Durbar:A Book Review

65 years of history encapsulated in 300 pages. Durbar reflects the journey of a journalist as privileged as the rulers of the country who saw India in a different light. Tavleen Singh has written a book so gripping and lucid, it’s an endless page turner.

Being a novice in many things political the book helped me connect incidents to its proper roots. Also being born in a family where politics is hardly discussed making sense of history and putting one and two together rested entirely upon my shoulders. As a media student and more importantly an Indian I couldn't have turned a blind eye to such important events in history.

The book delves as much in the Persian carpeted socialist houses of the Prime Minister as much as the bare face of poverty, hunger and dearth of rural India. A blatant contrast of the shining and starched clothes of the ‘drawing room elite’ as Tavleen Singh puts it and of the naked, pot bellied dying children of the villages.

Tavleen Singh through her years of being a political reporter has written a fine memoir of the life of a journalist entangled with the life of politics. An aspiring journalist myself the book opened a window for me to see the world of journalism from a different eye; its wrath and charm. Death threats, mysterious phone calls, stubborn colleagues, connections and smartness.

During the rule of the Congress Party, from Nehru to Rajiv, most of our economic and foreign policies remain unchanged. Indira Gandhi is considered as the strongest Prime Minister India ever had, as far as public opinion goes. Many say it because it was under her that the 1971 Bangladesh War was won. Apart from this she had a charisma, an aura, a personality which exuded something more than confidence; something less than deceit more than faith. Unlike Rajiv she could relate to the poor, so as they thought she did, which is the whole point of politics.

Durbar tries to catch the nerve and pulse of politics. During Rajiv Gandhi’s rule major decisions went wrong. It explained how small incidents ballooned into magnanimous problems which have now taken a deep root in our conscious. The Khalistan movement, the Kashmir conflict, the North-Eastern states problem. The frankness with which Tavleen Singh has highlighted them is commendable knowing that these revelations could come at great personal cost. The cost being relations with her and Rajiv & Sonia being disrupted.

Moreover one can say that finding fault with the government and it’s rulers is easy but finding a solution equally tough. After reading the book I have come to the conclusion that she has given appropriate reasons and alternate solutions. The book is recommended to anyone interested in history and politics. Anyone who is interested in the life of India which at one point and still is a mirage of religion, politics and the Gandhi family.

Nishtha Juneja.