Sewa International coordinator Ravi Kumar Iyer, Dr Srinivas Karkenahalli and Prof Michael Hirschhorn of UNSW’s School of Maths & Statistics

“Quitters never win, winners never quit!”

These powerful words sum up the life and travails of Indian mathematical prodigy Srinivasa Ramanujan.  Beset by lifelong health and financial troubles, he was a small town nobody and college dropout with neither social standing nor connections. Yet Ramanujan’s obsession with the magical world of numbers took him to the privileged halls of Cambridge, eventually making him a Fellow of the prestigious Royal College. Fuelled by self-belief and sheer determination, Ramanujan left behind a rich legacy for which he is remembered even today. Even when death knocked on his doors, the humble genius kept up his tryst with numbers, working away at theorems as his wife Janaki attended on his emaciated body. Ahead of his time, Ramanujan’s pioneering work opened new pathways and research possibilities that are still being explored.

It is this bittersweet “tale of agony and ecstasy” that Sydney Srinivas explores in his recently published book on the mathematical genius. The book has been printed by Manthana, a division of Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (Sydney).

A truly inspirational biography that targets high school students around the world, Srinivasa Ramanujan: A Tale of Agony and Ecstasy was launched by Professor Michael Hirschhorn of UNSW School of Mathematics & Statistics.

A well known author and columnist, Srinivas Karkenahalli (who writes under the pen name ‘Sydney Srinivas’) is the Deputy Head of University of Sydney’s School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering.

Addressing the packed auditorium at Homebush Boys High School, Dr Srinivas stated that his interest in the eccentric genius was triggered by a casual lunchtime query among his colleagues at Uni – Did the legendary mathematician really die of untreated lead poisoning, from using a contaminated container?

Dr Srinivas’s extensive research took him to Ramanujan’s modest residence in Saarangapani Street, Kumbakonam in Tamil Nadu, India, which is now preserved as a museum. It is here that Ramanujan spent many a productive day, armed with his legendary slate and chalk-piece, scribbling away path breaking notations, unmindful of the din of everyday life. He also visited the Naamakkal, Saarangapani and Parthasarthy temples, all of which were the deeply religious Ramanujan’s favourite haunts during his troubled days.

While Srinivas elaborated on the personal rollercoaster that was Ramanujan’s life, Professor Hirschhorn, who has presented numerous papers on Ramanujan’s works for over three decades now, gave an illuminating presentation on his mathematical contribution. Partition Number, Continued Fractions and the legendary Taxi Number, were some of the technical aspects Hirschhorn dealt with.

SEWA International Coordinator Ravi Kumar Iyer spoke of India’s strong mathematical history that dates back to the Vedic era. An exponent of Vedic Maths, Iyer recounted the rich tradition that is continued even to this day and urged youngsters to follow the shining example of Ramanujan.

Copies of Srinivasa Ramanujam,  A Tale of Agony and Ecstacy by Sydney Srinivas are available from Sri Ramyavaran (0423 533 554) at $5 each.

Mridula Koshy and Tishani Doshi were two Indian writers at this year’s Melbourne Writers’ Festival.  We reviewed Delhi-based Mridula Susan Koshy’s debut work of fiction If It Is Sweet in this column not all that long ago, a book for which she won the Shakti Bhatt Book Prize in 2009.  She also appeared at the Brisbane Writers’ Festival a few days later.  She has contributed several short stories to reputed journals and magazines, and is a prolific writer.
The other novelist, a young woman, is Chennai-born and based Tishani Doshi, who has written her debut novel Pleasure Seekers (Bloomsbury, UK and Penguin India) recently.  At 18, Tishani left India for the United States to study Business Administration at Queens College in Charlotte, North Carolina.  During her undergraduate years she worked in several casual jobs; she later moved to London in 1999 and landed her first and last full-time job as assistant to the advertising department at Harper’s & Queen magazine. The glamour of Gucci and Prada was exciting for a while, but one day she experienced an epiphany and decided to go home.  In 2001, Tishani moved back to India with the idea of training to become a scuba diving instructor (!) instead. A chance encounter with one of India’s leading choreographers – Chandralekha, led her to begin a career as a dancer at the age of 26. She travelled for the next 5 years and wrote several articles for news magazines, and in 2005, she was a finalist in the Outlook-Picador Non-Fiction competition for one of her essays.  Later she won the All-India Poetry competition for her poem The Day We Went Out to Sea.

Tishani Doshi’s charming debut novel, The Pleasure Seekers, was inspired by the romance between her Gujarati father and Welsh mother, who met in Britain in the 1960s before moving to India to be married.  As a teenager she discovered her mother’s love letters to her father and resolved to one day write her own version of their lives.  The Pleasure Seekers is the product of that resolve.

The novel begins with a focus on the romance between the young lovers, imagining the pleasures and difficulties of their early years together; however, very soon it expands to become almost a huge post-colonial family saga – somewhat reminiscent of Rohinton Mistry’s Family Matters – as Doshi lunges back and forth between cultures and generations.  The Pleasure Seekers does not quite match the maturity and complexity of Mistry’s book, but is nevertheless an enjoyable novel: tender, funny and moving.  It is currently being translated into German, Spanish, Italian, French, Serbian, Croatian and Polish.

An inspiring and brave Afghan woman Malalai Joya was also a guest at this year’s Melbourne Writers’ Festival.  She is a writer and an activist in her war ravaged country since she was in the eighth grade, dedicating her life to making a difference to other women’s lives.  She was elected to the National Assembly in Afghanistan in 2005 from Farah Province, and served until 2007 when she was dismissed for criticising the warlords and drug barons who were sitting in Parliament.  She is an outspoken critic of the current government as well as the American ‘occupation’.  Joya has worked tirelessly to improve the lot of her countrymen and women, and a newspaper even called her “Afghanistan’s answer to Aung San Suu Kyi”.

In 2009, Joya wrote a memoir (with a Canadian writer Derrik O’Keefe) titled A Woman Among Warlords, which was later published in Australia under the title Raising My Voice. It is a testament to the extraordinary courage, dedication and commitment of one woman in Afghanistan.

I have never met Tanveer Ahmed and only know him through his media pursuits, namely his opinion column in the Sydney Morning Herald and his writings for Indian Link. His recently released memoir, The Exotic Rissole provides an encouraging and touchingly honest insight into his life that had me laughing out loud, smiling or nodding along with him as he told his story through the pages of the book.

“I admired his crew cut and was riveted by his rat’s tail, which he sported with great confidence. I wished I could have one, but my parents were horrified at the idea, believing it would be my first step towards the juvenile justice system,” begins Tanveer, throwing us into a life that undoubtedly many can relate to.

Set in the western suburbs of Sydney , the memoir begins with a prologue that sets the tone and introduces a very young Tanveer Ahmed and his best friend Daryl. Tanveer manages to not only look at himself as an exotic creature to Daryl and his mother, but manages to reveal how this little Bangladeshi child would find Daryl and his family exotic in the way only an innocent child can.

Tanveer then moves backwards, to his first days in Australia and the trauma of immunizations, something foreign to most migrants. As we get an evocative glimpse of what prompted many Bangladeshi’s to migrate in the 1970s in hopes of a better life, Tanveer manages to beautifully explain how difficult it is to migrate, to leave one’s home and cultural societies so entirely to go live in a country that perhaps, you hadn’t even heard about before.

Moving between Bangladesh and Australia , Tanveer delves and dissects perhaps the most telling moments of his life and the lives of his family. While he does talk about the cultural issues his father dealt with, the cultural aversions of marrying outside one’s cultural group, and his own marriage to Alina who is of Ukranian decent, he shows an interesting insight of going back to one’s country and the worries he had of how Alina would react to Bangladesh and its culture, and how people would react to her. Funnily, he explains how she had watched Monsoon Wedding to prepare for the trip.

From the story of his parents meeting and marrying amidst the war post the Indian-Pakistan separation, to shaking off his Sydney Grammar uniform before getting off at Toongabbie train station; from his first girlfriend, to being part of a cricket team that was almost confused to be a terrorist group; from to his first visits back to Bangladesh or even standing up to his father when his sister decided she wanted to work while she studied – the first half of the memoir would make you believe this is like any other mixed cultural identity memoir or novel. But you’d be wrong!

Tanveer’s memoir is very personal and he doesn’t fall into the trap of simply writing only about the cultural dimensions of his identity. His most revealing chapters explain his ‘fifteen minutes of fame’. It began as a stand-up comedy stint that many months later landed him a gig as an Indian accent-laden caricature for a game show. “Looking back on the entire period it was as if I was afflicted with some rare strain of brain disease, a crazed Bingo-themed dementia,” he writes.

Tanveer reveals his own confusions of his career path, of disliking dead bodies as a medical student and his early aversions to shock therapy. The most confronting for him, he explains, was the death of one of his patients outside a medical institution. The death occurred in the patient’s own home, and for a long time, he blamed himself for the elderly man’s death. Tanveer explains how difficult it was to decide to move away from a medical career to becoming a ‘mind doctor’ or psychiatrist, and how much more difficult and trying it was emotionally to pass the exam so he could practice psychiatry.

The memoir, however, feels like there are many holes to be filled with more details, more stories and more insights. Tanveer Ahmed has lived a life with many dimensions, a child in a poor Bangladesh on the brink of civil war, growing up in the western suburbs of Sydney , attending Sydney Grammar and travelling as a medical student and doctor. A stint on television, a beautiful marriage, a media career and with parents and a sister that have undoubtedly their own share of stories, I wish this memoir were longer and more detailed.

The Exotic Rissole is a touching memoir with cultural collisions, confusions and allusions. But it’s not just another memoir or story about mixed cultural identities, it is the story of a young man’s journey through a life of many paths, a journey that definitely isn’t complete.

Bernard Salt's The Big Tilt

Two concurrent debates are taking place in Australia: one on population, the other on climate. In 2009, the Federal Government was espousing the reduction in carbon emissions through a Carbon Emissions Trading Scheme while simultaneously promoting a ‘big’ Australia, mainly through high immigration. That these two policies are contradictory does not appear to have been realised.

Two books released almost simultaneously in June this year, present the case for either a ‘big’ or a ‘small’ Australia. The case for a small Australia is made by the well-known Australian entrepreneur and geographer Dick Smith in his new book Population Crisis published by Allen & Unwin, Sydney.

The argument for a ‘big’ Australia is presented by Bernard Salt in The Big Tilt published by Hardie Grant Books, Prahran, Victoria. Salt is known for his prolific output of articles and books on historic and demographic change in Australia such as The Big Shift and The Big Picture. He is a partner in the financial firm KPMG and his writings are often taken as reflecting business viewpoints.

Dick Smith points out that the policy of reducing greenhouse gases while allowing the population to grow is paradoxical, arguing that higher population inevitably leads to higher carbon emissions.  This is particularly the case with Australia owing to its pattern of high energy consumption. Australia’s per capita carbon emission of 26.9 tonnes per annum is the highest in the world; the USA comes next with 23.5. At 5.5 tonnes and 1.7 tonnes respectively the per capita emissions for China and India may seem low but it amounts to a staggering number given the huge populations of the two countries.

Smith underscores that in 2009 Australia recorded 300,000 births, which is its highest ever. Salt’s World Demographic Report 2010 shows there were several European countries, including Russia, with a negative natural population growth while Australia grew by 0.7%, which is the highest growth for any developed country.

Smith links the world’s phenomenal population growth to issues of climatic change, food shortages and resource consumption. He writes that if the Chinese, Indians and those in the poorer world switched to consumption levels similar to those of the West, the world’s carbon consumption would ballooned out to that of a population of 72 billion.

Dick Smith's Population Crisis

Smith highlights that several studies that favour a smaller Australia, including that of Kelvin Thompson, a labour backbencher, have been either suppressed or ignored. Thompson’s paper counsels a moderate population increase (70,000 per annum), which Smith is satisfied with. That figure is the basis for a “small Australia” while an immigration of 180,000 per annum would usher in a “big Australia”.

The book points out that Australia, contrary to its image of food self-sufficiency, imports a lot of food. Besides, Australian prime farmland is being bought by overseas interests. China buying Tasmanian diary farms, Canada the Wheat Board and Japan the Queensland feedlots are some examples. Small farmers are becoming a vanishing lot and that endangers Australia’s food security. Smith sees water shortage and droughts as major limiting factors for agriculture, warning that Australia, by escalating immigration, could jeopardise its food security.

Smith notes that most of the wealth created by miners and farmers once remained in Australia but today much of this gets spread globally through foreign ownership.

In The Big Tilt, Salt details the minutiae of current Australian demographic changes. He traces the Australian iconic types from the men of the bush to the Baby Boomers to the current X and Z generations. This tracing of trends, such as the ageing of the Baby Boomers and the rise of the new digital savvy generations, makes for fascinating reading.

The information in The Big Tilt is both enlightening and alarming. The book signals the need for health care for an increased aged population and notes that the younger generation does not marry enough, or does not reproduce enough.

Salt perceives the inevitability of population growth, particularly through immigration. He makes the case for a larger population, firstly, on the ground that a larger population is needed to provide the means for looking after an ageing population such as that of the Baby Boomers; and secondly, that Australia has a shortage of skills.

Smith counters these arguments by suggesting that the skills available within an ageing population need to be tapped and, quite importantly, that young people who are currently finding it difficult to get jobs should be adequately trained to fill the skills gap.

The high immigration lobby is typically a business one. One well-known developer of units has in the past advocated a 100 million population for Australia. This would require a large number of desalination plants along the coastline, Smith counters.

Both the books are essential reading for those who want to understand the Australia of today and where it is likely to be heading. More importantly, they will help readers to reflect on what decisions governments should take in matters such as immigration, skills development, food production and energy use.

Jayalalithaa Jayaram, the 'Iron Lady' of Tamil Nadu

Jayalalithaa Jayaram, the erstwhile movie star and current Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu is the ultimate political survivor who has overcome almost all her disadvantages – whether as a single woman in a conservative society or being a Brahmin in a Dravidian party – and has been elected for a third time: in the recent elections her party romped home with a thumping majority, decimating the Dravida Munnetra Kazahagam (DMK).  She has survived the rough and tumble of Tamil Nadu politics for 3 decades, putting paid to predictions of her imminent demise time and time again.  Vaasanthi’s recently published book Jayalalithaa: A Portrait, (Viking/Penguin, 2011), is therefore a timely biography which traces Jayalalitha’s rise to ‘Ammahood’ – a sort of political deification – through movies and stardom, especially her association with MG Ramachandran, (MGR) the mega star who was a demi-god in his time.

Vaasanthi’s book paints a fairly sympathetic portrait of Jayalalithaa.  It traces her difficult and lonely childhood after her father died when she was two years old, when she was forced into films despite being a diligent and intelligent student in school, and her genuine desire to go to University.  Her tragic love affairs, including her liaison with Shoban Babu and her tumultuous relationship with MGR, who drew her into politics, are also described with both empathy and candour;  so is her epic struggle to wrest the mantle of the AIADMK after it was left rudderless on the passing of her mentor MGR. She led the party to 3 successful election victories.  Vaasanthi does not gloss over any of the twists and turns in Jayalalithaa’s political life, examining her chronic enmity with Karunanidhi, her rift with DMK’s old guard like R.M. Veerappan, and her unconcealed pursuit of support from Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi when fighting for political survival in Tamil Nadu. Also graphically highlighted are the contrary sides of Jayalalithaa: her extreme dependence on her aide Sasikala; her intolerance of criticism from any quarter, especially from the press, whose freedom she has repeatedly attacked; her ruthless stamping out of dissent among party workers; her extravagance and alleged accumulation of disproportionate assets, and the way she encourages her supporters, especially women, who worship her as their Amma or redeemer.

There are some striking facets of Jayalalithaa’s life that Vaasanthi describes in her book: her phenomenal ability to commit to memory almost anything.  In one instance, MGR’s speechwriter “Mr. Sholai” recalls how he went to meet her for the first time, with a speech all written up.  She asked him to read it to her three times: at the end of it she repeated it verbatim, not missing a single word! Sholai was simply astonished.  There is another well known anecdote about her: when a national politician quoted Shakespeare to poke fun at her, he was taken aback at her repartee: she completed the long quote from exactly where he had left off!

Writer and journalist Vaasanthi has written a most riveting account of a powerful and interesting woman.  She is a well-known fiction writer in Tamil and ex-editor of India Today (Tamil). Vaasanthi’s early novels, in Tamil, were about women. She spent several years in the Northeast, and then when she came to Delhi, the women writers she met were all so politically motivated that she started writing political novels.  She is the author of another book in English on the politics of Tamil Nadu, called Cut-outs, Caste and Cine star: the World of Tamil Politics (2008).

Sticky Wicket, an insider's account of cricket politics

Malcolm Speed’s recently published book Sticky Wicket, (Sydney, Harper Collins, 2011) is a must-read for the cricket cognoscenti and cricket lovers out there.  Speed was the CEO of the International Cricket Council from 2001 to 2008, and, needless to say, oversaw some of the most earth-shaking changes that took place in the world of cricket in recent times.

He began his career as a lawyer and a barrister, became a sports consultant before assuming his role as the CEO of the Australian Cricket Board in 1997, which he served for 4 years.  During that time, he was embroiled in a bitter pay dispute, player misbehaviour, corruption and such like.  Later, as the boss of the ICC, he witnessed many momentous events first hand such as the emergence of the new Twenty20 format; the death of the Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer, etc.  For the fans of Indian cricket, two things stand out in this book: the emergence of India as the game’s superpower; Bhajigate – the series of confrontations between Harbhajan Singh and Andrew Symonds a few years ago; and the chapters that describe the easing out of Speed from the ICC in a joint putsch by India and South Africa.

It is a book that will be savoured by sports historians, sports lovers or anyone just interested in cricket, for there is hardly a page on which there is not something to be learnt about the state of the game, its governance and politics.  Cricket is big – in terms of the money involved, the millions of people it touches, the passions it evokes.  A book on the administration of this mega sport – especially from one who has been in the driver’s seat, so to speak – is long overdue and welcome.  Some readers may have reservations about his views on cricket and politics – or at best find it a tad naive: given that most sports administrators in India are either high profile politicians or businessmen.

Some years ago Abraham Verghese, a doctor who graduated from the Madras Medical College, went to the US and worked at the University of Iowa’s outpatient AIDS clinic. He turned his experiences into a book, My Own Country, which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Last year, Siddhartha Mukherjee wrote a book on cancer titled The Emperor of All Maladies, based partly on his experience as an oncologist and partly on his research into the history of the disease.  Now Melbourne’s own Ranjana Srivastava, an oncologist who has worked at various city hospitals, has written a book about her experiences with some of her cancer patients.

Tell Me The Truth: Conversations With My Patients About Life and Death (Viking, 2010), is now shortlisted for the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction – part of the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards for 2011.

Ranjana Srivastava has had an exemplary academic record and a stellar career: she was educated in India, the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. She graduated from Monash University with a first-class honours degree and several awards in medicine; after which she undertook her internship, residency and specialist training at various Melbourne hospitals.

In 2004 she won the prestigious Fulbright Award, which she completed at the esteemed MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago. Ranjana was admitted as a fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in 2005, and started practicing oncology in the public hospital system.  She is married with three young children.

Yet somewhere between this extraordinarily full and busy life and career, she has found time to volunteer with the Missionaries of Charity whilst in medical training in Kolkata in India, where she provided street-based basic medical care; she was appointed by the Commonwealth Service Abroad Program to assist in the tsunami-ravaged Maldives in 2004.

While providing basic medical aid and counselling to the afflicted population, Ranjana wrote about her experiences and attracted sufficient funds to buy the island inhabitants their first boat. Local philanthropists helped build the boat as the island’s first community-owned medical transport vehicle, which was used to ferry sick patients to the nearest hospital located on a different island.  She has worked with the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre in Melbourne with refugees and helped them negotiate community and hospital-based care at a time when they were granted minimal access to these services.

This would have been a lifetime achievement for anyone, but not for Ranjana Srivastava. This young doctor published her first article as a medical student in the Lancet and has since continued a productive career in writing, including in such prestigious publications such as Time, the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care Management.  In 2008 her story Ode to a Patient won the Cancer Council Victoria Arts Award for outstanding writing. She writes a regular column for the Indian edition of the international magazine, The Week.

This young doctor, therefore, has accumulated such a magnitude of medical experience in her young life – and an even shorter span as a doctor or an oncologist – that she decided to share them with others.  In some ways, the idea was sown several years ago as a child when her dear Nanima died of cancer in Bihar: the family had little idea of how long she would survive or what the prognosis was.  She died suddenly, without giving her family time to come to terms with the disease or to grieve.  This left an indelible impression on the young Ranjana, who realized early on in her career, the importance of telling the patient the truth.

In her book Tell Me The Truth, Srivastava has, in each of the chapters, described a particular cancer patient who has somehow endeared himself or herself to her, or at the very least, left a deep impression.  She reflects on the very human side of the medical profession – the moral dilemmas and the angst - and shows us that the best doctors are the ones who engage with their patients, and keep learning by listening to them.  Indeed, the author shows us that in most of the cases, all that patients or the immediate family want is for an oncologist to simply listen to their stories or what they have to tell.

Written with great compassion and honesty, this is a rare view from the other side of the desk.

“Cancer patients put up with the most and complain the least,” Ranjana says; and when doctors listen to them, their patients teach them a great deal about life, and help them see “the big picture”.

Canadian author Jaspreet Singh’s debut novel could have easily been a forgettable rehash of much “Indian literature in English”, that has come before. As an Indian-Canadian author (born in Kashmir, later moving to Montreal) writing about his home country, Singh could easily have fallen under the shadows of masters like Rohinton Mistry. The conflict in Kashmir too, which forms the crux of his novel, is familiar material – Indians particularly get an overdose from the daily newspaper and Bollywood war films. The primary character and narrator, Kip (Kirpal Singh) is a chef, and his monologues could have easily been exotica-mongering passages about the spices and smells of Indian cuisine for an insatiable western audience.

However, Singh rises above these presumptive expectations. His writing sits comfortably within the tradition of immigrant Indian authors, and yet it is fresh and stylistically simple, if not crisp. Kashmir and its war-ravaged, hell-in-paradise setting is not merely a backdrop, but a living, breathing character. Particularly the Siachen Glacier is as much a character of the book, swallowing lives, driving some to insanity, freezing all human warmth. His descriptions of Kashmiri cooking and recipes, particularly his hybrid version of rogan josh, reveal the cultural ties between the seemingly insurmountable hostilities of Hindus and Muslims.

The novel begins with Kip – now middle-aged and victim to a growing brain tumor – returning to Kashmir after 14 years (must all Indian exiles last that very mythological number?). The long train journey provides ample time to dig into fading memories of his time as an apprentice to chef Kishen in General Kumar’s household.  The then 20-year-old Kip is exposed to not only Kishen’s philosophical approach to cooking, but his fiery opinions about women, politics, religion and everything in between. Kishen has some pretty strong opinions about Muslims and is proud of the fact that he made his professional progress because he once refused to serve Muslims. One is worried about the impact this might have on young Kip.

As a Sikh, Kip is initially distant from the sectarian politics underway in Kashmir, but is quickly dragged into the centre of a controversy when he falls for the “enemy woman”, a Pakistani woman caught at the border river and presumed to be a terrorist. The gentle romance seems to evoke a ruminating side to Kip, as he begins to see the “enemy” differently. At one point he buys a Qur’an for the Pakistani woman, and while cycling back, makes a poetic observation:

“The enemy turned on their lights at precisely the same time, I realized, we turned on the lights on our mountains. Both sides declared night at the same time despite the time difference. I stopped my bike and waited by the railing for a long time, and thought about the kitchens on both sides of the border, the culinary similarities and differences, and I thought about the rain, which was now falling too, on both sides, making the lines fuzzier and fuzzier.”

His (and the readers) ideas about justice and righteousness get even fuzzier as Kip stumbles into the horrific torture chambers of the Indian Army as well as uncovers some of its most shameful scams. In contrast to Kip’s slow but steady realizations about the situation in Kashmir, Chef Kishen’s explosive revelations on the Siachen Glacier seem a bit over-dramatic, and almost a tad filmy. But for these occasional slippages into the predictable, Singh’s book remains an interesting read.

Canadian author Jaspreet Singh’s debut novel could have easily been a forgettable rehash of much “Indian literature in English”, that has come before. As an Indian-Canadian author (born in Kashmir, later moving to Montreal) writing about his home country, Singh could easily have fallen under the shadows of masters like Rohinton Mistry. The conflict in Kashmir too, which forms the crux of his novel, is familiar material – Indians particularly get an overdose from the daily newspaper and Bollywood war films. The primary character and narrator, Kip (Kirpal Singh) is a chef, and his monologues could have easily been exotica-mongering passages about the spices and smells of Indian cuisine for an insatiable western audience.

However, Singh rises above these presumptive expectations. His writing sits comfortably within the tradition of immigrant Indian authors, and yet it is fresh and stylistically simple, if not crisp. Kashmir and its war-ravaged, hell-in-paradise setting is not merely a backdrop, but a living, breathing character. Particularly the Siachen Glacier is as much a character of the book, swallowing lives, driving some to insanity, freezing all human warmth. His descriptions of Kashmiri cooking and recipes, particularly his hybrid version of rogan josh, reveal the cultural ties between the seemingly insurmountable hostilities of Hindus and Muslims.

The novel begins with Kip – now middle-aged and victim to a growing brain tumor – returning to Kashmir after 14 years (must all Indian exiles last that very mythological number?). The long train journey provides ample time to dig into fading memories of his time as an apprentice to chef Kishen in General Kumar’s household. The then 20-year-old Kip is exposed to not only Kishen’s philosophical approach to cooking, but his fiery opinions about women, politics, religion and everything in between. Kishen has some pretty strong opinions about Muslims and is proud of the fact that he made his professional progress because he once refused to serve Muslims. One is worried about the impact this might have on young Kip.

As a Sikh, Kip is initially distant from the sectarian politics underway in Kashmir, but is quickly dragged into the centre of a controversy when he falls for the “enemy woman”, a Pakistani woman caught at the border river and presumed to be a terrorist. The gentle romance seems to evoke a ruminating side to Kip, as he begins to see the “enemy” differently. At one point he buys a Qur’an for the Pakistani woman, and while cycling back, makes a poetic observation:

“The enemy turned on their lights at precisely the same time, I realized, we turned on the lights on our mountains. Both sides declared night at the same time despite the time difference. I stopped my bike and waited by the railing for a long time, and thought about the kitchens on both sides of the border, the culinary similarities and differences, and I thought about the rain, which was now falling too, on both sides, making the lines fuzzier and fuzzier.”

His (and the readers) ideas about justice and righteousness get even fuzzier as Kip stumbles into the horrific torture chambers of the Indian Army as well as uncovers some of its most shameful scams. In contrast to Kip’s slow but steady realizations about the situation in Kashmir, Chef Kishen’s explosive revelations on the Siachen Glacier seem a bit over-dramatic, and almost a tad filmy. But for these occasional slippages into the predictable, Singh’s book remains an interesting read.

A nation’s food security must always be its top priority and that is what the Indian government currently claims it is doing. In this context, the lessons of the past should never be ignored such as the Bengal famine of 1942-1943. A new Australian book details that horrendous event when an estimated two to five million people perished. 

The renowned Australian author Thomas Keneally’s book Three Famines (A Knopf, Random House, Sydney, 2010) is an indictment of misguided and often cruel policies of British administrations in Ireland (from where Keneally’s forebears migrated to Australia) and in India.

The parallels between the two famines (the Potato Famine of the 1840s in Ireland and the Bengal Famine of the 1940s) are astounding despite those events being a whole century apart. Nothing seems to have been learnt except the methods for denying people their basic food entitlements.

The cause of the Bengal Famine was not food shortage but bad administration which continued for far too long before relief was offered. A British journalist, Ian Stephens, Editor of The Statesman, courageously published details and photographs of starvation in the streets of Calcutta so as to inform Britain and the world of the plight of the Bengalis. The Hindustan Times was also instrumental in exposing the crisis which officialdom was successfully keeping hidden.

Tom Keneally

Bengali food habits depended on religion and caste but the common staple food was rice. It was a time of war; Japan had overrun Burma and was knocking at the door of Bengal. Food stocks were requisitioned under the outrageously named “Rice Denial Scheme” which deprived Bengalis of their staple food. The food was exported to the Middle East where food supplies were adequate.

There are many lessons to be learned from the 1940s food crisis in Bengal. The enormous political consequences of that despicable period in India’s history have possibly not yet been realised. Such events can repeat themselves and they need to be prevented. The Independence of India and of Pakistan was just a few years away and that included the partition of Bengal itself.

Keneally’s well-researched and highly readable account is an indictment of the British administration under the Viceroy the Marques of Linlithgow. Keneally states that Linlithgow harboured such fanciful ideas that for India to be able to cope without British help, it needed the infusion of Nordic blood into Indians. Linlithgow did not even visit Calcutta during the crisis.

A British Governor was in charge of an ineffectual Bengal provincial administration which must share a major part of the blame. It allowed landowners (zamindars), food hoarders and profiteers to enrich themselves at the expense of a suffering humanity. The Nobel Laureate economist Amartya Sen is convinced that rumours of shortages caused rapid price rises making food purchase prohibitive. 

Keneally’s book is a refreshing change from Western works whose sole objective is often the criticism of India’s alleged social structure and the underlying notion is that everything good in India resulted from British colonialism. Unfortunately, as Keneally points out, those were the very ideas that Churchill carried with him when news of the Bengal famine reached London.

Keneally notes that when sending-off the new Viceroy to India, Field Marshall Wavell, Sir Winston Churchill expressed resentment that Indians had not been grateful to Britain for setting up the British administration in India! He blamed the famine on Indians “breeding like rabbits”. According to Keneally that was exactly what the Irish famine had been outrageously blamed upon a century earlier.

Churchill had been posted to India in 1896 and took part in fierce fighting with North West Frontier tribesmen in 1897. He founded the India Defence League with the objective of perpetuating British rule in India.  For Churchill, Gandhi was a “seditious Middle-Temple lawyer” and a “half-naked” fakir.

Madhusree Mukherjee, a research physicist, in her recently published Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India During World War II (2010) believes that Churchill’s racism exacerbated the Bengal famine. She points out that food ships from Australia bypassed India on the way to the Middle East.

Churchill should have remembered that some two-and-a-half million Indian troops fought during World War II on the British side, many of them in Europe, including in Italy and France. Indian troops suffered heavy casualties in the service of Britain.

The new Viceroy Lord Wavell recognised the Bengal famine as a man-made crisis and set about taking steps in military style to redress the situation. He visited Calcutta and toured the affected areas. He pressured London, often to Churchill’s annoyance, for food supplies and welcomed American aid which was forthcoming. 

It would be left to Viceroy Mountbatten, a few years later, to undo some of the damage caused in Indian-British relations by the horrendous memories of the Bengal famine.

Sarita Mandanna’s Tiger Hills created quite a stir prior to it even being published. It was reported that the book was sold to Penguin India for one of the highest sums paid to an Indian writer for a first novel. Not that Indian origin writers lack the spotlight, as can be seen from the careers of Salman Rushdie to Rohinton Mistry, or from Arundhati Roy to Amitav Ghosh – all writers of Indian origin who have continually enjoyed being in the limelight over the past few decades. Of the new writers, Chetan Bhagat and Jhumpa Lahiri have enjoyed moderate success, while the Sydney-educated Aravind Adiga went on to win the prestigious 2008 Man Booker Prize, the world’s most prestigious literary awards, for his novel The White Tiger.

Sarita Mandanna’s first novel weaves a great story, and is an easy and enjoyable read for the lazy summer weeks ahead.

Sarita Mandann

Spanning 50 years, the book is set in Coorg at the turn of the nineteenth century. For Coorgites, it paints a beautiful picture of rolling hills with mists rising in the far distance, lush fields with beautiful flora and fauna. The Scotland of India, Coorg provides a picturesque landscape to the trials and challenges in the life of Devi and the men in her life – her doting father, her forbidden love with Machua, her passionless marriage with Devanna and her two children, Nanju and Appu. As each  of these relationships unravels, one gets closer to Devi and is exposed to her bitterness with life, her will to succeed and her desire to build a future with the ghost of her lover Machu, while living with her husband and son on their coffee plantations. From a shunned husband, scorned lover, betrayed mentor and favoured sibling, all the characters work into the unravelling of the storyline.

The book begins with Devi’s spoilt childhood as the only girl child born in her family in the last six decades. In her childhood, she and Devanna are friends who become very close to each other. As they grow older Devanna’s friendship with Devi matures into love, whilst Devi herself sees Machu and decides she can’t marry anyone else. The love triangle is now in place. Meanwhile, Devanna suffers extreme bullying in boarding school which breaks him to the extent that even Devi becomes a victim of circumstances.

The book wonderfully captures the political scene of the times. The arrival of the British, the local Indians being conscripted in the army as sepoys and sent to fight wars for the British, the sprawling coffee plantations in southern India, the rise of Nazism in Europe, India and the world touch around the fringes of this book, whose heart is set in Coorg and the life of Devi.

From a reader’s point of view, it is an easy read. The prose is basic and does not get bogged down in detail. The characters are well defined and their presence and inter-connectivity with the central character of Devi and her men is well maintained. One quite enjoys the picture painted of village and family life during Devi’s younger years. As she grows into a shrewd businesswoman who indulges in a bit of scotch whiskey at night, she is far removed from the little girl skipping along the river in her village. But then, this is what life is all about.

As the 452 pages of this book come to end, one is left wishing for more. But one suspects that there is not much left to offer in this saga. As in The Thorn Birds with its forbidden love brings forth suffering in the life of Meg, the sweet sorrow of Tiger Hills can take one only so far. It is a book which is highly recommended for its pure escapism, enjoyable without being too challenging.

Tiger Hills by Sarita Mandanna is available online from Hachette Australia for $32.99.

India’s richest businessman Mukesh Ambani, the world’s fourth richest man, is all set to move into what could possibly be the world’s most expensive private home. Named Antilla after a mythical island in the Atlantic, the 27-storey building has floor space of over 400,000 sq ft and has been built at a reported cost of $2 billion. Located in the heart of the port city of Mumbai, Antilla boasts of a spa, a 50-seat theatre, a grand ballroom, three helipads on the roof, an Olympic-size swimming pool and a four-storey open garden.

Regardless, people have greeted the new tower with a mixture of moralizing and astonishment, envy and condemnation, all sprinkled with analysis of the most basic question: why did he do it?  While there has been criticism from many who find Mr Ambani’s extravagance “vulgar” in a city where millions lead pitiful existences in futile search of riches, there are many young entrepreneurs on the make who would want to know just how he did it. Was it luck? Was it just hard work? Or are there a number of factors or threads which could guide others to success?

It is probable that the answers lie within Australian author and AFG Venture Group Chairman Peter Church’s new book Added Value, recently launched in Sydney. The inspirational book combines invaluable advice with remarkable and candid inside stories of thirty Indian business leaders. Through a series of interviews Peter Church details the paths they travelled, the obstacles they overcame and the important lessons they learnt along the way.

Included in the book are stories of YK Hamied (Cipla), GVK Reddy (GVK Group), Kiran Mazumdar Shaw (Biocon), Captain CP Krishnan Nair (The Leela Palaces, Hotels & Resorts), Shahnaz Hussain (Shahnaz Herbal) and Captain GR Gopinath (Air Deccan/Kingfisher), among others. 

“Usually when we read about businessmen in the press and hear others talk about them, what is reported is how much money they have, the huge deals they have done and the wonderful lives they lead,” says Church.  “There seems little interest in their life stories which are far more interesting than speculating about how many dollars they have in their bank accounts. This book is not about wealth, but certainly many of those interviewed are wealthy. It’s more about the lives of Indian business leaders who have added value to their business and professions, and in many cases, to India as a nation”.

But why Indian businessmen?

Peter explains, “I have been involved with India since the 1980s and particularly over the past ten years. I saw that there were many wonderful stories waiting to be told which are now much more relevant to the international audience, with India going global.”
Discussing how these business leaders were picked for the book, Peter says he chose to deviate the focus from the Tatas and Ambanis and bring other talented individuals into the spectrum.

“I sought guidance from my Indian friends as well as Australian and Indian diplomats, by asking them to provide me with a list of twenty Indian entrepreneurs who had succeeded in their chosen profession and business, and who have the respect of their peers and the wider community. I wanted to exclude the crooks.  In reviewing these lists many names appeared several times, and I then set about approaching my shortlist, and the book is the final result”.

What looms large in the stories of many of these men and women is the long dark shadow cast by the ‘license raj’, at a time when one almost needed a license to breathe. Deepak Puri of Moser Baer best describes the situation to Peter: “At that time the government wanted the Indian entrepreneur to go and box with his arms behind his back, and win the bout.” Peter says the key ingredient in the success of many of those covered in the book was timing. “They were in the right place at the right time, when the license raj drew its last breath.”

Peter says another thing that made the lives of many Indian businessmen complicated was the concept of joint families and arranged marriages. The most important element of such an arrangement is that all the money goes into a common pool which may have worked well in traditional times, but in the India of today and particularly in urban society, one can see the enormous pressure this must bring. What if one member is lazy or incompetent, what if one wishes to take a risk but the others don’t? What if the patriarch lacks the skill and the experience to manage the business? Different entrepreneurs have handled these situations differently, but there is no doubt that the entrepreneur only starts to fly once he is on his own.

However, Peter says that times are no longer the same for the India of today. “Most of the entrepreneurs I interviewed don’t want their children to go in for an arranged marriage. They are more practical and realistic,” he says.

As Rahul Bajaj, Chairman of Bajaj Auto and Head, Bajaj Group puts it, “During the socialist times in India, a brother or a son was put in charge of the company even if he was not competent. There were other professionals who managed the company, the opportunities were limited and there was a shortage of supply within the economy. Now with globalization and many multinational corporations having come into India, there is severe competition. So if your son is not as good as or better than somebody else, you had better not put him in charge of the company because then nobody benefits, not even you and your son.”

“There is a buzz in the business sector in India today; the youth of India no longer suffers from an inferiority complex, and have justifiable pride in themselves,” adds Peter.

“In past times a Green Card used to be the thing for Indians going abroad, and they aspired to go to MIT or Harvard to study so that they could return to India and earn more money. But that is no longer the case. Today you see entrepreneurs coming back to India to share their success stories,” reveals Peter.

“I see more Indian entrepreneurs becoming global names in the years to come. A lot of them are learning lessons from successful European and US families who have not only survived, but prospered over many generations. The trick is to sustain the business and let it grow,” he adds.

For those budding entrepreneurs and businessmen out there, Peter says: “Every young person should concentrate on his/her strengths, rather than merely aspiring to be something. You should be able to take risks. All the entrepreneurs I interviewed had one thing in common; they did a short stint as employees before taking the plunge into creating their own businesses. They were willing to take a risk.”

“Also, budding entrepreneurs should realize that all is not lost if they do not stand first in school and university. Young Ranganathan in the book says, ‘I used to play chess with my brothers and never won. I was always struggling as a kid, I did not speak English, I used to barely pass my exams and I was shy.’ Today this guy is the CEO of Cavincare,” adds Peter, citing an example.