Unlike none-other

Ever since Hanif Kureishi had a devastating fall while holidaying in Rome in 2022, the accident did leave the noted writer paralyzed but not without causing any dent on his creative zeal. Physical tragedy did rob him of his muscular abilities, but it could not dilute the essence to express himself. The outcome is an eclectic memoir, a daily diary dictated by him to his immediate family members. These hospital dispatches have been suitably edited and meticulously expanded into a book, a daily account of pain and less immersed in gratitude, humility and love. 

Shattered is a diary of life in pieces, recorded with rare insights from hospital beds in different hospitals. Deprived of newpapers, music, and the rest of regular stuff, he had to stretch his imagination beyond uninteresting hospital beds and the bland walls. Although he had slowed down in life, then well into his late sixties, Kureishi has never found himself so busy. In the company of doctors and nurses, and peeping fellow patients, there was an odyssey of a medical system that he had to live through. Seeing little escape from it, he had to reinvent the writer in him. Unable to type or to hold a pen, he began to dictate the words formed in his head to his family members.

“People say when you’re about to die your life passes before your eyes, but for me it wasn’t the past but the future that I thought about”. The accident was a physical tragedy, but it had unique emotional outcomes worth sharing with others. It made him start over as a person, and as a writer, who began to take himself seriously. The conversational energy of his voice unburdens thoughts, lends no-hold barred tone a narrative that is both reflective and imaginative. Scattered is powerful and absorbing memoir that uses personal calamity to inspire others under similar condition. 

The book is packed with pain and humor, confessions and revelations, as well as wit and wisdom. Kureishi hasn’t been shy on narrating ruminations on bodily functions and bowel movements. In equal measure one notices pity and sympathetic vibes from Gregor Samsa, and realize the presence of Franz Kafka in dealing with realism and absurdity. Shattered is an absorbing and engaging readings on Kureishi’s reflections on life and his interactions with fellow patients. An identity that is seemingly been redrawn.  

What seems like a pause in routine life is also an opportunity to try something new, things one has never done before. "You may be afraid of presenting something personal to the world, but you can never anticipate how others will receive it.” Kureishi’s vulnerability is as evident as his courage to wriggle out of it through his writing. The aim of creative writing, reminiscences the author, is to give pleasure because the writing work is not a therapy but an entertainment for the reader. Quite right, writing finally wants to cheer up its readers.  

Kureishi raises an old cliché: Why me? Rarely it ever gets a credible answer. Who would ever think of responding: Why not you? Why would you think it would not be you? Though we would like to be acknowledged for our exceptional qualities, it is our ordinariness that often gets noticed most of the times. If this is the case, then it favors ‘who else but not me’. Though we may be important to one another, according to Kafka we are not much more than nothing in the universe. Interrogating our character alone is crucial for self-determination.

Shattered is both imaginative and reflective, revisiting the past from a futuristic perspective. It helps give up the standardized view of the world for a more complex one, which includes hitherto unmet people. Much like writing, this calls for working on oneself every day. This is what Kureishi has been through in this difficulty journey towards an impossible life. That there is life amidst despair, is indeed a possibility.

A disabled life in an able-bodied world is definitely another matter, and a different world in itself. It makes one feel one’s identity slipping away, as if becoming someone else. In a world that has both shrunk and expanded, it calls for doing new things every day. Shattered will change the way one connects with life. 

Shattered 
by Hanif Kureishi
Hamish Hamiltan, New Delhi 
Extent: 327, Price: Rs. 999.

First published in Hindustan Times.

Is capitalism on its last breath?

It may be hard to imagine that capitalism has outlived its relevance. No one can argue it better than Yanis Varoukakis, the former Finance Minister of Greece, who experienced the transition while negotiating his country’s debt crises with the European Union. Responding to his daughter’s compelling question ‘why is there so much inequality’ resulted in a slim volume entitled Talking to My Daughter: A Brief History of Capitalism which is a precursor to the book under reference. Capitalism’s two pillars, markets and profits, have mutated into cloud capital and cloud rent. Digital platforms are markets in themselves, and their primary function is to extract rent. 

The mutation may seem subtle, but its impact is profound. Cloud capital doesn’t necessarily labor to bring a commodity to market but receives a significant portion of what the consumers pay for it. With every click and scroll, the consumer pays rent to access what is on offer at those digital platforms. Varoufakis argues that cloud capital no longer focuses on growth, value and profit, but instead on rent extraction and control. Further, cloud capital reduces consumers into fragments of data, identifies them as a pack of choices, and manipulates them through algorithms. This reshaping of our lives may seem transformative, but it is no less exploitative and an imminent threat to our social co-existence. 

Called cloudalists, the sphere of influence of the new capitalists extends to nearly every facet of our app-powered daily life. Such is the influence, according to Varoufakis, we are reduced as products with our incessant clicks and searches generate profit for massive corporations; our data too is a product that gets bought and sold, and on top of it those who control the platforms have direct control over us, reducing us as digital pigmies. Need it be said that our capacity to stay focused has been compromised. Under such changing scenario, algorithms reinforce patriarchal stereotypes and hate-mongers for optimizing capital flow. 

TechnoFeudalism is about the historical journey in which humans not only transformed matter by taking control of technology but got transformed in return too. Ancient Greek poet Hesoid had summed it up by saying that iron hardened not only our ploughs but also our souls. Marx had described our condition under capitalism as one of alienation, under technofeudalism we no longer own our minds. Under technofeudalism, elaborates Varoufakis, a new class draws power from owning cloud capital whose tentacles entangle everyone. The author leaves the reader with the choice - accept either the world resembling Star Trek, where machines help us improve ourselves, or like The Matrix in which we are the fuel that empowers machines.  

It is not easy to read this book, but the narrative is insightful and empowering. Getting slowly sucked into the world of technofeudalism, the compelling question remains: will the new-age capitalism leave space and scope for freedom and democracy? The answer lies in capturing all that has changed since Mad Men implanted longings into our subconscious. It has since then been replaced by Alexa taking charge, spinning us out of control into something that we can neither fathom nor regulate. The rules of game are indeed threatening 

Technofeudalism is all about authority and control, it erects strong barrier to being questioned. By giving fewer opportunities for people to come together, it incapacitates people to organize and forge alliances for representation. The challenge is how to represent ourselves when what seemed labor to be paid and work to be executed is anything but a rent seeking feudalism that subsists on high-tech form of serfdom. The emerging technofeudalism is indeed global, and its power truly global. This book is not about technology but about the treatment meted to capitalism and therefore to us through screen-based, cloud-linked devices. 

TechnoFeudalism 
by Yanis Varoufakis
BodleyHead/Vintage
Extent: 281, Price: Rs. 531.

First published in Deccan Herald.

The Man Who Became Cinema

Legends are not born, but made, is an adage that seems apt for Dilip Kumar. He was an icon, who evolved as an institution. Vaijantimala, his co-star in seven hugely successful films, once remarked: “The icon’s influence on each generation has been such that there is a Dilip Kumar in every successful actor in Indian cinema”. Dilip Kumar is also credited to being the one who introduced method acting to Indian cinema — a foundation for which was first laid by Konstantin Stanislavski (Russian theatre practitioner) and popularized later by American acting coach and actor Lee Strasberg.

Dilip Kumar’s method acting brought about a revolutionary change in the portrayal of characters on screen, and with it the very art of film acting. The unforgettable classics such as Devdas (1955), Gunga Jamuna (1961) and Mughal-e-Azam (1960) depict the layers of emotions he continues to evoke in the viewers. Even in the provocative Jab pyar kiya to darna kya number one learns that there could be immense power in silence as conveyed by the character of Prince Salim. Dilip Kumar’s magic on screen remains undeniable — a legacy that continues to enchant countless fans.

He developed his method of acting as an antithesis to the widely followed classical acting technique. Dilip Kumar’s method as well as the characters he portrayed carried a strong social bearing. His method was rooted in a kind of cultural re-discovery that helped the character acquire the ability to observe the peculiarities and happenings in society.

Famously known as ‘tragedy king’ on screen, Dilip Kumar’s commitment to his roles and his deep involvement with the characters he portrayed, believed to have led to serious psychological issues for which he had to consult a psychiatrist in England. The advice given to him was to switch to comic roles, which he did with aplomb and poise. In Ram aur Shyam (1967) and Gopi (1970) to name only a few, he displayed his sense and timing for comedy as well.  

All these facts and more are captured in the book, The Man Who Became Cinema, written by “film buff” Ashok Chopra. Published by Penguin Random House, the book deconstructs Dilip Kumar’s cinematic reach and unparalleled timelessness through the prism of 57 films. It explores each of his cinematic characters intricately grouped under six categories — film-by-film, frame-by-frame. The author develops an understanding of how Dilip Kumar exhibited his formidable capacity to innovate and improvise. 

Ashok also speaks about the actor’s ‘visual verbal personality composite’, a complex mechanism by which his film dialogues were delivered. Dilip Kumar is said to be the only actor to have integrated audio and visual into a scene, as in, what finally gets conveyed to the viewer are not the words, but a strange modulation of the sound of these words with emotions. This was employed by the actor, particularly in romantic scenes.

His films are considered masterpieces — to be seen and studied. According to Ashok, before director Ramesh Sippy started work on his film Saagar (1985), he asked Kamal Haasan to watch Dilip Kumar’s Ganga Jamuna. “There are several nuances that every actor should compulsorily watch — to understand the meaning of subtlety,” said Kamal.  It comes as no surprise that Dilip is not an actor who is imitated much, but his acting method is examined and studied. And The Man Who Became Cinema helps with that.

The Man Who Became Cinema: Dilip Kumar 
by Ashok Chopra
Penguin Ebury Press, New Delhi. 
Extent: 334, Price: Rs. 799.

This article inspired by this book first appeared in The Hindu on Aug 1, 2025.

Clawing back from the abyss

What is often considered an end to life is, at times, a humble start to a new beginning. At least this happened with two-time Oscar nominee Jeremy Renner, 54, who after being crushed under 14,000-pound snowplough on new year day in 2023 that literally didn’t leave a major bone intact, talked to people two-days later to convey that ‘he was not yet gone’. The second-most googled person that year had an impressive filmography, a bomb technician in The Hurt Locker and a bank robber in The Town.  

Survival after such crushing accident guides one to re-assess life, and to rewire one’s mind to adapt change. It wasn’t easy for Renner to write; his memoir My Next Breath carries blistering details about the accident and the aftermath. The memoir is a testament to the human spirit and its unending desire to endure and transform. But it is not written in a traditional sense, it is a three-part painful story about living, almost dying and recovering. It has reflections on life already lived, and the prospects that lie ahead. 

Someone asked Renner if surviving had made him better or a different person. ‘I have more physical limitations on my body as an instrument, but my new life is way more deeply rooted in the art of emotions.’ In a school essay, his 11-year-old daughter Ava, summed up her proudest moment when she was picked up by her father from the school. Ava was the fuel for Renner’s recovery. It was bouts of positive energy all around that made pretty much anything possible, though not too long ago he was almost dead. 

Renner’s memoir captures the essence of life and profound transformation, a delicate interplay between redemption and renewal. No experience need be wasted, reminisces Renner. Everything that happens to us can be stored as information so that when disaster strikes, one doesn’t curl up and stop breathing. No wonder, the memoir is titled My Next Breath. Whenever disaster of any kind strikes, the focus should be on breath or to find a position in which breathing is possible. It is only breathing that makes things possible and doable.

Renner has signaled his return to what he knows best – acting and singing. Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery will be out towards the end of 2025. Says he, ‘I do love my job, but not at the cost of what has real value in life.’ It is an inspiring memoir that has many experiences that will leave profound impact on life.  Renner sums up his feelings: ‘I’ve noticed that I’m just cherishing moments more, savoring experiences more deeply, and expressing gratitude all the time’. Perhaps some readers might think that’s too simple a philosophy, but isn’t life as simple as that after all?   

After having gone through near-death moments, one ends up searching beauty of life. To Renner, the beauty comes from being connected. ‘We’re all connected in a divinity of love, which one can God. It helps us to stay vulnerable and yet being loved.’ 

My Next Breath 
by Jeremy Renner
Simon&Schuster, New Delhi. 
Extent: 206, Price: Rs. 999.

First published in Deccan Herald on July 13, 2025.

Harnessing creative energies of human intelligence and AI

Whether or not artificial intelligence will outsmart human ingenuity has been rested in favor of co-intelligence where both will collaborate in ways never imagined. The new technological revolution is in the future, a visionary road map which will shape our co-existence by reshaping our co-existence. As things stand, artificial intelligence will augment human ingenuity rather than replace it. The Co-Intelligence Revolution is an insightful guide to navigate the frontiers where human ingenuity meets artificial intelligence, it envisions a future in which they are not only powerful allies but collaborate to co-create ground-breaking innovations and transformed institutions. It engages with artificial intelligence as co-worker, co-teacher and coach. 

It is an interesting playbook that draws from numerous real-world case studies to illustrate how co-intelligence demonstrates a paradigm shift in expanding the role and reach of traditional and emerging institutions. The book presents artificial intelligence not just a tool but as a vital partner in the process of co-creation. With over a hundred compelling examples from different ecosystems— from L’Oréal’s inclusive beauty platforms to digital expansion of public finance, citizen-services, and education—the book illustrates how co-intelligent enterprises will unlock their potential across private, public and plural sectors.

Overs last few years, L’Oreal, the 115-year-old global leader in the beauty business has moved from its earlier focus on ‘beauty for all’ to now stress on ‘beauty for each’. Highly personalized beauty routines are delivered through sophisticated cutting-edge technologies, providing skin and skin-care diagnostics to receive personalized recommendations. To achieve such results, the global leader has leveraged over ten large language models to apply neural network techniques that processes lots of data. As a result, L’Oreal is now speaking a new language that leverages tech-intensity to create new life-experiences through its co-intelligence platforms. 

There are several cases where co-creation is pitched to increase efficiency and output. Venkat Ramaswamy and Krishnan Narayanan clearly explain evolving role of artificial intelligence in breaking down complex concepts in an accessible way. In the new realm of co-intelligence, organizations have to craft co-intelligence architectures powered by platforms for sharing digitalized infrastructure. It may be easy read for companies who wish to have AI drive future of their business. There are number of cases where industries are embracing AI as a collaborative partner. Even institutions like the University of Michigan are doing trailblazing work on promoting AI literacy and providing AI access. Its AI services attract an average of 15,000 users a day, and thousands are using these services. If its ten-year vision is anything to go by, the university aim is to develop future-proof educational models. 

The Co-Intelligence Revolution is a latest phase of the industrial revolution, it is the creative synergy between human intelligence and machine intelligence, where AI augments and amplifies human capabilities. And this revolution is technologically driven by electronic neural networks fed with vast amounts of data and put to work with accelerated computing, in a form of AI factory. However, a crucial question is regarding the security and sustainability of AI systems. Unlike in the past, co-intelligence enterprises in the anthropocene must grapple with the reality that their actions may significantly influence the very systems on which they rely.

Venkat and Krishnan have written an insightful guide which suggests that value creation will lead to collaborative experiences co-created by companies and customers. They argue compellingly that AI must be embraced as a strategic partner rather than a mere tool, and that they present several cases where it is made possible. They have painstakingly put together a road map for a better future – one that AI serves humanity, not the other way around. For example, Jugal Bandi, which refers to a duet between musicians, is actually helping multiple language users access information about 20,000 government programs in native languages, regardless of the source language of the information. The rapid diffusion and democratization of AI capabilities is undoubtly remarkable but there is every reason to believe that much more needs to be done.

Despite initial success with several cases, the authors tend to agree that no single example could possibly exemplify the trend. By their own admission, the examples are being used as thinking props. Nevertheless, The Co-Intelligence Revolution remains a clarion call to action in co-creating a new world of possibilities.  

The Co-Intelligence Revolution 
by Venkat Ramaswamy & Krishnan Narayanan
Penguin Business, New Delhi.
Extent: 414, Price: Rs. 999.

First published in Hindu BusinessLine on July 11, 2025 

Enriched legacy

Laali Mausi would always hug Ajit and call him her son. Other villagers would gather around to dissuade her from calling the stranger her son. Ajit was invited by the villagers to relieve them of the ongoing menace of decoits. When she’s finally been coaxed away, Ajit discovers the truth: Mausi’s son was kidnapped and taken away by dacoits eighteen years ago. This touching sequence in the film connects the past with the present. Who acted as Laali Mausi in the 1971 film Mera Gaon Mera Desh? No one could respond but the film director Raj Khosla himself, who took care to inform us that the actress was none other than Purnima. The reviewer of this biography has fond memories of this incident. Raj was behind some of the finest films of the times, Woh Kaun Thi?(1964) and Do Raaste (1969), and endearing soundtracks like Lag ja gale and Jhumka gira re.

Raj’s legacy has been ever enriching. Five decades in filmmaking is indeed a long innings, but he didn’t get featured in media like others. But his films and songs continue to touch lives every single day. Every tribute to Lata Mangeshkar, when she passed away in 2022, featured the song lag ja gale which remains the definitive love song ever since it was created in 1960s. Such memorable songs and disparate films can only come from the stable of a director who not only loved his work but created the genre of his cinema. Raj undoubtedly had an enviable filmmaking career by any standards.

Mentored by the iconic Guru Dutt, Raj has often been dubbed the Alfred Hitchcock of Indian films. Rightly so, as he traversed diverse genres but infused suspense in a way that kept the audience on tenterhooks. Like his contemporaries, Raj looked to Hollywood for inspiration. The stylization and aesthetics of those films were seamlessly blended with local morality and sensibilities. The QR codes supplement many of such narratives, songs and scenes from the film. First ever, these codes give scenic beauty to the textual narration.

The biography is well-researched; it is about the life of a filmmaker Raj Khosla but reads as the history in the making of some of the magical movies. It is a search for cinematic legacy by Amborish Roychoudhury. Legacy has it that Raj made taut thrillers, family dramas, timeless romances, and action spectacles. In the process, he had also perfected the art of making engaging thrillers with an emotional core. The world knows and celebrates the Sadhana trilogy of Who Kaun Thi?, Mera Saaya, and Anita. Suspense was considered the hallmark of his cinema. 

It is interesting how Waheeda Rehman got inducted into a creatively stimulating group led by Guru Dutt. Her dancing skills and fluency in Urdu stood Waheeda in a good nick. On being introduced to Raj, her unusual name caught the usual attention. ‘You have a long name, we must change to for the screen’, Raj had commented. It was the meeting of two headstrong, proud people who didn’t see eye to eye in certain aspects. She was all of 17 but had no intention of changing her name even at the cost of losing out. Had C.I.D (1956) not been Guru Dutt’s production, Raj may not have directed the film. That they never ever worked remains history.  

One of the abiding legacies that Raj carried forward was his love for folk songs. The folksy rustic song he used to hum was jhumka gira re, Bareilly ke bazar mein  Although the song has its history, Raj enacted its history yet again. Regardless of its origins, jhumka gira re continues to be exclusively attached to Mera Saaya (1966). Across the length and breadth of the country, the city of Bareilly came to be inextricably associated with the song. Now, the city has firmed its jhumka on a roadside plaza. Raj went through his life on his own terms and yet contributed immensely through the art and science of making cinema.

Raj Khosla: The Authorized Biography reveals the life and challenges of an accomplished director. Few filmmakers have demonstrated such versatility and command over their craft. The authors lend him his rightful place among the greats of Indian cinema.

Raj Khosla: The Authorized Biography 
by Amborish Roychoudhury, with Anita Khosla and Uma Khosla Kapoor
Hachette, New Delhi. 
Extent: 334, Price: Rs. 799.

First published in Outlook on July 6, 2025.

Yoga as political thought and practice

Traditionally, the focus has been on two spheres of yoga practices, commonly identified as the psychophysical and the philosophical. These two spheres of yoga have been made famous over millennia, more so by charismatic individuals like Vivekananda and Iyengar, who, doing the last century, brought these kinds of yoga globally renown. But yoga is more than just these two spheres; it has an enduring third sphere of political thought and practice, which extends beyond the two regimes of psychophysical practice and a school of philosophy.  

Combining textual reading and archival work, Sunila Kale and Christian Novetzke have teamed together to chart the political conceptualization of yoga, the third sphere, which controls one’s antagonists as well as the conditions that antagonize. The third sphere of yoga emerged as a political thought and practice through history, long drawn into it during the late classical, medieval, and early modern periods. Scholars suggest that during much of these periods, many of those were adept at psychophysical yoga were also warriors. These yogis wielded power in the worlds of war, intelligence, and diplomacy, including Akbar, who had a special fascination for it.  

Yoga and politics have remained inseparable over the long duration of time in history. It is undoubtedly a point of pride for the country, a monumental sculpture at the Indira Gandhi International Airport depicting each position of the Surya Namaskar is a visual presentation of this political soft power.  

The location of the sculpture is apt because the yoga position has long existed within the world of politics and power. It emerged as the quintessential form of postural yoga, a kind of subdued resistance to colonial rule popularized by the Raja of Aundh, Bhawanrao Shriniwasrao Pant Pratinidhi, during the early 1920. The Yoga of Power examines various aspects of yoga to suggest its role in both psychophysical practice and political strategy.  

It is a brilliant piece of scholarship on the enduring tradition of thought and practice, where yoga, religion, and politics intersect. It defines yoga as a means, method, and technique shared between a subject and an object which is expressed as a dialectic of power. However, yoga has remained secular in both dualist and nondualist philosophical and theological schools of thought. It is shared by Hindus seeking the true self, by Buddhists seeking no-self, by Muslims seeking allah, or by atheists seeking to chill. As a result, the psychophysical application to the mind-body problem crosses the barrier of religions and remains widely relevant as a practice.        

Both professors at the University of Washington, Kale and Novetzke provide a rare masterful insight connecting mythological yoga with modern political thought. Although the concept of yoga as political thought was sublimated, its ubiquitous proliferation on yoga mats has remained dominant. Mahatma Gandhi used yoga to rupture the boundaries between public and private and sought to redefine the language of politics through his attire. The Father of the Nation used yoga as an intramural political force, to shed new light on political thought and history. 

The Yoga of Power scans a period from 1400 BCE to notice how yoga as a political thought endured through history, and how it has been appropriated now with the rising swell of nationalism. Yoga is now referred to as a product of India’s premodern education system and is cited as a mode of ‘internationalization’ by way of a subject that has global recognition. It is predominantly conceived as a mode of public health, which echoes the Raja of Aundh’s understanding of the Surya Namaskar as medicine for public health.  

Its chequered history notwithstanding, yoga is a preeminent technology of the self for which the State has crafted institutional mechanisms for its support and promotion. Yoga as philosophy comes to share space with yoga as politics. The implication of history should guide the aspiring yogi to engage the psychophysical practice in its sociopolitical context. The book presents yoga as a political thought and practice that intersects with yoga as philosophy and psychophysical practice. The Yoga of Power has shed new light on the political history of thought, which can guide the reader to view yoga differently. 

The Yoga of Power
by Sunila Kale and Christian Lee Novetzke
Columbia University Press, New York
Extent: 256, Price: $35.

First published in the Outlook on June 28, 2025.

Why breath should be not taken for granted?

At the start of 2020, a small team of scientists tried and failed to convince public health organizations that COVID-19 was spread through the air we breathe. Until then, scientists thought that respiratory diseases spread through droplets, and that these droplets had a limited range. Coughed up, these droplets fell quickly to the ground, to use the disgusting terminology of the 1990s which health officials use while speaking about tuberculosis. In reality, however, breath has been a medium of transmission of most invisible things.

Such new insights into the living atmosphere come courtesy Carl Zimmer, through his book Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life we Breathe. The text follows the research where Louis Pasteur caught germs from the air and pursues groundbreaking experiments by Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh. It warns the world about airborne infections and chronicles the dark side of aerobiology designed to spread anthrax, smallpox, and an array of other pathogens. Rather than to be taken for granted, the importance of the natural process of human breath is once again established. 

Protecting the most vital of all life processes calls for a well-thought-out strategy. Breath is in itself of immense value -- one breath in and one breath out is the manifestation of life. A breath alone brings a newborn to life; the body turns pink as the first breath gets in. And the last breath accounts for life. The power that ripples through the whole universe comes in the form of breath.

It is an intuitive act of inhaling and exhaling, which is repeated 25,000 times a day. This natural act, often taken for granted, is counted as a necessary biological activity. It is precious nonetheless, but it is more than just an exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide. ‘Breath,’ says Prem Rawat, ‘is the greatest mystery, out of nowhere it comes to nowhere it goes.’ In his book, Breath: Wake Up to Life, Rawat writes that breath is the beginning of life, the sustaining of life, and when it ceases, it is also the end of life.

The invaluable gift

Breath is an invaluable gift, but only if it is taken that way. Traditional practices related to breathing value breath and even try to prolong and preserve it. Sage Patanjali has his pranayama practices that add value to age-old breathing practices that have gained popularity among the health conscious. Buddha counted breath as an essential link between the human body and consciousness. The breathing process has many hidden features that are gaining wide acceptance. That breath fuels all life forms and extinguishes it too, is a lived reality. The natural act of breathing, now counted as a biological privilege, is a precious gift given in abundance.

Breathing must be correctively done because nine out of ten people don’t breathe correctly -- aggravating a laundry list of chronic diseases, according to James Nestor. It is surprising that hospitals only deal with breathing emergencies related to specific maladies of the lungs. It is only in recent years that breathing as a branch of medical emergencies has been acknowledged.

The correct way to breathe

The way to correct breathing is an individual responsibility, but to consider that it is a pretty simple act that is well understood could be a fallacy. Only by following a tough breathing regime could four hours of daily snoring be just ten minutes. For this incredible change to happen, one has to go through an awful experience of forcefully breathing through the mouth for the first ten days and revert to nasal breathing for another ten days with lips sealed with a piece of tape. The longer one breathes through the nose, the nasal cavities get clearer and bigger, writes Nestor in his new book, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art.

Inhaling-exhaling techniques are around for several millennia. Over the years, however, these techniques are being rediscovered and scientifically validated. “The fruits of this once-fringe, often forgotten research are now redefining the potential of the human body,” explains Nestor. Limited but cutting-edge research in pulmology, psychology, biochemistry, and physiology has already demonstrated that many modern maladies – asthma, anxiety, psoriasis – could either be reduced or reversed simply by changing the way we inhale and exhale. 

Stories on the magical aspects of breathing abound in the world of yoga practitioners, as popularity of yoga in the past two decades has brought a large number of huffing and puffing exponents in public spaces. Whether or not they are breathing better remains to be ascertained. From alternate nostril breathing to breathing coordination, and from resonant breathing to Buteyko breathing -- all techniques of breathing impact human health and longevity.

Nestor raises hopes of revolutionizing the health sector by generating a renewed interest in breathing techniques to act as a preventive medicine that helps in retaining balance in the body such that milder problems don’t end up being serious health issues. However, modern medicine has yet to take serious note of this wisdom generated by Buddhist monks over two millennia ago. If face is the index of mind, breath is the indicator of human well-being.

Breath
by Prem Rawat
St. Martin’s Press, New York
Extent: 180, Price: US$ 30.

Air-borne: The Hidden History of Life We Breathe
by Carl Zimmer
Dutton Press, USA
Extent: 492, Price: US$ 17.60.

Breath: The New Science of Lost Art
by James Nestor
Penguin, New Delhi
Extent: 304, Price: Rs. 433.

First published in The Hindu on June 19, 2025.

A lip-licking indulgence

Ice cream is a growing indulgence that few would choose to go without. Be with sugar or without, high fat or low, soft serve or kulfi, ice cream will always stand as the world favorite treat. It adorns restaurant menus and home freezers across the world in multiple forms. Once considered an indulgence befitting only the elite, this sweet treat has evolved into one of the most popular mass-market food products ever developed. In Ice Cream: A Global History, journalist Laura B. Weiss takes us on a fascinating journey through the ages to tell the lively story of how this delicious dessert became a global sensation.

Featuring emperors, kings, inventors, and entrepreneurs, Ice Cream makes for a surprising and delightful read. Unlike other places, India boasts a venerable indigenous ice cream culture. Mughal emperors enjoyed flavored ice brought down from nearby mountains. Later, confectioners developed kulfi, a milk-based dish. It isn’t churned like ice-creams, but the mixture is cooked before frozen in small metal cones. Sprinkled with photographs, illustrations and recipes, this is a tasty history of everyone’s favorite childhood treat.

It is a short book that has scooped almost everything about ice cream. Where it was first invented, how it travelled across the world, and evolved into many variants. How ice cream as we know it came about, and how it went from being a dish for the elite to one that today has a ubiquitous appeal? With technological advances beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, and with the widespread emergence of street vendors, regular folks could scrouge up few coins for a ice cream scoop. Laura B. Weiss touches on various aspects of ice cream, from different ways of using ice, and to making ice cream; the important people who helped make ice cream what it is today, and how ice cream features in popular culture. Different graphic representations of ice cream, including a painting by Picaso, adds rich cultural scoop to ice cream’s history. 

I learnt a good deal of stuff that I hadn't known before, and since it's an easy read, I found Ice Cream: A Global History pleasant reading. US has the largest ice cream market, followed by Italy. The Italians, the originator of modern ice cream, were ill equipped to spearhead the drive to commercialize ice creams. Their refrigeration technique lagged, and Italian gelato – which means ‘frozen’ in Italian – was hand-made. The quality of even the best American ice cream – its taste, texture and richness – couldn’t match the gelato.

Whatever be the type of scoop, it is the art and science of licking an ice cream through a cone testifies to its enormous popularity the world over. It was way back in 1904 that the cone came into being, as we know it today. A sensation in its time, it was at the St. Louis fair in 1904 that attracted thousands of visitors who could walk with an ice cream scoop in a cone. It takes about fifty licks to polish off a single scoop of ice cream nestling in a cone, but just a few bites to gobble down its cakey container. It has been a winning combination since then. 

The book makes interesting revelations. It lets us know the ice cream creation of banana split, and the great dessert innovation called the Sundae. But it is emphatically not a global history as it confines to US, Europe, Middle East, Asia and East Asia. The greatest surprise was the complete lack of any mention of Africa. Wonder why this continent with some of the highest temperatures in the world has been left out? How has the African flavors, the Kenyan classic dessert called coupe Mount Kenya and South Africa's iconic Tapi Tapi Ice Cream, remained unknown? Africa did know its ice cream as well as others across the globe. 

Ice Cream: A Global History 
by Laura B. Weiss
Pan Macmillan, New Delhi. 
Extent: 176, Price: Rs. 474.

First published in New Indian Express on June 15, 2025.

How to lose yourself?

The world is increasingly getting obsessed with self-promotion and a thinking that it alone can bring about peace and progress. The growing selfie culture is a manifestation of this daily obsession, backed by technology of the day. Often, a ‘perfect’ identity is carefully curated on social media with a focus on the self.

Swayed by the glitter of social media, there appears to be no actual pursuit of knowing the inner self. Eventually, this relentless self-promotion is leading to distress. The fear of having less and the desire for more has contributed to a balance sheet of unhappiness

It’s perhaps the right time to re-read the teachings of the Buddha, who argued thousands of years ago that the self is an illusion -- and that our belief in it is the cause of most, if not all, of our sufferings. Poring over ancient Buddhist texts, Jay L. Garfield, Maria Heim and Robert H. Sharf have teamed together to dismantle notions of the self in How To Lose Yourself: An Ancient Guide to Letting Go (Princeton University Press).

Their suggestion? “Better to lose yourself!” The writers contend that Buddha had argued for letting go of the self, which allows us to see more clearly the innumerable causes and conditions that come together to create our experience and that make us who we are. “When we allow our fantasies of self to dissolve, we discover instead the radically interdependent nature of our existence.”

Opening up another flank of study on the ancient religion, Douglas Ober contests the commonly held belief that Buddhism “all but disappeared” from India after the 13th century and 14th century and saw a revival only in the mid to late 19th century. In his book, Dust on the Throne (Navayana), he notes that Buddhism had always been there, and that two centuries of archaeological excavation and textual scholarship now point to a long, enduring, and “unarchived” Indian Buddhist afterlife that extends to the modern day. Ober’s exhaustive research told him that Buddhism had an indelible influence in shaping modern India.

As he writes in the Introduction, ‘A Dependent Arising’, the theory of Buddhism’s “disappearance” from the subcontinent is “little more than a useful fiction, deployed to wash over a more complicated historical terrain involving periodic Buddhist resurgences and trans-regional pilgrimage networks.” He shows that Indian’s modern Buddhist revival began nearly a century before 1956, when the Indian government celebrated “2,500 years of Buddhism” and when B.R. Ambedkar led half a million followers to convert to Buddhism.

Ober argues that the “revival of Buddhism” in colonial and postcolonial India led to a slew of movements from Hindu reform movements, the making of Hindu nationalism, Dalit and anti-caste activism, as also Nehruvian secular democracy. He tells the stories of individuals and communities that kept Buddhism alive, not least the incredible account of J.K. Birla, eldest son of entrepreneur B.D. Birla, who financed major Buddhist constructions in pilgrimage centers like Rajgir, Sarnath, Bodh Gaya, and also in new centers of “urban Buddhist activity”, including Calcutta, Bombay and New Delhi.

While Ghanashyam Birla, J.K. Birla’s younger brother, sided with Gandhi and Congress, J.K. and his father firmly supported the extreme Hindu right and the Hindu Maha Sabha, although as Ober notes, “they never stopped supporting Gandhi either.”

Efforts to resurrect Buddhist archaeological heritage are an ongoing process to help connect its monumental past with its philosophy.

In his book, Casting the Buddha (Pan Macmillan India), Shashank Shekhar Sinha traces the Buddhist heritage sites and the cities they are located in to understand their larger geographical, sociocultural and historical contexts. It is an illustrated history of Buddhist monuments in India, spanning 2,500 years. For the purposes of this book, Sinha writes in the Introduction, ‘monumental history’ plays on the word ‘monument’ and discusses Buddhist edifices, sites, and connected histories.

A closer look reveals how the “lives of the monuments” resonated with the people and communities around them including monks, laity, kings, traders, guilds, landlords, agriculturalists and villagers.

Over time these structures have acquired different forms and meanings and have also become important “sites of social and cultural interactions.” The buildings are “complex ecosystems” which capture the changing times and give an idea about belief systems, rituals, stories and folklore. For instance, writes Sinha, the sculptured panels on the gateways of Sanchi not only depict events from the life of the Buddha but also the Jataka tales and the mythical bodhisattvas.

Ober contends that Buddhism was an indispensable part of the daily lives of Indians from many walks of life. “They spent their days reading and reinterpreting Buddhist scriptures, attending and delivering dhamma talks, building and rebuilding Buddhist shrines.” The lives of Ambedkar, Birla, Kosambi, Mahavir, Sankritayan and many other figures “help us realize that there is no one single identity at the heart of modern Indian Buddhism... [it] continues to have an important but often unacknowledged role in Indian society.”

As Indians relived the past to find a better present and future, writes Ober, “a classless, casteless, egalitarian society,” they found the Buddha. That as a society we have not yet been able to eradicate discrimination and poverty means the debates on issues like “caste, inequality, morality, social order, and belonging” are not over. The quest to grasp the historical Buddha and understand his ‘inherent mission’ must continue, and this says a lot about our modern times and predicament.

Dust on the Throne
by Douglas Ober
Navayana, New Delhi.
Extent: 389, Price: Rs. 699.

How to lose yourself
by Jay L. Garfield, Maria Heim, Robert H. Sharf
Princeton University Press, Oxford.
Extent: 195, Price: $.17.

Casting the Buddha 
by Shashank S. Sinha
Pan Macmillan, New Delhi.
Extent: 384; Price: Rs. 359. 

First published under Bibliography in The Hindu dated May 23, 2025.

Be a woman once

Writing is an intellectual pursuit, but it’s also creative labor and a social and political statement. In doing so, one becomes a witness to one’s own self, which gets revealed in parts. The advocate in Banu Mushtaq slips into the shoes of an activist to bring alive the lived reality in the Muslim households and to narrate the eerie calm that pervades inside those four walls.

Many shades of male dominance and female submission are reflected in Mushtaq’s vast oeuvre of short stories, a dozen out of which have been translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi to critical acclaim, winning the English PEN and landing a spot on this year’s International Booker shortlist.

The 12 stories in Heart Lamp exquisitely capture the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities. Originally published between 1990 and 2023, these stories are portraits of family and community tensions that are precursors to all forms of caste and religious outbursts.

In calling out patriarchy and questioning traditions prevalent amongst predominantly traditional households, Mushtaq emerges as a tireless champion of women’s rights. For its style which is intensely observant and colloquially reflective, ‘after laying the egg of light at dawn, the black hen of ignorance exited, rushing into the darkness to peck at grain’, the collection of stories is sure to sustain readers’ interest.

Each of the 12 stories does bring the incessant human pain and misery to the surface. However, the final story, Be a Woman Once, Oh Lord! is one that serves to linger. It is not an apt closing to the collection but a touchy beginning, an open letter that dares God to be a woman once to address their plight. Written like a letter addressed to Allah, it seeks respite from male domination: ‘if you were to build the world again, do not be like an inexperienced potter. Come to earth as a woman instead!’ Either it is too naïve to understand what women endure or too cruel to acknowledge their plight.

Deepa Bhasthi’s translation has introduced Mushtaq’s progressive stories far and wide. Bhasthi has done her best in retaining the linguistic sense wherever possible. Translation of a text, according to the translator, is more than merely an act of replacing words in one language with equivalent words in another.

Heart Lamp is linguistically rich, giving the reader a different feeling. The long list of individuals has stretched support in making this book achieve the distinction that it deserves.

Heart Lamp
by Banu Mushtaq
translated by Deepa Bhasthi
Penguin Books, New Delhi.
Extent: 216, Price: Rs. 399.

First published in New Indian Express on May 18, 2025.

The will to ignorance is as strong as the desire to know

If ignorance is indeed bliss, as a poet once wrote, it also can be said that human beings “are creatures who want to know and not to know.” The world, writes Mark Lilla in his timely book, Ignorance and Bliss, is going through a phase in which the denial of “evident truth” is rising. It’s a world where “mesmerized crowds still follow preposterous prophets, irrational rumors trigger fanatical acts, and magical thinking crowds out common sense and expertise.”

Holiday from reality

A professor of humanities at Columbia University, Lilla’s arguments that people seem to favor ignorance are compelling. In these murky days when everything seems to be at sea, Lilla offers an amazing insight on the human being’s incorrigible “will to ignorance,” a term coined by Nietzsche. It seems after spending a lifetime searching for knowledge, humans have taken “a holiday from reality.” No wonder, resistance to knowledge is now being backed by an ideology that is supportive. In the face of such developments, those devoted to reason and logic have started to feel like refugees.

Quoting from George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, Lilla asks: “It is a common sentence that knowledge is power; but who hath duly considered or set forth the power of ignorance?” While some people are naturally curious about learning why, there are many others who are indifferent. There are reasons to avoid knowing about particular things, and many of those reasons not to know are perfectly justified. And then there are those who have developed a disinterest for gaining knowledge simply because they believe what they already know is the truth.

Lilla provokes readers to think about this. In the Introduction, he writes that Aristotle taught that all human beings want to know. “Our own experiences teach us that all human beings also want not to know, sometimes fiercely so.” The most obvious resistance to knowing is rooted in fear. People resist any aspect that is related to their morality and religiosity being questioned, because they are afraid of getting exposed. By questioning such firm beliefs, people run the risk of upsetting ideas they’ve built their lives around, with no guarantee of any satisfactory replacement. However, if ever questions have to be raised without any chance of them being resisted, it has to take place in a state of total ignorance.

Imagined pasts

Ignorance and Bliss is all about how ignorance ought to be viewed and how indeed it should get valued. It views ignorance independent of bliss, and for good reason. At this time when politics is filled with lies and fake news, the question worth asking is whether the root cause of the problem lies with the public.

Gaining knowledge is an emotional experience and resisting knowledge is an emotional experience too. How to live with such contrasting emotions in a given time is the focus of the book, and our present predicament. The intimate struggles with aspects of self-knowledge feature prominently in it. Even self-knowledge depends on resisting other kinds of knowledge about the world. The chapters in the book concern fantasies, exploring that power in us which inspires resistance to acknowledging reality.

Lilla explores several human sentiments like innocence, nostalgia, emptiness, and taboo, to get some clarity on the knowledge/ignorance dilemma. Clarity is hard, because the search for an answer often remains subjective. Knowledge and ignorance co-exist. Those who feel ignorance is bliss may actually have a “distaste for the present” and go rushing to “restore an imagined past,” says Lilla. On the contrary, the more we know leaves us with the challenge to know more. A quest that never ends.

Fascinating and challenging, the book makes a compelling argument that a will to ignorance is as strong in us as any desire to have knowledge, and that we are caught between the will to know and the will not to know. Such are the times that wanting not to know appears to be much stronger than wanting to know.

Ignorance and Bliss 
by Mark Lilla
Hurst, New York 
Extent: 219, Price: Rs. 1,765.

First published in The Hindu on May 15, 2025

The religious congregation with a distinct identity

Punjab is known for its sprawling deras – places where self-proclaimed religious heads recite sermons and run the institution as a personal enterprise. These gurus build their brand through charity work including the organization of blood donation camps and mass marriage ceremonies. Politicians of all stripes are now warming up to the possibility of co-opting dera congregations. Unsurprisingly, deras are increasingly playing a critical role in times of political crisis.

Today, there are some 9,000 deras in Punjab that are patronized by about 80 per cent of the state’s population. These institutions are believed to pocket much of what is given to them by way of religious donations. While most are a heady mix of the esoteric and the political, they are also reflective of the sacred geography of the land. The rising popularity of alternative religious sects has sparked much academic and popular interest in the deras, which have, over the years, emerged as seats of alternative spiritual power. Each with a charismatic baba adopts distinct rituals, ceremonies, traditions, slogans, symbols, auspicious dates, customs, prayers and religious rituals.

Given the traditionally hierarchical nature of Indian society, the popularity of deras centered on singular messianic individuals is understandable. Many have emerged in response to prevailing caste-based social discrimination and the exclusion of marginalized castes from the mainstream religions. Those that cater to the large Dalit population, an estimated 32 per cent in the state, especially, give their following a sense of social identity. There is also a vast reservoir of individuals without options for whom deras provide a progressive focus and a viable way forward. Together with mammoth physical infrastructure, these bodies provide social mobility and a sense of belonging for those deprived of it. The attraction of the deras, then, needs to be understood as part of a complex social process. There is of course much variety in the character of the deras – with the highly influential Dera Sachkhand Ballan and the controversial Dera Sacha Sauda both being part of the spiritual landscape.

Sects are a feature of religions across the world, and this is true of Punjab too. In a sense, the deras act like tributaries of the main channel, whether it is Sikhism or Brahmanical Hinduism. Far from being boxed within a narrow framework, they carry within them the richness of diverse philosophical realms. The Deras by Santosh Singh offers a compelling sociological perspective on these institutions which continue to evolve and stay relevant. Spread across seven chapters, the book presents a fascinating view of how deras negotiate the contemporary scenario. It provides an ethnographic narrative on the burgeoning of this specific culture and also examines how related aspects of social welfare are gaining precedence.

An absorbing study on a subject that greatly influences the character and politics of contemporary Punjab, The Deras puts forward the view that the mushrooming of these bodies has to do with the fact that subaltern identity has yet to be mainstreamed with aspirations for inclusion and equality yet to be fulfilled. The dera phenomenon then needs to be viewed as a push towards the generation of social capital, which eventually contributes to the emancipation and empowerment of the marginalized.

The Deras 
by Santosh Singh
Penguin, New Delhi 
Extent: 196, Price: Rs. 699.

First published in the Hindustan Times on May 1, 2025.

To seek a philosophy of one's own

Are Greeco-Roman philosophies still relevant to our times? Aren’t our modern problems much different from those faced by people in ancient times? Conversely, however, fundamental human desires and aspirations haven’t changed in the last two millennia or even earlier? Don’t we still want love, friendship, money, reputation and tranquility, and still fear sickness, pain, death? If that is what most of us would agree with, then the instruments devised by the Greeco-Romans still constitute a powerful tool kit to help us figure out how we want to live. That is why the theoretical explanations and practical suggestions of 13 ancient philosophies still relate to us and even guide us. 

Live Like a Philosopher can help the reader relate to these philosophers, without being scared off by the big names. Having done a lot of the heavy lifting themselves to develop a life philosophy, the lifetime of distilled ideas by these philosophers can be shared to build a coherent and meaning way of life. From Pythagoras to Socrates, their blueprint for thinking about how to live well are highly relevant. Despite representing different philosophical schools, the three dominant themes that run common in them are - feeling good, being good, and thinking well.      

Pigliucci, Lopez and Kunz invite readers to expand their horizon to the vast richness of ancient philosophies of life. Through each philosopher’s life and works the authors dish out practical exercises that can be applied in our daily lives. These exercises are relevant teachings to be test driven over a course of time. The idea is to help reader with questioning and exploring their own philosophical journey in the process. At the end, what is important is not to stick with one set of ideas but to seek a philosophy that one would like to own. 

The idea of buying a latest shiny smartphone gives us pleasure, but it doesn’t last long and soon dissipates. Like a drug addict we soon resume our quest for another shiny object. Should it be pursued more as a matter of choice or as a philosophical question? Whatever be it, philosophy can help us know what to do in such a situation with a sense of good judgement. Insatiable desire to accumulate more and more things is a form of sickness that not many are aware off. According to the Cyrenaics school of philosophy, we must own our pleasures instead of our pleasures owning us. In other words, it is the immediate physical pleasure that matters, here and now. 

This book is an engaging resource for anyone who would like to test drive the ancient Greek and Roman philosophies to suit present life and circumstances. It creates a much-needed bridge between ancient wisdom and modern interpretation. It helps in better understanding rich philosophical ideas, so that these could be applied in present-day modern life. Live Like a Philosopher gives an illuminating opportunity to navigate the existential waters with valuable insights and reflections. 

Well-known philosophers Pigliucci, Lopez and Kunz have compiled this book that explores a range of Greek and Roman philosophies. These philosophies include the Epicurean doctrines of pleasure and avoidance of pain; the Aristotelian philosophy on virtuous character and radical doubt; and Pyrrhonism, the humbling philosophy of life that admits of not knowing much. Despite distinctions between ancient philosophies, the authors have attempted to draw synergies to address the modern-day challenges. 

Live Like a Philosopher can be helpful in creating meaningful life philosophy to navigate a world filled with uncertainty. How can we build a good life for ourselves? is the loaded question it sought to address, by using ancient philosophies as a compass to find a new way forward with a sense of purpose. On happiness, Aristotle had remarked ‘one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day’. He went further to say that ‘one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.’ A resurgence of interest in philosophies of life is not without reason. 

Live Like a Philosopher
by Massimo Pigliucci, Gregory Lopez and Meredith Alexander Kunz
Headline Books/ Hachette, New Delhi 
Extent: 298, Price: Rs. 699.

First published in Deccan Herald on April 27, 2025.

History repeats itself

Has the world plunged into a crisis, and that too permanently? The geopolitical analyst Robert Kaplan has every reason to believe so. Moreso with no such thing as linear in this world, the direction of human history is anything but unknowable. Though technology has kept evolving, roots of the permanent crisis continue to lie in what goes wrong with technology. With a sweep of history and politics, one could see similarity between today’s challenges and those of interwar years. The similarity being that every national disaster now has the potential to spread across the world, pandemic being one example. 

Waste Land both warns as well as generates hope. While it positions us as the Master of Technology, it considers us no less victims of it to a previously unimaginable degree. The entire world may seem one big now yet not connected enough to be politically coherent. But despite such cultural and even civilizational differences, a crisis at one level becomes a crisis for all. All countries are now so connected, at least technologically, that the crises have a domino effect. There are exceedingly complex set of issues that have yet to be acknowledged and resolved.

An interesting and absorbing sweep through history, literature, politics and philosophy guides Kaplan to divide the world into two broad phases, Globalization 1.0 and Globalization 2.0. While the past phase was about the spread of democracy and the enlargement of the middle class, the present phase is value-neutral but largely hostile. Furthermore, this phase is characterized by dense webwork of interactions that is a perfect fuel for sustaining permanent crisis. No wonder, Ukraine, Gaza and other major conflicts get their effects amplified, rather than assuaged. 

Considered one of the top global thinkers on Foreign Policy, Robert D. Kaplan is currently Robert Strausz-Hupe Chair in Geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. At this time when the world is bracing uncertain geopolitics, a deadly mix of war and climate change and heady cocktail of power rivalry and technological supremacy, the future finds itself in an exceedingly fragile phase of political transition. Nothing less than a penetrating diagnosis is needed to evolve a new international order.

The world isn’t getting worse, but the point is that social and digital media in the cities, in addition to doing some good, has greater potency to ignite more geopolitical turbulence. Waste Land surmises that social media in the world-cities are the key reason why politics will continue to get complicated and challenging. Not only has complex countries like Pakistan, Nigeria, and South Africa are teetering on becoming failed state, it is getting harder to even govern countries like the United States and France. The book makes some compelling observations and tosses unprecedented challenges that mankind is likely to face. 

Kaplan has drawn an interesting parallel of the present situation with the erstwhile Weimar Republic, the semi presidential republic during the interwar period 1918-1933, which the world today find itself in an exceedingly fragile phase of technological and political transition. Much like Weimar, ours is an interconnected system of states in which no one really rules. Weimer, once a loose-limbed republic, is now a permanent condition in the world, as countries (and its people) are connected by technology to affect each other intimately.

The whole city is a web, or should it be said the entire world is a web. Social media and the digital technology only amplify crowd psychology. The Trump phenomenon was hard to imagine in an earlier age of technology. The technology has its pinball motion that oscillates between extremes of toxic narcissi and the solidarity of the mob. The future is being defined by 21 century technology but has interesting resonant with the past. Kaplan concludes that many diverse strands of culture and history are converging to make amazing new sense of things. 

Waste Land is a brilliant and engaging survey of the world before us. Grounded in a vast range of history, philosophy and literature, it provides a range of critical positions before us. It is a dark mirror held to a dangerous world that demands our attention. We seem to have little choice but to fight one, as the outcome is neither clear nor predictable. It is a cautionary tale of absolute brilliance.  

Waste Land
by Robert D. Kaplan
Hurst, London.
Extent: 207, Price: US$ 23.

First published in the Hindu Business Line dated April 26, 2025.

A dera for everyone

Punjab is known for its sprawling deras - a place where a self-proclaimed religious head recites sermons - and there are some 9,000 of such deras in the state. About 80 per cent of the state’s population patronizes these deras which are believed to pocket 90 per cent of the religious donations. It is not without reason, it gives a large dalit population, an estimated 32 per cent in the state, a sense of social identity by which it can wield massive influence that is not without controversy. While most deras are a heady mix of the esoteric and the politics, these are also reflective of the sacred geography. Over the years, however, each dera has emerged as a seat of alternative spiritual power.  

The rising popularity of alternative religious sects has sparked much interest in the deras. These have emerged in response to prevailing caste-based social discrimination and exclusion of lower castes from the mainstream religion. Confirming the popularity of these sects among the lower castes, the contemporary attractiveness of the deras need to be understood as a complex social process. Not only that, the deras have influence on the character of the society which is often intertwined with its politics. While there is highly influential Dera Sachkhand Ballan on one extreme, the controversial Dera Sacha Sauda too dots the landscape. 

Religion is here to stay, or should it be said religious sect. In a sense, the deras act like tributaries of the main channel. Far from being boxed into narrow framework, the deras carry with them the rich diversity of deep philosophical realm. The Deras offers a compelling people’s perspective on the sociological imagination of these dynamic institutions which continue to evolve with time to stay relevant. However, the manner in which these institutions negotiate with the present scenario is fascinating. Spread across seven chapters, the book provides an ethnographic narrative on the dera culture that is not only growing but its social welfare perspective is gaining precedence.    

The modern narrative on the deras is somewhat progressive. Indeed, many deras are run by self-proclaimed gurus as personal enterprises. There is little denying the fact that there is a vast reservoir of free-floating disgruntling individuals for whom such progressive orientation of the dera is the way forward. These individuals want these deras to operate on purely entrepreneurial basis, investing in brand-building through charity work like blood donation camps and mass marriages. Deras have become congregations for electoral politics. Politicians of all stripes are understandably warming up to such possibilities. It is no surprise that the political patronage these deras receive in times of political crises is critical.

The Deras is an absorbing study on the dera culture in Punjab, which has gained unique profiles over the course of time with the adoption of distinct rituals, ceremonies, traditions, slogans, symbols, auspicious dates, customs, prayer, religious rituals, and attire of baba. Together with mammoth physical infrastructure, the deras provide social mobility for socially discriminated and economically poor sections of society. The book provides all that contributes pathological reasons for mushrooming of these deras. 

Author Santosh Singh reasons that mushrooming of deras has more to do with the fact that subaltern identity has yet to get mainstreamed. As this has yet to happen, the aspirations for inclusion and equality are far from fulfilled. The phenomenon of deras needs to be seen from the perspective of generating a social capital, which contributes to the emancipation and empowerment of lower caste and middle-class people in particular.

The Deras 
by Santosh Singh
Penguin, New Delhi 
Extent: 196, Price: Rs. 699.

First published in The Outlook on April 19, 2025.

No time to die, James Bond

For over six decades, from 1962 till 2021, James Bond has been a fixture of global culture, universally recognizable by the films’ combination of action set pieces, sex, political intrigue, and outrageous gadgetry. No Time To Die, the last Bond film released in Sept 2021, had the ruthless and self-indulgent secret service agent ‘die’ for the first time. Bond’s death cannot be without an impeccable reason. The lingering question: Is life sucked out from 007 or is there a new life for the agent awaiting somehow? Are there reasons enough for the secret service agent to perish or are global changes too many for his life getting a meaning?  

Spanning the franchise’s history, from Sean Connery’s iconic swagger to Daniel Craig’ visceral interpretation of the superspy, James Bond Will Return offers both academic readers and fans a comprehensive view of the series’ transformations against the backdrop of real-world geopolitical intrigue and sweeping social changes. Six years between the film Spectre (2015) and No Time To Die (2021) so much had happened that the Bond, as a character, felt grossly challenged. The period was itself factitious: Trump presidency was transforming the world between 2017-2021, and Brexit have had its influence on Europe in 2020. Gender relations were changing too.

Cary Fukunaga felt that ‘you cannot change Bond overnight into a different person’. As someone who directed Daniel Craig in No Time To Die, Fukunaga argued that while you can definitely change the world but not the way he has to function in such a world. In theory this was acceptable but not in practice. Never were there more vocal calls for substantive changes to the franchise than ever before, suggesting instead that the series was turning ‘redundant’ if such changes were    not incorporated. The world had definitely changed at all levels.    

The twenty-five chapters in this book engage with the wide range in which the Bond franchise has achieved historical and cultural impact, navigating the repetitions and innovations over the years. Over six decades 007 has remained a perennial feature of most adulthood, in no small way in which it owes it to the character’s ability to create and remain relevant.  But this in no way explain why some critics, scholars, and even fans have been glued to the Bond movies for being sexist, elitist, and even racist. Needless to say, it created opportunities when there was no dearth of reasons to pursue them. Over time, however, the masculinity and femininity the series presented began to strike many viewers as outdated.

Change is inevitable, more so in the case of Bond. It escaped change for being slow, but each time it served newness in each new film. The Bond has demonstrated its ability to shift social and political coordinates, while retaining the core constitutive elements that have held fans together since 1962. James Bond has remained an enduring icon of both national and masculine, and that would remain a challenge to retain that identity.

James Bond Will Return is for true. Barbara Broccoli didn’t shy away from saying that the next Bond film would be ‘a reinvention of Bond'. 'We’re reinventing who he is and that takes time'. James Bond matters to the entertainment industry, society, culture, and scholarship, negotiating issues of wider geo-political importance.          

James Bond Will Return
by Claire Hines, Terence McSweeney and Stuart Joy (Eds)
Columbia University Press, USA
Extent: 328, Price: Rs. 2,808.

First published in Hindustan Times on April 12, 2025.