Dollar Desam

I am reading a book - Dollar Desam (Tamil) by Pa. Raghavan (Kizhakku Pathippagam's). The story narrates the American History of the past 400 years. In a sense, the book is written in a antilogarithmic scale - only a first few pages are dedicated to the initial 200 years, around 120 pages to next 70 years, another 150 pages to next 40 years and so on. As the year becomes more recent the number of pages narrating the incidents also grows. It touches upon all major events and persons right from Independence, Abraham Lincoln, World Wars, Martin Luther King Jr., Watergate, Vietnam war, Korea War, Afghan War, Cold War between US and USSR, Gulf wars etc. Each President of US gets an introduction and character analysis. The achievements and blunders are elaborated.

But somehow I feel, the author compromised on the facts by trying to keep the book interesting. There are some very good masala sentences in the book trying to create interest for the readers to look for the next week (the book came as a series in Kumudham, I think).

The chapters about Osama Bin Laden are factually contradictory among themselves. Author says Osama's father expired in 1968 when Osama was already married and had just finished his degree in AbdulAzziz University and enrolled in another university. Taking Osama's birth year of 1957 into picture, the year 1968 does not fit. As per the book, the first meeting between Osama and Dr. Abdullah Azim happened in 81 or 82, but the next chapter says that Washington invited Osama and Dr. Azim to US in 1980 after the duo gained popularity. Further, after a few chapters, the author says Azim's first visit to US happened when Osama had already started his base in Pakistan (1986 as per the book). The author claims that Osama had murdered Dr. Azim because of differences in opinions - a fact which is not authenticated, yet.

Since, so many such contradictions happens in a span of few pages - I doubt the content in the other chapters too. Though, to get a broader picture the book may help - it is definitely lacking in the attention to details. One can read the book to get an overview of the important persons and events, but cannot vouch for anything in particular.

I hope the author and the publishers bring out better stuff next time.

Budget Class Room

Yesterday, I participated in a pre budget discussion to be aired in Zee Business channel. The program titled "IIML Budget Class Room" will be telecast sometime in the next week. The agenda was to identify the top 5 challenges that our finance minister has to tackle and propose solutions for the same. It was not a free-flow discussion as the anchor co-ordinated and directed the course of the discussion. We put forth many issues right from infrastructure, health, education to energy and security.

Catch it up on TV.