PUNJABI SAGA (1857-2000) THE MONUMENTAL STORY OF FIVE GENERATIONS OF A PUNJABI FAMILY By Prakash Tandon, Rupa, Rs 295 Autobiographies do not find a market easily unless the author is already a celebrity. Nirad C. Chaudhuri's Autobiography of an Unknown Indian was an exception. Although not in the same league, the revised and updated version of Prakash Tandon's previously published work owes its appeal to the harmonious blend of autobiography and national history. Not to forget the author's ability to recreate the old Punjab as it was. Tandon's formidable career in commerce and management at home and abroad - he has taught at the universities of Los Angeles, Berkeley and Boston - suitably equipped him for the task. Punjabi Saga provides a broad glimpse of the changing social and political milieu of Punjab during the Muslim and British rule. The narrative flow, matched by a neat, polished style - the description of elaborate nuptial rituals is one instance - compels immediate interest. Tandon offers a vivid account of the festivals during the colourful festive seasons of Dusserah and Diwali originating from the Ramayana. In fact, the vignettes of Punjabi life and culture, like the much-awaited visit to the bazaar to enjoy the Diwali, are some of its most arresting features. Tandon also offers that shedding their insularity, the new generation Punjabis have scattered all over India and abroad in all the professions - the army, medicine, technology, accounting, management and so on. We must have found something in common between us and the Englishmen which made us get on well together from the start, claims the author. The long Muslim domination was 'often intolerant and usually zealous', while the British impact was comparatively 'gentle and persuasive'. However, the Punjabi society was adaptable to every change. In England, the author lived and studied for eight years and was struck by the academic and social freedom of its campus life. Tandon makes several illuminating observations on the British national character and its influence on him. He came to 'discover that the people known for their strangeness and formality were sentimental at heart and held back nothing, provided you became one of them as I did'. He holds that the extent to which Indian political and economic thinking has always veered left must be largely due to the influence of Fabian and socialist ideals on generations of young Indians during their student years in England: 'They sensed in it a genuine sympathy for Indian aspirations.' No Punjabi, nor any Bengali, can recall the horrors of Partition with equanimity. The author however, recounts the tragedy of Partition, and the large-scale disruption and sufferings it caused, in touching terms. It also signalled the 'end of old Punjab', as also the decline of the pleasant Calcutta, as utter shabbiness and neglect took over. Calcutta was a city of vitality and apathy, wealth and poverty, life and decay, as Tandon so tellingly puts it: 'Here was a town without a social conscience. Its civic life had once made a great name for the city; its politicians were men of all-India stature but they appeared to have left no legacy of running the day to day affairs'. Dating between British or American officers and the Anglo-Indian or Westernized Indian Christian girls was common during wartime. However, as Tandon points out, not many marriages resulted from such contacts. The relationships seemed to have been confined to having a good time. The Americans were found to be more informal and generous than the English. Besides, they openly criticized the British for the poverty, illiteracy, poor communications and general inefficiency in the country. Tandon too feels that the British had come to Punjab in a time of chaos, and left it in the same state. Cast in the heroic mould, Subhas Chandra Bose and his Indian National Army influenced Tandon. The INA saga triggered a revolutionary upsurge at the civil and military level which prompted the British decision to quit India. According to Tandon, the recurring short wars between India and Pakistan did not leave scars behind, nor did it inspire vendettas. But they did drain precious resources that should have gone into growth. The Chinese attack was, however, the result of Indian diplomatic blunders, according to Tandon. But nothing could hold back Punjab. A large work such as this could do with a proper index. If nothing else, it would certainly have made the reviewer's job easier.