Ponniyin Selvan by “Kalki” Krishnamurthy, Macmillan India, ~1800 pages.
Who should be the king? This was the question that members and enemies of the Chozha dynasty were asking each other in 10^th century Tamil Nadu and the incidents around this episode forms the plot for R. Krishnamurthy’s (pen name: Kalki) epic novel Ponniyin Selvan. This novel was first published in serial form in the Tamil weekly magazine Kalki from 1950 – 1954. Though Krishnamurthy wrote a large number of short stories, it was as a novelist that he got fame. He was also the first significant historical novelist in Tamil and his other works include Parthiban Kanavu and Sivagamiyin Sabatham.
Parantaka Chozha was succeeded by his second son Kandaraditha as the first son Rajaditha had died in a battle. On the death of Kandaraditha, his son Maduranthaka was a child and hence Kandaraditha’s brother Arinjaya ascended the throne. After Arinjaya’s death, his son Parantaka II, Sundara Choza was coronated. He had two sons, Aditha Karikalan and Arulmozhi Varman and a daughter Kundavai.
When the story starts, the emperor Sundara Chola is ill and bedridden. Aditha Karikalan is the general of the Northen Command and lived in Kanchi and Arulmozhi Varman (who would be famous later as Rajaraja Chola I) is in Sri Lanka in battle and their sister Kundavai Piratti lived in Chola royal household at Pazhayari.
The story is set in motion, when rumor starts that there is a conspiracy against Sundara Chozhar and his sons. One person who gets a glimpse of the Pandya conspirators is a warrior of the Vana clan Vallavarayan Vandiyathevan. Even though the book is titled Ponniyin Selvan, the hero of the book is Vandiyathevan, a friend of Adhitha Karikalan.
It is through Vandiyathevan that we meet most of the characters in the novel such as Arulmozhi Varman, the prince whom all the people loved and Periya Pazhavetturayar, the chancellor who married Nandini when he was sixty. During his youth Aditha Karikalan had fallen in love with Nandini, but she turned vengeful after Aditha Karikalan killed Veerapadyan (who was either Nandini’s father or brother) and vowed to destroy the Chozha dynasty. We also meet Kundavai Devi, who after hearing the news of the conspiracy sends Vandiyathevan to Sri Lanka to give a message to Arulmozhi Varman to come back immediately.
Continue reading “Book Review: Ponniyin Selvan” →

Ponniyin Selvan by “Kalki” Krishnamurthy, Macmillan India, ~1800 pages.
Who should be the king? This was the question that members and enemies of the Chozha dynasty were asking each other in 10^th century Tamil Nadu and the incidents around this episode forms the plot for R. Krishnamurthy’s (pen name: Kalki) epic novel Ponniyin Selvan. This novel was first published in serial form in the Tamil weekly magazine Kalki from 1950 – 1954. Though Krishnamurthy wrote a large number of short stories, it was as a novelist that he got fame. He was also the first significant historical novelist in Tamil and his other works include Parthiban Kanavu and Sivagamiyin Sabatham.
Parantaka Chozha was succeeded by his second son Kandaraditha as the first son Rajaditha had died in a battle. On the death of Kandaraditha, his son Maduranthaka was a child and hence Kandaraditha’s brother Arinjaya ascended the throne. After Arinjaya’s death, his son Parantaka II, Sundara Choza was coronated. He had two sons, Aditha Karikalan and Arulmozhi Varman and a daughter Kundavai.
When the story starts, the emperor Sundara Chola is ill and bedridden. Aditha Karikalan is the general of the Northen Command and lived in Kanchi and Arulmozhi Varman (who would be famous later as Rajaraja Chola I) is in Sri Lanka in battle and their sister Kundavai Piratti lived in Chola royal household at Pazhayari.
The story is set in motion, when rumor starts that there is a conspiracy against Sundara Chozhar and his sons. One person who gets a glimpse of the Pandya conspirators is a warrior of the Vana clan Vallavarayan Vandiyathevan. Even though the book is titled Ponniyin Selvan, the hero of the book is Vandiyathevan, a friend of Adhitha Karikalan.
It is through Vandiyathevan that we meet most of the characters in the novel such as Arulmozhi Varman, the prince whom all the people loved and Periya Pazhavetturayar, the chancellor who married Nandini when he was sixty. During his youth Aditha Karikalan had fallen in love with Nandini, but she turned vengeful after Aditha Karikalan killed Veerapadyan (who was either Nandini’s father or brother) and vowed to destroy the Chozha dynasty. We also meet Kundavai Devi, who after hearing the news of the conspiracy sends Vandiyathevan to Sri Lanka to give a message to Arulmozhi Varman to come back immediately.
Continue reading “Book Review: Ponniyin Selvan” →

Part adventure, part archaeological detective work and part spiritual exploration, this three-part series follows storyteller Bruce Feiler on his inspiring 10,000-mile odyssey as he searches for traces of the great biblical heroes. Feiler travels by foot, four-wheel, camel and boat to re-create the journey he recounts in his best-seller, Walking the Bible. The series wanders through 10 countries on three continents, including volatile areas of the Middle East. Accompanying Feiler is Avner Green, one of the world’s leading biblical archaeologists. Dramatic scripture readings are interspersed throughout the three programs, bringing viewers closer to these Biblical settings. [PBS]

To understand the Bible better, Bruce Feiler traveled from Egypt to Jerusalem along the path taken by Moses with an archaeologist. As he passes the locations mentioned in the book, he talks about the stories, about the people currently living there and archaeological discoveries. One of the best travelogues I have read is now coming as PBS series on KQED TV. Here are the timings.

Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy, and the Bomb by Strobe Talbott, Brookings Institution Press (August, 2004), 268 pages
Following the Indian nuclear tests of 1998, Strobe Talbott, Deputy Secretary of State and Jaswant Singh, Minister of External Affairs conducted a series of dialogues, meeting fourteen times in seven countries on three continents which according to Talbott were the most intense negotiations between Indian and American officials ever. There was an objection to the word “negotiation” from the Indian side as it implied talking to someone in a position of strength. The reason it was called a dialogue was because the participants were not talking to change each others minds, but to understand what each person had to say. It was an attempt to fix the broken Indo-US relationship as well as to define the visions of economic and strategic cooperation between the two countries.
At the start of the dialogue both camps had diametrically opposite view of the future. The Americans thought that India, by acquiring the bomb had threatened the world order and other countries would cite this as a reason to acquire the bomb. The Indian stand was that it was an issue of sovereignity and security. If five nations in the world could have the bomb, then why not India? The compromise position taken by the Americans was to get India to limit the deployment and development of its nuclear arsenal and the Indian position was disinclined to compromise. The goal of the Indian team was to get India accepted as a fully entitled member of the International community.
When Clinton became the President, one of his goals was to get India to sign the NPT and get the Congress to ratify CTBT. Narasimha Rao, who was the Prime Minister was invited to Washington for discussions and Rao being the smart guy he is definitely wanted good relations with United States for India’s prosperity, but did not want to be forced to sign the NPT. But knowing that the Clinton administration was serious about getting CTBT ratified, Rao ordered the nuclear tests to be conducted. But American satellites passing over Pokhran saw cables running through L-shaped tunnels indicating suspicious activity. Frank Wisner, the US Ambassador, showed Rao’s principal secretary a picture of the satellite imagery and warned that a test would backfire against India and the tests never happened in Rao’s term.
After Rao, Vajpayee became the Prime Minister and the tests were arranged in such secrecy that the Americans got their information from CNN. This set off in motion the talks which is the subject of this book. Finally according to Talbott, Jaswant Singh came close to acheiving his goal in the dialogue than the Americans. Also due to these talks, Prime Minister Vajpayee trusted President Clinton to resolve the Kargil crisis and two years after the bomb, Clinton visited India. This book contains the details of various events and people which made it possible and is a story of the diplomacy and the dialogue that took place.
Continue reading “Book Review: Engaging India” →

There is a new book, Mao : The Unknown Story and it does not portray the Chairman in favourable light. In the interview (click on Listen) on National Public Radio, the authors, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday portray Mao as a brutal dictator who thought that he had the best moral values and had the freedom to control the lives of others.
They describe of a time when Mao himself as a young man had little faith in the communist party of which he was a member. He was more interested in reading books and started as a bookseller selling Communist literature. Then on a visit to his home province of Hunan he was impressed by thug violence. He wrote that that travel of 32 days changed his life and he felt a certain “esctacy”.
Mao was spotted by Stalin and pushed to the top of Communist party. Since the Chinese Communist party was started by the Soviets they had a say in the affairs. But once he took control over the party, he conducted his first purge even before his sponsor Stalin, who took a few more years to murder people. Even though people complained about him to the Soviets, they were ignored. The authors also accuse that even during the Long March, Mao had to be carried and did not march with the people many of whom he purged later.
Nicholas D. Kristof reviews it for The New York Times

After Mao comes to power, Chang and Halliday show him continuing his thuggery. This is more familiar ground, but still there are revelations. Mao used the Korean War as a chance to slaughter former Nationalist soldiers. And Mao says some remarkable things about the peasants he was supposed to be championing. When they were starving in the 1950’s, he instructed: “Educate peasants to eat less, and have more thin gruel. The State should try its hardest . . . to prevent peasants eating too much.” In Moscow, he offered to sacrifice the lives of 300 million Chinese, half the population at the time, and in 1958 he blithely declared of the overworked population: “Working like this, with all these projects, half of China may well have to die.” [‘Mao’: The Real Mao]

As expected, this book is banned in China and so are all references to reviews of the book. Hence it has to be read.

The K. Madhu-SN Swamy-Mammootty team has done it for the fourth time. Nerariyan CBI, the fourth in the CBI sequel, is a unique film because nowhere else in the world of cinema has a film had a fourth sequel. That way, the Nerariyan CBI team is eminently qualified to enter the Guinness Book of World Records. [‘Nerariyan CBI’ A Whodunit!]

P Sreekumaran, Film Critic for ApunKaChoice.Com apparently has not heard of the Rocky Series. What about the Star Wars series with six episodes? Maybe prequels don’t qualify.
How do people who don’t know facts about cinema get employment as film critics? Looks like the United States Supreme Court, Rediff, and Apun Ka Choice don’t need people with experience.

Q: Since your character in Kyon Ki… is not one of those ‘seen-him-before’ characters, was there any method to your acting?
A: What method? No method, I play it from my heart. If I can understand and relate to the character, then I take it on and that is how I play a character.[Interview with Salman Khan]

It is probably due to this “play by heart” methodology that Bobby Deol has a constant constipated look, Suneil Shetty looks like a water buffalo wearing Rayban, and Shah Rukh Khan is jumping like Tom Cruise on Oprah’s couch, independent of the character they are playing. As I am growing older, the tolerance for this methodology of acting is declining. But thanks Salman, for explaining this technique to us.

The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) starring Gael Garcia Bernal, Rodrigo de la Serna. Directed by Walter Salles
Soon after they leave Alta Garcia, Argentina, on a motorcycle for their trip across South America in 1951, Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna, a medical student and Alberto Granado, a biochemist hit a dog and fall off the bike. Ernesto chides his friend and takes proper care of the dog. Later, completely broke, they reach a town and con two women in a restaurant to order them food and wine and get their father to repair their broken bike. They visit a newspaper office and get an article printed that both of them are expert doctors curing leprosy and then use that newspaper article to get people to do favors for them. They hitch rides, seduce women, hunt animals and convince strangers to provide them lodging.
But what started as a fun filled trip changed both men at the end. Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna, the asthmatic, introverted idealist tranasformed into “Che” Guevara, the revolutionary who influenced revolutions in many countries and was later killed in Bolivia. The silent romantic young man was transformed into a killing machine and a psycho

In January 1957, as his diary from the Sierra Maestra indicates, Guevara shot Eutimio Guerra because he suspected him of passing on information: “I ended the problem with a .32 caliber pistol, in the right side of his brain…. His belongings were now mine.” Later he shot Aristidio, a peasant who expressed the desire to leave whenever the rebels moved on. While he wondered whether this particular victim “was really guilty enough to deserve death,” he had no qualms about ordering the death of Echevarría, a brother of one of his comrades, because of unspecified crimes: “He had to pay the price.” At other times he would simulate executions without carrying them out, as a method of psychological torture.[The Killing Machine: Che Guevara, from Communist Firebrand to Capitalist Brand]

The movie, The Motorcycle Diaries is about the trip that Ernesto and Alberto made across Argentina, Chile, and Peru and is based on the notes of Ernesto himself. On the way, they meet various poor people who are being exploited and slowly the transformation of Ernesto happens. He realizes that national boundaries are artificial and the problems of people across South America are the same. The movie ends at the end of their road trip and hence you do not get to see the violent Che. The last shot in the movie is of Ernesto boarding a plane while Granado is standing on the tarmac waving him Goodbye. As the camera zooms to Ernesto and pulls back, the actor portraying Alberto is replaced by the real Alberto, who is now in his eighties.
The actors who portary Ernesto (Gael García Bernal) and Alberto (Rodrigo De la Serna) have done an excellent job. Though there is not much in terms of action or drama, the script is tight enough to hold your attention till the end. As the trip starts, Gradado is the older wiser person, but towards the end it is Ernesto who does the talking. The two differing personalities are bought out through dialogue and situations. Though you may disagree with the path that Che followed, this is a movie worth seeing for understanding the influences in his life.
Mohandas Gandhi and Swami Vivekananda both traveled all around India to get to know the problems first hand. This travel influenced the path they chose to address the issues and it did not involve murdering people. The time Ernesto became Che was after India became independent and I wonder if he even gave some thought to the ideas of Gandhi.
Postscript: Chasing Che is an excellent travelogue by Patrick Symmes, who decided to follow the route taken by Ernesto and Alberto