Laal paan ki Begum

Read this great story by Phanishwar Nath Renu. Its amazing how Renu depicts his characters and their mental makeup in all his stories. In Laal Paan ki Begum, Renu brings out the feelings of a typical house wife - her jealousies for all neighbourhood ladies, her getting angry upon slight upset in her plans for an outing and its repercussions on her poor husband the kids. Birjoo ki Maa is preparing to go to Balrampur to see naach in her bail-gaadi. Her altercations with Jungi ki putahoo (daughter-in law of Jungi), scolding of her kids and her husband later makes her character very lively.

Also read another great story by Renu, 'Maare Gaye Gulfaam'. Though I had already seen the screen adoptation of this story as Raj Kapoor's Teesri Kasam, I feel reading the story is greater fun. Hiraman, the bail-gaadi driver develops an infatuation for Hirabai, the nautanki waali bai. The side characters are also a joy to read. Like the helper Lahsanwa who washes his Gamcchi in the same water in which Hirabai's saari had been washed because after washing Hirabai's saari, the dirty water beomes 'atar-gulaab'. Renu's mastery at its best.

Good Muslim, Bad Muslim

Finished reading this brilliantly written book by Mahmood Mamdani this week. The book provides an in-depth analysis of how militant Islam has come to haunt the USA who was itself responsible for creating it. Ronald Reagan learnt his lessons well after the Vietnam episode and tried to minimize American personnel casualities in its exercise to "rollback" Soviet Union. Its idea seemed brilliant in 1980s - use militant Islam against Soviet Communism. CIA limited its role to providing logistics and 'training of the trainer' kind of programmes and outsourced everything else to ISI. Saudi Arabia, being increasingly seen in the Muslim world as an US ally who had betrayed the just cause of its fellow-Muslims in Palestine, readily pitched in to redeem its position through Afghanistan. Pakistani and Arabian charitable organizations were used to channel CIA funds for Afghan 'Jihad'. Another major source of funding was drug trade. Opium began to be cultivated on large scale as most Afghan commanders doubled up as drug lords. ISI ran several heroin processing laboratories in Pakistan for processing these. The same trucks that would carry CIA-provided weapons to Afghanistan would return full of opium grown there. CIA, not unaware, would justify it as source to fund the war for 'right' cause. ISI on its part channeled most of the 'war' fund to these hand-picked drug lords and, as Mamdani puts it, some of the bloodiest battles in Afghan war was fought between these drug lords, rather than the Soviets. Identifying militant nationalist governments as Soviet proxies in countries such as Nicaragua and Afghanistan, the Reagan administration readily backed terrorist movements, hailing them as the “moral equivalents” of America’s Founding Fathers. The era of proxy wars has come to an end with the invasion of Iraq. And there, as in Vietnam, America will need to recognize that it is not fighting terrorism but nationalism, a battle that cannot be won by occupation.

Read one more book in the meantime - A Call to Honour : In Service of Emergent India by Jaswant Singh. Decent reading but just one of the books you read for the sake of it but has nothing new to offer.

Polk's violent Politics

There are two kinds of writers. First, those who write about a topic by actually being at the spot where the event has occured or is occuring. Others, who write about their impressions of the event, from a distance. You can tell the difference. The second category of writers do, I admit, have the advantage of hindsight. William R. Polk's book Violent Politics is one such book. Here he gives summary of insurgencies in about a dozen cases ranging from Spanish guerrilla war against Napoleon, the Irish struggle for independence, the Algerian War of National Independence, and Vietnam (both against France and the United States) and finally into Afghanistan and Iraq. His conclusion about how expensive the last two wars are proving for US is nothing new.

History is many things but one thing that it is NOT is evitable. What has been done by US in the aftermath of 9/11 in Iraq and Afghanistan cannot be undone. Ther are no UNDOs in real life. What course of action needs to be taken now has become favourite pastime of "intellectuals" the world over. Also, no point asking the erstwhile Bush administraion what they learnt from all the insurgency case studies that Mr. Polk mentions in his book, especially Vietnam. Ironically, Mr. Polk himself is a member of Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), considered to be 'the most influential foreign-policy think tank in US'. Well!!!

Perhaps, this may be of some relevance. Chapter v of The Prince by Machiavelli:

CONCERNING THE WAY TO GOVERN CITIES OR PRINCIPALITIES WHICH LIVED UNDER THEIR OWN LAWS BEFORE THEY WERE ANNEXED

Whenever those states which have been acquired as stated have been accustomed to live under their own laws and in freedom, there are three courses for those who wish to hold them: the first is to ruin them, the next is to reside there in person, the third is to permit them to live under their own laws, drawing a tribute, and establishing within it an oligarchy which will keep it friendly to you. Because such a government, being created by the prince, knows that it cannot stand without his friendship and interest, and does it utmost to support him; and therefore he who would keep a city accustomed to freedom will hold it more easily by the means of its own citizens than in any other way.

There are, for example, the Spartans and the Romans. The Spartans held Athens and Thebes, establishing there an oligarchy, nevertheless they lost them. The Romans, in order to hold Capua, Carthage, and Numantia, dismantled them, and did not lose them. They wished to hold Greece as the Spartans held it, making it free and permitting its laws, and did not succeed. So to hold it they were compelled to dismantle many cities in the country, for in truth there is no safe way to retain them otherwise than by ruining them. And he who becomes master of a city accustomed to freedom and does not destroy it, may expect to be destroyed by it, for in rebellion it has always the watchword of liberty and its ancient privileges as a rallying point, which neither time nor benefits will ever cause it to forget. And whatever you may do or provide against, they never forget that name or their privileges unless they are disunited or dispersed, but at every chance they immediately rally to them, as Pisa after the hundred years she had been held in bondage by the Florentines.

But when cities or countries are accustomed to live under a prince, and his family is exterminated, they, being on the one hand accustomed to obey and on the other hand not having the old prince, cannot agree in making one from amongst themselves, and they do not know how to govern themselves. For this reason they are very slow to take up arms, and a prince can gain them to himself and secure them much more easily. But in republics there is more vitality, greater hatred, and more desire for vengeance, which will never permit them to allow the memory of their former liberty to rest; so that the safest way is to destroy them or to reside there.

A Classic from Dinkar

Today, stumbled upon these lines from Ramdhari Singh Dinkar's poem Chand aur Kavi in a collection of his poems that I had recently bought from a book fair in Patna. First reading itself tells me that these are some of the finest lines of hindi poetry I have read in my life

चाँद और कवि

रात यों कहने लगा मुझसे गगन का चाँद,
आदमी भी क्या अनोखा जीव होता है!
उलझनें अपनी बनाकर आप ही फँसता,
और फिर बेचैन हो जगता, न सोता है।

जानता है तू कि मैं कितना पुराना हूँ?
मैं चुका हूँ देख मनु को जनमते-मरते
और लाखों बार तुझ-से पागलों को भी
चाँदनी में बैठ स्वप्नों पर सही करते।

आदमी का स्वप्न? है वह बुलबुला जल का
आज बनता और कल फिर फूट जाता है
किन्तु, फिर भी धन्य ठहरा आदमी ही तो?
बुलबुलों से खेलता, कविता बनाता है।

मैं न बोला किन्तु मेरी रागिनी बोली,
देख फिर से चाँद! मुझको जानता है तू?
स्वप्न मेरे बुलबुले हैं? है यही पानी?
आग को भी क्या नहीं पहचानता है तू?

मैं न वह जो स्वप्न पर केवल सही करते,
आग में उसको गला लोहा बनाता हूँ,
और उस पर नींव रखता हूँ नये घर की,
इस तरह दीवार फौलादी उठाता हूँ।

मनु नहीं, मनु-पुत्र है यह सामने, जिसकी
कल्पना की जीभ में भी धार होती है,
बाण ही होते विचारों के नहीं केवल,
स्वप्न के भी हाथ में तलवार होती है।

स्वर्ग के सम्राट को जाकर खबर कर दे-
रोज ही आकाश चढ़ते जा रहे हैं वे,
रोकिये, जैसे बने इन स्वप्नवालों को,
स्वर्ग की ही ओर बढ़ते आ रहे हैं वे।


--रामधारी सिंह दिनकर


Your dreams are your most prized possession and the most potent ones.. so, keep dreaming ...

Hunting Bin Laden

Foundation Course is a great place to return to reading books. 5 days into the course and finished reading first book Hunting Bin Laden: How Al-Qaeda Is Winning The War On Terror by Rob Schultheis.

Rob's expertise with Afghanistan is well known and yet again, he comes out with an authoritative account on Al Qaeda, its role in Afghan's war against Soviet invasion and how Saudi Arabia and ISI have helped create such organisations (Al-Qaeda is just one of many). Apart from various other things that Rob mentions in the book regarding why Iraq and Afghanistan are slipping out of American hands (if ever they were... EVER), I particularly like his solution package on the penultimate page where he suggests, among other things, that Indian Civil Servants be included in any solution schema on Afghanistan. Lord Curzon had secured the north-western borders of British India like never before in the history of sub-continent, better than Akbar, and has left behind lot of literature on exactly how. If anything that comes close to that expertise today, it is the Indian bureaucracy (rather than British!!).

The picturesque representation of developments in Afghanistan leading upto 9/11 and its aftermath bears an unmistakable mark of a man who has spent decades there. Fun reading in every sense.

Funny new year.

A funny post at The Register about the Chilean anti-piracy law which seems to have been drafted using pirated software. Worth a read and I hope your year ended on a good note too. Also, a very happy new year to the small elite group of my blog readers :)

Family in Bihar

Today I made an interesting observation. Most people in Bihar refer to their wives as family. I was talking to a constable who had overstayed his leave and upon being asked the reason for it, he replied his family was sick (family bimaar ho gayi). When asked repeatedly how the whole family could fall sick together, he reluctantly revealed it was his wife who was sick. I am keen to find out how many copies of Mario Puzo's The family was sold here.
On related note, one of our seniors was introducing Bihar's culture to us and he said, and I quote, "You will not see a girl driving a motor bike here. Cars, yes, but bikes, never." Interesting :).

Just found this today. Too lazy to put it anywhere else. Seth Godin raises an important question - "And yet, there are plenty of books about getting a job, but no books I know of about choosing a job".