Bestsellers

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hey guys, i shall post the names and if possible the reviews of bestsellers here.

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FICTION

Funny Side Up
-Ruskin Bond

Last Templar
-Raymond Khoury

Memoirs Of A Geisha
-Arthur Golden

The Alistair Maclean Collection
-Alistair MacLean

The Best of RK Laxman Collection
-RK Laxman

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NON FICTION
The Argumentative Indian
-Amartya Sen

Mathematical Century
-Odifreddi, Piergiorgio

A Corner of a Foreign Field
-Ramachandra Guha

The Old Man & His God
-Sudha Murty

Calling the Shots
-Michael Vaughan

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The Argumentative Indian
Category: Non-Fiction
Author: Amartya Sen
Publisher: Penguin Group

Prolixity is not alien to us in India. We are able to talk at some length. Krishna Menon's record of the longest speech ever delivered at the United Nations (nine hours non-stop), established half a century ago (when Menon was leading the Indian delegation), has not been equalled by anyone from anywhere. Other peaks of loquaciousness have been scaled by other Indians. We do like to speak.

This is not a new habit. The ancient Sanskrit epics the Ramayana and the Mahahharata, which are frequently compared with the Iliad and the Odyssey, are colossally longer than the works that the modest Homer could manage. Indeed, the Mahabharata alone is about seven times as long as the Iliad and the Odyssey put together.

The Ramayana and the Mahahharata are certainly great epics: I recall with much joy how my own life was vastly enriched when I encountered them first as a restless youngster looking for intellectual stimulation as well as sheer entertainment.

But they proceed from stories to stories woven around their principal tales, and are engagingly full of dialogues, dilemmas and alternative perspectives. And we encounter masses of arguments and counterarguments spread over incessant debates and disputations.

Dialogue and Significance

The arguments are also, often enough, quite substantive. For example, the famous Bhagavad Gita, which is one small section of the Mahabharata, presents a tussle between two contrary moral positions - Krishna's emphasis on doing one's duty, on one side, and Arjuna's focus on avoiding bad consequences (and generating good ones), on the other.

The debate occurs on the eve of the Great War that is a central event in the Mahabharata. Watching the two armies readying for war, profound doubts about the correctness of what they are doing are raised by Arjuna, the peerless and invincible warrior in the army of the just and honourable royal family (the Pandavas) who are about to fight the unjust usurpers (the Kauravas).

Arjuna questions whether it is right to be concerned only with one's duty to promote a just cause and be indifferent to the misery and the slaughter - even of one's kin - that the war itself would undoubtedly cause.
Krishna, a divine incarnation in the form of a human being (in fact, he is also Arjuna's charioteer), argues against Arjuna. His response takes the form of articulating principles of action - based on the priority of doing one's duty -, which have been repeated again and again in Indian philosophy.

Krishna insists on Arjuna's duty to fight, irrespective of his evaluation of the consequences. It is a just cause, and, as a warrior and a general on whom his side must rely, Arjuna cannot waver from his obligations, no matter what the consequences are.

Krishna's hallowing of the demands of duty wins the argument, at least as seen in the religious perspective." Indeed, Krishna's conversations with Arjuna, the Bhagavad Gita, became a treatise of great theological importance in Hindu philosophy, focusing particularly on the 'removal' of Arjuna's doubts. Krishna's moral position has also been eloquently endorsed by many philosophical and literary commentators across the world, such as Christopher Isherwood and TS Eliot. Isherwood in fact translated the Bhagavad Gita into English.'

This admiration for the Gita, and for Krishna's arguments in particular, has been a lasting phenomenon in parts of European culture. It was spectacularly praised in the early nineteenth century by Wilhelm von Humboldt as 'the most beautiful, perhaps the only true philosophical song existing in any known tongue'. In a poem in four Quartets, Eliot summarizes Krishna's view in the form of an admonishment: 'And do not think of the fruit of action. / Fare forward.' Eliot explains: 'Not fare well, / But fare forward, voyagers.

And yet, as a debate in which there are two reasonable sides, the epic Mahabharata itself presents, sequentially, each of the two contrary arguments with much care and sympathy. Indeed, the tragic desolation that the post-combat and post-carnage land - largely the Indo-Gangetic plain - seems to face towards the end of the Mahabharata can even be seen as something of a vindication of Arjuna's profound doubts.
Arjuna's contrary arguments are not really vanquished, no matter what the 'message' of the Bhagavad Gita is meant to be. There remains a powerful case for 'faring well', and not just 'forward'.

J Robert Oppenheimer, the leader of the American team that developed the ultimate 'weapon of mass destruction' during the Second World War, was moved to quote Krishna's words ('I am become death, the destroyer of worlds') as he watched, on 16 July 1945) the awesome force of the first nuclear explosion devised by man/ Like the advice that Arjuna had received about his duty as a warrior fighting for a just cause, Oppenheimer the physicist could well find justification in his technical commitment to develop a bomb for what was clearly the right side.

Scrutinizing - indeed criticizing – his own actions, Oppenheimer said later on: 'When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success.'

Despite that compulsion to 'fare forward', there was reason also for reflecting on Arjuna's concerns: How can good come from killing so many people? And why should I seek victory, kingdom or happiness for my own side?

These arguments remain thoroughly relevant in the contemporary world. The case for doing what one sees as one's duty must be strong, but how can we be indifferent to the consequences that may follow from our doing what we take to be our just duty?

As we reflect on the manifest problems of our global world (from terrorism, wars and violence to epidemics, insecurity and grueling poverty), or on India's special concerns (such as economic development, nuclear confrontation or regional peace), it is important to take on board Arjuna's conesquential analysis, in addition to considering Krishna's arguments for doing one's duty.

The univocal 'message of the Gita" requires supplementation by the broader argumentative wisdom of the Mahabharata, of which the Gita is only one small part.

There will be an opportunity in this essay, and in the others to follow, to examine the reach and significance of many of the debates and altercations that have figured prominently in the Indian argumentative tradition.

We have to take note not only of the opinions that won - or allegedly won - in the debates, but also of the other points of view that were presented and are recorded or remembered. A defeated argument that refuses to be obliterated can remain very alive.

Gender, Caste and Voice

There is, however, a serious question to be asked as to whether the tradition of arguments and disputations has been confined to an exclusive part of the Indian population - perhaps just to the members of the male elite.

It would, of course, be hard to expect that argumentational participation would be uniformly distributed over all segments of the population, but India has had deep inequalities along the lines of gender, class, caste and community (on which more presently).

The social relevance of the argumentative tradition would be severely limited if disadvantaged sections were effectively barred from participation. The story here is, however, much more complex than a simple generalization can capture.

I begin with gender.

There can be little doubt that men have tended, by and large, to rule the roost in argumentative moves in India. But despite that, the participation of women in both political leadership and intellectual pursuits has not been at all negligible. This is obvious enough today, particularly in politics. Indeed, many of the dominant political parties in India - national as well as regional - are currently led by women and have been so led in the past.

[HydraHeaded]

According to me, a few really great books are:

Papillon, by Henry Charierre.

The Hunchback of Notredame, by Victor Hugo

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway.

Out of all these, if you haven't read Mockingbird, then definitely read it!

[princess temu]

if you ask me do read , An American Brat by Bapsi Sidhwa ,Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom ,To Kill A Mocking Bird by Harper Lee ,Things fall apart by Chenua Achbe.

[waniya mir]

if you ask me do read , An American Brat by Bapsi Sidhwa ,Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom ,To Kill A Mocking Bird by Harper Lee ,Things fall apart by Chenua Achbe.
can u tell me what so gud about these books. i mean what so gud in it dat ur recommending these to us.

[kg.my.life]

"The Hunchback of Notredame" by Victor Hugo and "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee are my favourites :D.....apart from dat....i love reading Agatha Cristie,Sherlock Holmes and Sidney Sheldon.:)

But I still love Enid Blytons "Famous Five"....and "Secret Seven"....they r really special to me....i enjoy reading them till now!;)

[princess temu]

can u tell me what so gud about these books. i mean what so gud in it dat ur recommending these to us.
hi wania, have u read any more urdu writers works lately, i mean except for umera ahmed.;);)

[princess temu]

hello everyone and wania, yaar i hav read another urdu book by hashim nadeem titled ''Khuda Aur Mohabbat''.it wasn't as good as umera ahmed's books but overall its good,giv it a read when u(wania) hav time.