Kusum Choppra

China’s One Belt One Road initiative is neither new, nor about A road. Essentially it proposes to resurrect the ancient land and sea Silk Routes from China to the West, with modern infrastructure in roads, rails, ports, power plants etc. China will play $115 billion Santa Claus to 60 odd countries strung across Asia, Europe, Africa and Australia. It scored early by co-opting earlier projects like the Europe-China rail and CPEC into OBOR … since there is no definitive project list anyway.    The aim of OBOR?    Anything from using up China’s     mythical cash hordes; to resurrecting centuries-old domination over South East Asia, later Africa and now Europe and Australia too; to establish its hegemony over more than half the world with cheap loans, after its moves over the South China Sea. The territory is familiar to India, History’s hoary Trading Nation. International trading routes cannot ignore India, straddling the Indian Ocean, with Zanzibar, ...

The guys who wrote the Ved Purans must have been a real misogynist lot. Hey, wait a minute; didn't the Brahmins do all the transcription, centuries after their actual creation and oral tradition? Hmmm Brahmins?         It figures. Some say, after release of the soul in cremation, it goes to Pitralok.  This enables a forefather to move to his next birth. No instant rebirth? Anyways, so grandson releases grandfather, and so on. Now what about the women? Does grandma also need a grandson or a grand beti will do? Does it have to be her son’s son or Beti‘s son will do?  Is there any mention? After all in our times when one son is common, What happens to Daadima,   Naanima and   Mausima?  Everyone does not have a son. Some people don't have kids at all. Agar bete ki Beti hai, toh? Agar Beti ka beta hai toh?   What about his paternal grandfather then? If no grandkids, toh?   And if only one ...

A New Beginning is always difficult; so much goes against the grain, the tradition, Indian custom. Actually, not so much --- haven’t men been marrying as soon as one wife dies?   Often enough even while she lives?              Widow remarriage is not big deal in most parts of the world.   But, in India?    BIG DEAL.     Building bridges between two lonely people, tearing down of walls of bias against women, creating a new society that recognized a new humanity ---- all these are topics people love to comment on but hesitate to delve into, even in the form of a Book. Silver Dreams from Notion Press is one such book – that builds a vibrant, racy narrative to counter the old Sita concepts, now an Indian history staple.      Rana and Kinnary are both Senior Citizens.   Yet there is a potent zest for life, desire tamped down by circumstance and a need for the cuddles...

How many studied the “India’s Aryan Invasion” in school? Possibly everyone?   Recent research indicates that was just an imperialist theory; a successful attempt at cultural imperialism, to prove the superiority of Occidental culture and to give the British an unholy cover for their presence in India at all -- that they were merely repeating what had been done in the hoary past.    It offered Occidental culture a false antiquity beyond ancient Vedic culture, and served to split India into a northern Aryan and a southern Dravidian culture that still festers.   In short, an instrument for subjugation that negates the facts that Dravidian culture was an early offshoot of the Vedic, through Agastya, and that there were migrations from India, across the Asian landmass into Europe up to Germany: “The Return of the Aryans” by Dr. Bhagwandas Gidwani. Led by Max Mueller and other Christian scholars steeped in Biblical chronology, an arbitrary date of 1500 B C was ch...

SILVER DREAMS  is my fourth book, published late 2016 which holds a unique record: that of being the first Senior Romance in recent Indian English literature.  Set at a number of locales described in the book,  for a romance, it also sets another unique record. Usually it is women who are partial to romances.  But in this case,  it is male readers who have sent me the more graphic reviews of the book.  Does that go to show that the new metro Man has come into his own and can  relish and understand something written by a woman for women? One Sample: Golden Dreams Madhu Menon By the time I reached the end of Kusum Choppra’s “Silver Dreams”, I felt certain she could do a sequel titled “Golden Dreams”, in a silver, golden, platinum series. Three successful books, Kusum’s fourth one comes with immeasurable courage, pleasantries, realities and messages for not just the silver lined ones, but for all those reading for pleasure and intellectual...