SHORT TAKES: Four books with thrills and takeaways for everyone
Whether you’re a history buff or a poet at heart, there are thrills and takeaways for everyone in these four new books.
1. Sweet home India
Twenty-two-year-old Samuel Evans Stokes came to the Himalayan foothills in 1904, embraced Hinduism and became Satyanand Stokes. Today, his descendents still live in the region. In 1833, American businessman Frederic Tudor made history when he shipped 180 pounds of ice harvested in Boston to Calcutta, ice being much in demand among the elites here. Then there were the medical missionaries like Ida Scudder, who set up the Christian Medical College in Vellore in 1900, and Clara Swain who set up Asia’s first hospital for women and children in Bareilly. All of them wander around in the pages of Anuradha Kumar’s compelling book on early Americans in India. These traders, adventurers, fortune hunters, storytellers and mystics came here looking for something. Whether they found it or not, they all left their mark on the nation, and Kumar astutely captures how.
Wanderers, Adventurers, Missionaries: Early Americans in India
By Anuradha Kumar
Published by Speaking Tiger
Price Rs599; pages 384
2. A gripping adventure
On May 11, 1944, just four weeks before D-Day, 67 American heavy bombers dropped 168 tons of bombs on the French town of Epinal, which housed over 3,000 Indian prisoners of war. The Great Epinal Escape is the story of these prisoners’ endeavour to escape thousands of Nazis and journey across 100km of French countryside to Switzerland, where they hoped to find safety. At a time of incredible suffering and darkness, Ghee Bowman cobbles together a story of hope and resilience. As a historical consultant for the BBC and others, Bowman’s research and ability to ferret out little-known details shine through. For the large part, the story of these unsung heroes has never been told, and it is time they become more than a footnote in history. As Bowman writes, “May the unknown become known”.
The Great Epinal Escape: Indian Prisoners of War in German Hands
By Ghee Bowman
Published by Westland
Price Rs699; pages 272
3. India, down the ages
Tempest on River Silent recounts the adventures of Devavratt and his friends as their dreams and disappointments unfold across the fabric of a rapidly-changing India. As they navigate life—experience first loves, build enduring friendships and face crushing defeats—their country, too, mutates. Through heartfelt conversations and debates about everything from Sachin Tendulkar to TV serials like Hum Log, Sandeep Khanna takes you on a nostalgic deep-dive to India’s past. For an old-timer, the memories come alive, as though someone has dusted off an old dream. Khanna records the socio-political, cultural and spiritual transformation of India in the last 50 years, thus making the book as much a love letter to his country as a story of friendship and camaraderie.
Tempest on River Silent: A Story of Last 50 Years of India
By Sandeep Khanna
Published by Niyogi Books
Price Rs850; pages 640
4. Anatomy of grief
Vidya Krishnan, a Nieman Fellow at Harvard who has written for The New York Times and The Atlantic, lost her grandmother to old age and her partner to a road accident in one weekend. She was absolutely crushed and to make sense of it, she turned to everything from religion to science. Finally, she found a home for her grief—the city of Delhi, with its “heartlessness, its history of death and renewal down the ages”. But then, unexpectedly, she also found a companion in her grief: the city’s greatest poet, Mirza Ghalib, who did not just describe, but almost inhabited the emotion as no poet has ever done. White Lilies is a meditation on grief as it changes its nature over time, and on the love that deepens, even as it outlasts, the loss.
White Lilies
By Vidya Krishnan
Published by Westland
Price Rs499; pages 104
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