The Blog of Small Things

  Name :  Gandhi : The Years that changed the world Author : Ramachandra Guha Year of Publication : 2018 Genre : Non-fiction,Biography Rating : **** (4 stars out of 5) In a doorstopper of a book, Ramachandra Guha covers MK Gandhi's years in India through a chronological narrative of painstaking research. Unlike the first volume which covers previously untouched terrain, this volume has to content itself with embellishing additional details about already known events. This is not the author's fault because 1915-1948 is a much analyzed period in Indian history. In the chapter covering MK Gandhi's weird "brahmacharya" experiments, the author could have been a bit more critical of the old man but unfairly ends up placing some portion of the blame at Manu's door. Some of the details may not interest the general reader ( Kasturba's last hours is described at an excruciatingly unnecessary length). Yet these criticisms are minor quibbles and this 1000 pages-plus b...

Name :  Gandhi before India Author : Ramachandra Guha Year of Publication : 2013 Genre : Non-fiction,Biography Rating : ***** (5 stars out of 5) It is natural to question the need for another Gandhi biography when there is already a surfeit of tomes but anyone who finishes this book will question the research and rigour of biographers who had merely skimmed the surface all these years. While other biographies saw the 20 years spent by MK Gandhi in South Africa as mere title credits to an engrossing movie that follows, the scholar-author Ramachandra Guha makes a blockbuster out of the same period.  Stellar research (unearthing previously unknown nuggets like the first correspondence between MK Gandhi and MA Jinnah, the first person to address MK Gandhi as Mahatma and eerily prescient words in 1909 where he talks about his death uniting Hindu and Muslim communities) combined with highly readable prose make this a winner. Finishing this book which covers MK Gandhi's life from 186...

Name :  The Dramatic Decade, The Turbulent Years, The Coalition Years Author : Pranab Mukherjee Year of Publication : 2015,2016,2017 Genre : Non-fiction,Memoir,Politics Rating : * 1/2( One and a half stars out of 5) Pranab Mukherjee, a seasoned politician who has seen it all from Indira Gandhi to Narendra Modi, recollects his forty years in politics through a trilogy of sincere but boring books. His habit of maintaining diaries has ensured that no significant political or economic event is left untouched in these books but the transformation of those personal diaries and notings into readable tomes has not quite happened. He goes overboard in reproducing every formal speech made on different occasions verbatim . Despite the voluminous material, he conveniently does not go into the excesses of emergency or the cash-for-votes scam or the rampant corruption which derailed UPA-2. The trilogy feels like a sincere homework assignment submitted by a student but which general reader will w...