Punjab - Amandeep Sandhu

Non-Fiction

Verdict: Read It

I have a rather long-standing fascination with Punjab - many aspects of it. So when I saw this rather large nonfiction book in Book Worm, it very much piqued my interest. I did think twice, becaue as I said, it's not a quick read, but that never bothered me. 

Punjab is written an an almost autobiographical style, with the author obviously a Punjabi or a foreign returned Punjabi - I can't remember at the moment, mixed in with a bit of historical and current events mixed in for education purposes.  One of the things that made this interesting is that there's currently (although it's been going on for quite some time) an issue in Delhi about Farmers. I don't know much about it, so I'm going to refrain from commenting here. Since this book covered agriculture in Punjab, it was easy to tie it to some of the current events happening, which I always appreciate.

You can obviously tell that the author has strong emotional ties to his homeland. He approaches the subjects he raises in a passionate and personal manner. He also is quite comprehensive in his coverage. 

While I did appreciate the comprehensiveness of the book, I found it scattered in many places and needing a bit of organization and flow. The author hopscotches from one topic to another. It's obvious that they're connected, but the lack of a flowing narrative bothered me quite a bit.  I also think that certain subjects that are very near and dear to an author are difficult to write bout well. As a writer, I have found myself struggling to remove emotion and passion and write in an informative or logical way. I hesistate to critisize the author for this, but I think there was room for improvement.

For me, Punjab is a very complicated piece of the Indian puzzle and learning more about it helps me learn about India as a whole. If you have an interest as well, I would suggest that this is not the best place to start. It is, however, a good book to read for someone who already has some context on Punjab and build their understanding. It's definitely not a charicature of Punjab like portrayed in the movies. While that's always fun to observe, it's not real and learning about the real Punjab is much more rich. 

Read it!

~Becky~