Rediscovering The Joy of Reading

Just today there was an article in one of the dailies on the decline in the habit of reading. But nowadays, for me, books have become my routine, my recreation, my everything - an hour of peace and solitude before I call it a day.

Given my fascination for all things African, which is quite understandable as I spent an invaluable 11 years of my impressionable years in the equatorial and savanna belts of this great continent, I went on an Africa book-shopping spree on Flipkart.

The first book I picked up was The Rain Goddess, a fascinating account of the Rhodesian bush war that started way back in the 1960s after the Unilateral Declaration of Independence. Written by an officer in Rhodesian police force, Peter Stiff, the story covers the life of an ambitious young black Rhodesian, Kephas, who was studying to be a doctor, who had a pretty girlfriend.
But with a twist of fate, Kephas is indoctrinated and gets so intoxicated by power that it gets the better of him. He unleashes his fury of terror on village-folk with his AK-47, survives on bushmeat and  takes shelter in the veld, where the monotony of the landscape is interspersed with the kopjes that regally rise up above the landscape.

Perhaps, the loss of reason, unscrupulous guile and an infinite lust for power in brilliant youngsters like Kephas explains why the once prosperous Rhodesia has deteriorated into the pitiable state that Zimbabwe is in today.

Sara Dunn's Appointment In Zambia is an exciting account of her journey, alongwith her husband, Ross, in the early 1970s from Edinburgh to Chingola in Zambia, in their brand new Hillman Hunter. They covered 20,000 kilometers in nearly 8 weeks, braving the Sahara, crossing the war-torn Biafra region, and transported their car across a tributary of the Congo River on a raft cobbled together with canoes. I could very well identify with their journey beyond the Sahara into equatorial Africa and Savanna grasslands. It was heartwarming to read about Sara and Ross' experiences in Kampala, my birthplace - a place they found extremely pleasant and pleasing! Their drive along the Rift Valley was refreshing - my family traveled on that route several times and we felt that way too - it was rejuvenating.
And then getting to Chingola in the Copperbelt was such a relief for  Sara and Ross - this area was so familiar, so much like home, once, for us!

Another interesting book I read recently was Harnessing The Trade Winds. The book, written by Blanche Rocha D'Souza, gives a fascinating account of India's links with Africa, which date back to the Vedic Age. East African highlands (Mountains of the Moon) were called Chandra Giri, the White Nile was called Shvet Ganga and the Blue Nile, Neel Ganga! Gold from Sofala (today's Mozambique and Zimbabwe) fed ancient India's insatiable hunger for gold!

The book then goes on to describe how seafaring Kutchis and Gujaratis developed intricate trade relationships with the East African region, specifically Zanzibar in the medieval ages. Their ingenuity was  a boon - not only did they profit from trade  but also gained prominence in local administration. Their sea-faring skills were "exploited" by the marauding and pillaging Portuguese, under Vasco da Gama to "discover" the sea-route to India, something that our Gujarati bhais had known for centuries prior to the Europeans!

And then came in the English, who brought in indentured labour from India to build a railway link into Uganda in the 1800s. And the rest is history...

With three books on Africa done, I have headed "home" and am now reading Khushwant Singh's The Sikhs on another industrious and affable Indian community

The Joy of Reading

After a long hiatus, I have rediscovered the joy of reading, all over again. First it was High Commissioner Madanjeet Singh's Culture Of The Sepulchre, which incidentally had been edited by my sister, Neelima. High Commissioner Singh chronicled his stint in the Pearl of Africa, Uganda, during the period of Idi Amin's dictatorship. It was such a pleasure to read the vivid descriptions of Uganda's natural beauty, which makes me so proud for I was born there. I completed reading the whole book in less than a day flat. 

Neeti recently bought Ruchir Sharma's Breakout Nations which again I devoured literally line by line. Ruchir's incisive analysis of emerging markets through his journeys and experiences was again very readable and exciting. He is particularly appreciative of South Korea, an economy he terms as the "Germany of Asia". He prescribes a slower growth for China, which he says would be less disruptive and would lessen friction. His indictment of  crony capitalism and official corruption in India is particularly stinging. And there are question marks on natural resource driven growth in Brazil and Russia.

Now I am reading the venerable American diplomat, Henry Kissinger's On China - a gripping account of China's political and economic evolution over the last 400 or so years. He vividly account of the journey of China from unification under the Qing Dynasty in the 1600s to the very insulting intrusions by Western power, the Opium Wars and his seminal journeys into the post-Cultural Revolution Maoist Middle Kingdom in the 1970s that practically triggered the single most defining event of this age, the rise of China.

Kissinger's numerous anecdotes and recollections of early interactions reveal a single-minded objective that Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou En Lai had - a controlled, definite and robust rise to power, a painfully slow game of wei-qi ( 圍棋) played in statecraft. Wei-qi is a board game, played on a 19x19 board, based on the principles of encirclement and containment. Considered painfully slow in the West, but patiently played in the Orient, the game deals with global influence, interaction between distant stones, keeping the whole board in mind during local fights, and other issues that involve the overall game. Unbelievably, in wei-qi, it is possible to allow a tactical loss when it confers a strategic advantage. 

Perhaps it were these wei-qi strategies laid out by Chairman Mao, Premier Zhou and Chairman Deng Xiaoping that prepared China for the long haul to pre-eminence on the world stage. Even though my political leanings are towards conservative capitalism, the book makes me doff my hat to those pioneering Chinese statesmen.

Reading On China makes my blood curdle that India never had leadership of that stature, excepting PV Narasimha Rao and Atal Behari Vajpayee, to steer the polity beyond tactical moves to defining long-term strategic moves. Prime Minister Rao's Machiavellianism and Prime Minister Vajpayee's vision worked wonders in those 12 years, which have defined the India that we know today. They are the true unsung heroes of India. Only if Prime Ministers Rao and Vajpayee stayed on a little longer.....
But today, we are "blessed" with underachievers.... sic!

I am still reading on Kissinger's visits to Peking (now Beijing), I have to get back to read on what happened next, in the Deng regime. On China is as gripping as a spy thriller and simply unputdownable!

No matter how convenient an ebook on Kindle or an iPad is, there is a certain thrill in reading a physical book. I have rediscovered the joy of reading!