THE DIARY OF Z

SUSHMA SWARAJ, the 56-year-old charismatic Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader known for her gift of the gab, is the machine gun-mouth of the political outfit.

She was earlier a lawyer in the Supreme Court and later went on to become the youngest cabinet minister of the country at the age of 25 years.

When Swaraj is not spending time with her 25-year-old daughter Bansuri and dog Rakshak, she curls up with the Bhagavad-Gita, she told this writer when he met her way back in 2000. Here are a few excerpts from the brief tete a tete…

What are you reading these days?
One Hindi and one English book.

What’s the title?
Saga of Hinduism.

Are you rediscovering Hinduism?
No. It’s about the resurgence of Hinduism. It’s very readable. The other book I am reading is Dragon Fire by Humphrey Hawksley (It’s about how China considers the democratic Indian model as the biggest threat to its nationhood and talks about the Indian retaliation against China’s Operation DragonFire).

Have your reading tastes changed over time?
Not really. I read fiction, poetry…

Which is the book that has influenced you most?
The complete works of Swami Vivekananda and… The Bhagavad-Gita that I read every day.

Which is your favourite bookshop?
Take Sons in Delhi.

Who are your favourite authors?
Ram Hari Singh Dinakar in Hindi and Vikram Seth in English.

When I was in college, my lecturer used to say, “The king and the queen died is a story. The king died but the queen died of grief is a plot.” Apply it to Jeffrey Archer, the master storyteller, and you will agree that the story should read: ‘The king died and the queen died. But both were later found to be alive.’

His tales with a twist have enthralled readers across the globe. I have read all his short story collections from the very first ‘A Quiver Full of Arrows’ and ‘A Twist in the Tale’ to ‘Twelve Red Herrings’ and ‘The Collected Short Stories’.

‘To Cut A Long Story Short’ is the latest from Archer’s stable. Out of the 14 short stories, 9 have been inspired from real life incidents. But unlike his earlier books, this one is good only in parts.
It gives you the impression that Archer wanted to be overly fair to the actual events that he left out his own little anecdotes and characters to make interesting reading.

The collection might not be a ‘wonderfully satisfying read’, as the blurb says, but it does provide useful insights into the characters of people. While some stories fail to sustain your attention, others like ‘The Letter’ and ‘Love At First Sight’ stand out for their ingenuity, style and presentation.

But then again, the choice is purely subjective.

According to Archer, the art of storytelling bears no relation to birth, upbringing and education. He talks of the contrasting upbringings of Joseph Conrad, Walter Scott, John Buchan, O Henry, HH Munro and Hans Christian Anderson.

P.S: Though this book released in 2000, it retains its topicality till date.

Business @ The Speed of Thought
Bill Gates / Tech / Rs 856.80

The world’s biggest geek strikes again. And this book, like all the books written by those who became rich, will be bought in large numbers by those who want to become rich. “Business…” states its premise in the opening sentence itself, which reads, ‘Business is going to change in the next ten years more than it has in the last fifty’. But a quick read through suggests that this more a sentiment that a well-organised plan of action for change. It also has little relevance for India, where electronic business is mired not in red tape but also in lethargic bureaucratic reaction.

Facing the Mirror
Ashwini Sukthankar / Lesbianism / Rs 295

Voyeurs will only be mildly titillated by this book. It is a collection of the writings of several women, all lesbians, who have things to say about their experiences. Some are poems; some are narratives of particular experiences such as placing ads in the personals seeking fellow lesbians. The book purports to be a voice for the many women who seek each other out but have “borne silent witness to distorted reflections of their reality”. Many of the authors’ names are obviously masked but on the whole, the writing is so uniformly good as to present the notion that it has all been re-written by one person.

The Origins of Non Violence
Martin Green / History / Rs 195

A fascinating account of Gandhi and Tolstoy “in their historical setting”. Through this, Green embarks of the academic exercise of providing a basis for comparison between Russia and India; Lenin and Marx; Gandhians and Tolstoyians; and anti-Gandhi and anti-Tolstoy sentiments. The links are sometimes tortuous, often tenuous, but never less than provoking.

The Ground Beneath Her Feet
Salman Rushdie / Fiction / Rs 395

Rushdie steps forward in time from his previous oeuvre (The Moor’s Last Sigh) and deals with the pop culture of our times. The narrative moves from India, through England and the US. It is the story of Vina Apsara, a captivating singer, who is lost in an earthquake. And of her lover, Ormus Cama, who finds her, loses her and finds her again. The narrator is a photographer, Rai (not necessarily Raghu). Underlying the story, as all Rushdie’s works must, is the inter-play of cultures of East and West, something on which the master is well, the master.

For years, I used to pity people who were into self-help books (which meant most of America). Until Betty Shine happened.

There I was browsing for more than an hour at Sankars Book Stall when my eye picked out her book, Mind Magic. Maybe it was the jacket blurb. Maybe it was my age – I had just turned 30. Maybe it’s a bit of all this, but the fact is it was a fortunate accident.

The next few days stretched my mind. Shine says that we are energy beings first. Without our energy counterpart of the physical body, we would not be here at this moment. But stress causes energy blockages in the physical system causing distress and disease. The underlying reasoning: Don’t underestimate the power of your mind. If it can create an atom bomb, it can also create great art. It makes waves – of love, compassion and understanding – and it heals.

Shine was a medium (she died four years ago). She not only existed in this dimension, she could also interact with ‘dead’ people in the next dimension so that she could pass on their messages to loved ones telling them not to grieve. They came to her to prove they had survived ‘death’ and were happy in their new world.

The healing powers of the mind drew me more than anything else. I wanted to heal and be healed, physically and soulfully. I have tried healing my father’s dislocated knee – though it’s yet to be healed completely, the pain has receded to a large extent. Now he heals himself. The process is simple: Visualise your palm as a magnet that takes away negative energies. You place your palm on the place of pain for a while and move it away, taking with it all the negative energy that was embedded within the body. It’s a process that demands faith.

If it’s about healing people living away from you, you could still work the magic through visualisation. You could send loving thoughts to the person even without that person’s knowledge. And the best way to heal yourself is to go to bed blessing your friends, enemies and strangers.

As Betty Shine puts it, to be happy, one can never afford to lose the child within. A child is innocent and has faith and allows things to happen. We are all born with this talent, and it takes the child within to find and nurture it.