The anklet bells are stilled

On Balance: An Autobiography (Penguin, Rs 350) by Leila Seth is a delightfully-written book by a woman who is well-known, not just as the mother of Vikram Seth, but also for being the first woman chief justice of a high court in India and the first woman judge of the Delhi high court. With this book, she proves herself to be an impressive author as well. Seth talks about her personal and professional lives with uniform ease and peppers the narration of even the gravest episodes with quiet humour. She says in the Preface that the idea of the book was conceived during months of painful incarceration occasioned by a fractured ankle. But what brought the book into being was the birth of her granddaughter. In keeping with the conditions of its genesis, the twin strains of anguish and elation run throughout the book, but they are deftly kept ‘on balance’ by Seth.

Close (Headline, £6) by Martina Cole is the story of Patrick Brodie — the man who “wants it all”. His trials and tribulations, as he makes his way in the big bad world and then tries to hold on to what he has achieved, make up the stuff of this novel. Close promises to be a good read for those with a taste for bestsellers of this kind — that is, if they can handle the considerable girth of the book.

Above Average (HarperCollins, Rs 195) by Amitabha Bagchi is a story of growing-up with which most university-boys and girls would find it easy to identify. Arindam Chatterjee joins the IIT and so embarks on a life of cracking complex mathematical puzzles while dreaming of making it big as a drummer at the IIT Rock Fest. The title of the book comes from a comment overheard in IIT, Delhi, and quoted as one of the epigraphs — “I might not be good looking but I am definitely above average”. This sets the tone of the novel, which can be sentimental at times but is also not without touches of self-deprecation.

Subhashitavali: An Anthology of Comic, Erotic and Other Verse (Penguin, Rs 200) selected and translated from the Sanskrit by A.N.D. Haksar is a collection of epigrammatic verses on myriad topics, ranging from nature, devotion, friendship, virtue, to “all aspects of love, symbolic and actual, emotional as well as physical”. The original Subhashitavali, from which this anthology has been selected, was compiled in circa 15th century by Vallabhadeva. It is difficult to translate the terseness and beauty of Sanskrit verses into English and the stiffness is evident in some of the translations. But, on the whole, one manages to get a taste of the richness of the original texts in this collection.

Transforming Schools — Empowering Children (Sage, Rs 480) by Arun Kapur can be a valuable guide for those teachers, who, aware of the out-datedness of the present education system, are eager to re-create it along new lines. Kapur underlines the importance of increased interaction between students and teachers. He shows how the low priority accorded to teaching as a profession has resulted in a lack of motivation among those who take up the job. This, in turn, lowers the standard of education imparted to students. Perhaps Kapur should not have provided the model “day in the life of a teacher” by Vidya Surendaran. If one has to spend her life flitting in and out of classrooms and devoting each minute of her ‘free’ time in correcting notebooks, then only the bravest will dare to embrace such a life.