Book Review – The Book of Indian Kings: Stories & Essays

 

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Well, technically, this isn’t a book, but a booklet. As just around 120 pages, this is a book that any capable reader can complete in a day at the most. An hors d'oeuvre of sorts, this book contains excerpts from books by 10 different authors – each well-renowned and established name on their own. Having read a few of their works, I thought that this would be a right book to test the waters on the writings of some other authors – works of whom I have been long wanting to read, but wasn’t sure where to start.

To go by the sequence of chapters in the booklet, Romila Thapar comes across as a historian who is old-school. Facts are laid down and presented in a purely academic fashion. No drama, no grand theatre of words on which the past events of history can play out again in front of our eyes. Interesting enough to make me want to pick her works though.

Abraham Eraly – I once had added his works to my Amazon wish-list en masse, only to remove them all as soon as I read a negative comment. My reading of his chapter vindicated my act. He comes across as bitter and cynical, waving away everything great about everyone as if it is all mere imagination or exaggeration. Not sure whether he is capable of understanding that history is a subject that is always contentious and simply scoffing at everything is the mark of those bitter old souls that spray acrimony at all around.

Kalki – the excerpt of his Tamizh magnum opus ‘Ponniyin Selvan’ is made to sound like a children’s tale, by inept translation. Hardly a page or two, I feel it is an injustice to Kalki while people like Eraly ate up so many pages.

Manu S. Pillai – Here is another modern historian who is full of sarcasm and disregard for the past. Though not on the same, bitter mould as Eraly, his treatment of past history and depiction, filled with derision and disregard for the sentiments, borders on sacrilege. Not sure why people like Eraly and Manu Pillai take pleasure in treating the past figures with disdain!

Salman Rushdie – I have a couple of his other works sleeping in my shelf. This one, an essay on Akbar, has given me a taste of what I can expect from them. Fluent, magical writing, but a tad too lengthy to my liking.

Jadunath Sarkar – One of the prominent historians of India, few people are aware of him these days. This excerpt, simple and straightforward writing, is interesting enough for me to want to read more of his works.

Rajmohan Gandhi, William Dalrymple and Khushwant Singh are all people whose works I have already read enough and relished. So, nothing much to add here.

Vir Sanghvi & Namita Bhandare – Their co-authored work on Madhavrao Scindia makes for interesting reading.

Overall, this is just an excerpt from the works of these authors and is not a complete book by itself. 3 stars!

A.