It comes both as warning and wisdom when you flip through this very personal adventure ride of Virgin's Richard Branson. Those who are acaqainted to see him only in "sleazy" promos for his airline, now he is more visible at book stands. And very passionately shares his passion for flight and how to turn that into billion dollars. But he doesn't share that you need to have that in you which he was borth with -- a sky full of privileges. Even then, his book is a moderate read if it's not cnverted into a Discover Channel documentary soon. Opt for the documentary, though belated...
When passion takes wings, only sky is the limit. Or may be not. Richard Branson shares this mantra of what he calls the “spaceport”, the aerospace adventures, in Reach for the Sky, a story of him and his pals who dared to circumnavigate the world surfing through air. Dedicated to his childhood hero, the Word War II veteran Douglas Bader, the book chronicles the evolution of flight that Wright Brothers set off and aeronautical engineers like Burt Rutan sculpted to the perfection and to the delight of enthusiasts like Robert Fosset and Branson himself. Fosset leads the bogey of madmen who devoted their lives to their dreams to sail around the world in planes, balloons and airships, before their adventure devour them. Branson narrates how he himself survived many a flight in balloon or planes landing midway into sea and mountains. But his passion to take wings remains ablaze. Branson sums it up with Mark Twain — “We shall see what we shall see, before we die. I have a dream — a world of it.”
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
A bard who learnt to twitter
A fellow bard
A random take on my friend Danish Shafi's unpublished but riveting tale All Birds Left, a novella set in Old Delhi.
Tales about Old Delhi are abound. Tales emanating from Old Delhi are rarity. Danish Shafi, a young hack and an old dilliwala, has ventured to unearth what happened and followed in the lives of people residing in Turkman Gate area when Sanjay Gandhi-ordered bulldozers razed down their houses during the Emergency days. “It was a ghettoised mini Pakistan,” was the government excuse behind the move and so no matter if some of ‘mini Pakistanis’ had to be maimed for that.
Zaibu, who has just gained a wife, loses his house. He escapes to real Pakistan and on return see the revenge and revolution coming via politics. His campaign bears fruit and locals get compensated by new houses. But they later feel cheated and crib about claustrophobic living in the burrows…While Zaibu’s politics doesn’t quite take off, he weaves dreams in his son Khairu’s education in a public school.
Khairu, riding on his public school English, gradually takes on the world and shapes his father’s dreams – he enters Delhi University, get employment in a famous food joint, works in an international call centre…and finally lands up in a newspaper office as a journalist and writes articles about the area. The father can’t be more proud than seeing his son’s name in print. Well, this is the most beautiful aspect of the story when a boy from old Delhi rides on the new city bandwagon and finds the new cultural milieu so palpably different and so vigorously enticing. He helps people from the outside world, his colleagues, shade preoccupied notions about the place and people … But alas, destiny decides otherwise and before he could fulfil all his and his father’s ambitions, he dies all of a sudden.
One may find it hard to agree with the writer’s denouement, but it might well be an indication that people in the walled city find it too tough to come out of despair…
Though well-crafted and an engrossing read, the novel lapses at places — despite starting from the Turkman Gate demolition episode, it fails to comment upon how the minorities were discriminated against by the government and what roles people like Sanjay Gandhi, Jagmohan and very local Ruksana Sultana played during Emergency; it too concisely informs about Zaibu’s political life; and lastly I personally don’t like why Khairu dies all of a sudden… a too depressing a note to end the story. But comments apart, it’s a must read for those who nurture tastebuds for stories about Dilli and Dehelvis.
A random take on my friend Danish Shafi's unpublished but riveting tale All Birds Left, a novella set in Old Delhi.
Tales about Old Delhi are abound. Tales emanating from Old Delhi are rarity. Danish Shafi, a young hack and an old dilliwala, has ventured to unearth what happened and followed in the lives of people residing in Turkman Gate area when Sanjay Gandhi-ordered bulldozers razed down their houses during the Emergency days. “It was a ghettoised mini Pakistan,” was the government excuse behind the move and so no matter if some of ‘mini Pakistanis’ had to be maimed for that.
Zaibu, who has just gained a wife, loses his house. He escapes to real Pakistan and on return see the revenge and revolution coming via politics. His campaign bears fruit and locals get compensated by new houses. But they later feel cheated and crib about claustrophobic living in the burrows…While Zaibu’s politics doesn’t quite take off, he weaves dreams in his son Khairu’s education in a public school.
Khairu, riding on his public school English, gradually takes on the world and shapes his father’s dreams – he enters Delhi University, get employment in a famous food joint, works in an international call centre…and finally lands up in a newspaper office as a journalist and writes articles about the area. The father can’t be more proud than seeing his son’s name in print. Well, this is the most beautiful aspect of the story when a boy from old Delhi rides on the new city bandwagon and finds the new cultural milieu so palpably different and so vigorously enticing. He helps people from the outside world, his colleagues, shade preoccupied notions about the place and people … But alas, destiny decides otherwise and before he could fulfil all his and his father’s ambitions, he dies all of a sudden.
One may find it hard to agree with the writer’s denouement, but it might well be an indication that people in the walled city find it too tough to come out of despair…
Though well-crafted and an engrossing read, the novel lapses at places — despite starting from the Turkman Gate demolition episode, it fails to comment upon how the minorities were discriminated against by the government and what roles people like Sanjay Gandhi, Jagmohan and very local Ruksana Sultana played during Emergency; it too concisely informs about Zaibu’s political life; and lastly I personally don’t like why Khairu dies all of a sudden… a too depressing a note to end the story. But comments apart, it’s a must read for those who nurture tastebuds for stories about Dilli and Dehelvis.
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