BOOK MATTERS
Salman Khan, author of The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined (Twelve Books), needs no introduction, even though he has nothing to do with Bollywood. Named one of Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World” in 2012, he is the founder of Khan Academy, a virtual university reaching five million unique visitors every month. Over 15,000 classrooms in 234 countries use the lessons and software produced by the academy. How did this nonprofit, incorporated only in 2008, become such a phenomenon in a short time? The answer, simply put, is “Teaching” with a capital T. “I wanted to teach the way I wished that I myself had been taught,” Khan writes. “Which is to say, I hoped to convey the sheer joy of learning, the thrill of understanding the universe.” Eschewing a top-down model with its narrowly defined classrooms, Khan advocates a creative and more accessible, flexible approach. He points out, among other things, why learning and credentialing should be separate. Khan, who has an MBA from Harvard and three degrees from MIT, worked for a hedge fund before turning to education.
And Laughter Fell from the
Sky (William Morrow) is Jyotsna
Sreenivasan’s debut novel for
adults. She focused on children’s
fiction previously, and also wrote
three nonfiction books, including
one on the activist Ela Bhatt.
For her novel, Sreenivasan drew
inspiration not only from her experiences
as a daughter of Indian
immigrants, but from The House of
Mirth, a novel by Edith Wharton. The character Lily was
fascinating and frustrating because “her situation—the
need she felt to fit into her society by marrying the right
kind of person—seemed so similar to the situation
faced by many Indian-Americans,” writes Sreenivasan,
adding, “So, I wanted to explore a Lily-type character
who is a modern-day Indian-American woman.” Enter
Rasika. This dutiful daughter agrees to go along with
her family’s plans for her, although she is accomplished
and financially independent. That changes when she
reconnects with Abhay, an old family friend. They seem
to have little in common, but Rasika is attracted to him.
Sreenivasan created an online Gender Equality Bookstore
and a website called SecondGenStories.
In Tarun Tejpal’s The Story of
My Assassins (Melville House),
five assassins are out to get the
narrator, who is an India-based
investigative journalist and a
philanderer. He has no problem,
and is even pleased, when his
mistress comes to the defense
of the assassins. Why? Because
the narrator’s mistress, who sees
the assassins as mere pawns in a larger dirty game, becomes more amorous when she is
drawn to another passion—activism. This may sound
bizarrely funny. True, it’s fiction, but the broader outlines
of the story were inspired by Tejpal’s own experiences
as a muckraking journalist and founding editor of Tehelka,
a newsweekly. Known for its explosive exposés of
corruption and criminality in India, Tehelka almost went
out of business due to pressure from high places. But it
survived, with vigorous public support, and continues
to thrive under the editorship of Shoma Chaudhury. As
for Tejpal’s latest novel (his second), it is “a masterful
account of 21st-century ambition, inequality, and power
from one of India’s most fearless writers,” according to
author Katherine Boo.
Aatish Taseer’s Stranger to
History: A Son’s Journey Through
Islamic Lands (Graywolf Press)
finally gets its well-deserved release
in the U.S. Earlier, it was
published to acclaim in India and
the U.K. He is the son of Indian
journalist Tavleen Singh and the
late Salmaan Taseer, a Pakistani
governor who was murdered
last year because of his opposition
to blasphemy laws targeting minorities. Aatish Taseer’s journey from Turkey and Saudi Arabia to Iran
and Pakistan is more than a travelogue. It’s a memoir,
even a quest to understand his complex heritage straddling
two religions and two nations. He reflects on his
troubled relationship with a largely absent father, and
his attempts to reconcile with him. “My aim was to
tie together the two threads of experience from that
summer: the new, energized Islamic identity working
on young Muslims and my own late discovery of my
father’s religion,” Taseer writes. The book was finished
well before his father’s untimely death, but it ends with
another tragic event: the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
His novels are titled The Temple-Goers and Noon.
Enjoyed reading Khabar magazine? Subscribe to Khabar and get a full digital copy of this Indian-American community magazine.
