Book seeks to decode the enigma called Tiger Woods

(New Delhi, Sep 26, 2018) Tiger Woods, who just clinched his first PGA title in five years, is the most mysterious athlete of his time, an enigma obsessed with privacy who mastered the art of being invisible in plain sight, of saying something while revealing virtually nothing, says a new book on the champion golfer.

Investigative journalists Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian have come out with a biography of Woods, packed with behind-the-scenes details of the Shakespearean rise and epic fall of a global icon.

Tiger Woods offers a 360-degree look at Woods’ entire life to date, closely examines his roots and the vital role his parents played in his epic rise, fall, and return.

The authors say Woods’ greatest victory is not in golf but rather in his journey back into the light, and for the first time in many years, into life.

In 2009, Woods was a transcendent star of almost unfathomable fame and fortune living what appeared to be the perfect life – married to a Swedish beauty and the father of two young children.

Winner of 14 major golf championships and 79 PGA Tour events, Woods was the first billion-dollar athlete, earning more than USD 100 million a year in endorsements from the likes of Nike, Gillette, AT&T and Gatorade.

But it was all a carefully crafted illusion. As it turned out, Woods had been living a double life for years – one that exploded in the aftermath of a late-night crash that exposed his serial infidelity and sent his personal and professional life off a cliff.

In Tiger Woods, Benedict and Keteyian dig deep behind the headlines as they seek an answer to the question that has mystified millions of sports fans for nearly a decade: who is Tiger Woods?

The book, published by Simon & Schuster, draws on more than 400 interviews with people from every corner of Woods’ life – friends, family members, teachers, romantic partners, swing coaches, business associates, Tour pros and members of his inner circle.

According to the authors, Woods will forever be measured against Jack Nicklaus, who won more major championships.

“But the Tiger Effect can’t be measured in statistics. A literary comparison may be more fitting. Given the full spectrum of his awe-inspiring gifts, Woods was nothing less than a modern-day Shakespeare. He was someone no one had ever seen or will ever see again,” they say.

“The Woods family dynamic,” they say, “made Tiger the most mysterious athlete of his time, an enigma obsessed with privacy who mastered the art of being invisible in plain sight, of saying something while revealing virtually nothing”.

Lisa Ray to come out with memoir in 2019

(New Delhi, Sep 26, 2018) One of India’s first supermodels, Lisa Ray will pen her memoir next year, chronicling her journey from being an actor, her fight with cancer, to attaining motherhood through surrogacy.

“The untitled memoir is an unflinching and deeply moving account of Lisa’s nomadic existence: her entry into the Indian entertainment industry; her relationship with her Bengali father and Polish mother; movie sets and the Oscars; her battle with eating disorders; being diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma; her spiritual quest; and the heartaches and triumphs of her journey. It is also about Lisa’s search for love,” publisher HarperCollins India says.

Lisa has had a long career in the entertainment arts spanning multiple countries and films including the Oscar-nominated Water, television (Top Chef Canada) and modelling.

When diagnosed with a rare blood cancer in 2009, she chose to share her experiences in a blog called The Yellow Diaries which led to her first book (her forthcoming memoir). She is a well-known advocate for cancer awareness through her writing and public talks.

Lisa recently announced the birth of her twin daughters – Sufi and Soleil – via surrogacy, writing and speaking about it as a way to normalise fertility options and choices for others.

“Writing my story has transported me through a myriad of experiences and worlds, and the emotions of a life lived close to the bone. I’ve been working on this a long time and, after the birth of my twins, it feels like my third baby,” Lisa says.

According to Diya Kar of HarperCollins, “Lisa’s memoir is candid, brave, and inspiring. We are delighted that we will be publishing the story of her remarkable journey – from being ‘discovered’ at 16 to being diagnosed with cancer at 37, this is a brutally honest account of one who’s lived life on her terms.”

Epic Bengali novel on Karbala war now in English

(New Delhi, Sep 23, 2018) An epic historical novel by Bangladeshi literary great Mir Mosharraf Hossain centred on events that led to the battle of Karbala has been translated into English.

The plot in Hossain’s “Bishad Sindhu” is dramatic, has a mythical undertone to it, and deeds of heroism and supernatural occurrences render an epic flavour to its narrative.

The storyline explores the sufferings and agonies of human life and the covetousness and hatred of men, and, at the same time, imparts a historical background to the bloodbath and killings that took place in Karbala, Iraq in AD 680.

Readers of “Ocean of Melancholy”, translated by Alo Shome, can get an insight into the events that led to the battle of Karbala and its aftermath.

The book, brought out by Niyogi Books under its Thornbird imprint, revolves around the tragic story of Hassan and Hussein, grandsons of Prophet Muhammad, who were exterminated by their bitter enemy Yazid, the son of the king of Damascus.

“I am not a religious person myself, but am only objectively curious about religion as it is a part of human culture. Thankfully, ‘Bishad Sindhu’ gave me an opportunity to gain much knowledge about Islam. Through its translation I could express my respect and love for another faith other than the one I inherited,” says Alo Shome.

The book was released this Thursday.

Publisher Trisha de Niyogi says “Ocean of Melancholy” is a work of historical fiction in which there is no distortion of facts, yet multiple imaginary characters and hypothetical situations have been brought in to not only to enhance the interests of the reader, but also to give a geopolitical picture of the time.

Hossain, a pioneer among 19th century Bengali Muslim writers, was born in 1847 to the zamindar of Padamdi. He was deeply interested in Arabic, Persian, and Bengali literature. He contributed his writings to various journals, mainly in “Sangbad Hitokar” and “Gram Barta Prakashik”.

Mir authored 35 books of which “Bishad Sindhu” is considered his best.

Bhupen felt both of us should celebrate our love story: Kalpana Lajmi

Zafri Mudasser Nofil

(New Delhi, Sep 23, 2018) Cultural icon Bhupen Hazarika always felt that he and Kalpana Lajmi should celebrate their love story as it was special and unique given the conservative construct of society, the filmmaker wrote in her memoir.

Lajmi, who was suffering from kidney ailment, passed away early Sunday morning at a hospital in Mumbai at the age of 64. She was Hazarika’s companion for nearly 40 years. Hazarika predeceased her in 2011.

Lajmi was just 17 when she met Hazarika for the first time. He was 45 then.

“My eyes sparkled with love at first sight and I saw their reflection in his eyes just when the light of his life was about to be extinguished – 40 years later,” she wrote in her just-released autobiography “Bhupen Hazarika: As I Knew Him”, co-authored with Sunanda Shyamal Mitra.

“Our lives, from youth to old age, were a continuous journey of mutual passion and love. We stepped into various chapters of our lives, sliding in and out of relationships with men and women, making memories along the way. We cherished some of them, but there were some we wished we could forget,” she wrote in the book, published by HarperCollins India.

So why was she attracted to Hazarika?

“When I met the 45-year-old Bhupen, I instantly thought of the ‘dhumuha’, which, in Assamese, means a short tempestuous storm that swirls across the riverine civilization bordering the Brahmaputra. Bhupen epitomised that storm.

“The dhumuha is eternal and comes year after year to sweep everything and everyone away in its wake. Bhupen’s personality at 45 was like the dhumuha: charismatic, wild, passionate, talented, with an unmatched intellect; and yet which, like the whirlwind, loved, empathised, and uplifted, especially his region, the north-east, to integrate it into a brotherhood with India.”

What was the idea behind the book?

“My love story with Bhupen Hazarika was unique. Forty years of an eventful, personal, tumultuous journey with Bhupen, marked by important socio-cultural and political events that deeply impacted our personalities, are what I want to talk about. Our nation’s influence on Bhupen and his artistic conscience and, in turn, Bhupen’s complete devotion to his art and uplift of the underprivileged and plea for regional recognition went hand in hand.

“I slowly realised I was always in love with Bhupen and Bhupen was always in love with the nation. I was always in love with his artistic genius and he was always in love with his native soil. I was always in love with his innocence whereas he was, till his last breath, torn with anguish, angst and inexplicable pain for the condition of his fellow beings, not only in eastern India but also in India and Bangladesh.”

Lajmi, daughter of well-known painter Lalitha Lajmi and niece of Guru Dutt, directed six critically acclaimed films – “Ek Pal” (1986), “Rudaali” (1993), “Darmiyaan” (1997), “Daman” (2001), “Kyun” (2003) and “Chingaari” (2006) and a documentary called “D.G. Movie Pioneer” based on Bengali filmmaker Dhiren Ganguly. Hazarika composed music in all the films.

She also directed the TV serial “Lohit Kinaare” (1988) for Doordarshan and 26 episodes of “Dawn”, a serial on the freedom movement of India.

According to Lajmi, she kept herself busy in loving Bhupen and looking after him till his demise, allowing him to indulge in his dreams and fond memories of his native soil.

“That was probably the most difficult period of my life. The loneliness that engulfed me, my depleting finances, the creativity that eluded me – it was as if my life breath was slowly being sucked out.”

Hazarika died on November 5, 2011.

“Almost immediately after his passing away, the winds changed. The world welcomed and acknowledged me finally, bestowing upon me the honour, respect and pride as Bhupen’s companion. Somewhere down the ages, I too would be remembered, something that I had not asked for, but was given because Bhupen gave me in death what he could not in life: his acceptance and the status of his wife and consort,” Lajmi wrote.

How to deal with small issues in life, book seeks to provide answers

(New Delhi, Sep 22, 2018) At a time when depression, especially among youth, is becoming a major issue of concern, a book offers a comprehensive understanding of life’s basic principles and suggestions on how to deal with mental stress.

“Here and Beyond: Eternal Happiness through Self Evolution” by Rashmi Joshi seeks to build inner strengths to deal with small issues in everyday life that might snowball into people facing severe problems.

With several anecdotes – ranging from dealing with a neighbour who calls one names to witnessing a child dying of a life threatening disease – the book articulates answers to all existential queries, helping one to learn and evolve as a spiritual being with each step.

Deepika Padukone was one of the foremost Indian celebrities to come out in open about this. It’s only when celebrities commit suicide or talk about it that people wake up to such issues. The statistics on mental health issues are alarming.

More and more professional colleges and corporates are introducing sessions on happiness, yoga, improving mental health, dealing with stress etc to ensure that students and employees can come out as winner. It’s not about spirituality but how one can channelise internal energies in simple ways to live a positive and happy life.

In the book, published by Bloomsbury India, Joshi, who is a professional singer and yoga trainer, suggests six steps to “rid oneself of a lot of pent-up emotions and physical ailments” – accept that there is a problem, identify the problem, pour it out, thrash it out, meditate, and revise the process till one feels internal happiness.

“All of us need some kind of closure or settlement to our problems. We may not have been able to react or settle the issues optimally at the right time; therefore, we carried baggage and now it is too late to face the persons or situations that wronged us.

“We all find ourselves in this quandary, tirelessly chugging along, sometimes for decades together but worry not, there is good news – you do not have to live with it for the rest of your lives. You have the power, even today, to give it, that closure,” she says.

Book to feature unpublished writings of literary great A K Ramanujan

(New Delhi, Sep 22, 2018) Unpublished writings of one of India’s greatest poets, folklorists and scholars A K Ramanujan that are being preserved and catalogued at the University of Chicago will be featured in a new book next year.

The book “Journeys” will be edited by son Krishna Ramanujan and Guillermo Rodriguez, who has authored a book on the poet-scholar.

It will feature excerpts from Ramanujan’s personal diaries and journals, providing a window into his creative process. It will also include literary entries from his travels, his thoughts on writing, poetry drafts, and dreams. His diaries and journals provided fodder for much of his published work.

Among his vast body of work, Ramanujan (1929-1993) translated ancient Tamil and medieval Kannada poetry, as well as UR Ananthamurthy’s novel “Samskara”.

A modernist poet, he produced four poetry collections in English during his lifetime, and had intended to publish the journals he had kept throughout the decades.

After his premature death 25 years ago, his journals, diaries, papers and other documents – spanning 50 years from 1944 to 1993 – were given by his family to the Special Collections Research Center at the Regenstein Library of the University of Chicago in June 1994.

The book will be published by Penguin Random House (PRH) India in 2019.

Ranjana Sengupta, associate publisher (literary publishing) at PRH India excited about publishing the “papers of a poet, scholar and thinker as eminent as A K Ramanujam”.

Senior Commissioning Editor Premanka Goswami said time and again Ramanujan’s writings “have delighted us with a cornucopia of meanings”.

Indira Gandhi made two serious mistakes – Emergency, Operation Blue Star: Natwar Singh

(New Delhi, Sep 16, 2018) Indira Gandhi made two “serious mistakes — declaring the Emergency in 1975 and allowing Operation Blue Star to happen”, but regardless of these she was a great and powerful prime minister and a considerate humanist, feels veteran Congressman K Natwar Singh.

Singh worked in her office from 1966 to 1971 as a civil services officer before joining the Congress in the 80s and becoming a minister in the Rajiv Gandhi Cabinet.

“Ever so often, Indira Gandhi is depicted as solemn, severe, prickly and ruthless. Seldom is it mentioned that this beautiful, caring, charming, graceful and sparkling human being was a considerate humanist and a voracious reader, that she was endowed with charm, elegance, style, good taste and, above all, gravitas,” he says about the former prime minister.

Singh says Gandhi “made two serious mistakes – declaring the Emergency in 1975 and allowing Operation Blue Star to happen”, but hastens to add, “And yet, regardless of these, she was a great and powerful prime minister.”

Singh expresses these views in his new book, ‘Treasured Epistles’, a collection of letters. Those who regularly wrote to him included friends, contemporaries and colleagues, from the days of his foreign service to ambassadorship, to recent days as the minister of foreign affairs.

Some of whose letters feature in the book include Indira Gandhi, E M Forster, C Rajagopalachari, Lord Mountbatten, Jawaharlal Nehru’s two sisters Vijaylakshmi Pandit and Krishna Hutheesing, R K Narayan, Nirad C Chaudhuri, Mulk Raj Anand and Han Suyin.

He says each of these luminaries influenced him in a different way and consequently his “Weltanschauung” or world view was vastly extended and enriched.

The topics of Indira Gandhi’s letters to Singh ranged from congratulating him for becoming a father to politics, books, birthday wishes and get-well-soon messages.

After sweeping the Lok Sabha elections in 1980, Gandhi wrote to Singh, who was then the high Commissioner of India to Islamabad: “The real difficulties now begin. The people’s expectations are high but the situation – both political or economic, is an extremely complex one.”

“I cannot help being an optimist and I have no doubt that if only our legislators and the people as a whole have the patience and forbearance to climb the steep and stony path for the next few months, we can get over the hump and arrive at a place from which progress is possible once again.”

Among the several other nuggets in the book, published by Rupa, is Rajagopalachari once telling Singh that he had “sold” the idea of Partition to Lord Mountbatten as “Partition was the only answer”.

When Singh persisted by saying that Mahatma Gandhi was against the Partition, Rajagopalachari said, “Gandhi was a very great man but he saw what was going on. He was a very disillusioned man. When he realised that we were all for Partition, he said, ‘If you all agree, I will go along with you,’ and left Delhi the next day.”

Different conspirators in ISRO spy case, victims same set of people: Nambi Narayanan

(New Delhi, Sep 16, 2018) ISRO scientist Nambi Narayanan, who has been awarded Rs 50 lakh compensation by the Supreme Court for being subjected to mental cruelty in the 1994 espionage case, says he became a pawn in the case in which the conspirators were different with different motives but the victims were the same set of people.

The Supreme Court Friday ordered a high-level probe into the role of Kerala Police officials in the “fabricating” the case and arresting and causing “tremendous harassment” and “immeasurable anguish” to Narayanan.

Terming the police action against the 76-year-old former scientist as “psycho-pathological treatment”, a bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra said his “liberty and dignity”, basic to his human rights, were jeopardised as he was taken into custody and, eventually, despite all the glory of the past, was compelled to face “cynical abhorrence”.

According to Narayanan, the ISRO spy case was a lie, right from Maldivian national Mariam Rasheeda’s arrest on October 20, 1994. He was then the director of ISRO’s cryogenic project.

Rasheeda was arrested for allegedly obtaining secret drawings of ISRO rocket engines to sell to Pakistan.

“Though the Maldivian woman’s arrest marked the beginning of the case, the genesis of it all was a chance meeting she had with K Chandrasekhar (Indian representative of a Russian space agency) at the Trivandrum airport on June 20, 1994,” Narayanan says.

“The ISRO spy case is unusual in that though the conspirators were different with different motives, the victims were the same set of people. When a desperate police inspector found (the then deputy director of ISRO’s cryogenic project) Sasikumaran’s name in Mariam Rasheeda’s diary, ISRO was dragged into it.

“When a master conspirator found an opportunity to slow down, if not stop, ISRO in its march to the global satellite launch market, I became a pawn,” he says.

Narayanan makes these comments in his book, which was published recently by Bloomsbury.

He was arrested along with other ISRO scientists besides some other persons in November 1994. They were released on bail three months later. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed a report before a Kerala court, saying the espionage case was false and there was no evidence to back the charges. The court then discharged all the accused.

In 1998, the Supreme Court awarded compensation of Rs 1 lakh to Narayanan and others and directed the Kerala government to pay the amount. Last year, the Supreme Court began hearing on Narayanan’s plea, seeking action against former Kerala DGP Siby Mathews and others who had probed the matter.

In “Ready To Fire: How India and I Survived the ISRO Spy Case”, Narayanan and journalist Arun Ram unpick the ISRO spy case, revisit old material and discover new details to expose the international plot that delayed India’s development of a cryogenic engine by at least a decade.

Narayanan suspects a vested interest in the whole episode as the ISRO spy case delayed India’s cryogenic engine by at least 15 years.

“What does one gain from that? For one, a lot of money. India today offers to launch a satellite at a fraction of the price that NASA charges. A 2015 report of the Colorado-based Space Foundation pegged the global space economy of 2014 at USD 330 billion, with a 9 per cent growth over the previous year. Satellite launches and related commercial activities constitute 75 per cent of it,” he writes.

“It is in public domain how the US applied sanctions on India and Russia in 1992, a year after the two countries signed a contract for transfer of cryogenic technology. Piece together the timing of the ISRO spy case and a few later incidents, including a top IB man being given marching orders for supping with the CIA, and you see the plot,” he goes on to say.

For Narayanan, this book is “not an effort in revenge but an experiment in something more powerful: truth”.

“This book is not just an account of the ISRO spy case in which I was an accused. The case that broke out in the late 1994 as a potboiler of sex, spies and rocket science before dying down as a police misadventure that eventually fed an international conspiracy, however, forms the fulcrum of this book,” he says.

Final book of Vineet Bajpai’s Harappa trilogy launched

(New Delhi, Sep 15, 2018) “Kashi: Secret of the Black Temple”, the final book of Vineet Bajpai’s Harappa trilogy, was launched here Friday.

The three books in the series combine mythology, history, fantasy, crime and the modern-day thriller element. The first two books are “Harappa: Curse of the Blood River” and “Pralay: The Great Deluge”.

At the launch there was a discussion on how historical and mythological fiction is helping millennials and the modern generation rediscover their roots.

Neeta Gupta, publisher of Yatra Books, moderated the discussion among former Chief Election Commissioner Navin Chawla, BJP leader Gaurav Bhatia and the author.

Chawla said in contemporary times when the young Indians are busy consuming content via digital media, books have the potential to keep the diversity and richness of Indian heritage relevant.

According to Bhatia, books are an important medium through which India’s rich culture and ideologies can be passed on to the youth.

Bajpai spoke about how literature and content have always been potent forces in shaping the fabric of the nation. He cited the examples of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s 16th century Bhakti movement and Swami Dayanand’s Arya Samaj and how initiatives like these were powerful cultural revivalist movements.

He said authors of today need to shoulder a similar responsibility and take Indian culture, heritage and epics into the hands of the young reader in the form of books.

The three books have been brought out by Bajpai’s publishing platform TreeShade Books.

Bajpai said that Audible, an Amazon company, has bought the audio rights of the Harappa series and one of the biggest production houses in the country has made an offer to buy its film or series rights too.

Bajpai is the founder and chairman of the Magnon Group, a digital and advertising agency.

British boarding school show coming to India in Oct

(New Delhi, Sep 15, 2018) A show next month seeks to expose discerning Indian families to the concept of a UK boarding school education, what that choice entails and the numerous benefits that such an experience can bring for a student.

The first ever British Boarding Schools Show in India will be held in New Delhi and Mumbai and will bring the registrars (directors of admissions) and heads from a selection of leading boarding schools from across the UK.

Visiting families to the show can therefore discover firsthand what it means to board in the UK, and learn about the incredible opportunities that these schools can offer them quite apart from just a world class academic offering, says William Petty, director of Bonas MacFarlane Education, London.

Bonas Macfarlane, a provider of private tuition and educational advice in the UK is organising the show.

There will be special benefits for Indian students.

“An Indian student aiming for a leading UK university or US college place can do much to enhance their chances of successful applications merely by moving to a UK-based school. We would argue that they would be far better prepared by a UK boarding school for starters, but also they would be considered as Indian nationals applying from Britain and therefore in a hugely smaller pool of applicants than those applying directly from India,” says Petty.

Citing recent data, he says an Indian student applying to Cambridge from a UK independent school is 300 per cent more likely to succeed than they would be applying from an Indian school.

So why are they eyeing Indian students?

“Over the last two decades, the number of Indians boarding in the UK has fallen as more and more high-achieving schools were founded in India offering qualifications such as iGCSE, A-level and the IB programme. In the last five years though those numbers have began to rise once more,” Petty told PTI.

“We feel that this is just the beginning of a renaissance for Indian students boarding in the UK. We feel that there are a huge number of children and students in India who would gain so much from life at a British boarding school and we are extremely excited to be re-introducing the idea to Indian families,” he says.

According to him, the average British boarding school will have an enormous array of academic subjects on offer, sometimes across multiple qualifications, a plethora of co-curricular activities, community projects, high level sports, music and creative arts.

Petty says there will be no such conditions like students opting for studies in the UK will have to stay there for further studies.

“Student visas apply only to the institution where an Indian student is attending on a full time basis for the duration of the course of study. Once the studies have been completed the visa expires within a few months,” he says.

He also dismisses as unfounded recent reports that some of the UK’s most in-demand private schools were willing to accept donations in return for coveted places.

“Many British boarding schools are charitable trusts and whilst their fees seem high they generate very little profit. Therefore the schools rely on donations and endowments to maintain bursaries and develop new facilities,” Petty says.

“It is a model upon which the Ivy League colleges of America are built. Schools are very careful that all students are subjected to the same admissions process and assessment procedures and that for each student who is accepted they can prove that the child deserves the place on their own merits,” he adds.