Anuradha and Manoj are committed to creating a user friendly and interactive website around reading. I felt honoured they chose to open their site interviews with me. Best wishes, we need more interlinked readers. Read on.
Tags: 1984, Bluestar, Khalistan, Mrs. Gandhi, Punjab, riots, Roll of Honour, school, Sepia Leaves
It is such satisfaction that in 2012 The Hindu gave Roll of Honour a review, me an interview, and yet another article mentioning Sepia Leaves as well. Thank you! Please read here.
Tags: 1984, Bluestar, Khalistan, Mrs. Gandhi, Punjab, riots, Roll of Honour, school, Sepia Leaves
Friends, Freya is a traveler, a motorcyclist, a reader of books, a social media consultant and she loves her dogs. While some of us were blindly posting the copyright messages on Facebook, she fought an interesting copyright issue on Facebook and managed to convince the folks there that some images by a certain photographer were plagiarized and got them pulled down. Thank you, no nonsense girl Freya!
‘Reading Roll of Honour gave me an insight into the lives of Sikhs after 1984. After partition this was the next big religious event that I was too young and too far geographically to remember, this book helped me understand the people of Punjab better. I’d definitely recommend this book if these kind of stories are your thing.’
Read on here.
Tags: 1984, Bluestar, Khalistan, Mrs. Gandhi, Punjab, riots, Roll of Honour, school
Friends, I am really happy to post this interview that The Hindu has carried. As a writer one often writes in a vacuum but when one suddenly sees a brilliant review in an esteemed page one feels both humbled and excited. That is what had happened with ‘Sepia Leaves’ that Uday Balakrishnan had reviewed a couple of years back. That he followed up with this interview for ‘Roll of Honour’ pleases me no end. Thank you Uday.
‘A teacher of mine used to say: the mad are poets without language. Whether he is the stoic father in [my earlier novel] Sepia Leaves or the traumatised boys in Roll of Honour, whether it is schizophrenia or depression, my attempt is to extend storytelling to situations where language frequently fails to articulate reality.’
Please read here.
Tags: 1984, Bluestar, bullying, Khalistan, Mrs. Gandhi, Punjab, riots, Roll of Honour, school
Finally, The Hindu reviewed Roll of Honour a day after its reading at Bangalore International Centre organized by the Bangalore Literature Festival. The previous night Dr Uday Balakrishnan had introduced the book as a close look on the boarding school system of the country and Mr Chiranjeev Singh had spoken so eloquently about the book which had touched upon his own 1984 wounds. I was satisfied that the book had reached home when Ms. Manisha Gangahar surprised me with this review.
Read on here.
Tags: 1984, Bluestar, Khalistan, Mrs. Gandhi, Punjab, riots, Roll of Honour, school
Dr. Gita Mohan blogged about the Roll of Honour reading organised at Easy Library by Vani Mahesh. Thank you Vani, Shinie, Dr. Sheshadri, Gita, and friends who could make it.
‘As the author explained, ragging or bullying is prominent in residential schools, especially in boys’ residential schools. The world itself is rift in violence and this is naturally reflected in various microcosms too, including schools. Bullying was very much seen as the “right” of senior students, who would revolt if prevented from bullying the newcomers. Sodomy was often the preferred means of bullying in residential schools. Residential schools in India were modelled on Eton and other public schools of England, which took in only the upper classes. However, the military residential schools were different in that pedagogy tried to invert the social classes! And herein lay the root of much malaise…’
Read on here.
Tags: 1984, Bluestar, Dr. Sheshadri, Easy Library, Khalistan, Mrs. Gandhi, Punjab, riots, Roll of Honour, school, Vani Mahesh
One of the finest school stories collection (with brilliant illustrations) by some of India’s best authors that I have read is ‘Whispers in the Classroom, Voices on the Field‘. Richa Jha, the excellent editor of the collection, compares ‘Roll of Honour’ with the critically acclaimed Siddhartha Sarma’s ‘The Grasshopper’s Run‘ and points at the glowing reviews for both books but laments the reading habits of teenagers and parents and teachers when compared with books from the West. She makes an argument for our, Indian books on teenagers, to be read by our adolescent readers. Thank you Richa for this much needed pointer examining our reading habits.
‘…a gripping, haunting, disturbing page-turner. In many ways, it is also India’s first boldly written brutally honest crossover fiction.’
Tags: 1984, Adolescent, Bluestar, Khalistan, Mrs. Gandhi, Punjab, riots, Roll of Honour, school, Teenage
Smita Beohar is a friend I have met only through my writing. She reviewed Sepia Leaves when it came out and now reviews Roll of Honour. Her straight talking and frank books blog is quite popular, deservedly so. Thanks Smita!
‘…a story of male camaraderie, loyalties, of surviving in dire circumstances, of letting go & shows you a mirror that what happens if you let your past rule your present. It also makes you think that you might have great friends in your life but at the end it is each for its own. A dark & gritty book but a must read.’
Tags: 1984, Bluestar, Khalistan, Mrs. Gandhi, Punjab, riots, Roll of Honour, school
I am glad that advertising professional and writer Julia Dutta read Roll of Honour the way she did. While the book has been hailed as a text on boarding school culture and the events of 1984, she invites a discussion on the psycho-sexual aspect of the book. It was a key theme for me while writing it. Thanks Julia!
‘…there is a deeper and denser meaning that emerges from the reading of this book, that being, the underlining, loud voice that literally shouts out to the reader revealing an insight into the relation between violence and sex… Both sex and violence is about power, they are two sides of the same coin.’
Tags: 1984, Bluestar, Gay, homosexuality, Khalistan, LGBT, Mrs. Gandhi, Punjab, riots, Roll of Honour, school
Maullika Sharma who read Sepia Leaves a few years ago and Roll of Honour recently left the technology industry a few years back to work as a counselor with children in schools. She interviewed me recently for the prestigious journal to plot my journey from being a care giver, sufferer, to becoming a writer. In this interview in which I talk of writing as therapy I duly acknowledge the role Dr Ajit Bhide, Dr Alok Sarin Dr Shekhar Sheshadri and Dr Anirudh Kala played in my life. Thank you Maullika.
Q: What was your motivation to make your story public?
Ans. The motivation for Sepia Leaves was that through my growing up years the society called me a ‘mad woman’s son’ and hence unworthy of equality but worthy of a lot of sympathy and even some pity. I asked myself: is there no space in the world beyond our home where our family’s story can make sense? Is madness truly as dehumanizing as it is made out to be? Can’t we live in a world, or even inside a story?
Tags: 1984, Bluestar, counselling, Khalistan, Mrs. Gandhi, psychiatry, Punjab, riots, Roll of Honour, school