” Akbar is quoted in the book.

On his instructions, an ibaadatkhana was constructed around the Anoop Talao (pond) in Fatehpur Sikri where Akbar started interfaith dialogues. He said: “I have called this majlis so that the truth of every faith—including Hindu faith—can be understood.” He was critical of Ulemas for being narrow-minded. “They think only those who read the Kalma, eat meat and do sajda (the ritual of bowing to touch the ground with one’s forehead) are Muslims. A Muslim is one who wages a Jehad within and overcomes his desires and anger, and follows the law.”

His impatience grew with time, and in his characteristic anger—his bad temper comes to light in this novel—he once yelled at an Islamic thinker Mullah Badayuni, “You are talking nonsense” when a debate lingered on without conclusion. On another occasion, he actually punched a person’s face when he got irritated. It was his close coterie of Abul Fazl, Tansen and Birbal which would calm him down, when the stress of handling religious issues became overwhelming.

“Dheere Dheere Dheere Mann, Dheere hi sab kuchh hoe (“calm down. Things can be accomplished gradually”, to translate roughly), counseled Tansen on one occasion.

Fed up of the Ulema, Akbar considered taking on the mantle of the religious head too. Mullah Abdul Qadir Badayuni, who has been extensively quoted in the book, wrote that Akbar could not bring himself to following the diktats of others. And that Akbar decided to read the khutba (which the Imams do), because he wanted to be seen as an authority on Islam.

In June 1579, he announced from the Jama Masjid in Fatehpur Sikri that he is next to no one not only in worldly matters but also in matters of faith. But the author describes how the emperor could not complete reading the khutba, and with his voice shaking, he let Hafiz Mohammad Amin complete the task.

Increasingly, he veered away from the Islamic fold, and contemplated starting a new faith absorbing elements from all religions. He took to sun worship—there are miniatures showing him performing the ritual—banned the killing of cows, issued orders that Christians be allowed to build churches and gave land grants to the Jain faith.

The Portuguese power was on the rise already and making its supremacy felt on the seas vis-à-vis the Mughals. In this backdrop, a delegation of three missionaries arrived in the Mughal court and spent considerable time in the close company of Akbar from 1580 to 1583. They were invited to all the religious discussions, annoying the Ulema even further. The author spends considerable space on describing the single-minded efforts of the clergymen to convert Akbar, and of Akbar’s openness to understand Christianity but his antipathy to conversions. He started his second son Murad’s education under the tutelage of these missionaries; the princes got a fair exposure to these missionaries.

The frustration of the clergymen at failing to convert Akbar is obvious. Missionary Rudolf Aquaviva wrote in a letter that the emperor viewed everything with suspicion, and applied his mind to matters of faith too.

But it was the approach of the 12^th-century thinker, Ibne Arabi, to religion that Akbar came to imbibe. Arabi believed that just as water takes on the colour of its container, similarly, God is seen in every form and every individual.  And if human beings understand this thing, they will not find fault with other faiths.

But was Akbar rational to the core? For, how could a person, who despised the narrow-mindedness of the Muslim cleric, encourage sajda and make the cream of his durbar, Birbal and Abul Fazl, bend before him to gain entry to his faith Din-i-Illahi? In fact, Akbar wanted the entire durbar to perform sajda but the Ulema created a furore. How could he replace the Hijri calendar (Islamic calendar) with Illahi calendar, which began with the date of his ascension to the throne? How could he give most brutal punishments to his detractors?

Anecdotes relating to miracles associated with Akbar gained currency during this time, like a passerby in a jungle coming face to face with a lion, and, upon uttering Akbar’s name, escaping death.

“Badshah Salaamat is saal paigambari ka daawaa karenge.

Ghar Khuda ne chaha toh woh agle saal khuda ban jaaenge”.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Mullah Sheri, a murid of Akbar wrote these flattering lines; such was the mood among his followers then. But not everyone could be convinced. Man Singh, a jewel in Akbar’s durbar and related to the emperor by marriage, bluntly refused, saying: “If being your murid means sacrificing my life for you, I am all willing. But if it means something else, well, I am a Hindu. If you order me, I will become a Muslim, but besides that I am not aware of the existence of any other religion.”

Nor could Akbar impress the Bhakti saints and poets of his times. The land of Krishna, Brij bhoomi, was not far from Fatehpur Sikri, and Akbar, on his visit to Surdas, requested that he sing in the emperor’s praise. Surdas refused, saying there was no place for him in his (the poet’s) heart. And Vaishnav poet Govindswami got angry when he realised that the emperor was sitting in the audience, and said his Raaga had been rendered ineffective by Akbar’s presence.

But the book is not just about matters of faith. Kingship, kinship, conquests and assimilation are some other prominent themes. Jealousies and scramble for power between brothers and half-brothers are other prominent strands.

Part one of the book deals with the expansion of the empire, and traverses three generations—Babur, Humayun and Akbar. The author traces the Mughal genealogy to Chengiz Khan and Taimur, describes how Babur first established a foothold in India, the wars that he and Humayun faced, the defeats that Humayun suffered and his travails while in exile.

Part two of the book, while dealing with Akbar’s experiments with faith, has many other facets of imperial life. How marriage alliances with Rajputs helped further Mughal interests; how kings were particular about paying visits to elderly ladies of the family, including step-mothers, sisters and step-sisters; how they gave importance to sons’ education; what games they played (Akbar was very fond of pigeon fights and derived great joy in taming out-of-control elephants); their attire; food (for example Akbar ate only once a day, when he felt hungry); their lingo (Akbar was also prone to abuses on occasions), are other interesting aspects that come to light.

The emperor’s equations with his sons are also well elucidated. While Akbar had to suffer the pain of his son Salim’s revolt and of his two other sons Murad and Daliyal dying of alcoholism, Salim had to bear the heartbreak of son Khusro going wayward. In grief, Salim’s wife and Khusro’s mother Shah Begum committed suicide, leaving Salim further distraught.

Salim was later married to Mani Bai, daughter of Jodhpur’s ruler Udai Singh. She came to be called Jodha Bai after Jodhpur. The book sets at rest the controversy stirred by the movie Jodha-Akbar a decade ago.

But the most startling episode that comes to light in this book is a strange mental state Akbar’s close associates found him in one night during a royal hunting expedition across Jhelum. This episode has been described by Abul Fazl in Akbarnamah, Mullah Abdul Qadir Badayuni in Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh and Dalpat Vilas in his work. “Gai hai su Hindu Khavo. Aur Musalman suvar Khavo…,” Akbar was yelling. Was it a case of temporary epilepsy or bipolar disorder, the author questions, as he sets the tone for the book with this episode.

The urgency to incorporate many details in the narrative shows, especially in the first part of the book. Constantly going back and forth between the three generations doesn’t help either, for there’s the risk of the reader losing the thread. Also, the choice of language and the reference to all the titles and epithets prevalent then makes for a tough reading: Babur is referred to as Firdaus Makaani, Babur Badshah or Zahiruddin Mohammad Babur throughout the book; Humayun referred to as Jannat Ashiyani, Humayun Badshah or Nasiruddin Mohammad Humayun throughout.  But the understanding of the issues that Zaman displays makes for a perfect tribute to his “ustaad”, late Mohammad Amin, who taught him Mughal history at St Stephens College.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Lead images: Miniatures sourced from the book. (Left) Akbar worshipping the Sun; (right) Akbar with Christian missionaries. The images were originally sourced from Indian Museum Kolkata, and The British Library Board, respectively[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]

Akbar
Writer: Shazi Zaman
Publisher: Rajkamal Paperbacks
Price: Rs 350[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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