Adventures in composting

Our family has been composting now for the past 6 years, and we are by no means veterans. So when a friend, who is a total pro at all things green, asked me to share my experiences with composting, my response was similar to the guy from the vintage Godrej shaving cream ad that most Indians my age know - “Who me?”. There she was with her Midas touch (yep all garbage changes to gold at her home) and her green fingers, and here I am a bungling novice at best at anything I do in the garden. So you wonder how I came around to writing this post.

Well for starters you never say no to Ms.Midas Touch who singlehandedly raises  our group’s karmic greenness points by example, and a bit of guilt :) Secondly there is a reason why books for dummies have a huge market – there are a lot more dummies at everything than there are experts.

So dummies at composting, this is a post dedicated to you, from one dummy to another. I know you’ve always wanted to do the right thing, but it has just been so hard. And let’s face it – the beginner’s composting workshop is not really for beginners, is it? When they start talking about brown Vs green, carbon Vs nitrogen, heat Vs moisture, you are kicking yourself for not having paid any attention to the physical sciences in high school, and just when you are ready to give up they hit you with biological forms that you’ve tried very hard all your life to steer away from - flies, ants, worms, rodents!

But do not despair, there is hope for all of us! I first approached composting pretty much the same way as I approached most things in life (marriage, programming, motherhood, driving, cooking, birding,...) – A combination of naivety and arrogance (by now you understand I am serious about the dummy part) – “How hard can this be?” And just like all those things I mentioned, I was quickly humbled, realized that this can be very hard, but can also be very rewarding if you decide to keep at it.

We were in a townhome back then with not much of a backyard, and our first"compost bin" was an old trash can with holes poked through; brown material was mainly dried eucalyptus leaves which generously covered our yard, and green material well all kitchen waste. We didn't cut up the kitchen waste, didn't realize that eucalyptus leaves were too oily to breakdown quickly, didn't keep turning the compost frequently - all rookie mistakes. Sure enough we were faced with flies, foul smell and filth that we had to quickly discard before our neighbors caught wind. This bad start kept us away from composting for quite sometime.

What made it more difficult to accept defeat was the fact that we clearly understood the problems of filling up our landfills with garbage that can be "easily" diverted, the need for organic replenishment of the soil, and the fact that having joined a CSA we were bringing home carrot tops, brussel sprout stalks, cauliflower fringes that despite our best intentions to eat everything from the box were ending up in trash more frequently than I would've liked. 

That's when I stumbled upon an electronic composter which claimed to have converted the art of composting into a science - repeatable, simple steps that any dummy can follow! So for our 10th wedding anniversary we bought ourselves an electronic composter (No, we are not very romantic people). Yes it was plugged in, yes we had to chop up the produce (which by now we had learned), yes we had to use saw dust pellets for the brown material, and no we couldn't do dairy/ meat (both were not consumed at our home anyway). But for the first time composting worked for us! For a small home here was a neat solution which diverted more than half of our weekly kitchen waste, produced good quality compost in 2 weeks (instant gratification, in compost years that is!). The family was happy - less trash meant fewer trips to throw the garbage, enough compost to feed our small kitchen garden, and very minimal power draw that the benefits far outweighed the drawbacks.

More importantly, the small electronic composter did a few intangible things for us

1) Boosted our confidence
2) Now that we saw how much trash we were able to divert we couldn't go back to not composting - very similar to any technology adoption. Once you have a 45mpg hybrid car very hard to choose anything less for your next car, once you have high speed data modems you will not go to dial-up - similarly once you cut down trash by half you don't go back to producing more trash, you only want to push the boundaries to see if you can divert trash even further
3) We had no qualms signing up to a CSA or buying whole watermelons

It's been 5 years and we are in a bigger home with a bigger yard and as a corollary generating more yard waste. So for our 15th wedding anniversary we went ahead and bought ourselves 2 giant tumbling composters (I was serious about the non-romantic part), neatly set up in our backyard right next to our much enlarged veggie raised bed. No instant gratification this time as it takes nearly 2 to 3 months to fill up our tumbler, and yes tumbling it when full requires the strength of an ox, and we are yet to see our first compost. But to quote Mrs.Thatcher "the lady's not for turning"... back, I mean. Composting has become just one other thing we do.

The other day when one of us "tumbled" the composter with the lid not locked (do you really need more evidence that "dummy" was not really self-deprecating humor on our side), we didn't fret one bit - we gathered the mush of material that fell to the ground with no hesitation and put it back in the composter without holding our noses, 'cos frankly the smell was not that of garbage but just earthy. No flies, no filth and no complaints from neighbors. We are still learning about our composter, what it does well and what it does not, or as our daughter likes to say "what it likes to eat and what it does not", but the pride we feel as a family when we set out our minimal trash for pick-up is priceless.
 

So here is my salute to all those wonderful folks and organizations who set us on this journey either directly or indirectly - AID, Inika, Solana Center, C.Srinivasan of Exnora Green Cross, and numerous friends, especially Ms.Midas and her Zero Waste household, whose steaming compost piles fueled our interest, and have kept the fires burning.

Summer Scorecard - Books, Birds, Art and a Loss

As summer comes to a rolling stop I was doing a mental stock take on how this summer fared -“Mixed” was my answer. Books, Birds and Art would’ve been the theme for this summer as we got a healthy dose of all three the past 3 months.

I will start with the books, where I continued with my year of reading women and also managed to sneak in a bit of OBOC. Jhumpa Lahiri and Alice Munro’s collection of short stories have made me re-evaluate my feelings towards short stories. “Interpreter of Maladies” by the former and “Runaway” and “Too Much Happiness” by the latter were fantastic collections! I also couldn’t resist Zadie Smith’s “NW” after having read her “On Beauty”. It was gritty, showed me a different side of London and a different side of women that I didn’t know existed. Having skipped all of Harry Potter, I went straight to “Casual Vacancy” by J.K.Rowling. Very similar to NW but different geography – a very honest portrayal of provincial towns of England. Then I re-read “Wordy Shipmates” as we were heading to Boston for a short vacation – my first time in Boston in the summer. Walking along the Freedom Trail, Sarah Vowell’s seemingly irreverent take on the early New England settlers provided me a nice background commentary for the trail. Although not a diamond ring/jewelry person, I picked up “The Engagements” by J.Courtney Sullivan DESPITE it being recommended by People Magazine (not a magazine on my reading list) as I later found out. Totally enjoyed the 5 stories weaved into one book and am glad there was at least one character who shared my attitude towards diamonds in it. 6 women this summer – not bad you say, but here comes my crown jewel!

Eleanor Catton’s “The Luminaries” –  The two weeks I spent with this book I was completely lost to the outside world and my family. I caught myself thinking about the book in uncanny places and situations (including a few dull meetings or when on hold). 19^th century New Zealand, murder mystery, manipulation of time that would make Christopher Nolan proud, weaving in the Zodiac, language that mimicked the Victorian novels, hidden tricks and treats that makes a second reading even more rewarding – this is THE book I am recommending to every one. This was my pick for OBOC- New Zealand, and I haven’t been able to pick up another book since I wrapped this one up as I am still “marinating” in it. Eleanor Catton deserves the Booker and more!

I have with me “The plague of doves” by Louise Erdrich which I will pick up soon, and another novel for OBOC-Nepal as I don’t want to give up on OBOC. Also just started "A visit from the goon squad" by Jennifer Egan. So on the book front this summer scored a perfect 10! 

This was also a great summer of birds for us. We were part of the conservation effort for the California Least Tern, and my daughter and I spent many weekends “ternwatching”. I am happy to say that this year San Diego (and us) witnessed the birth of a 100 terns which have all successfully fledged and are now somewhere down in South America. The day the last chick flew away, I learned for the first time what it means to be an “empty nester”. It was a unique opportunity to observe an endangered species in such close quarters and observe their mating, nesting, feeding, predator chasing behaviors. We will look forward to doing this again next summer. We also spent a week in Oregon chasing bald eagles, and the summer in Boston was filled with Cardinals, Chickadees and Woodpeckers.

I also got my art fix more than satisfied this season. Starting from visits to our local Mingei International Museum to LACMA, MFA in Boston, and Worcester Art Museum we were treated to so much art especially the Impressionists, that even my husband can now name a few :)

 

All in all sounds like we had a pretty terrific summer. Doesn’t tally with the “mixed” review I gave it at the beginning.  It got a mixed score mainly because of two events –  the cancellation of our trip to India due to a summer flu that afflicted all of us and more importantly the loss of a cousin to cancer. 

Loss of any kind is hard enough, but this one was a bit too much even for a battle hardened family like ours which by now should have gotten used to losing many warriors to cancer. Srimathy was 51, full of life and warmth, faced anything that life threw at her with a resilient spirit, and always ready to try anything new. She was a large part of my life as we grew up together and was an older sister to my brother and I and although she was our mother's niece she took on the role of a  younger sister to our mother. She had an uncanny ability to fit into any environment, make herself at home and becoming indispensable. She did not have an easy life, starting with a debilitating eye condition from birth which forced her away from her parents on account of medical care, but that never stopped her from working hard, not once have we heard her whining about the cards she was dealt with - lessons from her life that I take away. I used to tell her that her life can be easily turned into a book or a tearjerker movie full of drama and she would just laugh away. I think of all the roles she took on she probably cherished being a teacher and later Director at a local school. As I stood in the MFA staring at Gaugin's masterpiece "Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?" I can say Srimathy was on my mind. She will be sorely missed!

 
 

So as I look back on this summer and am reminded about how fragile life can be, I am grateful for the small pleasures of everyday - be it a book, a work of art, or a bird that chose to halt briefly in my neck of the woods before continuing its long journey.

 

Happy 375th Madras!

My Facebook page has been flooded with news about Madras’ 375^th birthday. The city I proudly call my hometown has changed in countless ways in the 19 years since I left it to live in the West, but in many ways it still evokes the same nostalgia and warmth for me. I come from a family of Madras fanatics, for whom the passion for their city trumps religion or cricket. For them, the hot and humid weather which requires you to have a fan in the shower, the traffic (which is still the best among the major metros, as they kindly point out), the two-party politics, are all just minor glitches more than compensated for by the coffee, the food, the music, The Hindu, the people and the culture that is Madras. When Madras makes the list for anything – quality of life, place to visit, I can be assured my family will make sure I hear about it from them! All this talk about Madras’ place in India, its historical importance made me look back on how the city has shaped me, and in many ways still does. 

The city fed my ever growing hunger for books, music and movies, like no other place I knew.  “The Hindu” remains the only physical newspaper that I have ever read till date. Even when I traveled within India I would seek out the newspaper although I felt that their regional editions were sub par when compared to the Madras edition. My dad and an uncle got me hooked to The Hindu crossword when I entered 8th grade, and I kept at it everyday until my dad's passing so much so that when I recently turned to the online version of The Guardian Quiptic I felt like I had reneged on some kind of a Holy Vow!

Although not widely known, Madras is a book lover's paradise. Long before the fancy malls and the

even fancier book stores established a presence in Madras, my dad roamed the streets of Moore Market looking for rare books. By the time I took to books, there were 3 institutions in whose musty ambiance I felt completely at home - Higginbothams (the oldest bookstore in India), the Connemara Public Library, and Raviraj lending library. The countless hours I spent in these during my formative years laid the foundation for a life long love affair with books. And then there was the annual Book Fair which was an event I lived for! To me the Book Fair was the most important event in the city's cultural calendar and ranked higher than the Music season in my personal calendar. The anxiety with which I used to make lists of the books I wanted to purchase at the fair, and the constant budgetary considerations, the thrill of finding a new stall with a completely unexpected surprise are feelings that I still remember. I don't think I missed a single Book Fair in the '80s and early '90s. 

Preceding the Book Fair season (Dec-Jan) is the annual Music Season (Nov-Dec), which is one of the highlights of the city. These days it looks like a proper commercial activity with round the clock TV coverage, sponsors, advertising and gossips. I don't recollect any of that when I lived in the city. Music season was primarily about the music - an opportunity to see world class artists in some of the best known venues in the city. Coming from a family of ardent Carnatic music enthusiasts, the music season was (and still is) much discussed at our home. Luckily for me, there were very few in the family who enjoyed the visual arts so they would gladly give up their season passes for a cousin and I to go see

Padma Subramaniam or Chitra Vishweshwaran perform. Recently when in Tokyo I had the wonderful opportunity to experience Kabuki. Although I don't speak a word of Japanese, I immensely enjoyed myself and was transported to Kalakshetra in Madras, the seat of arts in the city of arts.

The story of Madras is incomplete without mentioning Kollywood and cut-outs. The music of Kollywood provided the soundtrack for the lives of my generation. If Kollywood is an art form, cut-outs signified pop-art at its very best. Going down Mount Road, craning one's neck through the windows of Pallavan (another Madras fixture) to catch a glimpse of the towering super star Rajnikanth cut-out is akin to catching a glimpse of the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, or Golden Marilyn @ MOMA. The city's cut-out artists are one of the most under-appreciated in my opinion. They would make Banksy proud! This was also the city that introduced me to movies from around the world - be it Hollywood, or French Noir.

I haven't even mentioned the diversity of people, the temples, the world famous Marina beach, the oldest engineering college in the country of which I am a proud alumni, the food, our unique dialect of Tamil, or the shopping but it already looks like I am preaching a

Winthropish sermon making out Madras as the "city on the hill". At this point let me acknowledge that not all is rosy - incessant pressure on water (something that has inculcated in me water-wise habits which are absolutely essential to survive in California these days), rising income inequalities, pressure on infrastructure are all experienced by this city like many other megacities around the globe.  The city has also seen its share of environmental tragedies - the Tsunami of 2004 hit the city hard, some political unrest (much smaller compared to other Metros of India).

Despite these issues, the city is still the gateway to the south, a treasure trove of art and culture and one of the fastest growing cities of the world. Maybe I am just living in a time-warp, maybe it is just pure nostalgia which I am told often hits people my age, maybe a Birthday is just meant to evoke happy memories - whatever it maybe, I can't deny that the city has a very special place in my heart.

Thank you Madras, and a very Happy Birthday!

The Year of Reading Women

When Guardian declared 2014 as the year of reading women I was hoping to marry this project with my other one - OBOC. I've succeeded partly in the sense I've been reading a lot of women but not all necessarily connected to OBOC.

As part of OBOC - Morocco I read "A palace in the old village" by Tahar Ben Jelloun, a story about Moroccan immigrants in France. When the patriarch character decides to move back to Morocco after retirement and build a home, a "palace" for his grown-up sons and daughters and their kids, will his children honor his wishes and return to Morocco, or have they been assimilated by France that the scheme looks to them completely crazy? It is a touching novel that talks about the immigrant experience, aging, cultural wars, and values.

I then did a quick reading of Boris Akunin's Murder on the Leviathan -a Fandorin mystery. Can't say I enjoyed it, so am not sure if I should put a checkmark against Russia.

I also read "Gandhi Before India" by Ramachandra Guha which is a must-read for anyone curious about Gandhi and Gandhian philosophy. I enjoyed this book even more than "India after Gandhi" by the same author. Now I await his second part of the biography of Gandhi.

Am sorry to say that's all the progress I made with OBOC. But I have had more success with reading women. I finished Atwood's Oryx and Crake trilogy with MaddAddam which I thoroughly enjoyed! Then for the first time I read Louise Eldrich's Painted Drum, and Zadie Smith's On Beauty. Loved both their styles! Right now I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of Eleanor Catton's Luminaries which won the Booker this year. I think the last time I was this excited about a book was when I was waiting for MaddAddam. I hope the 800 pages investment will be worth my time.

So here is how my summer reading list looks

FICTION

1) Eleanor Catton - Luminaries (the only one that is part of OBOC)
2) Alice Munro - Runway
3) Toni Morrison - Beloved
4) Kate Mosse - Labyrinth

NON FICTION (Unfortunately don't have books on my current pipeline written by women)

1) Am wrapping up Journey to the Ants by E.O.Wilson
2) Birds: their life, their ways, their world
3) Ken Burns' book on National Parks

I have given myself till end of August to wrap up these 7. Let's see :)

Open Sesame ... to the 40s!

Me, my frizzy hair turning slightly grey, a face that has never seen makeup, all of my wobbly bits, and Bengay are together marching proudly into our 40th year. Before you mistake me for someone who has just "let it go", let me assure you that on the contrary I follow a healthy vegan diet, have an active lifestyle combining yoga with a decent gym routine, not to mention the weekends when I strive to do something that lets me and my family soak in some nature. Yep it takes all of that to even have what I have. I just never cared about how I looked and more importantly what others thought about how I looked and never bought into the world view that women somehow magically go from looking like Jennifer Lawrence for, I don't know, 40 years and then overnight in their 70s turn into Meryl Streep/Judi Dench with no stops in between;  That is not going to change suddenly today.

This post is more about 2 events in my life which if you had asked me 20 years back I would've never thought would happen to me, and yet they did happen to me, and one incident makes me feel old, and the other makes me feel much younger than I ever felt before.

The first takes me back exactly 20 years. I was then 20, zipping through the streets of Chennai with a two wheeler sans license, so much so, my dad a conscientious citizen, and stickler for rules decided to take off from work one day, made me skip college and insisted on accompanying his procrastinating law breaker of a daughter to her driver's license exam. I was mortified as my dad (who BTW could never even ride a cycle and sat behind me as I drove him to my license exam) stood there urging the inspector to actually test me harder before approving my license. "How come she was not asked to trace the infamous 8", he asked the examiner. "Dad, whose side are you really on?", I yelled! Despite his machinations and reservations I was granted a license with a 20 year validity. The day the license arrived, my dad took a hard look at the date and said, "Fat chance when you turn 40 I am going to be there to get your license renewed". We had a good laugh and forgot all about it, until today. My dad passed away 11 years back after a 3 year painful struggle with cancer. At 20 if you had asked me to imagine my life without my dad I would have had a hard time. I spent every spare moment with him - doing crosswords, talking about books, discussing Melville movies, or him poking fun at my taste in music ("Kurt Cobain sings and looks like the guy begging in the Chennai local trains!"). And here I am, a wise old woman of 40 who has no plans to renew her two wheeler license as her dad is not here to make her do it. I can't believe so much time has passed and when I think of him I realize that I have suddenly grown up and turned into an adult, and if I can say so myself, a responsible one at that, and he completely missed my metamorphosis and one of the most important events of my life - the birth of my daughter!

That was another thing I could've never imagined when I was 20. My daughter was probably the first baby I ever properly held in my hands! I never for once thought I possessed any maternal instincts or skills. I was surrounded by other girls (especially some of my cousins) who were skilled in multiple ways around the home, and whom I knew would make amazing mothers someday! As for me, all I ever saw in my future was interesting work, combined with lots of travel and lots and lots of reading and music. All of that happened along with the chance meeting of a wonderful guy who has been my partner-in-crime ("husband" seems so archaic) for the last 15 years and whose partnership with me, my dad on his death bed thought of as a silver lining to his otherwise cloudy last days. Our daughter arrived almost 9 years back to fill a void that I didn't think existed in the first place. She forced me to learn a bunch of new skills, mostly on the job, improvising all the time. Instead of making me feel old, she actually keeps me young as I am re-discovering the world through the eyes of a curious 8 year old. My dad would have revelled in her company. Her taste in music and her passion for books are two qualities which can be directly traced back to him.Through her I got a taste for western classical music which I never thought I would. I frequently go on adventures with Percy Jackson, Taran the wanderer, and shall I dare publicly accept, little talking magical ponies. When she read "The Red Pony" and her heart went out to Gabilan and Jody, I realized why I love Steinbeck! Travel with her is pure unadulterated fun as she is game for anything(including wearing adult size snow shoes, trying to find a trail in deep snow, with no lunch, no dry socks and a couple of adults who were out of their element in snow...all when she was 5!). When she plays DJ on our driving trips we move from Disney songs to Mozart to Edith Piaf to Radiohead to T.M.Krishna to Illayaraja seamlessly. Thanks to her I am a better birder, hiker, reader, cook, mom and person.

So as I turn 40 i am not going to fret about my first mammogram, my first grey streaks, or start fearing the weighing scale. The past 20 years have had its ups and downs, but I have had more to be thankful for than not. I can say all experiences I've had and people that I've encountered have added to my 40, and I am having an open mind about what the next 20 will bring. Honestly between work, "what can I make with Parsnips", "Is that a Falcon or a Kestrel?", and "Was it Colonel Mustard in the study with the knife?" - my brain is on overdrive already that I am not going to waste precious moments or cells worrying about a number and if I look the part.

Earth, Wind and Fire

We spent a week in April completely unplugged and in the wild jungles of Amazonian Ecuador in close contact with nature. Wake up calls were delivered by howler monkeys and lullabies sung by thunderstorms and frogs. Not once did I hear "Can I have your iPhone" or "I am bored". My 8year old stood in the Sun for 2 hours trying to catch a piranha (and let it go after that). With a pair of binoculars around her neck and claiming to be "birding" she was happy to just BE and so were we!

 I remember telling my daughter that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and sadly i think that might very well be the case. Cruising down the Napo river you are suddenly stunned by the sight of natural gas burning - not trapped and shipped elsewhere, not stored, just burnt as it is the easiest thing to do when drilling for oil in the Amazons. Will these forests be around when my daughter turns 40 and wants to bring her kids down here to experience the wild? Sadly I am not so sure.

When we met the people of the Sani community who call these forests home we could see they were divided about the oil drilling. As a volunteer I have lent support to the struggle by the Adivasis of the Narmada Valley fighting for their way of life against big dams in India. I had always wanted to visit the valley but never did. Standing in the Sani village, i was struck by how similar the struggles were. Oil companies have built schools (with no regular teachers), hospitals (doctor doesn't stay there all the time and for emergencies you have to take a boat to Coca for 2 hours) and there is even Internet.

What right do I have to pass any moral judgement over Ecuadoreans if they decide to ride the oil ticket to get to economic success? I live in California one of the largest economies of the world. Just living in California makes my footprint huge despite being a vegan, going solar and driving a hybrid. The recent climate change report that came out brought dire news to the US, and we in California experienced wild fires like never before in a month when normally weather used to be described as "May Gray".

Not all is doom and gloom. We did love the pristine forests of Ecuador (eco-tourism is certainly doing its bit to help indigenous communities in many parts of the land achieve financial success without exploiting resources), and now that the fires have died down, we spent the last two weekends watching the endangered California Least Terns come to our hood to nest. The enthusiasm with which my daughter has taken to Ternwatching and doing her part to protect the terns can only give me hope about the future!  

OBOC - Turkey & Mali

Why didn't I pick "Snow" or "My name is Red"? Well for starters they weren't readily available at the library, and I do like museums so I decided I couldn't possibly go wrong with "The Museum of Innocence" by Orhan Pamuk. So that was my pick for Turkey. On hindsight I would have loved to read "Forty Rules of Love" by Elif Shafak. Oh, well

I don't know how I really feel about the book. A tale of unrequited, obsessive love driving the hero Kemal to build a museum in honor of his object of affection - Fusun - certainly not the kind of book that I normally like to read.  With 80+ chapters and not much of a plot, I wonder what made me not give up the book, and it was because of Istanbul!

I have heard about Istanbul from a few Turkish friends that I had the fortune of knowing a few years back. Still, what I was not prepared for were the remarkable parallels between Istanbul in the '70s and '80s to the metros of India that I grew up in, minus of course the political violence (at least in my hometown in India). I was also stunned by the cultural similarities between the two countries - both dealing with their secular image vs religious right, on the path to modernization vs long held cultural values, trying to protect their industries while facing increasing global competition, and their women struggling to find a place for themselves amidst all these changes.

Everytime the story focused on Kemal's lifetime of obsession with Fusun i lost interest, but the moment Istanbul showed up even as a backdrop I was drawn back in. Although it is not a book I would recommend to everyone, it still was worth the effort.

Onto Mali now.

My only exposure to Mali is through its glorious music. From Ali Toure, Toumani Diabate, and the unbelievable Khaira Arby, music from Mali has enriched our lives! Mali has a rich oral tradition and therefore it's literature is not widely known as much as its music. Thanks to Amadou Hampate Ba, Mali's most famous writer/historian some of these traditions have been captured for posterity.

I read "Fortunes of Wangrin" by Amadou Hampate Ba, which traces the rise and fall of the savvy Wangrin as he navigates the French colonial system and his own countrymen, amassing wealth by exploiting the loopholes while at the same time doing Robinhood like deeds. The book is full of wit, and is also a nice window into the early 20th century Mali - the local customs, colonialism, French administrative practices and the griots. The griots were the original "memory keepers" - people of the oral tradition and one can trace the roots of Malian music to the griots. Every time Wangrin gets into a tough situation he uses his uncanny intelligence to get out of it, in the process making more enemies who want to see his downfall.

It was quite an easy read, and anyone who has experienced the colonial system either first hand or been in a country still recovering from it (even after 60+ years as in India) will find this book interesting.