“Freedom At Midnight” and “The Men Who Killed Gandhi”

I am lumping these two books together as they are on the same subject and I thought offered a different perspective from what I knew about or was taught about history.  Both were great reads - only I read them nearly two decades apart.

India & Indians are quite open about hypocrisy in our lives, inevitable since the system is geared up towards that.  A honest discussion is almost rare and shied upon - we are more queasy than the Brits on a lot of subject.

Amar Chitra Katha

An important part of my childhood, and one of the most defining contributions would be that of Amar Chitra Katha comics.  My generation in fact owes significant gratitude to the founder Anant Pai for helping shape our thoughts and opinions, and also educating us about history and folklore.

It is inevitable, so let me declare that I don’t have any relation to Mr. Pai, but have basked in the rub-off of having the same surname.  So when I refer to him as ‘Uncle Pai’ it is only using the name by which he was popularly called.

As the story goes the founder was quite disappointed to see students at a quiz not able to answer questions on Indian History but cracking all questions related to the US. (This was in the 70s – decades before the internet, telecom and liberalisation –so history is what we had a lot of!)