The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh

The Hungry Tide is a novel full of ideas, none of them found to have an easy answer. In Kanai's and Piya's world, they prefer the structure of science or business where they can view everything as black or white. In the Sundarbans where the tide changes the environment daily, nothing is certain and everything in life is a shade of gray. It's a place where tigers kill hundreds of people a year, but since they're a protected species, killing a tiger that has been preying on a village brings in the goverment authorities to mete out punishment. In an environment where life is fragile, the essence of any person is broken down to its core. Amitav Ghosh lets the tide country break down the barriers of both society and his characters.

While The Hungry Tide is about the struggle for each person to find their place in the world, it's not a novel of constant action and suspense. This doesn't slow the pace of the novel. Amitav Ghosh keeps the pages turning with the history of the tide country, the stories of the local deities, scientific information, the back stories for each character, and Nirmal's journal of what happened to Kusum and her son. At times, the history and scientific information start to overwhelm the story, and these carry on for a bit too long before the final voyage up the river begins. Someone already knowledgable about the Sundarbans or cetology might find this book dragging at times with these details, but the explanation of the exotic, whether scientific, geographic, or historical, can be as engaging as the lives of the characters. A bit of judicious editing about three-quarters of the way through the novel to eliminate the history of the scientific research of the river dolphin would have been helpful.

This is a small complaint, though. For the most part, The Hungry Tide is a compelling book about ordinary people bound together in an exotic place that can consume them all. It's the basest of human emotions, love, jealousy, pride, and trust, that will make the difference. That's a lesson we all can learn, again, as we follow Piya, Kanai, and Fokir into the heart of tide country.

Credit to:

W. R. Greer

Copyright © 2004 reviewsofbooks.com

Forgive me Amma - The Life and Times of Dhanraj Pillay

Though India is cricket crazy hockey also holds its own place. But it pales when compared to the fanfare and media attention cricket gets. Dhanraj Pillay is among the few hockey players who have gobbled considerable space in the media. Dhanraj’s behaviour was always complex and controversial. He was emotional and always evoked mixed responses from unalloyed adulations to outright condemnation. He was truly enigmatic. In this biography the author has attempted to evaluate the class, calibre and the convulsive ebb and flow of the hockey’s icon. While doing so he has rightly focused more on the history of the Indian hockey from the time Dhanraj came to limelight in the 1980 Asia Cup. His presence on the national and the international hockey scene is inexorably linked to the most turbulent phase of Indian hockey. The eventful happenings that had a tremendous impact on the rise and fall of Dhanraj are narrated in this biography. Dhanraj’s career spans more than a decade and a half during which he was capped over 400 times and he figured in four Olympics and equal number of World Cups and Asian Games. However, to his misfortune, he failed to pick up any medal of any hue, either in the World Cup or in the Olympics. His life is like a metaphor in the story of Indian hockey which, always threatens to bloom, has brilliant moments and yet is unable to sustain the quality of performance. Dhanraj’s career has been intimately interwoven with India’s victories and defeats. His failures were India’s failures and his triumphs were India’s triumphs. This succinctly sums up the fact that Dhanraj and Indian hockey were synonymous at any given point of since 1990. Dhanraj Pillay comes out in the biography as a charismatic sportsman with all human foibles and failings.

Also when you reading the book, you feel that you are watching the matches right in front of you.. The author has done a fantastic job of writing which has all the action and thrill of a suspense book.

In one word the book is nothing short of Scintillating.

Banker to the Poor - Review

Recently finished reading Banker to the Poor: The Autobiography of Muhammad Yunus, Founder of Grameen Bank and told myself that I would definitely write a review of the book, because there is so much we can learn from an Economics Professor who went on to become the Father of Micro-Credit!!!(That's my own title giving ;-) ).. Thanks to my exposure to the development sector, definitely I knew what Micro Finance (as we call it in India) is all about but glad that I actually got to read the book at last!!!!

I was inspired and amazed at the simplicity of Yunus's concept, and appalled at the resistance he met putting it into action.

It started when he found that 42 villagers were being kept in thrall -- literally bonded slavery -- to moneylenders in one village. The total sum they owed was $27. Yunus put his hand into his own pocket, and the system of microcredit was born. THEN came the long, long, attempt to get other sponsors, government help, and a lot more.

By the end of the book they have branched out into cooperatives, health care, cell-phone providers, and the internet. As he says, no US businessman would even consider operating without a telephone.... but there is criticism that "The rural poor do not need the luxury of a telephone." But telephones help the micro-borrowers improve their businesses and find the best markets for their products. So Yunus's bank, Grameen, created GremeenPhone to provide service to villages. Some villages didn't have electricity, so they then created a nonprofit company dedicated to developing wind turbines, solar energy, etc! Just one example of Yunus's progressive thinking and nothing-is-too-tough attitude!

Not in the book, but it's inspiring to see how Yunus's idea has caught on in other parts of the world. There's even a US organization, Kiva, which allows people to extend loans over the Internet to individual small businesses in far-flung countries. This is an idea that has to grow.

Definitely, Yunus dreams of a world without poverty and the books gives you a feelin that it's very possible given that all the factors fall in place!!! But hell what the harm in dreamin!!!

Interesting I also came across an article which is pretty hard on Yunus but thought I'll share the same with you folks.. irrespective of the article which I'm sharin, definitely I recommend this as a must read book!!!

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article6860170.ece