BOOK CLUB NOVEMBER

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Nothing like falling sick to make you pensive, contemplative over the transience of everything (good health, life, and so it goes...) So it was certainly some sort of a cosmic chuckle to have a new version of the Tibetan Book of the Dead land in my lap - this at a time all the flexing and chest-beating is dying down over the Dalai Lama's trip to Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh (which he's visited some three times before, since fleeing Tibet in 1959 - but not as much noise over those other trips, I take it.)

Not only do I now know what to avoid listening to in the 'Bardo', when death actually comes calling - I have to tell you, I'm hoping for liberation in that first moment itself, but that of course remains to be seen - I also snapped out of whatever strange ether-space my brain was in, on account of the magnificent pictures. Some of the photos by Thomas L Kelly in this, the Illustrated Edition of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, (or Bardo Todol) are simply stunning. Breath-taking stuff. Somehow putting you right in context, in a way. The author, Glenn H Mullin ("consummate translator of classical Tibetan literature") keeps it simple and straightforward, and the fact that he lives in Ulaan Bataar in Mongolia just adds to the whole package. Published by Roli Books, this is definitely one for the collection.

There's a lot to contemplate, whether you're taken with Buddhism or not... and suffering (if not cycles of suffering) due to attachment and other delusions, not to mention the hope for liberation, I'm sure is something we're all familiar with.

But it's the other sort of liberation that gave me nightmares actually - liberated zones a la Naxal style - reading Sudeep Chakravarti's Red Sun - Travels in Naxalite Country (published by Penguin last year) is even more of a wake-up call than all the chilling violence and "counter-violence" we've seen of late. He doesn't hold a brief for Naxals, but by travelling, meeting people including those who inherited the mantle of the original Naxalbari movement, not to mention jaded security officials, and those willfully in denial over the scope of the problem (and the attendant development issues), he's able to depict just how desperate the situation is/ was (things have changed since his book, but probably not all that much).

The government's now calling out the big guns - that's the big development since this book was published -- and what's horrific is that while the "Naxal issue" is now top of the agenda, we're just about getting used to seeing bloodshed on a daily basis.

Until reading this, I'm not sure I was aware of the full extent to which Maoists have planned each stage of action - from guerrilla warfare to the setting up of urban bases... and of course with the gap between the haves and have-nots, and lack of governance, the marginalised are pretty much theirs for the taking.

(Not that anything justifies violence, but to quote an intelligence official Chakravarti speaks to in Mumbai: "These Naxal chaps, they break the law, for which I will fight and kill them. But they are fighting for the right things. Isn't it?")

Whatever we tell ourselves in our urban citadels, revolution's coming, and it ain't a pretty sight.