Short Takes 22

The Coalition of Competitors
Kiran Karnik| Collins Business| Rs 399

If it hadn’t been for Nehru and Vikram Sarabhai, India may not have been the IT major it is today, says Karnik, in this highly readable take on the IT industry. Of course others also contributed, like Sam Pitroda, who is supposed to have told General Electric that if they wanted to sell aircraft engines to us, they would have to throw in USD 10 million IT software work into India. GE did. Karnik assembles this and other nuggets to describe the birth of IT industry and Nasscom. The book flap tells us Nasscom is upheld as a model. That’s a bit over the top praise for an association floated by private software firms.

*

The Child Inside
Suzanne Bugler| Pan| Rs 325

The Child Inside tells the well-worn story of marital betrayal and its aftermath. A married woman delivers a stillborn child, turns away from her husband to rekindle an affair with an old flame. Only, it does not work. “Do you know how lonely I have been,” wife tells husband when confronted, “I feel like I am trapped in emotional graveyard.” But we are ‘a family’, responds the husband. Not exactly a cheerful plot, you have to admit. It does not help that the prose is gloomier than the tale and narration is as lifeless as the depressed heroine of the novel. The novel is billed as a ‘psychological drama’ by the publisher.

*

The Flying Man
Roopa Farooki| Hachette India| Rs 499

This novel tells the story of a shady entrepreneur, gambler, businessman, political activist, journalist, fornicator, thief, dilettante, doodler and sometime playwright. He is born in Pakistan. But he could well have been from India or any other neighbouring Asian country. The novel penned by Farooki, her fifth, invents a memorable come-of-age immigrant. A man whose life moves as fluidly between London, Egypt, Madrid and Hong Kong as it does through his three marriages, shady businesses, invented personas and several incarcerations in jail. Sometimes, Farooki seems to say, to go “anywhere “ can lead one nowhere.

(An edited version of the above reviews appeared in the Sunday edition of the Mail Today, New Delhi, dated 18 March 2012)

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