Book Review: Boys Don’t Cry, by Meghna Pant

  

Meghna Pant’s Boys Don’t Cry is a brilliant, though heart-wrenching story of marital abuse. It’s very difficult to believe that an educated woman from a well-to-do and progressive family would put up with domestic abuse, but that’s exactly what Maneka Pataudi does. After a fair amount of abuse, when Maneka aka Manu is on the verge of walking out, there is a reconciliation and peace prevails for a while. Then it’s back to square one and the cycle repeats again. Forget, forgive, move on, suffer again, prepare to walk out, reconcile, forget, forgive, suffer once more. As a reader, I lost track of the number of times this happened.

Pant is an excellent raconteur and her language is simple and straight forward. The book begins on a semi-funny note and then there is a sudden vertical drop for which the reader isn’t prepared. The ending is equally unexpected and Pant makes full use of her writer’s licence to serve her readers an unexpected dessert to end her tale.

Does Manu manage to escape her domestic prison and walk away or is she trapped forever? Do please read this wonderful book to find out more.

Warning: Spoilers Ahead!

The stars willed for Manu to meet Suneet in New York. It was love at first sight. Manu gives up her job as a TV news reporter in Mumbai and everything else she had to move to the USA to be with Suneet. Suneet was an MBA student – his older step-brother was covering his tuition and Manu was unemployed. Suneet beats up Manu badly before their wedding, but Manu goes ahead with the wedding nevertheless. Why did she do that? Was it because her parents had already spent a lot of money on the wedding? Was it because she wanted to avoid the shame and embarrassment that comes with the cancellation of a wedding?

Suneet is good looking, the sort of handsome man that made him a catch. Suneet’s father is a doctor who used to work for AIIMS. Later he gets a job in Dubai. Suneet’s mother is one of the main villains in the drama and once again we see a case of a woman being another woman’s chief tormentor. Manu is treated on par with a domestic help while Suneet is expected to be treated like royalty. There is verbal abuse all the time and the rare physical violence. Suneet and his parents act in concert, with a lot of planning, to torment Manu. The idea seems to be to subjugate her and make her conform to Suneet’s family’s values and notions of a woman’s place in a household.

Manu knew that Suneet took drugs even before she agreed to marry him. However, he was handsome and was the sort of man Manu could introduce to her friends. That Suneet didn’t gel with any of Manu’s friends from day one is a different matter. Was Manu the typical woman who was subconsciously looking for a husband who ticked the right boxes and when she met Manu, couldn’t say No to him?Towards the end, Manu concludes that Suneet is probably bipolar, offering a possible explanation for his violence and occasionally acts of kindness.

Boys Don’t Cry poses many questions for which there are no easy answers, but that shouldn’t stop us from searching for solutions. In this day and age, there is no reason why women need to put up with domestic abuse. Period.  

Highly recommended!

Book Review: Manasbhai Ka KRA - How organised crime became... more organised, by Gitanjali Chandrasekharan

I just finished reading this hilarious novella. Manasbhai, an old fashioned local goon who operates out of a Mumbai chawl, is forced to hire a HR person when two cleaners hired by him to clean up and dispose of dead bodies, go on strike. That’s right. A Human Resources person, who comes in the form of well-intentioned Sunil, a man hyper-focussed on learning and growth. Sunil would rather work for the mafia and be able to learn new things and grow professionally rather than work for an old-fashioned, staid, legally-run business enterprise where would stagnate. Sunil gels well with Manasbhai's associates and starts to put in place the sort of HR processes which any self-respecting enterprise would have and also rolls out benefits, such as insurance cover for the goons.

I read Manasbhai Ka KRA in a single sitting and it took me around an hour to read it on my Kindle. I’m not going to say too much and give away either the plot or the ending. However, let me say this. Manasbhai Ka KRA shines a light not just on the ways of Manasbhai and his mafia associates, but also shows the lighter (and at times ridiculous) side of HR practices and jargon – from KRAs to appraisals.

Gitanjali Chandrasekharan, is a former journalist who now runs Talered. Chandrasekharan’s language is simple, but elegant and the frequent use of Mumbaiya Hindi adds authenticity to the dialogues. I really enjoyed reading Manasbhai Ka KRA and highly recommend it.

You can buy Manasbhai Ka KRA from here.

Book Review: Kill The Lawyers, by Shishir Vayttaden

Quick, think of a lawyer fiction book you’ve read and enjoyed, and the chances are that the lawyer-hero/heroine in question, whether it be Perry Mason or a John Grisham hero, is a criminal lawyer. There are many lawyers who don’t go to court to ply their trade, but these folks almost never grace pages of a book of fiction. In India too, there have been a number of lawyer-heros who, usually in a movie, manage to prove the innocence of someone falsely accused of a crime or convict a guilty person who would otherwise have gotten away scot-free. In particular, Aditya Sudarshan's A Nice Quiet Holiday comes to mind. So, is it even possible to make a hero out of a lawyer who is not a litigator? Shishir Vayttaden, a leading corporate lawyer based in Mumbai, evidently thought it was possible and picked up the gauntlet through his debut novel Kill The Lawyers and I should say that Vayttaden has managed to do the impossible, which is to make a hero out of a laptop warrior who whispers advice in his or her clients’ ears and gets remunerated for the counsel provided. To do so, Vayttaden has picked Public M&A, which usually involves the sale and purchases of shares of companies listed on stock exchanges or the merger of listed companies, activities which are heavily regulated by the Securities and Exchange Board of India, primarily under the Takeover Code, as his canvas.

Edwin Edamarra is an interesting character. A former amateur boxer, he dresses like a lumberjack and, like many corporate law partners, works very long hours and drives his subordinates (especially Anjali Mathur) nuts by overworking them. Edwin is single and has a Man Friday who takes care of him. Most importantly, Edwin is a good human being. He has friends across the spectrum and a sense of justice and fairplay even when working for clients who don’t always play square. One cant help but like Edwin, the main protagonist in all nine stories in Kill The Lawyers. Some of the clients like Nostral and a few other characters appear in more than one story. Anjali Mathur and Edwin’s boss Amit Adhikari, who is nicknamed Ron Burgundy by Vayttaden, also appear in most stories.

For those familiar with Indian commercial law firms, many of the human relationships, such as the one between Edwin and his boss Amit Adhikari or Anjali Mathur’s experiences (driven to the brink of despair with research after convoluted research), will ring a bell. The law firm - client relationships, such as where a law firm, when working for a client, is pitted against a particular corporate, impresses the hell out of that corporate and is later hired by that corporate, or what a law firm does when an angry client has to be placated, will also not be too strange, though Vayttaden does blow it up. For those who have followed Indian Public M&A transactions over the past twenty years, many of the plots underlying the stories will seem to be oddly familiar. Kill The Lawyers has open offers, artificial inflations of the minimum price that a buyer would have to offer to the public in an open offer, mutual funds refusing to approve a sensible merger at the behest of their investors, who are rivals of the merging entities, White Knights, Indian promoters fighting to stave off takeovers by MNCs more out of fear of the skeletons that will come out of closets if the acquisition succeeds, the travails of the micro finance industry, gold loan companies and much more

Edwin comes from a middle-class background and Vayttaden gives sufficient hints to convey that his own personal background isn’t dissimilar. At times, Edwin goes against his own class interests and values. In one of the stories, where a merger between Oster Auto and Kaslow Motor Parts is blocked by a union, Anjali is forced to call him out. ‘Edwin your grandpa led the teachers union. There’s not one lawyer in the country who has not read his case in law school,’ she reminds him angrily. However, easy-go-lucky Edwin easily makes friends with all and sundry, including his very well-off class-mate Varun Dayan. Later when Edwin helps Chandubhai Agarwal stave off a takeover bid by Grande Acier of France, Varun, then working for a Singapore law firm, acts for Grande Acier and the friendship between the two opposing lawyers helps ease the transaction towards its conclusion. 

Most stories are set in tony South Mumbai, but at times the action moves to Kolkata, India's former commercial capital, or to Hyderabad and in one story, to Ghansoli in Navi Mumbai. The action venues range from Edwin’s law firm to the exclusive Belvedere Club in the Oberoi at Nariman Point to corporate offices of clients. In many of the stories, threads from Edwin’s personal life play along as a sub-plot, such as a fight with Dolly Shah, the Secretary of the Residents Council of the housing society where Edwin lives or an interesting train journey which a ticketless Edwin had undertaken in the past and his encounter with an interesting fellow passenger.

Vayttaden’s language is at times very simple and at times flowery and poetic, which is in a way, similar to Edwin’s lifestyle. For example, once when Edwin finishes an assignment at 4 am, we are told that a crepuscular light was breaking over city and sea. Tiny ships had grown around the anchoring lights and the stars were making their final stand in a cloudless sky. Just like Vayttaden, Edwin can also be witty and sarcastic. When asked by Spanish JV Partner Andolius when a particular transaction would conclude, Edwin retorts that it would as soon as the Spaniards finish the famous Sagrada Familia.

Vayttaden is required to explain various laws and regulations in order to get his reader involved in the plot of each story, be it a merger or a hostile takeover and Vayttaden does this with simplicity and verve. Provisions of the Banking Regulation Act, SEBI's Takeover Code, Stamp Duty Rules, all of these are simplified and packaged in easy-to-swallow capsules for the benefit of the reader, accompanied by a tall glass of cool water. 

The best part of each story in Kill The Lawyers is how Edwin manages to save his client from a hopeless position and either checkmates his opponents or at least gets a stalemate. To do this, Ed goes much beyond the role of a desk-bound corporate lawyer. Once, he takes French leave from his law firm and goes to Hyderabad to play detective, at the risk of being fired by his firm.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Kill The Lawyers and am sure you will too.

Book Review: Silver Lining - Overcoming Adversity to Build NephroPlus, By Kamal Shah

Take any start-up and the chances are you will find an incident or trigger which caused the entrepreneur to found the start-up, with the noble intention of solving a problem or pain point. Nephroplus, a dialysis service provider, founded by Kamal Shah and Vikram Vuppala, to provide patient-centric dialysis treatment in India, also has a “story” behind it. However, this story is a far-cry from the usual start-up story. In 1997, Kamal Shah, one of the co-founders of Nephroplus, was hit by kidney failure at the age of twenty-one when he was on the verge of departing for the US for his master's degree. After the US Consulate in Chennai approved his student visa, Kamal took his extended family in Chennai for lunch at a restaurant called Dasa on Mount Road, which apparently served the best dosas in Chennai, before returning to Hyderabad. In Hyderabad, a mild fever, which Shah initially put down to the various vaccinations he took before his impending departure to the US, deteriorated into a full-blown emergency. After a kidney biopsy at Hyderabad’s Medwin Hospital, Shah was diagnosed with an atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome (AHUS). Shah started kidney dialysis and further complications ensued. A second doctor at Kamineni Hospitals diagnosed the problem as Acute Tubular Necrosis (ATN). Shah kept hoping that a cure was around the corner and that he would depart for the US pretty soon. He was so wrong.

Shah’s first dialysis session was a nightmare. On his way out of the dialysis centre after his first, Shah met a lady who was having her ninety-fourth one! Ultimately, it was decided that Shah needed a kidney transplant. Shah’s mother generously volunteered to donate a kidney, but the renal transplant was unsuccessful. Shah’s trauma continued.

Soon Shah got used to the frequent dialyses and learned to live with his condition. He later moved to peritoneal dialysis (PD), whereby dialysis happens without an external machine. PD made Shah’s life easier. He even took up a job at Suma Computers and learnt Visual Basic. With PD, it became possible to take holidays. He later moved to a software firm started by Obul Kambham (who had moved back to Hyderabad from the US) that focused on the Apple Platform . In December 2004, Shah and a few colleagues took a holiday at a resort in Mahabalipuram, experienced the Tsunami and lived to tell the story!

Shah mentions the names of many good doctors and technicians who helped him to slowly improve his lifestyle. Jayaram, the lead technician at KIMS is one of them. Thanks to Jayaram’s support, Shah was able to switch to home haemodialysis. His energy levels improved, and he could work for eight to ten hours a day. He started to go for a swim every day. Then, in 2007, inspired by his work colleague Akbar Pasha, Shah started a blog. Initially, his blog was on various topics that caught his fancy, including his journey with his kidney disease. However, his posts about his dialysis experience touched a chord with patients and those involved in nephrology. Shah got questions about various aspects of his disease, which he answered. His readership climbed up steadily. One day in 2009, Vikram Vuppala who had worked for Mckinsey in the US, came across Shah’s blog when he googled for ‘dialysis in India’. The rest is history.

After Shah and Vuppula founded NephroPlus, it slowly grew to become Asia's leading dialysis networks with 320+ centres across 4 countries, including India, Nepal, the Philippines and Uzbekistan. How did Shah and Vuppula achieve overwhelming success with Nephroplus? In addition to implementing many innovations which cut down the risk of infection, they started to treat dialysis patients as guests and also followed a 'guest care comes first' policy. They received VC funding. I am not going to give more on this away, other than to say that towards the end of the book, we see Nephroplus acquire a competing business run by US giant DaVita.

Shah writes in simple, but beautiful English which makes the reader glide over the story, even when it details so much hardship. Shah’s matter-of-fact approach to his ailment is reflected throughout and it is very likely that such calm, unruffled demeanour is one of the reasons for Nephroplus’s success. Silver Lining- Overcoming Adversity to Build NephroPlus is a very unique memoir by an entrepreneur which will not fail to strike a chord in any reader, especially in a reader who appreciates courage amidst adversity, despair and hopelessness. Also, Shah’s tome details so many problems which India’s healthcare industry in general and dialysis patients in particular face and will be a boon to anyone who wants to address these issues.

Go on, get hold of this book and read it. Highly recommended. 

An Interview with Sarah Khan

Dear Readers, I would like to introduce to you to my friend and former classmate Sarah Khan. Sarah is a lawyer by training and has focused on public international law for her entire career. Her focus has been international humanitarian law, human rights law and refugee law and their applicability primarily in zones of conflict and natural disasters. Her work expertise is known as “protection” - i.e., the protection of rights of refugees and displaced populations and other civilian population.

Her work has involved implementing these various international laws, by supporting the development of: government legislation; policies for governments, international organizations (including UN country teams- that is all UN entities in one country), and civil society; training programs for various entities including, armed forces and national security actors; establishing monitoring systems to track the situation of people in zones of crisis including, access to humanitarian assistance and services such as, education, health and legal aid; and advocacy on crisis situations. In the last few years, Sarah has worked in management, heading offices and has had less to do with law. Her day-to-day work has been managing  governmental relations, budgets and staff and overseeing programs on health, education, livelihoods, legal aid etc., for populations in crisis areas.

Sarah has worked with various NGOs and at the Red Cross prior to working for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as a Senior Protection Officer and then Head of Office. Her work has taken her to various places in Asia, Africa, Europe and North America. She notes, a happy accident gave her over 12 years of incredibly rewarding work with UNHCR. She has worked in some of the significant crisis’ of recent times, including, Afghanistan, Libya, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan and Syria.  She has worked with UNHCR both in a country (colloquially called “the field) and at its headquarters -- however, her real love has been working in “the field”.

Sarah has very kindly agreed to tell us a bit about her experiences at UNHCR and give some career advice to budding public international law students who may wish to work for the UN or an International NGO  or a think tank which focuses on situations of humanitarian crisis.

Winnowed: Sarah, thank you so much for agreeing to spare a few moments and talk to Winnowed’s readers.

Sarah: It’s my pleasure and thank you for asking. I’m always happy to help law students who are interested in global affairs and  who see themselves as future public international lawyers.

Winnowed: Tell me, if a law graduate wants to work for the UNHCR, is doing a masters’ degree in public international law from a Western university still the best route into that domain? Also, are there other public international law opportunities for students other than the UN?

Sarah: There are many positions in UNHCR and other UN entities that are not just for people with a master’s degree and it was never ever the only way. However, a masters’ degree may make it possible to be recruited directly to a higher position in the UNHCR or other entities within the UN. The best way to understand what is required is by looking at the job descriptions of various positions that interest you and talking to people who work there is key.

There are different paths to join any UN entity. People have started in the UN as national officers in the country that they are from and then moved to overseas positions. So please do consider working in New Delhi UN offices as a start. Others have joined the UN Volunteer Program, which enables you to work for different UN entities either in your own country or overseas. After 5 years of service (please check if the number of years required has changed) as a UN volunteer, one can get a regular staff contract (UN civil service). The UN volunteer program is paid. There are others who have had a Junior Professional Program post with a UN agency (these are not always open to Indian nationals and are very few since they are funded by a select group of wealthy countries). I joined UNHCR as a consultant, as many do and then you apply for regular position. There are also roster positions in a lot of UN entities – where you get selected and then when a position is opened your name is selected from the roster for the position.  There is a common system for the UN secretariate for UN peace keeping, political affairs, legal affairs etc. and then the UN specialized agencies like UNHCR and UNICEF  have their own systems. You need to study each entity to understand what the methods are since new things keep getting added over the years in terms of employment schemes. I apologize that it is not simple!

After NLSIU, I opted to go to the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Boston for a master’s in law and diplomacy (International relations with law). Graduate school broadened my sense of the world and the career possibilities. I am thankful for that. I will list here what I did -- in case any of these entities interests the reader since they are all in human rights and related areas and beyond just the UN.

The opportunities included a paid internship at Calvert Investments (an American social responsibility firm), where I worked on developing human rights indicators. I chose that over an unpaid internship at the UN office for Legal Affairs at the UN Secretariate in New York. I believe now there are a number of UN paid internships available with different UN entities, which students reading this should check out. Note UN internships are competitive and limited but not impossible to get. Fletcher also nominated and funded me to intern with the US Institute for Peace (think tank), who put me on a project for the Pearson Peacekeeping Center in Canada. Some years later, Pearson recruited me to do trainings for NATO forces deploying to Afghanistan and  senior military officers in UN peace-keeping missions around the world --  as I had previously interned with them.

I was at Fletcher when 9/11 took place, and like a lot of young people working on global affairs then (scholar Michael Igantieff has written a great essay on this!) - I wanted to go to Afghanistan. My professor at the Kennedy School at Harvard University found me funding to go work for a tiny civil society organization in Kandahar, which was working on out-reach to women to increase their political participation in Afghanistan’s first “Loya Jirga” deliberations after the fall of the Taliban (note: Fletcher School, Harvard and MIT students can cross-register for classes with each other). In the same year, I got funding from Fletcher to intern for an American NGO, Mercy Corps in Tajikistan (I was tasked to write a report suggesting ways human rights could be incorporated into conflict resolution programs they were running there). As a result, I suspended my graduate degree for a year and half, which, luckily, Fletcher allowed me to do. These  were amazing opportunities for me as young person and I seized them when offered – so keep a look out to see what all is out there and it might be not what you have planned or foreseen. It did help my CV stand out in my initial job applications and led me to my first paid international job with Oxfam GB in Afghanistan, and it counted that I had worked in the country as an intern.

Winnowed: If I am in the fourth year of my five-year law degree in India, what should I do to create a career in the field of public international law?

Sarah: I cannot speak to the entire field but at least vis-à-vis the UN humanitarian and political actors, I would advise students to identify what interests them. The UN is vast with different entities dealing with different aspects of public international law. I would identify what interests you in the area of public international law and then check out the entities which deal with it and then apply for an internship there. Internships give you an idea of the place but also make you become a known entity for future job applications.  For example, if you are interested in human rights, do an internship with a human rights NGO or even UN offices like UN Women or UN Development Program which have representation in New Delhi. If you can afford an internship overseas as some Indian law students have done, then please do so. From NLSIU I know some who interned with International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Hague and subsequently got jobs there. Many from ICTY now work for the International Criminal Court.

Of course, you can write and publish on a topic that interests you and that too is a plus.  Academia is another great route to work for the UN as an expert further down the line in your career, if you so wish.

The key is to take opportunities on offer. Do also try to ask for opportunities and show an interest in your topic. While at NLSIU it was clear to my professors that I was interested in public international law, and I did get very good grades in that subject as opposed to say contract law. So right after I graduated from NLSIU, I got offered my first job with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Delhi by my former international law professor at NLSIU who became their regional advisor for South Asia. I still remain in touch with him and am thankful that he gave me my first big break. Working for the Red Cross for a year did wonders for my CV and helped me get into a master's program of my choice. A Red Cross contact became my reference for my job with Oxfam later in time since the Red Cross has a certain gravitas for other actors in the international law/humanitarian field. Both UNHCR and ICRC have a lot of lawyers working for them.

Winnowed: You’ve learnt French, haven’t you? How useful do you it think it’s to learn a foreign language when working in the field of public international law? 

Sarah: I just can’t emphasize sufficiently how important it is to learn an international language, in addition to English. Of course, it is much easier to learn an additional language when you are young. Most South Asians are bilingual, if not trilingual. However, that doesn’t mean one is not able to pick up an international language as an adult. In this area of work many learn foreign languages as adults since it increases your geographic work opportunities. Those who work in the foreign services of large governments learn new languages prior to each diplomatic posting. You need to be open to the possibility and have a willingness to put in the time and effort.

I have studied French for some years and have also studied Dari a little (similar to Persian and Urdu) while in Afghanistan. I tried Arabic and Russian while in the Middle East and Central Asia but found both very difficult for my limited linguistic skills.  

So having second language other than English, is a distinct advantage to have in the UN or with an international NGO. So, it’s worth learning one of the 6 UN languages, apart from English, while at law school. For crisis areas, French, Spanish and Arabic and now Russian are languages of focus. 

Winnowed: Currently, what are you up to?

Sarah: I resigned from UNHCR in 2021 to try and have a ‘normal’ life rooted in one place and decided to go back to school. For the last two years, I’ve been in a research LLM program at Osgoode Hall Law School (as law continues to be the parlance of global affairs) and as a Graduate Research Scholar at York University’s Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research in Toronto. My research centers on NATO’s landmark Policy on protection of civilians and the harm of displacement in law and policy of the international community. I am grateful for the funding I have from York to think, research and write about the eight significant post 9/11 wars - where over 38 million people have been displaced. I have engaged with these wars for most of my career over the last decade or so.

Winnowed: Sarah, this is very helpful. Thank you very much.

Sarah: You are welcome! Thank you.

Sarah Khan tweets at @Khan2005Sarah

Cover photo © with PBS from Part 2 of the documentary series “When Disaster Strikes”, which is a good series to watch for students, to understand the mechanics of aid work.

Pig farm on Nazi ‘Roma Camp’ Demolished

I have for long been fascinated by the Roma, nomads in Europe whose roots can be traced to the Indian subcontinent. The Roma have historically been discriminated against and marginalized in Europe. During the Nazi era, the Roma got caught in Nazi theories of racial superiority and were subjected to a genocide. Historians believe that between25% and 70% of Europe’s Roma population was murdered during the 2nd World War. Unfortunately, even after World War Two ended, the Roma continued to face discrimination and prejudice. They still do. There can be no better example of such discrimination and prejudice than the communist government of Czechoslovakia allowing a piggery to be set up on the site of a Nazi camp near Lety, about 80 kilometers south of Prague, were thousands of Roma were held, exploited, tortured and many killed. The guards who operated the Lety camp were local Czech.

This piggery  at Lety has now been demolished.

Book Review: Marriages Not Made In Heaven, by Vathi Agrawal

A South Delhi mother of three daughters of marriageable age is a special creature and Nita Chopra runs true to the stereotype. Her three daughters are as different from each other as chalk and cheese and chai, with just one thing in common - all three, Payal, Simran and Nisha, are very keen to get married, just as keen as their parents are in getting them married. Anand Chopra, the father, works for the Mittal Group of companies and the Chopras are well-off, though not filthy rich and they have the money and wherewithal to spend on the desired weddings. Vathi Agrawal definitely believes in ‘getting on with it’ since the marriages happen in quick succession, atleast for two of the daughters, and the last one doesn’t take too long either, but that’s because the story moves fast. Agrawal’s characters are real-life ones and many run true to stereotypes, though a few don’t. Nita Chopra is ambitious, but also realistic. Nisha is the prettiest of the lot and ‘it was an unacknowledged aspiration of Nita, that her youngest daughter get married to the young scion of the Mittal family, Sidaarth Mittal. After all, aren’t rich business tycoons always marrying beneath them, so long as the bride is young and good looking.’ However, for the eldest Payal, an old maid who had crossed thirty and who took after her father in looks and brains, broad of shoulders, neck and waist, she did not harbour any extravagant ambitions and is even willing to shell out a substantial dowry to get a half-decent groom.

Marriages Not Made In Heaven is definitely not a politically correct novel, though it gets its characters and their settings correct. There is nastiness and jealousy, pettiness and greed, love and longing, sacrifice and benevolence. Each character is vividly drawn. Was it Mark Twain who said that human beings show their true colours when they are dating, getting married or getting ditched? Actually, I made that one up, but after reading Marriages Not Made In Heaven, one would find it difficult not to agree.

Agarwal’s debut effort is such a romantic (or rather unromantic) thriller that I read it in one go – I think I took around five hours to read the 198-page page-turner on a warm Saturday afternoon, not needing a single cup of coffee while doing so. Agrawal writes well in simple, everyday Indian English, the sort of English which the Chopras and their neighbours, the Grovers, would speak. Agrawal’s use of ‘will’ instead of the more common ‘would’ threw me initially, but I soon started to enjoy the usage. For example: “He knew Nisha had a steady boy friend, but was naive enough to believe that if he displayed his steadfast unshakeable devotion to her, she will fall in love with him sooner or later.”

I highly recommend Marriages Not Made In Heaven. Go on, do pick up a copy and read. Actually, its fine even if you don’t read it because it is very likely to be made into a TV serial soon and you can watch it on screen.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Thanks to Nita Chopra’s quest for sons-in-law from the get-go, despite the title of the book suggesting otherwise, I ended up looking (in vain) for Jane and Elizabeth and Lydia, Mr. Bingley, Mr. Darcy and Mr. Wickham in Marriages Not Made In Heaven.  In India, with its patriarchy and dowry, dyed-in-the-MCP-wool men and steeped-in-tradition women, many marriages, unlike the marriages that take place in Austen-land, don’t have a happy ending, even if both horoscopes had been matched before the M boat set sail. Payal, a marketing executive in a technology firm, does have a few things in common with Jane, but not in the looks department. Second daughter Simran, a doctor to boot, ‘attractive and unapproachable’, the official snob of the family who has a high opinion of herself, has nothing in common with Elizabeth Bennett. As for Nisha, the youngest and the prettiest, she is as head-strong as Lydia, but not as lucky.

Marriages Not Made In Heaven is as different from Pride and Prejudice as pride is different from prejudice, or are they really? Don’t pride and prejudice have a lot in common? If Jane Austen were to write Pride and Prejudice today, wouldn’t the Bennett sisters also be career-minded? Actually, unlike her two elder sisters, Nisha isn’t very career-minded, but she is pushed into working for an investment bank and she does pretty well, effortlessly stealing credit from her colleague Ananya and sleeping with a key client. Wouldn’t Lydia have done the same?

ONE MORE SPOILER

By the way, I did find Mr. Darcy in Marriages Not Made In Heaven. Actually, Nisha’s colleague Ananya found him for me. No, I’m not going to tell you more. Please read this potboiler to find out more for yourself.

Book Review: Once Upon A Plate – The Recipes and Memories of an Unhurried Cook, by Radhika Ramachandran

Do you know how Chicken 65 originated? Radhika Ramchandran’s cookbook Once Upon A Plate tells me that in 1965, when hostilities between India and Pakistan were on, Chennai’s famous chef A. M. Buhari came up with this delicious non-vegetarian dish that could be prepared instantly and served to soldiers. The resulting dish draws its name from the year in which it was invented. Or is it called Chicken 65 because it is made by cutting chicken into 65 pieces? Or did its name come about because a 65 day old chicken was used to prepare it? Once Upon A Plate is not conclusive on this point, but it doesn’t really matter. The eye-watering photo of a plate of chicken 65 and the accompanying recipe ensure that one is focused more on preparing a plate of Chicken 65 than resolve the mystery behind its name.

A cookbook they say, is made not just of paper, but carries with it the author’s sweat, grime from her kitchen, fragrant aromas wafting from her oven, the burnt smell of experiments that went wrong and sounds of grateful lips smacking in appreciation.

In the case of Radhika Ramachandran, Once Upon A Plate – The Recipes and Memories of an Unhurried Cook also has buried in it generations of inherited kitchen wisdom and culinary dust gathered from across the world. Ramachandran, a lawyer cum cook, has poured her heart and soul into this coffee table cookbook, which has been many years in the baking. Once Upon A Plate is more than just a collection of recipes. Rather, ‘it stands conveniently at the beautiful intersection of a cookbook and a food memoir’. It lovingly describes how Ramachandran inherited a passion for cooking, how the time spent with her grandmother laid the seeds for her motivation to write Once Upon A Plate for which she spent years accumulating recipes in meticulous detail. Ramachandran’s English is simple and unadorned and her instructions straightforward.

Ramachandran has her roots in Andhra, spent her childhood in various cantonments across India, went to law school in Bengaluru, married a Bengali man who too has a military background and much later moved to Nigeria where she lives even now. Once Upon A Plate draws on the culinary traditions of all these places.

There are recipes for chutneys, pickles, dips, sauces, salads, dozens of south Indian vegetarian dishes, many chicken, fish, mutton dishes from across the world, including Iran, Pakistan and Nigeria, breads and biriyanis and other rice dishes and more than enough desserts to satisfy any sweet tooth anywhere in the world.

One of the best bits about Once Upon A Plate is that it is almost autobiographical and Ramachandran’s background is truly fascinating. Ramachandran’s maternal grandfather BDP Rao was a military doctor in the British Indian army who was awarded an MBE for his exemplary service in World War II. Her maternal grandmother Anasuya Rao hailed from a Zamindari family. All four of their children became doctors.  Ramachandran received from her ammamma lessons in mythology, cookery, proper demeanour and Sai Bhajans. Ramachandran’s mother and her two sisters, all doctors at one time, formed a close-knit group of strong opinionated women and there is little doubt that Ramachandran is cut from the same cloth.

As the daughter of two army officers and granddaughter of an army general, Ramachandran who grew up in ‘magical cantonments’ where many evenings were spent at the Officer’s Mess and Army Clubs such as the Defence Services Officers’ Institute and various Rajendra Sinji Institutes.

 Isn’t the proof of the pudding in the eating? Well, I made Bhuna Gosht using the recipe from Once Upon A Plate and it’s lip smacking good, though I ended up deviating a bit from Ramachandran's toolkit - mainly in that the mutton I used was chopped into small pieces. Here’s a photo:

Once Upon A Plate is beautiful coffee table book which can adorn any drawing room. It runs to over 550 odd pages, has hundreds of photographs of the finished dishes and a painstakingly prepared index at the end which will be very useful to any reader.

I do encourage all my readers to acquire a copy of this beautiful book which will not only be useful in cooking tasty dishes, but can be passed on lovingly to future generations.

Once upon A Plate is available on Amazon and at Notion Press.

Maintaining My Streak On Duolingo

 

I have been using Duolingo since March 2019 and find that Duolingo is the best resource available to me to learn French, considering the various constrains I am under. However, I have learned to not use Duolingo mindlessly. Duolingo is designed like a gaming app and it makes one addicted to gaining various types of rewards or credits, which reduces its effectiveness. One of the most well-known features of Duolingo is the 'Streak'. There are folks who proudly claim to have a Streak of over a year, implying that they have used Duolingo regularly everyday to maintain that Streak. However, Duolingo makes it rather easy to maintain the Streak. There are refills and other gimmicks which keeps one's Streak going even if one has not been regular. I have become so annoyed with the Duolingo Streak that I don't use Duoling on weekends and once in a while on weekdays too, but my current Streak has stayed with me for over 58 days. This is the story of my current Streak on Duolingo.  

Duolingo offered refills to maintain my Streak, whenever I was on the verge of losing mine.

Look at my calendar. There have been many days when I did not use Duolingo.

I dropped down the league table many times!

 

I kept dropping

However, I manage to keep my streak

Streak is just one of the incentives offered. There are others too!

There are daily quests.

Once I was inducted into the Streak Society, not sure what that means though.

Look at how my calendar looked around 10 days ago

Book Review: Zainab The Precious Quest, by Shayan

When a butterfly flaps its wings in Delhi, it causes snowfall in Switzerland. When Indira Gandhi abolishes the privy purses of the former rulers of erstwhile Indian princely states, Magnus Montgomery, a Swiss banker focusing on South-East Asia at the Banque Wedderburn Privee, sees a huge uptick in his business.

We live in dystopian times and Zainab The Precious Quest reflects this with muddled precision. Vikas. Magnus, Zainab, Rishika, Varun, Sejal, they get on with lives, as they move across continents, meet new people and lose contact with old friends and then sometimes there is a reunion. Throughout the novel, Vikas, Zainab and Sejal manage to steal moments of happiness. We don’t know if Prakhar did the same. Most probably he did not, since he was always precise and methodical and his entire live was a managed project that did not require any external injection of joy. When the reader reaches the end, s/he is none the wiser (regarding the magic elixir that leads to human joy) than s/he was in the beginning.

Vikas Kumar ran a small travel agency in West Punjabi Bagh. When Magnus Montgomery landed at this doorstep after having lost his briefcase, which had his Swiss passport and expired Indian visa, Vikas was ever so helpful, even going to the extent of suggesting that the word "Banque" in "Banque Wedderburn Privee" was misspelt. Shouldn’t it be “bank”?, Vikas queried. Soon Vikas ended up working for Mangus, which took him to Moradabad, 'the armpit of India,' where he made his way to Rishika Pradhan’s father’s shop. Love blossomed between Vikas and Rishika, even as Vikas enabled, for Magnus, the collection and transfer of literally truckloads of cash from various parts of India through Tyagiji’s hawala parlour in West Punjabi Bagh. In parallel with Magnus using Vikas’s services, Banque Wedderburn Privee decideed to outsource back office operations to cut costs and retains New Horizon Infotech Limited in Noida for this purpose. Vikas managed to get Rishika to work for New Horizon. Fast forward and Vikas becomes a private banker in Zurich, working for Banque Wedderburn Privee. Rishika plays the role of the bored housewife amidst the mountains and snows of Switzerland. How does Vikas become a private banker in Zurich? Do please read this novel to find out for yourself.

Prakhar Solanki, a boring data analyst, and his clever wife Sejal, take-off from India for Zurich so that Prakhar can work on-site on an integration project for his MNC employer. In Zurich, Prakhar continues to be ever efficient and precise, while Sejal becomes a marketing assistant at the Uto Kulm Hotel, where she meet Vikas, who is a total contrast to Prakhar. On weekdays, Sejal swirls her prosecco and meets Vikas often. On weekends, the best she can hope for is an Antakshri with Prakhar’s office-mates and their families. Vikas wishes Rishika could be as much fun as Sejal, but he wishes in vain and so he continues to meet with Sejal whenever he can.

Zainab’s family hails from Hyderabad and her father Mr. Sidhiqui works for IDPL - Indian Drug and Pharmaceutical Limited where he is Senior Purchase Officer. When Mr. Sidhiqui is transferred to IDPL’s Vibhadra branch, he manages to get his wife a job as a Chemistry teacher at the IDPL Inter College. Zainab and her family are allotted a Type-III flat (though he is entitled to a Type-IV flat) and things would have been really dreary for Zainab if she hadn’t become very close friends with Varun Dixit whose father is entitled to a Type-V flat. Water Tank No. 5 of the Virbhadra township is where Varun and Zainab have their frequent rendezvous. Suddenly, Mr. Sidhiqui is transferred to a scientific laboratory in the US on behalf of IDPL and Varun and Zainab are torn asunder. Zainab chances upon some documents, addressed to Mr. Sidhiqui which contains another name. Further, at the US immigration counter, they are escorted by state agents via a special queue, sans the usual ESTA checks. Is it just a high profile posting, or something else? We are told that before the move to the US, Mr. Siddiqui had made several visits to the Office of the Technology Attache in the US Embassy on Shanti Path in Delhi. Do please read this excellent novel to find out more.

Vikas soon starts making frequent trips to Philadelphia where he runs into Zainab. They meet often in a seventh-floor luxury suite of the Crowne Plaza Hotel on Chestnut Street. Zainab has a boyfriend three doors down on the same street. Varun Dixit is a faint memory, though Zainab has been looking for Varun in every man she has had a relationship with until then. When her relationship with Vikas starts to threaten to become serious, Varun gets in touch with Zainab via Orkut and it turns out that Varun is actually in her vicinity. Are Varun and Zainab able to put the clock back and recreate the ambience of Vibhadra's Water Tank No. 5? Go on, please read and find out for yourself. 

Shayan (the author's pen name) writes well in precise prose that does not become a barrier to one’s enjoyment of the story. There is no unnecessarily lyrical prose that diverts your attention. The religious fundamentalists who pop in and out of the story occasionally add colour to the human kaleidoscope that rolls on at moderate speed. Shayan's main characters are all very much lovable - in fact, I didn't find a single character in this novel who is detestable, not even the boring Prakhar. I really enjoyed reading Zainab The Precious Quest and highly recommend it to Winnowed’s readers.

Zainab The Precious Quest is available on Pothi and Amazon.