Khushwant Singh’s “Delhi- A Novel” a must read book

Dear Book lovers,

I finished reading “Delhi- A Novel” by Khushwant Singh today. No doubt he is a master writer, historian and an amazing lively man with eternal sense of humor. The last 200 pages I completed in just few hours. This was my second read of Khushwant Singh after his “The Train to Pakistan” and I was not disappointed, I bought this book without anybody's recommendation 3 weeks back.The way this “Delhi-A Novel” takes you forward and backward in time is superb. Never felt so thrilled reading any book so far. It travells from, early 13th century when India/Delhi were being invaded to the modern times 1984 riots, when rest of the India killed Sikhs bluntly everywhere. The book explains how Delhi got demolished and reconstructed several time during Mugals and became modern day's Lutyen’s New Delhi. Chapters after chapters he meets Poets , Kings , Sufis , Saints from Meer Taqi Meer to Akbar to Aurangzeb , traitors , patriots , Gandhi , Nehru , RSS , common man Musssadi Lal Kayasth and everyone who have participated in or had been witnessed the rise and fall of Delhi is simply cool and intriguing at times. A must read for those who are interested in Indian history specially.  Long live Khushwant Singh, long live the other bold courageous writers like him. If you know someone who writes like him please leave me a comment.

~bd

P.S: If you really like to read this book order it from FlipKart.com, they offer awesome discount and free shipping all over India. I bought it unfortunately from Landmark and got 0 discounts. Another valuable suggestion, do visit Landmark on weekends but order your books only from FlipKart.com ,believe me I do the same.

Noida 12-22

Part 1

Summer was ruling that time of the year in 2006 the prickly heat and unavoidable power cuts in Noida had transformed all negis, kotiyals , dhyanis to dull boys. NCR literally turned into an oven that year, believe me. But life goes on , it was the time when my college friend Jagat Negi and I were thinking to make a matrimonial ads consulting site, something like a free online consulting page , the objective was to help prospective bride and grooms. Helping them in writing their SOPs, we thought we will provide words to their expressions; we’ll help them in rephrasing their matrimonial advertisements well in English. So they can mark a very good first impression through their ad in popular matrimonial web sites. It was Jagat’s brilliant idea, philanthropy has never been my cup of tea, but he wanted to return something good, back to the society. The seed germinated in Jagat’s ever fertile brain probably because, he could not find any single impressive write-up of any girl in any of the matrimonial site that year; he initially used to laugh. But seeing so many grammatical mistakes, improper punctuation usages , big expectations bluntly mentioned in those advertisements he sometimes felt like leaving India for ever. 

Not to forget internet browsing was still expensive , around 30Rs/hour. Anyways we discussed about this online consulting firm for few days or may be few hours, felt attached to our beloved state, but then as if Jagat found one impressive write-up and hence wilted the consulting firm seed in that prickly summer which we thought will be a big tree one day.  It is true that “need” is the mother of inventions.

In one such hot noon, Rumit reached at Jagat’ Sec 57 room and the 3 dulls decided to go to Atta market  Centerstage mall, a way to escape heat in the centrally AC mall ,biggest of its type those days in NCR, some greenery for Rumit’s always thirsty eyes too.  Rumit actually needs no introduction, a friend of friends and dushmano ka dushman ,he passed engineering from the same college with distinction in all subjects, wildly famous for his jaw breaking punch, he always threatened innocent opponents ,participants even in tame group discussions to break their teeth if anyone doesn’t agree, it is believed that his roommates in college years used to wear hidden boxing like jaw guards. By this time however no such jaw breaking incident ever took place, Rumit is also famous for styling his hair with minimal availability. Gone are the past days now…. what happened in the evening?...To be continued.

~bd