Matters of the heart
♦ IT WILL ALWAYS BE YOU (Penguin, Rs 175) by Megha Rao is yet another teenage romance story. Although the prose is fun and breezy, there is little in the plot that is new. The protagonist, Aditya Mehra, learns from her parents that she has to move to Chennai for her studies. Aditya reluctantly leaves her hometown, Coimbatore, and her darling younger brother, Amar, behind. She has been told that in Chennai she will be looked after by Murugan Thevar, her father's college roommate. At the Thevar household, she gets along with everyone except her namesake, Aditya 'Tiger' Thevar, the 'rockstar' son of Murugan. The rest of the story - the two Adityas fall for each other after a few hiccups - is boring and predictable.
♦ TAKE-2: 50 FILMS THAT DESERVE A NEW AUDIENCE (Hay House, Rs 399) by Deepa Gahlot features analyses of a judicious mix of Hindi films made before the turn of the millennium. Some of them are famous, while others are not so well known, albeit classics in their own right. The author rues the fact that in present times, "films made by the mainstream industry hardly seem to be about flesh and blood people". Even failed films of the past had plots that the audience could relate to. The first movie in this anthology is Karma (1933), which was co-produced by Himanshu Rai. Karma is better known for the lengthy on-screen kiss shared by Devika Rani and Rai; however, as Gahlot points out, it has other unique things to its credit. It was one of the first crossover films made in India, and went on to become a critical and commercial success in England. Some other films that Gahlot has talked about are Roti (1942), Miss Mary (1957) and Anokhi Raat (1968). This book would certainly appeal to people interested in learning about the history of Indian cinema.
♦ THE NAKED SURGEON: THE POWER AND PERIL OF TRANSPARENCY IN MEDICINE (Speaking Tiger, Rs 350) by Samer Nashef is a rather unusual book on surgery. It is lucid, free of medical jargon, and is packed with anecdotes and jokes. Nashef explores "how the concept of quality measurement came to be an essential part of medical and surgical practice." The author, who is a cardiac surgeon, also questions some of the basic assumptions that rating agencies make while evaluating the performance of hospitals. For instance, a hospital can have a high mortality rate for heart attack patients, but that might have nothing to do with the quality of treatment - it could be that more patients in a critical condition are referred to that hospital. This book will help people with heart ailments make informed choices.
