Bibek Debroy, an obituary

Bibek Debroy: A Tribute

   
Shri Bibek Debroy, or "Sir" as I called him, passed away on the 1st of November. Truly a darker Amavasya I could not have imagined. 

 An economist, a translator, a writer, a composer of limericks par excellence were achievements that people would be challenged to achieve in even a single field. Yet he had mastered all, and then some. 

 My first introduction to Sir was in 2012. I had been searching for an unabridged translation of the Mahabharata, having despaired of abridged retellings that distorted more than they abridged and hallucinated more than they retold, and while there was Kisari Mohan Ganguli's 1896 translation available on the internet, I stumbled upon an ongoing translation by Bibek Debroy. An equally happy mix-up in an online order on the now defunct IndiaPlaza site saw me ordering the first two books instead of only the first one. It drew a raised eyebrow from my wife, but happily there were no other consequences. Thus began a journey that was rewarding beyond imagination. 

An Intermedial Retrospective-review of “Indian Renaissance: The Modi Decade”

 

Indian Rennaissance: The Modi Decade. Edited by Aishwarya Pandit

Between 1989 and 1998 India saw five General Elections and six Prime Ministers. In the twenty years from 2004 to 2024, India saw two coalitions govern in ten-year stints each. While the UPA coalition was led by the Congress party, but which didn’t have a majority in the Lok Sabha, from 2014 to 2024 the NDA was led by the BJP which commanded an absolute majority in both terms. It was led by Narendra Modi, who was the undisputed leader of the party, unlike the UPA’s Manmohan Singh, who was described by Sanjay Baru as an ‘accidental prime minister’. 

Ten years is a long enough period to take a pause and do a retrospective of sorts. The book, Indian Renaissance: The Modi Decade, edited by Aishwarya Pandit from the Jindal Global Law School, attempts to do just that, with essays from twenty-six people, an Introduction by Aishwarya Pandit, and a Foreword by Ms. Nirmala Sitharaman, the country’s Finance Minister. 

The Hanuman Chalisa, translated by Vikram Seth

The Hanuman Chalisa: Tr. Vikram Seth

Ego gratification or a labour of love?

When Vikram Seth, praised as the ‘best writer of his generation’ by The Times, and author of A Suitable Boy, called ‘the most prodigious work of the latter half of [the twentieth] century’ by, again, The Times, pens a translation of the Hanuman Chalisa, one of the most famous and revered works of 16th century CE Hindu poet, Goswami Tulsidas, one cannot but get a copy. 

 Apart from penning Ramcharitmanas, a retelling of the story of Lord Rama, Tulsidas' other famous work is Hanuman Chalisa, a collection of 40 verses in praise of Hanuman. Hanuman is considered both an avatar of Lord Shiva as well as the son of the wind God, Vayu. He was also a great devotee of Lord Rama. 

Life, Death, and the Ashtavakra Gita, Bibek Debroy and Hindol Sengupta

Life, Death, and the Ashtavakra Gita, Bibek Debroy and Hindol Sengupta

Life, Death and the Ashtavakra Gita” is a combination of a translation of the text by Bibek Debroy, accompanied by an intensely personal reflection by Hindol Sengupta on the Gita and his experiences. 

A Gita means a song. There are some Gitas in Hinduism that are more famous than others. The most well-known Gita is, of course, Krishna’s divine song and discourse, delivered to Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra—the Bhagavat Gita. The Mahabharata itself has several Gitas, and Bibek Debroy recently wrote a book with translations of 25 such Gitas (Sacred Songs: The Mahabharata’s Many Gitas, pub. Rupa, 2023). Eighty-six shlokas in three chapters from the Teertha-yatra upa parva (in the Aranyaka Parva) of the Mahabharata tell us the most we know about the sage. The Ashtavakra Gita is a dialogue between Sage Ashtavakra and King Janaka. The Ashtavakra Gita itself is however not a part of the Mahabharata. There is a fleeting mention of the sage in the Valmiki Ramayana, a mention in Adhyatma Ramayana, and a little, much later, in Bhavabhuti’s Uttararamacharita. 

The Ashtavakra Gita itself is short—285 shlokas in 20 chapters, and is much shorter than the Bhagavat Gita, which has 700 shlokas over 18 chapters. Unlike the Bhagavat Gita, the Ashtavakra Gita has seen relatively fewer translations and commentaries. Swami Nityaswarupananda in 1940, John Richards in 1994, Rajiv Kapur in 2011-14, Bart Marshall in 2005, and by Swami Chinmayananda in 2014 are some.

Advaita Vedanta posits that the atman and the Brahman are the same, they are not distinct, they are not two. The Ashtavakra Gita is considered one of the most distilled advocations of Advaita Vedanta. As Bibek Debroy writes in the Introduction, “It is a direct and undiluted exposition of advaita (non-dual) Vedanta." To quote, in 2-2, Ashtavakra says, ‘Just as I alone provide illumination to the body, I do that to the universe too. Therefore, either the entire universe belongs to me, or nothing does.’ In 2-5, the sage says, ‘When one reflects on it, a piece of cloth is nothing but strands of thread. In that way, when one reflects about it, the universe is nothing other than the atman.’ The path to moksha (liberation) lies not in a self-sacrificing pursuit of liberation, or even a surrender to a supreme deity, for that itself is an expression of an embedded desire—‘It is extraordinary that though he desires moksha, he is terrified of moksha.’” (3-9). 

Strange Obsession, Shobha De

Strange Obsession, by Shobha De

As strange confessions go, here is one - I hadn't read a single of Shobha De's books till recently. Not one. Not even leafed, browsed, flipped pages of one. Shobha De, 'Cycnicism in chiffon', as a Bollywood superstar had once described her, the queen of sleaze prose, founding editor of gossip rag, Stardust, the 'Jackie Collins of India', a homegrown bestselling author, female icon, and more. And then, one day, on a whim, I picked up Strange Obsession from Bookworm. If Krishna, the proprietor's, eyebrows went up a smidgen, I didn't notice. 

First published in 1992, it is the story of Amrita Aggarwal, a beautiful girl from Delhi who moves to Bombay (as the city was called in 1992, when the book was published, till it became Mumbai) to become a model. A supermodel, at that. And she does. The young, nubile girl attracts the attention of many. Among the many is a mysterious woman named Minx (Meenakshi, actually). Minx is attracted to Amrita in more ways than one, is infatuated and obsessed with Amrita. Minx is well-connected and powerful; she can make or break careers, with a snap of her fingers. She can even make people disappear, again, with a snap of her fingers. Everyone knows it, and yet no one does anything. Such are the ways of high society in Bombay, evidently.

Review: Sacred Songs The Mahabharata's Many Gitas

Sacred Songs: The Mahabharata's Many Gitas, by Bibek Debroy

The Mahabharata, given its encyclopaedic length, unsurprisingly, contains many, many Gitas (songs). Surprisingly though, not many people are aware of the presence of Gitas other than the Bhagwat Gita in the Mahabharata. This book is a selection of 25 Gitas from the Mahabharata, with the Sanskrit verses in Devanagri script, along with their English translation. 

Gita means song. When one mentions the word ‘Gita’ in the context of the Mahabharata, one is invariably referring to the Bhagwat Gita—Krishna’s divine message to Arjuna on the eve of the great battle between the Kauravas and Pandavas in Kurukshetra. However, there are other passages that are also called ‘Gita’. Taken across the Mahabharata, Ramayana, and Puranas, these number over fifty. In this book, Bibek Debroy has selected twenty-five such Gitas, excluding the Bhagwat Gita, from the Mahabharata. 

An obvious question that arises is—what is the criteria for classifying a Gita? In the book’s Introduction, several criteria are listed. One is to take only those that are explicitly called out as such in the Critical Edition of the Mahabharata; only nine qualify. Categorizing expositions and conversations that further an understanding of the purushaarthas (dharma, artha, kaama, moksha) are a more acceptable criterion. This brings the list up to twenty-two. Add the Yaksha Prashna and Sanatsujata and you get twenty-four. The twenty-fifth is the Pandava (or Prapanna) Gita, added on admittedly weaker grounds. 

Shiva Purana, Vol.1, tr. by Bibek Debroy

Shiva Purana, Vol. 1, tr. by Bibek Debroy

Shiva Purana, Vol, 1 is the first of a three-volume unabridged English translation of the Shiva Purana, accompanied by more than one-thousand explanatory footnotes. 

In the corpus of religious texts in Hinduism, the Puranas are classified as smritis (remembered texts), as opposed to the Vedas, that are classified as shruti (those that are heard and divine and timeless in origin). Purana literally means old. They are encyclopaedia texts on many, many topics. Specifically, a Purana is supposed to cover five topics—sarga (cosmogony), pratisarga (cosmology), vamsha (genealogy), manvantara (cosmic cycles), and vamshanucharitam (accounts of royal dynasties). 

There are eighteen major Puranas, also called Maha Puranas. There are minor, or upa, Puranas, and then there are local, or sthala, Puranas that are devoted to sites of religious importance. The Shiva Purana is, interestingly enough, sometimes not counted as one of the 18 major Puranas, mostly on account of the fact that much of this purana is also to be found in Vayu Purana. However, the Shiva Purana is counted as a maha Purana in most enumerations. 

Soufflé, by Anand Ranganathan—Review

Soufflé, by Anand Ranganathan

At under 200 pages, Anand Ranganathan’s fiction thriller-mystery novel is an ideal read on a Delhi-Mumbai or Bangalore-Delhi plane ride. The book starts off in India’s business capital, Mumbai, where, at a lavish party at a luxury hotel, business tycoon Mihir Kothari takes a spoonful of Michelin star chef Rajiv Mehra’s soufflé and drops dead. The police find Rajiv in his hotel room’s bathroom, barely alive after what looks like an attempted suicide. CCTV footage shows him adding what is later confirmed to be cyanide from a vial to the soufflé marked for Mihir Kothari. An open-and-shut case, with a speedy trial and a death sentence guaranteed. Except he is not guilty. He cannot be guilty. Could he? Is he?  

Spy Stories: Inside the Secret World of the RAW and the ISI, by Cathy Scott-Clark Adrian Levy - Review

This is a fast-paced read, but which comes across more as a Pakistan ISI sponsored pamphlet. 

The material is haphazardly put together. The veracity of several key conclusions is unsubstantiated. One has to rely on the authors' word. No corroborative evidence is presented. Pakistan's point of view is presented without critical scrutiny, as gospel. India's external intelligence agency, R&AW, is painted as a diabolical outfit that is incompetent and unaccountable by turn. 

The strife in Kashmir is presented after suppressing all accounts of horrors perpetrated over the decades against the ethnic Hindu minority. Former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf is shown as a leader who tried to solve the Kashmir crisis, notwithstanding his complicity in several terrorist attacks on India. 

The authors draw an equivalence between terror groups like LeT, Al Qaeda, and Jaish on the one hand and so-called Hindu terror organizations on the other. The authors' dislike for India's National Security Advisor, Ajit Doval, borders on the disturbing. 

The Pulwama terrorist attack of 2019 is hinted at as a "false-flag" operation, using the same line of reasoning that would also make the 9/11 attacks in the United States a similar false flag operation. Yes, truly. 

India is the perpetual aggressor in this book, Pakistan the eternal wronged state at the receiving end. In other words, the authors seek to profit from luring gullible Indians into buying the book by promising them lurid details of spycraft, but delivers a left-liberal screed that whitewashes radical terrorism without compunctions.


© 2023, Abhinav Agarwal (अभिनव अग्रवाल). All rights reserved.

Aryaa: An Anthology of Vedic Women—Review

Aryaa: An Anthology of Vedic Women

(Kindle e-book, Paperback)

Ten Women Who Shaped Ancient India.

Aryaa is a collection of ten stories from Vedic and post-Vedic literature that brings to life the stories of ten women, each unique, each strong, each of whose story is an adventure in itself, and who shaped in small, and big, ways ancient India.

Eight of the women featured figure in the Mahabharata, while two are from the Upanishads. There is Shakuntala, born to an apsara and a sage, and who became the progenitor of the race of the Bharatas. Chitrangada, the warrior princess who married the Pandava Arjuna and whose stepson, Babruvahana, would meet his father in battlefield. One cannot talk about Chitraganda without also writing about Ulupi, the Naga princess who basically kidnapped Arjuna to have as her husband. From that union was born Iravan. The tale of Damayanti is perhaps the most romantic tale ever penned and whose account was narrated to Yudhishthira as a reminder that what was the present had repeated in the past; such was the way of itihasa—history. Subhadra, whose posthumous son was carried on the lineage of the Pandavas. Or Madhavi, who raises her father, Yayati, back to heaven after his fall on the strength of her merits. Then there is Satyavati, the fisherwoman who ensured her lineage survived in the face of the vicissitudes of fate and the dictates of karma. That leaves two women—Gargi and Maitreyi. Their accounts figure prominently in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. Whereas Ved Vyasa is considered the composer of the Mahabharata, he is called the collector, organizer, of the Vedas. In that sense, even these two accounts are of women Vyasa wrote about. These two women are not only unique individuals in their own right, but also one of the most learned sages mentioned in the Vedas. 

Mahabharata The Epic and the Nation, by GN Devy - Review

Mahabharata The Epic and the Nation, by GN Devy

What gives the Mahabharata its "timeless magic", what about the epic has captivated the imaginations of millions, do its characters make it so captivating, or is it the philosophical ideas captured therein? The book avers that it answers all these questions. 

Ved Vyasa is considered the author of the Mahabharata. The appellation Ved Vyasa means someone who divided the Vedas. Ved Vyasa can therefore refer to more than one person. Krishna Dwaipayana is also called Ved Vyasa. 'Krishna' means dark, and Dwaipayana means 'island born' and is derived from 'dweep', which means island. He was dark in color and was born on an island, which is why he was called Krishna Dwaipayana. The author translates it as 'Krishna of the Dark Island'. A cursory look at any Sanskrit dictionary may have sufficed by way of clarification, like Monier-Williams or Apte. The author didn't deem it necessary. One expected better from someone who has written and edited ninety books and was awarded a Padma Shri in 2014.

Ajaya, by Anand Neelkanthan—Review

Ajaya: Roll of the Dice, by Anand Neelkanthan

A screed and a rant, but not a book or a story.

This is a book written with the sole purpose of inciting outrage, and therefore, publicity, and therefore sales. 

Is this an alternate retelling of the Mahabharat? No. It reads more like the outpouring of a mind that sees discrimination everywhere and consequently projects it on to the characters in his book. The molester of a woman, the instigator, the one who cheered are the heroes and protagonists. Tells something, tells all, doesn’t it, and then some more, about the book and its author? 

Vishnu Purana, tr. by Bibek Debroy

Vishnu Purana, translated by Bibek Debroy

(Paperback, Kindle e-book)

A book that stays close to its definition


Why was Drupada, father-in-law of the Pandavas and Draupadi’s father, called a Panchala? Because one of Puru’s descendants was Haryashva, who had five sons — Mudgala, Srinjaya, Brihadishu, Yavinara, and Kampilya. So confident was Haryashva in his five sons’ valour that he declared that these five alone were capable of protecting the kingdom. Thus, these five brothers came to be known as Panchalas.

Or why was the capital of the Kurus called Hastinapura? Because one of Puru’s descendants was Hasti, and who established the city of Hastinapura. Both nuggets of information come to you in the 19th chapter of the 4th part of the Vishnu Purana.

King Rituparna was a descendant of Bhagiratha; the same Bhagiratha who brought down Ganga from the heavens. Karna’s foster father was Atiratha. He found the infant Karna floating on the Ganga, took him home, and was raised by him and his wife, Radha. It turns out that Atiratha was one of Anu’s descendants. Anu was one of Yayati’s sons. This is described in the 4th chapter of the 4th part of the Vishnu Purana.

Buried (Hush Collection), by Jeffrey Deaver

Buried (Hush Collection), by Jeffrey Deaver

Amazon Kindle

'Buried' is a short novella, at under 100 pages, and runs at a fast clip, keeping me - the reader - engaged throughout. 

The plot is simple enough - a serial killer has returned to the small town of Garner and a too-old-to-be-taught-new-tricks journalist, Edward “Fitz” Fitzhugh, heads out to report on the story the old fashioned way. Meanwhile, the kidnap victim is in a race against time to free himself before time, air, and opportunity run out. One eyewitness to the kidnapping refuses to reveal himself and come out in the open, till Fitz employs good old journalistic skills to track him down and get some hints about the probably kidnapper. 

There are some brief passages where the pace slackens and one gets the impression that Deaver is perhaps filling the pages, but those passages are brief. This is a fast-paced novella that kept me turning the pages. All in all, a satisfying read. 

In particular, the opening chapter grabs you by the neck. If I were in a store leafing through books at random and if I came across this book, the first three pages would be enough to make me buy it. Yes, openings matter.

 




© 2022, Abhinav Agarwal (अभिनव अग्रवाल). All rights reserved.

Classified: Hidden Truths in the ISRO Spy Story”, by J. Rajasekharan Nair - Review

Classified: Hidden Truths in the ISRO Spy Story, by J. Rajasekharan Nair 

(Kindle, Amazon India)

A Sharp Look at the ISRO Spy Case.

The short of the matter, for people who have not followed the case closely, is that Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) scientist S. Nambi Narayanan and others were accused of spying and conspiring to sell to Pakistan cryogenic engine technology. For close to three decades the matter rolled around in the corridors of the judiciary, roiling and ruining lives, till 2018, when the Supreme Court ruled that Narayanan’s arrest had been unwarranted, and ordered compensation of Rs. 50 lakhs to be paid to him. Another accused, scientist K. Chandrashekhar, slipped into a coma hours before the verdict was announced, and died soon thereafter. 

Veteran journalist J. Rajasekharan Nair has been following the case since it broke out. His book, “Classified: Hidden Truths in the ISRO Spy Story”, is an updated version of the book he had written in 1998, “Spies from Space: The ISRO Frameup”. He has brought out additional facts and updated the book based on the Supreme Court verdict of 2018 and developments since. What the book reveals is a story of bureaucratic egos and petty revenge dramas, of foreign agents embedded high up in the government, of political games and apathy, cover-ups galore, and international games of espionage and arm-twisting. 

The Reacher Guy: The Authorized Biography of Lee Child, by Heather Martin - Review

The Reacher Guy: The Authorized Biography of Lee Child, by Heather Martin

(Amazon India, Kindle)

Heather Martin’s authorised biography of Lee Child, ‘The Reacher Guy’, is the story of James Grant the person, Lee Child the author, and Jack Reacher the character.

James Dover Grant goes out on 1 September 1994 and buys “three pads of lined paper, one pencil, one pencil sharpener and an eraser for a total of £3.99.” In March 1995, he sends out his first ever letter pitching his novel. Writing as Lee Child, his first book, Killing Floor, is published in 1997. It is the first book to feature Jack Reacher as the protagonist. Two decades later, by 2018, it is estimated that approximately 400 Lee Child books, on average, sell every hour of every day. Night School, published in 2016, sells 18,000 copies a day. Lee Child’s Jack Reacher books have sold well over a hundred million copies.

Krishna Vasudeva and Mathura, by Meenakshi Jain - Review

Vasudeva Krishna and Mathura, by Meenakshi Jain

Amazon

Indians may know Mathura as an important railway station on the way to Agra, as the site of a large oil refinery and a place of connection with the Hindu god, Krishna. But not many will know of its significance in India’s socio-political landscape. Even fewer will know enough to separate fact from fiction. Meenakshi Jain’s Vasudeva Krishna and Mathura attempts to summarise, in a short and readable book, the available literature about Mathura, its history, and association with Vasudeva Krishna over the ages.

While the book is divided into 10 chapters, it can be broken into three logical parts. In the first part, going back to almost 3,000 years, ancient Sanskrit grammarian Yaska’s treatise Nirukta gives an indication of the transition from “the gods of sacrificial fires to the deities of the Epics and Puranas”. The Svetasvatara Upanishad propounded the idea of bhakti and there was also the emergence of images (murti, vigraha, pratima) where “images served the same purpose as Agni in Vedic rites”. There was a gradual merging of Bhagavata and Vaishnava, with Vasudeva Krishna being identified with the Vedic Vishnu.

Rukmini, by Saiswaroopa Iyer

 

Rukmini: Krishna's Wife, by Saiswaroopa Iyer

Amazon: paperback, Kindle. Flipkart

 

Writing fiction based on our epics is easy. Writing fiction based on our epics is tough. Somewhere along this dichotomy lies the secret to writing a story that holds your attention and interest while at the same time staying faithful to the original. 

HBR's 10 Must Reads - Management Ideas 2021 - Review

 

HBR’s 10 Must Reads - The Definitive Management Ideas of the Year from Harvard Business Review – 2021

(Amazon)

HBR’s 10 Must Reads - The Definitive Management Ideas of the Year from Harvard Business Review – 2021 is a good collection of short articles covering diverse topics. Of all, however, The Hard Truth about Innovative Cultures, by Gary P. Pisano, is the most important, and also the best written, piece. 

It may seem harsh to use the saying – ‘Monkey See, Monkey Do’, but success begets imitators. Decades ago, there was the ‘HP Way’, then came Google’s ‘20% Project’ and Amazon’s ‘extreme tolerance for failure’. If HP was the original garage startup that became one of the most successful companies of Silicon Valley (before suffering the inevitable decline, terminal in many cases, that every company goes through; Jim Collins' 2009 book, How the Mighty Fall, is a good read on the subject), Google and Amazon have grown to become trillion-dollar industry leaders. It is unsurprising that leaders at companies look to these successful companies for best practices to emulate. However, a superficial adoption of these practices without an understanding of what makes them successful in the first place is a recipe for failure. The article brings out the truths about five of the best practices of these innovative corporate cultures. 

Indraprastha, by BB Lal - Review

Indraprastha: The Earliest Delhi Going Back to the Mahabharata Times

Author: B.B. Lal

Publisher: Aryan Books International

After Independence in 1947, the two most famous sites associated with the Indus Valley civilisation, Harappa and Mohenjodaro, became part of Pakistan. Indian archaeologists began a hectic campaign of excavations to discover more Harappan sites in India. One such excavation was at Lothal by S.R. Rao in 1954-55. In the coming years more than a thousand sites would be excavated, many along the route of the long dried-up Saraswati river. It is a matter of lament from archaeologists, including B.B. Lal that many of these sites have been subject to abject neglect and apathy and are in danger of being lost forever.

B.B. Lal, as a young archaeologist with the Archaeological Survey of India, wanted to examine whether places mentioned in the Mahabharata had an existence that went back to the times of the epic. It helped that the names of many of these places had remained unchanged from the times of the Mahabharata. The first excavations at Indraprastha were conducted in 1954-55, resumed after a gap of fifteen years, in 1969-70, and which continued till 1971-72. There was another round of excavations that was performed in 2014. A total of ten periods identified based on the excavations and the stratification were observed. These periods started with the Painted Gray Ware period, dated to the 10th century BCE; the Northern Black Polished Ware, dated to circa 600BCE; and all the way to the British period, dated to the 19th to mid-19th century CE.