The French Connection

Superb movie, watched it for the second or third time. The chase sequence is terrific.

The Great Indian Novel

Wonderful book; sheer genius. The author interweaves characters of Mahabharat into the freedom struggle and identifies them with the famous and not so famous freedom fighters. The sheer brilliance of the plot lies the seamless merging of the mythical characters like Bhisma, Pandu, Dhritarashtra etc. with the leaders like Gandhi, Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose. Apart from the story-telling, the books also gives insight into the contradictions and the subtle acts of manipulation made by MK Gandhi. Also, the British tyranny is brutally exposed.

I am surprised and saddened by the fact that the famine of Bengal under the British rule, which killed millions in the same period Hitlers’s Nazis killed a similar number of Jews, is clearly forgotten in India, while Israel takes every opportunity to remind the world of the Holocaust.

Coming back to the book, the highest praise I can offer for this book is that it is an intellectual pleasure to read this work.