|
The never-before-told story & daughters account of Indias thirteenth prime minister and his wife.
Strictly Personal - Manmohan and Gursharan is a clear-eyed, inquiring writing by a woman about her regular, middle-class family caught in the maelstrom of history. No prime minister other than Jawaharlal Nehru has had as powerful an impact on India and her economic policies as Manmohan Singh. Daman Singh tries to reconcile the towering intellect of her father with the caricatures she sees in newspapers and arrives at this nuanced portrait. What emerges is a picture of great complexity. A young boy who lost his mother, lost family members to Partition, grew up with his grandparents and barely knew his father. The weathering of penury, the growing intellectual ambition of a young man. His stint at Cambridge and meeting colleagues like Jagdish Bhagwati, Amartya Sen and Ashok Desai. A grown man who returns to India and academics, then gives it up to work with the government and moves on to join politics.
But Strictly Personal is not the story of Manmohan alone. The life he built as an adult was cent-red on something he lacked as a child - family. The woman he made that life with, Gursharan Kaur, had a childhood a lot like his. Beautiful, vivacious, sociable and adaptable, Gursharan followed her husband from country to country, one city to another, helping him make the transition he may have struggled to make alone. Together, they were a small, warm unit the two of them and their three daughters, Upinder, Daman and Amrit.
This is also their story and of the authors own-a retiring girl who grew up with two firebrand sisters, a zestful, talented mother and a father who reluctantly stepped into the limelight. Compelling and honest, this book will change the way you look at Manmohan Singh.
ISBN - 9789351363248
|
|
Pages : 456
|