yet again ... getting lost ... then enjoying self-discovery ...

Learning from silence  Pico Iyer  Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Random House India  2025  ISBN 9780143474364  Pages 214  Price 599/-  Thanks Eesha for the suggestions on the draft.  One could talk about silence as " quiet " or " absence of sound " or just " silence " or on similar lines. Or one can be eloquent like Chesterton was on the colour white ( he described it as a strong colour in itself, not an absence of colour, drew parallels with virtue and so ). In this book Pico Iyer takes the Chesterton path, only he goes way deeper. He writes about what silence has meant to him over the years as he consciously put in more and more time with it, how people he looks up to understand silence, what it has done to him as a person, and more. The text flows smoothly as he opens up and talks about his family, the people he bumped into at the retreat, the conversations with them, and the forest-fires which impacted his home and the retreat, as he describes how s...

Saccha Sur  Cultivating The Soul In The Field Of Grace  Stories by Sanghamitra  Published by AuroPublications, Sri Aurobindo Society  Illustrations by Eesha  ISBN 978-81-7060-439-6  Second edition 2023  Price 555/- Pages 154 I read Saccha Sur immediately after The Grammar of Greed . And, this after having hardly read during the recent months. Was it a coincidence to read of the inner world after the outer, of sangeet after laalach , of g urus after rulers, of t anpuras after mobile phones? But then, like I have been told more than once during the recent months, "there are no accidents" .  These books have similarities as well - both have high production values and aesthetic appeal for example - but for now I will move on.  I will talk about what I gleaned from Saccha Sur rather than comment on the book. Also I will refrain from quoting lines from the book - there is one too many for this!  Life  Saccha Sur assured me that I am ...

Some questions, Some numbers  Storms delay 50 flights and divert 50 flights in Dilli. Heavy rains cancel 50 flights in Bombay. Headlines like these are common these days.  Headlines which raise few questions.  Since when have flights become indicators of bad weather?  Does weather affect only those who travel by flights?  Are we, our media, bothered only about the upper crust that travels by flights?  Is time important only for those who travel by flights?  Are flights our only or the most popular mode of transport?  If it is about flight delays do flight delays at smaller airports make news?  Is it only the English media that reports in this manner?  In a country like India should this be news leave alone headlines? If nature has decided on rains and storms do we have an option other than waiting? Just so that we have a perspective Roughly 4 ~ 5 lakh people in India travel by flights each day Roughly 40 ~ 50 lakh people use the Dilli Me...

The Grammar of Greed  Reflections on a Fatal Ecology  Aseem Shrivastava  Illustrations Sachin Vyam  Pages 246 First published March 2025  Publisher Red River Story  ISBN 978-93-48111-84-5  Price 799/-  At the beginning Aseem bhai writes, “ The book is written for those moments when there is an interval of leisure to ponder. ” This worked - the lines, the illustrations, the spaces all made me ponder! He adds,“ The sentences in this book are to be read very slowly. They cannot be digested without patience. ” While the book touched me as I travelled the pages I realised that for all my claims of having slowed down I have a lot to walk on the road! This is what the book does, it reminds you where you stand! And, it resonates! The text is all about “ we ” and not about “ them ”; the author and the reader are integral to the world that the book talks about; it neither talks about the “ other ” nor does the tone imply a higher ground - moral, intellectua...

A New Landscape  A New Life In More Ways Than One Thanks Eesha For The Image And A Lot Else 

Book Title: Poor Economics for Kids Authors: Esther Duflo and Cheyenne Olivier Published in: 2024 Publisher: Juggernaut Books ISBN: 9789353455866 Price: 999/- Pages: 381 Thanks to Teacher Plus for publishing the review and to Harmony for getting the book. What is this book about?  “ This book tells the stories of Nilou and her friends, a group of children and teens, and the adults who live with them. These children live in a village, one which could be in India or Kenya or Vietnam or elsewhere, and we see them deal with some ordinary and not-so-ordinary challenges. ” Stories from “ a world both very different and yet intensely familiar ”.  These stories are connected by a set of common characters, and of course, the setting. Education, health, urban migration, elections, fear, beliefs, food, greenery, livelihood, government, and gender are the topics they touch upon. The issues they highlight are universal. This is also a book written during or just after the COVID pandem...