Byline
234 pages
English

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234 pages
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Description

Byline anthologises M.J. Akbar's finest writings over the last decade, bringing together essays that reflect the author's versatility and range. The book is divided into five seamless sections, each with its own identity, woven together by M.J. Akbar's delectably informal prose.
'Travel' is the first section in which the author shares his passion for history and the occasional fable, the obscure detail, the glorious and the ludicrous. This is followed by 'Politics and History' in which the reader is provided a view of some events and people in the recent past with all the quirks and whims that characterise the great as well as the mundane. The reader then moves on to 'Sidelines' (those delightfully off-centre pieces). M.J. Akbar says in an essay in this section: "The train of thought has moved. But that is the way with trains. They must travel."
'Memories' is the most personal and autobiographical part of the entire selection, mixing regret, nostalgia and deeply felt sorrow for the friends and times gone forever.
Byline ends with a short section entitled 'On a Personal Note' in which James Bond must live to die another day, The Telegraph has to learn to live beyond the age of twenty and Dev Anand remains young forever.

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Publié par
Date de parution 31 décembre 2004
Nombre de lectures 0
EAN13 9789351940470
Langue English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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About the book
Byline anthologizes M.J. Akbar’s finest writings over the last decade, bringing together essays that reflect the author’s versatility and range. The book is divided into five seamless sections, each with its own identity, woven together by M.J. Akbar’s delectably informal prose. Travel is the first section in which the author shares his passion for history and the occasional fable, the obscure detail, the glorious and the ludicrous. This is followed by Politics and History in which the reader is provided a view of some events and people in the recent past with all the quirks and whimsy that characterize the great as well as the mundane. The reader then moves on to Sidelines (those delightfully off-centre pieces). M.J. Akbar says in an essay in this section: ‘The train of thought has moved. But that is the way with trains. They must travel.’ Memories is the most personal and autobiographical part of the entire selection, mixing regret, nostalgia and deeply felt sorrow for the friends and times gone forever. Byline ends with a short section entitled On a Personal Note in which James Bond must live to die another day, The Telegraph has to learn to live beyond the age of 20 and Dev Anand remains young forever.

ROLI BOOKS
This digital edition published in 2014
First published in 2003 by Chronicle Books an imprint of DC Publishers
First published in hardback 2004 by Roli Books Pvt. Ltd.
First published in paperback in 2005 by The Lotus Collection An Imprint of Roli Books Pvt. Ltd M-75, Greater Kailash- II Market New Delhi 110 048 Phone: ++91 (011) 40682000 Email: info@rolibooks.com Website: www.rolibooks.com
Copyright © M.J. Akbar, 2004
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic, mechanical, print reproduction, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Roli Books. Any unauthorized distribution of this e-book may be considered a direct infringement of copyright and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Cover Design: Sneha Pamneja
eISBN: 978-93-5194-047-0
All rights reserved. This e-book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated, without the publisher’s prior consent, in any form or cover other than that in which it is published.
Byline
M.J. Akbar started his career as editor and columnist in the Times of India and then moved to Calcutta to launch the weekly newsmagzine, Sunday , and the Telegraph . He is now the founder-editor of The Sunday Guardian and Editorieal Director of India Today and Headlines Today. In November 1989 he briefly interrupted his career to enter politics as an elected member of the Lok Sabha. That was a hiccup in his journalism, but not in travelling. He returned to writing and editing in 1993. His book India: The Siege Within appeared in 1984, the first of a series of internationally acclaimed books that include Nehru: The Making of India, Kashmir: Behind the Vale, Riot after Riot, The Shade of Swords: Jihad and the Conflict Between Islam and Christianity, and Blood Brothers, all published by Roli Books.
Dedication
I was fortunate, for I never wanted to be anything other than a journalist. It is not always good luck to get what you want. My pudgy, wisecracking uncle, Chacha T.P. Singh, inseparable friend of my father, warned me when I was a child wafting on dreams in the squalid jute mill colony called Telinipara, to beware of the astrologer who told you that you would always travel in a car when you grew up. That prediction could be as correct for the owner of the jute mill as it would be for the driver. Prayer can be answered in more than one way.
Journalism, however, has been kind to me, enriching me with its plenty from a very young age. What I am most grateful for is the opportunity to travel. Journalism is the only profession that permits you to travel without making you a travelling salesman. You become, in a way, a travelling purchaser, picking up images of near and distant life, and reshaping them into an order that will communicate to your reader. Words are the currency of this transaction: you buy images with words, and then you pass them on with words as well. This collection is a kaleidoscope of the last decade, with a little overstretch here and there.
I got my first proper job, after a year of hanging around whoever would allow me to hang around, in 1971 as a trainee in Mumbai with the Times of India . An assured salary can breed unsuspected levels of confidence. In a short while, three of us in that batch of trainees had done something as dramatic as find a flat to share. That was my first independent home, in Juhu. My two friends were S.P. Singh and Udayan Sharma. We packed the seventies with rum and drama, and threaded our days with work and laughter. Both S.P. and Udayan, in entirely different ways, became icons in Hindi journalism. It never lasts, does it? Both died suddenly, in their prime. Both fell to a stroke that came from a malignant nowhere, for no reason, and left only drifting memories behind.
Byline is dedicated to my first and abiding friends in journalism, S.P. Singh and Udayan Sharma.
M.J. Akbar
Contents
TRAVEL
9/11
The HowAllah Conspiracy
All the Views that’s Fit to Print
A 9/11 Diary
Turkish Delights
A Turkey Diary
Atta Turks
An Arab Arc
The Holy Trail: A Jordan Diary
History’s Dice Game: An Israel Diary
A Moor’s Diary
One Ear for the Matador
Wild West, Mild West
A California Diary
A Puff of Smoke in California
Hungry in America
The Fall and Rise of Erectile Dysfunctioning
My Fair Lady
A Traveller’s Notebook
Light Africa
Kenya Diary: Was Bob a Spelling Mistake?
A Bihari in Mauritius Finds Life without Laloo
South by South East: Some FTs in South Africa
Neighbours: Mostly Friendly
To Nepal: Exhilaration with a Pensive Touch
The War of Blood Money: Dhaka Notebook
Your Breathly: A Lahore Diary
V & 7Up: A Dhaka Diary
A CEO in Olives: An Islamabad Diary
Liberty had a Close Shave in Kabul
The Lord of Wars: A Herat Diary
Breakfast with Ismail, Lunch with Dostum
Europe: Plus ça Change
A Foreigner’s Dictionary
Prince au Port: A Portugal Diary
A Paris Diary
Britain: English Spoken Here
Traveller’s Notes
Pagan Christmas: A London Diary
Songs of History
A Season of Mist and Mellow Fruitfulness
A Picture Postcard, Slightly Damp
Are Bengalis a Martial Race?
War, Peace and Something in Between
A Kochi Diary: How Green is my Seacoast
Dal Life: A Kashmir Diary
Kargil: A Madness in their Method
POLITICS AND HISTORY
Role Models: Look Who is Acting Now
From Awara to Yes Boss : A History of India
Was Jawaharlal Nehru a Hindu?
Is Atal Behari Vajpayee a Hindu?
A Mahatma’s Earthquake
A Summit Glossary
Breakfast at Pervez’s
How Do You Rule India?
Politics of the Lynch Mob
Why Modi Deserves Nishan-e-Pakistan
You are my Sonia
Fawlty Globalisation
A Word or Two About the Congress
Terror in Mumbai, Response in India
Sub kuch luta ke hosh mein aaye to kya kiya
A Gandhian Manoeuvre in Kashmir
SIDELINES
The Where-Hair Syndrome
Home Is Where the Heart Is
Give Pakistani Humour a Chance
Theopompus: The First Journalist
A Train of Thought
Dead Woman’s Tales
And That Will Be Quite Enough
Hand-recounts at Calcutta Airport
A Horror Story
Poetry’s Love Lost
Words on a Foolish Tomb
There Was a Young Man With a Beard
Some of My Best Friends are Fruit Flies
Why is that Humbug Tony Greig on TV?
Handle With Care, She’s from Calcutta
Revenge of the Bihari
A Trend in the River
Good Advice
MEMORIES
Goodbye, My Friend, and Sleep Well
Should Calcutta be Reborn?
The Seventies Set and the First Goodbye
The Last Memory of a Young Man
From the Middle Ages
The Laughter Died Young
The Pinprick was Mightier than the Sword
Udayan Sharma
Phoolan
Question to God: Why? Why? Why?
ON A PERSONAL NOTE
The Man Who Could Never be Wrong
A Toast to The Telegraph . . .
Some Thoughts in a Heavy Cold
A Lahore Diary
A successful bazaar is easily defined. You come for a pair of socks and leave with a pair of shoes. By those standards, Anarkali still works. The linger effect is induced by a seamless, ceaseless tide of people past shops that are as unchanging as the banks of a river protecting the flow. A cacophony of brands spills across open piles on the pavements’ edges, while the more respectable shops defend their reputation with order. Some of the spill is clearly spillover from the reject-markets of Bangkok and Dhaka, but that makes it good value, if you know how to bargain. In the midst of such economic cross-currents is a large island of dark, musty calm, a nineteenth-century bookshop that stopped in the twentieth only to pick up a few mementoes on its way to the twenty-first. Jinnah, in gleaming monocle and cigar, dominates one wall. A sign etched into the wood of furniture gleaming with age says ‘Books are the only immortality’. The quote is from Gladstone; Jinnah would have approved. Other portraits on walls include the great Urdu poets Iqbal, Hali, Mir and Shibli. This is appropriate, for half the books in the shop are in English and half in Urdu. The English section is filled with classics from Shakespeare to Shaw with one prominent leap backwards to Dante. The clientele is clearly the few students of English Literature left in Lahore. I wonder, however, if anyone in Pakistan has actually read Dante’s Purgatory and its description of the Prophet of Islam. I almost bought Shaw’s Plays for Puritans but could not discover the courage to disturb the middle-aged manager hammering away diligently at his Underwood typewriter. I wonder where he gets the ribbon for that typewriter.
Outside, a few steps away, I notice Abdul Ghani’s kulfi in a glass box but Abdul

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