Books: Off the Mark


	April 3, 2000

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Off the Mark

Well-written memoirs of a dynamic army chief--with the real story missing

By H.S.Gill

OF SOME CONSEQUENCE
BY K.SUNDARJI
HARPERCOLLINS
PRICE: Rs. 250
PAGES: 175

Authorspeak

India Today issue dated April 3, 2000 General K. Sundarji died in early 1999, leaving behind just a third of the 105 episodes he had originally planned to pen about the Indian Army and his life and times. This partially written memoir, which ends as abruptly as it begins, could easily have been a bestseller had Sundarji only used the 10 years of his retirement to write about the infamous Operation Bluestar, which he personally conducted; Brasstacks, an exercise with troops and armour at his own singular desire, which prompted Pakistan into a similar confrontation and nearly started a war; the ramrodding of the cadre review and the unthought of command and staff streams, which nearly broke up the army; the final selection of the Bofors gun into field service; and his turning a British-tradition-seeped fighting force into something like a commercial company with all the trappings of the Mumbai corporate world.

Alas Sundarji was unable to do anything of the kind. He had confided in Vani, his wife: "I will write about Bluestar and other matters in good time." But he was never able to leave that legacy. In the absence of the real story, all that remains are tales of his regimental life in the North-West Frontier in the 1940s as a subaltern- -- good marks to him here, for he indeed did write with candour and a sense of humour -- his army days in Srinagar after the Pakistani raiders had attacked in 1947, and his life in the early '60s with the United Nations Force in the Congo busy fighting the Katangese.

All in all, this book is a disappointment. Not that Sundarji couldn't write well -- even in Of Some Consequence he has displayed a down-to-earth, straightforward style, writing as he used to talk to so many of us, shunning all the padding and the frills that many authors fall prey to and recounting somewhat like a child his "early" days.

Unfortunately, what his readers wanted from him were his "after years", of Bluestar, the army's misadventure in Sri Lanka, the modernisation of the army in which he played a commendable role, his close equation with Arun Singh, the de facto defence minister in place of Rajiv Gandhi who was never available. It would appear that after having served the appetisers, the table captain couldn't serve the main course. Destiny had deemed otherwise.

Authorspeak
Prosenjit Das Gupta
Urban Safari

For Prosenjit Das Gupta, going around in circles can be a good thing. Now he's telling others how to do it. In his recently published 10 Walks in Calcutta (HarperCollins) -- a literary global positioning system -- Das Gupta, 55, combines maps, history and philosophical asides to allow readers a zoom-in on the city. You must be a walkaholic to write this one. Das Gupta qualifies: he's logged over 150 miles simply walking around the city, Pentax 1000 slung over shoulder, notebook in hand.

The book is more discerning. It picks the 10 most picturesque and heritage-dotted routes to give walkers a "feel" of the city. There's the labyrinthine Chitpore Road past the crumbling mansions of old, affluent Bengali families including the Tagores' house in Jorasanko; the riverfront stroll past the ghats; the "path of knowledge" through the city's academic district of College Street. Das Gupta prefers the offbeat road, cramming the book with minutia rather than textbook history. He actually barged into people's houses collecting facts, and at times got into trouble with the law. Like when he was shooting a photograph of Writers' Building and the security men thought him to be a terrorist .

The book took Das Gupta -- a Presidency College alumnus who now works with a refractories firm -- 12 years to compile. He was inspired by a leaflet on walking in Aachen, Germany, and Desmond Doig's Calcutta: An Artist's Impressions.

It's hard to tell who the book is for. Tips on clothing, about carrying water and taking a hepatitis shot before eating out, smack of a manual for foreign tourists. But Das Gupta insists it is "first and foremost" for Calcuttans. "They never really see their city, they never look up," he says. "If you want to study the jungle, you'll have to get down from your jeep." Meanwhile, the book's writer himself may be on the road to Part II. But that's another story

-Labonita Ghosh

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