On June 6, 2014, as the world watched the Sikh community mark the 30th anniversary of the Army attack on Golden Temple, Operation Blue Star, factions pulled out swords and there was a free for all in the holy premises for one and a half hour. My piece in Tehelka on one of the deeper reasons behind this event.
‘Though Punjab has largely been peaceful after the violent 1980s, it remains a land with deep fissures. One of the reasons is that the Sikh community’s management body, the cash-rich SGPC, has over the past two decades been converted into an extension of the SAD (Badal). Instead of practising inclusive Sikhism, solving the community’s problems, furthering education and healthcare, and raising and solving the identity issues that had led to the separatist movement, the SGPC has become rife with nepotism and dynasty politics. It manipulates Sikh sentiments for political and commercial gains.’
Read more here …
Tags: 1984, Akal Takht, Army, Bluestar, Khalistan, Punjab, SGPC, Simranjit Singh Mann
Thanks to Margerie from Ireland for chasing me to to this interview. It has come out well.
‘I battled my own self for the longest period, even went through clinical depression for a few months. There are issues like masculinity, sodomy, gay sex, my own views on the events of 1984, the code of honour among schoolmates, communal violence and so on. All of them troubled me when I wanted to write about them. I felt I will earn enemies. It is best to stay silent rather than invite criticism. But I could not sleep. I felt I was cheating by not writing. This is my truth of communal violence and of public schooling in our country. I needed to write it, put it out, to gain some semblance of equanimity in my life. I am very thankful the people have accepted my truths. The book has been lauded, nominated for awards; I have earned a good scholarship from it. The acceptance is a validation of my effort. I feel, in our world, we have space for truth. Let us work to bringing out those truths.’
Read more here …
Tags: 1984, Bluestar, Khalistan, military school, Mrs. Gandhi, Punjab, Roll of Honour, schizophrenia, Sepia Leaves
So, the book is getting around. Around the 30th anniversary of the attack on Golden Temple, Operation Blue Star, I received this review of my novel Roll of Honour from a US based Sikh website.
‘Sandhu’s story is full of shocking brutality, and definitely not for younger audiences. Unfortunately, so are many of the stories of 1984. For those who are willing to give this book a chance, however, Roll of Honour offers a lesson that readers are not likely to forget.’
Read more here …
Tags: 1984, Bluestar, Khalistan, military school, Mrs. Gandhi, Punjab, Roll of Honour, schizophrenia
This is what happens when you have been roaming the Dargahs and tombs of Sirhind and get late keeping your appointment with dear friend and contemporary intellectual from Punjab Daljit Ami. By way of penalty, he calls you to the studio and forces a brief interview on you. My first in Punjabi. Interview by Jaideep.
Please see here …
Tags: 1984, Bluestar, Khalistan, military school, Mrs. Gandhi, Punjab, Roll of Honour, schizophrenia, Sepia Leaves
Friends, it is September 2013. Roll of Honour completes one year with us. In this year we collected over fifty reviews and interviews on Roll of Honour and some more on Sepia Leaves. Thank you so much for your love and support. I feel humbled and honoured. Please read all the pieces in the right panel under ‘Roll of Honour’.
This week Dr Charanjeet Kaur from the esteemed literary journal Muse India interviewed me on both my books and the writing life. Thank you Dr Kaur. Please read here …
Tags: 1984, Bluestar, Khalistan, military school, Mrs. Gandhi, Punjab, Roll of Honour, schizophrenia, Sepia Leaves
It is an honour to get such a glowing review in The Book Review. Thank you Nishat.
‘As the writer grapples with emotions of anger, fear, pain, suffering, confusion, chaos, resistance and endurance, the novel moves from poignant to contrived, disturbing to formulaic, profound to crude, literary to raw, lyrical to macabre and real to phoney. In short it leaves the reader as enraged, confused and silenced as its narrator is, opening up, in turn, several interpretive possibilities. … he narrates his personal experience of a political event, without pontificating or taking sides. It is through his unsullied account of what he witnessed and endured that the writer seeks to remember his dismembered self. Writing, in this sense, is also a survival strategy for the writer …This safe haven is also the space where the ‘performative’ reality of the nation is preserved, unadulterated by ideological hues, a space which the readers like birds must turn to, to find a trace of their history and hence a space that allows the literary writer a serendipitous entry into the social, historical and political debates.’
Tags: 1984, Bluestar, Khalistan, military school, Mrs. Gandhi, Punjab, riots, Roll of Honour
Daman is a friend and a fellow writer but I did not know she was reviewing Roll of Honour in Asian Age.
‘Roll of Honour is an important work for it sets out to explore dark spaces in time and place and forbidden recesses of the mind. … Written as a fictionalised memoir, Roll of Honour is completely credible. While it may not answer all the questions that it raises, it certainly forces the reader to face them. These questions are both personal and political. Amandeep Sandhu has a remarkable command over the art of personal narrative. He writes with startling honesty and with searing intensity.’
Please read
Tags: 1984, Bluestar, Khalistan, military school, Mrs. Gandhi, Punjab, riots, Roll of Honour
Varad Sharma highlights the tone of the book by selecting certain important instances of thought in his review. Thanks Varad.
‘Roll of Honour questions the authoritative power. It is about different identities an individual takes in different phases of life on the basis of colour, religion, community, language, and nation. The author is blunt in describing the events and the experiences (and even the abuses). … One should read this novel to get an insight about what the youth went through during troubled times in Punjab.’
Please read
The same review appeared at The New Indian Express
Read here
Tags: 1984, Bluestar, Khalistan, military school, Mrs. Gandhi, Punjab, riots, Roll of Honour
I remain grateful to reviewers and interviewers who discern and glean out thoughts worthy of sharing in their pieces. After her excellent review Reshmy follows it up with this interview in which I manage to surprise myself. Read on.
Tags: 1984, Bluestar, Khalistan, military school, Mrs. Gandhi, Punjab, riots, Roll of Honour
What does a writer say when a reviewer born in Bhopal in 1983 confesses that, ‘The eyes still haunt me and I am perpetually running away from certain realities in the embezzlement of fiction that may touch base human emotions but doesn’t touch human suffering at the hands of fellow countrymen. … When Amandeep Sandhu asked me to read his second book for my views as a reader I knew if I say a yes, it would be my test too. A test if the adventurous reader has the guts too.’
Then she says this on the book. I feel humbled. Please read …
Tags: 1984, Bluestar, Khalistan, military school, Mrs. Gandhi, Punjab, riots, Roll of Honour