yes, there is a hope...

    Alex Rutherford is a name to reckon with if History is the field of study. "Raiders from the North" is first in the four book series under the project "Empire of the Moghul." The book is published by Hachette.      The book is an account of Babur who laid the foundation of Mughal Empire in India. However the book traces its journey to much before from the birth of Babur and his father's time in Ferghana, Afghanistan. The familial line of Babur traced from Timur and Ghengiz Khan from Central Asia. With such an illustritious blood line and being surrounded by bigger kingdoms of whom majority were his extended family and relatives, Babur faced survival as a daily assignment and threat of being eliminated after sudden death of his father in an earthquake. His ascedence to the throne was amidst lurking Turks, Uzbecks under Shaibani Khan and his uncle Ahmed ruling from Samarkand. He successfully navigated everyone and in the process to be rightful successor o...

Asura : Tale of the Vanquished The story of Ravan and His people Written by Anand Neelakantan and published by Leadstart. The author is  a former engineer in a PSU and has come up with this novel after lot of deliberation in which he narrates the story of Ravan from his own perspective. All the other versions are either of Ram or Hanuman and no one has tried to understand Ravan and his side of story. As it is said that the history is written by the victors and so none will take up his side. In the introduction, the author writes that Ravan is portrayed as 10 faced traditional income, ism places, importance on the control of emotions and projects the intellect alone as the being supreme.  His guru Mahabali advises Ravan to shun, the nine emotions of anger, pride, jealousy, happiness, sadness, fear, selfishness, passion, and ambition. Intellect alone is to be revered. But Ravan argues and states that all these 10 emotions make him a complete man without any pretence of holiness ...

Bandits by Eric Hobsbawm published by hachette, is a book on history of Bandits explaining their rise and expanse as a social phenomenon. If we see the profile of the author, he is one of the accomplished writer and historian and has produced major works like the Age of Revolution, the Age of Capital, the Age of Empire, the Age of Extremes, apart from several other books on social, political and economic aspects. Banditry is an old phenomenon. Bandits came into limelight due to their relentless opposition to the authorities. India has long seen banditry phenomenon and were called as "Dasyu" which was a bit different from Dacoit. Colonel Sleeman has written good account of same in  " A journey through the kingdom of Oude in 1849-1850". Even the  Boll ywood was fond of the topic which was mainstay of the films like Bandit Queen on the life of Phoolan Devi, Ganga ki Saugandh, Sholay and recently Paan Singh Tomar which has been played by Irrfan Khan. Mostly these movies...

  Shattered Land Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia    Sam Dalrymple / Harper Collins 2025 We all have studied history from different perspectives as presented by different historians to the ideology they have followed like left historians , sub-altern etc. The credit to Sam goes for the fact that he has presented this book as factually as possible without any tint of ideological bias. The book is divided into 15 chapter with detailed notes, epilogue, acknowledgement notes, maps and illustrations. The book starts with the introduction of the Simon Commission and it’s visit to Bombay wherein it held deliberations with Mohammed Ali Jinnah , Sarojini Naidu and Mahatma Gandhi . The relationship between Mahatma Gandhi and Jinnah soured over certain misunderstanding. The chapter introduces the readers to the personal life of Jinnah, his wife Ruttie and daughter Dina . There is interesting map which shows places visited by Simon Commission, which starts from Ad...

My Inventions : Nikola Tesla Nikola Tesla, born  10th July 1856, Smiljan, Croatia. Recently, I've read his autobiography “My Inventions”. He was God gifted serial innovator and from very illustrios family. His mother belonged to one of the oldest families of the region having impeccable record as inventors and who invented several tools and implements. His father was military officer and later on turned to work as priest. Infact, his grandfather served in the army of Napoleon Bonaparte. From childhood he was suffering from light flashes and he could intuitively imagine the exact drawings without any assistance of pen or paper. He had clarity of vision but knowledge of principles of physics was a limiting factor in his earlier life. Firstly he proposed to transport letters and packages across seas through submarine tube in spherical containers. The pumping plant would force the water through the tube. In yet another project he proposed to construct a ring around equator to float f...

India : A Sacred Geography Do you remember review of Benaras: The City of Light written by Diana L. Eck? As I read more and more about her books, I am sort of liking her. The depth she had in exploring the Indic religious organisation which is very rare for someone looking from outsiders perspective. This book India : A Sacred Geography, published in 2012 by Random House is next in series for the author wherein she has delved into the vastness of religiosity of India as a country. The book is divided into 10 chapters starting with a detailed note on transliteration and pronunciation. In A Sacred Geography, an imagined landscape, the author identifies tirthas as “crossings”  where one’s prayers are amplified, one’s rites are more efficacious, one’s vows more readily fulfilled. The book indicted that in the ancient shastras not only geographical teerthas but also teerths of heart are referred as “manas teerthas”. These are enumerated as “truth, celibacy, charity, patience, self-contr...

This is Manickarnika, where death is auspicious,  where life is fruitful, where one grazes the pastures of heaven.  There is no tirtha like Manikarnika, There is no city like Kashi, There is no linga like visheshwara,  not in the whole universe. Banaras: City of Light is written by Diana L. Eck. Before we proceed further to review the book, it is pertinent to discuss the credentials of the author. She is a professor of comparative religion and Indian studies in the Harvard University. She has written books on spirituality, religion, especially on India. The book was published in 1981.  The book is divided in eight chapters dealing with different aspects of the city. The chapters range from discussion on Shiva temples of Banaras to the events, on Ganges and the seasons. The book richly contains appendix and a detailed notes and glossary which gives it a complete treat for someone who is new to India or wants to explore the city in a holistic manner on its own. The aut...

THE GOLDEN ROAD :  HOW ANCIENT INDIA TRANSFORMED THE WORLD WILLIAM DALRYMPLE, BLOOMSBURY, 2024 William Dalrymple does not need an introduction. Every reader has heard his name even if he hasn't read his works. His readership spreads from serious history researchers to casual history enthusiasts, from serious UPSC Civil services aspirants of History optionals to general studies specific students, from Indians interested in their cultural revivals to global readers interested in South-East Asia and especially India.  Recently, I have read his "The Golden Road" published by Bloomsbury which is about India's golden era where the dominance extended from Central Asia to China to South East Asia. The extent of influence was such that the entire cities were built on the patterns as in Bharatvarsh and Kings ruling in the name of Hindu dieties what he broadly terms as Indosphere. The book is presented in 10 chapters revolving around the common theme of Indic influence transcend...

 A Scholarly Work Guns, Germs and Steel - The Fates of Human Societies written by Jared Diamond and published by Penguin Random House in 1998 is a brief history of evolution of human civilization. Before we delve into the specifics of the book, we must introduce the author Jared Diamond, for he is one of the prolific author writing on evolution, human history. He is professor of Geography at UCLA and won Pulitzer Prize for this book. In order to explore the evolutionary process deeper he studied anthropology, biology, genetics, linguistics, ecology and history. His scholarship leaves an indelible mark which is evident in the book. The book revolves around the quest of the author to find answer as to why human development proceeded at such different rates in different continents and societies. What factors have caused this differential rate of evolution where even nearly placed societies experienced different growth trajectory. He spent 33 years in New Guinea for understanding the s...