amar

It's part of an anthology. Or so I hope. A little story of revenge simmering inside an administrative officer across decades while he has the power to decide, or rather influence, the life of a person, death more so. Very few books paint a picture more accessible and subtler, ironically at the same time, of power structure in lesser words.

Or is it just very telling of the dull life bureaucrats are often fated to live in places remote and unfashionably uninteresting? That they need something very personal invisibility clinging to them so that they can get some sense of satisfaction from it knowing fully well that do not have any real power broadly speaking, being the instrument of the state they are? I have doubts. I reckon it's just very personal in the guise of discussing something broader and deeper and not the other way round, which is usually the case with books. And that's good.

Excellent book; a novella. It's essentially a long story. Excellent nonetheless. What fine storytelling. Sprinkled with that occasional signature dry humour with or without the tinges of officialese which, more often than not, can be quite funny entirely on its own.

An excellent slow read which goes tedious at the end but that's fine, it's an autobiography after all. Of someone who lived a hundred years and was privileged enough to be around and in the thick of things - someone in his 30s at the time of independence and in 80s when the next century took its turn. Lots of love and malice and I will take the author's word on the truths proclaimed. The middle is the best, just like the life maybe. Because the end and start either we don't live enough or rush and forget. Very different from his Train to Pakistan, but interestingly different.

I didn't rate it 5 due to few reasons. I'd mention one of them. Author's like for Sanjay Gandhi and in a twisted way emergency. Yes, he hasn't mentioned it directly but it shows. In the end he shows how he was just a privileged son, of a privileged father, who didn't have to do much to get things in life and hence his liking to autocratic people and imagining there are gross corrections needed made in the world and the few with power and privilege are magically capable of doing that or even specially ordained to. In fact I think it was just the naivety of the author. His “let them eat cake” moment. I actually felt pity on author for that.

But the book nevertheless is quite good and of course the accounts produced as well, quite honestly at that I'd say.

Like many books I eventually end up liking, sometimes on the second read - which I don't often do, I like this book not just for what it was supposed to write but what it ended up writing in spite of it. Towards the end the book becomes very lyrical and hastened. It felt like on those good short train journeys. Comfortable, pleasant, and enriching.

Felt very slow and tedious at a lot places. Too frequent in fact. At times it seems there were just copy paste from online newspapers. It was good to see some insider details on apparently how these two neighbouring agencies work (whatever the veracity). On Indian side though it seems they based everything on a “Monisha” which of course sounded absurd. But one thing I can say — the book has little to no literary merit — as in the language and flow; and it is not a very insightful book. It's a good start though.

I didn't find authors biased. They just lacked depth and details.

It started tepidly but then I continued. I had hopes. But eventually it ended up feeling like I had just read too many snippets of Wikipedia articles and popular podcast transcripts. No, I wasn't expecting escapades or sexcapade of James Bond books or the cold blooded classic lingering espionage of Le Carré and his kind, the two sets of literature the author references quite a bit in this work of his, but the least I was looking for some unique or original insights, something to take away from, some coherence, some deep dive, especially since it was written by an ex-chief of one of the premier most espionage shops in the modern world. That wasn't there. It was always tough and go. Topics were picked and then abandoned in no time. It seems the effort is, in this book, to cover too much in too little time and space. In fact the hope of all that is what kept me at this book. It could be some sort of crash course on modern espionage, or so; uninteresting as well, I am afraid.

A book that will, I believe, connect with everybody who has always been moving or wanting to move but never moved. This book, like many other works by Hemingway, comes to you slow and terse and with the initial resistance. But it comes to you, it comes to you. It is like reading something while being in sync with the life of the book itself, in its most bare form.

I found this book so utterly disinteresting that my reading paused to almost nothing for a few weeks. Finally I decided to out this book out of its misery and donated it to my RWA's library, having scan-read the remaining 60-70%; that was rather to just finish the ritual of marking the book complete. That might also help me not picking it ever again. I am slowly making peace with the realisation that I have always hated monologues. And that an uninteresting book might not be worth your time.

मैं चौंक गया था “रुकतापुर” नाम देख कर लैंड्मार्क्स में ऐसे टहलते हुए। मुझे याद है जब पहली बार यह शब्द सुना था मेरे गाँव से २०-२५ किमी दूर एक आउटर सिग्नल पर जब ज़ंजीर खींचकर ट्रेन रोकी थी किसी ने। बस फिर मैंने ये किताब यूँ ही उठा लिया।

क्या बेहतरीन किताब है! ना सिर्फ़ आँकड़ों और तथ्यों के साथ, बल्कि उसके बावजूद भी बांधे रखती है पढ़ने वाले को। बिहारी इससे बहुत जल्दी जुड़ पाएँगे, इसके नैरटिव से, लेकिन ऐसी किताब देश के सारे हिस्सों में पढ़ी जानी चाहिए। “रुकतापुर” को मैं “The Silent Coup” और “Everybody Loves a Good Draught” की श्रेणी में रखूँगा।

It scared me a little. Reading this book echoed some of the sentiments I've felt, over these years - albeit rationally less intensely (or honestly) than the protagonist (or I want to believe that), in a very precise and seemingly casual way. Something I have mostly not been prepared to do. “...that my nature was such that my physical needs often got in the way of my feelings...”, saying something like this is so stark, and simple, and accessible. I don't like monologues, but I really like this short of a long monologue. And the absurdity of the existing questioned in a way of explaining.

It's a good read.

As many have pointed out it's a travel diary. A long one and a very interesting one. Though towards the end, as it happens with many books, Rushby just rushed through. Maybe he had a target number of pages in mind. He just went through the motions since in the beginning he had announced those chapters, chose places. Last quarter of the book felt unnecessarily haphazard.

It's not really a historical account or investigation. In fact far from it and while it disappointed in the beginning, I don't really mind it having finished the book. It's a travelogue with critical thoughts applied to things he has read, hears (a lot of that is just gossip and random blabbering from people and he admits that).

It's an unplanned, at his own pace whims kind of journey and he wrote about it.

Often he is quick to dismiss beliefs or even accepted narratives which are without evidence, countering with opinion which are - again - without evidence. I personally agreed with most of them but that's how they're done. Also, he doesn't seem to have consulted with anyone regarding spelling of names of people who he came across and just wrote it down the way a Brit in 1700s might have heard it written ot down.

For me one of the most fascinating part of the book remained author's equation, and later monologues and certain but subtle yearning and some kind of tension, with a fellow Brit he met in Jabalpur and explored the area around together with her. It lingers on the pages until the end without being talked about much. Or maybe I just read too much between the lines.

It's a good read if you're not looking for a history book, but a critical travelogue. Besides, I would appreciate the book just for the scenes author evokes by his description of the geographies of the places he visited, passed by, sometimes almost instantly pushing you to go and see those sparse places.

It's a light, OK read. Paced well. Author is anything but a seasoned writer and that shows, in a nice way. At times it does feel like old diary entries. That's not bad.

Constant turn offs were the mild to explicit adulations throughout the book. Felt more like forced insertions.

Nothing noteworthy though.

It's just that — a letter. It rather felt like a bullet list — yes, everything proper and we should all know; but it was just a hastily written letter which became a book due to the fame of the author. That's the tragedy, not the content on the book, which you really don't need if you are already initiated into feminism, and if you're not then there are much better ways to get to that.

It's felt like that newspaper article which is quickly assembled to fill the empty space in tomorrow's edition listing all the right things.

It's the kind of book I like to read. It's my cinema equivalent of coming of age. It is in fact a coming of age book; coming of age a little late. I kept wanting to listen to the protagonist. It felt personal without overburdening the book with clichés. The quick, but mercifully short, turn from hopeless sort of nihilism and cynicism to hope was jarring a bit. Out of place.

A little more indulgent than I would, ironically, have preferred this book to be. But it's an important book. If nothing then just for the fact that he had seen India from before it came to be and for many decades after that. He was also always very close to the corridors Of power in Delhi. That's about it.