THE INDIAN COMMENTATOR

Playing It My Way is a book that insists on satisfying every bit of expectation the reader may possess regarding a book by Sachin Tendulkar, India’s cricketing legend. Playing It My Way has 28 chapters. The appendix that follows contains Sachin’s farewell speech with which he damped the eyes of millions of his fans after the final match of his career, on 16 November 2013 at the Wankhede Stadium. The publisher is Hodder and Stoughton and the revenue from the selling of the book (actually the author’s share) would go to two charitable causes: the alleviation of malnutrition in children and the provision of clean water to the underprivileged. Playing It My Way has almost 500 pages and covers Sachin’s life from Childhood to his Final Test Match. What I found intriguing is that printed in this book at regular intervals is score cards from significant games Sachin was a part of or whenever the story of his life demanded the scorecard’s presence, which in Sachin’s life is quite of...

It can’t get any better.

New York Times bestselling author John Irving in his recent article, published in The Globe and Mail, writes a capturing eulogy for Günter Grass. In his article titled “ An unanswered letter from Günter Grass ,” John Irving underscores how Grass combined contemporary novel writing with 19 th century storytelling. “I learned from my favourite 19th-century writers that I wanted to be a certain kind of novelist – like Dickens and Hardy, like Hawthorne and Melville. I learned from Grass how to do it,” says John Irving. I would like to draw a particular conclusion with great eagerness from this statement by John Irving. I consider this a crucial sign of a relationship that seems to transcend time and cultures. In every culture, teacher-student relationships have always been given special positions, both personally and socially. The extent of this relationship makes me wonder if it’s actually person-bound at all. I consider this relation soul-bound. The student, fundamentally, give...