Kamat Book Club

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Page Last Updated: February 17, 2024

Selections by Vikas Kamat

These are the books I have read time and again.  I have provided links to the titles are available online for purchase.
-Vikas Kamat

Man Eaters of India
Jim Corbett takes you to the forests of Kumaon on a trilling and enchanting expedition. I enjoy reading it now as I did as a young boy. [buy]

 

Preprocessing and Post processing of the Soul
English translation of U.R. Anantamurthy's 1965 classic (Samskara in Kannada) is a great saga of ancient Hindu customs and human dilemmas. A worthy translation by A. K. Ramanujan [buy]

 

The Madam of Kanooru
The English translation of  dramatic Kannada novel Kanoouru Heggadati by K. V. Puttappa stands tall among the fiction I have read,  "Oh Destiny", being the favorite chapter. [buy]

 

Experiments With Truth
English translation of Mahatma Gandhi's autobiography is a necessary reading for anyone who wants to believe in the healing power of soul, and non-violence as a potent weapon. [buy]

 

Wonder that was India
Masterpiece by A. L. Basham, probably the finest introduction to Indian culture by a "mleccha". In production of Kamat's Potpourri, and The Timeless Theater CD-ROM, I have heavily relied on this book whenever in doubt. [buy]

 

Bride of the Mountains
K.V. Puttappa's Malegalalli Madumagalu (in Kannada) is an epic of a novel for lovers of poetry and nature.  K.V.Puttappa, a noted poet captures the timeless beauty of  the Malnad area. You laugh, you cry, you wonder, you learn. I translated the entire 700 pages to my bride on our honeymoon.

 

Darkness of Communalism
Tamas, by Bhishma Sahani is a must read for students of ethnology, lovers of freedom and for Indians born after the independence. Later made into a controversial tele-film, the book illustrates the anatomy of communal riots in India. It is so intense, I could hardly read more than a few pages at a time. It is honest as it is disturbing. [buy]

 

Rajaji's Ramayan
C. Rajagopalachari, while an eminent leader and Congressman, was also a distinguished scholar and has rendered the Ramayan in commoner's language.[buy]

 

The Unconquered
Single most book that has influenced my life is Ajeya (the unconquered, in Kannada), the biography of Chandrashekhar Azad by Babu Krishnamurthy. As a ten year old, I had read it so many times, that when I met the author when on a vacation, I recited several pages of the book word-to-word much to his amazement! A very well researched work, it illustrates the struggle of young revolutionaries in India to drive the British out of the country.

 

Born Thieves of India
This award winning autobiography (Uchalya, in Marathi; see my translated excerpts) deeply pains me now as it did years ago when I read it first. It exposes a caste in rural India who are condemned to be thieves, generation after generation. [out of print]

 

Krishnashastry's Mahabharat
The great Mahabharat is a complex, story with very well developed characters and numerous digressions (upakathas). I have read many interpretations and narrations, and I like A. R. Krishnasastry's Vachana Bharata, the best- he has adhered to Kumara Vyasa's Mahabharat. 

Forget the video and the play. Read the real stuff.

 

 

 
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