Kaun banega Pradhan Mantri?

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LK Advani is officially pulling out of the race for prime ministership. Or is he? He has said he's happy as a party worker. An ambiguous but significant statement. Is he yielding to pressure from the RSS? He needs the Sangh's support for his yatra against corruption...but the RSS isn't happy with the move that many saw as his attempt to come back to the forefront. Age isn't on his side. The Sangh isn't either. And even the party has wasted no time in welcoming the announcement. Not wanting to be Prime Minister only adds to his stature as a leader, said a BJP spokesman. But where does that leave the party where second rung leaders continuously play a game of musical chairs... they call it a democratic setup as against the Congress' dynastic politics.. but how much does it help? With the likes of Narendra Modi, Sushma Swaraj....

Board Exams: Does the test make the grade?

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"Isme pass/fail kahan likha hai?" The response of a father holding his daughter's Class IX report card. He doesn't understand it. She goes to a school affiliated with the CBSE. They've just introduced the new CCE system. No marks, only grades. Daily assessment, no end-of-the-term killer exams. It was supposed to cut down the "stress". It hasn't. Students are working longer hours to finish the endless projects. And then they must please the teachers who will evaluate them. ('Partiality' is the first multi-syllable word a student in India learns.) It's a tough life for a kid already dealing with pimples, puppy love, peer pressure and pocket money issues. It's difficult for the teachers too. Consider the numbers. In an average CBSE school, one section of each class has 50-70 students, much higher than what norms allow. (Why? It's a huge racket, we'll discuss that another time.) A....

Family Histories, Memoirs

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My all time favorite story is that of my parents. How they met, fell in love and got married. As a child I pestered my mother, urging her to tell me the story over and over again. And then my aunts and uncles. Some frowned, most obliged. I added the bits and pieces, skipped some parts and imagined a fairy-tale love story. I decided if I ever wrote a book it would be about them. I haven't. But my fascination with such stories still draws me to family histories, books that blend history, facts and fiction and go beyond listing names and places with a tree. Here are the best ones I read this year. Leaving India by Minal Hajratwala It's a must read if you like the genre. The author describes it as 'My Family's Journey From Five Villages to Five Continents'. It's the story of....

Go Everywhere, Eat Everything: A Foodie's Dream Come True

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Go everywhere, eat everything. 30 countries. 12 months. Loads and loads of food. Everyone I told about the book went - WOW! Wish I could do it. Since most of us possibly won't do it, the next best thing is to read the book. Eat my Globe by Simon Majumdar - the son of a Bengali father and Welsh mother who has grown up on thin lentil soup (he calls it LSD- Life Saving Dahl) and black pudding (blood, barley, spices and back fat in beef intestine) and everything in between. And he's grown up to love it to the extent most don't, or perhaps don't realise, or aren't good enough to articulate. It's incredible the way he leaves his well-paying desk job with a publisher in London and criss-crosses the globe with Big Red- his backpack that's big and red. Talk about original. He blogs about....

The News From Paraguay - Lily Tuck

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The last time I looked up a map of Paraguay I was in 7th grade, perhaps 6th. The country is hardly in news. It doesn't matter to us much. This is what bothered Francisco Solano Lopez or Franco way back in 1854, so much so, that he dragged his country into war and devastation. The News From Paraguay by Lily Tuck is the story of Franco and Ella Lynch- an Irish courtesan living in France, until she meets Franco and moves to Paraguay to be his mistress, the mother of his children and a powerful voice in Paraguay's governance. Ella adapts, learns Spanish and Guarani and develops a taste for yerba mate. Franco tries to change his country as dictator by building opera houses and libraries. Ella survives war and disease. Franco dies before getting thousands of his men killed. Both are complex people, tender....