The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan

The story is about three generations of Rafia Zakaria's family with Pakistan's history as the backdrop. Or maybe the story is about Pakistan with the family's story as the backdrop? Either way, this book is a good read.

The 'upstairs wife' Zakaria's Aunt Amina is forced to live with the ignominy of her husband taking a second wife, moving his first wife upstairs and proceeding to spend alternate weeks with the two wives. Meanwhile, outside the family home, wars, assassinations, massacres, coups, and sectarian violence roils Pakistan's history.

Pakistani women live a cloistered, constrained, demeaning life. Aunt Amina's misery is mirrored in the struggle for women's rights in Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto strides onto the stage holding the great hopes of women, but ultimately slinks off - symbolizing the extreme corruption and venality of Pakistan's political life. High expectations unfulfilled.

Zakaria's family emigrates to Pakistan from India after Partition, also full of high hopes of a better life. But life is not better than it was in India, and in many ways it is worse, certainly economically and socially. Immigrants are disadvantaged compared to the native born; for instance educational opportunities favour those whose fathers and grandfathers both have Pakistani residency.

This book is not plot driven but proceeds in a series of vignettes describing external events and family events, as the title clearly describes. I wasn't particularly fond of this approach, but it was interesting nevertheless. I would recommend this book - particularly if you are unfamiliar with Pakistan's history, as I was. It certainly helped me put into perspective modern events.

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The Year of Yes

Shonda Rhimes at TED

Shonda Rhimes is a story teller. She writes for TV. She owns Thursday night: all three ABC prime time slots are hers.  She's a powerful and influential Hollywood figure, all the more outstanding as a double minority - both female and black. Not surprisingly, she's much in demand as a speaker or guest at many big events. But, as her sister once muttered, she always said no.

After acknowledging the truth of that statement, Rhimes commits to spend a year saying yes. Being a writer, of course she wrote about it in The Year of Yes. The book describes how this introverted, insecure writer, who retreats obsessively into writing for three - yes, count 'em three - simultaneous hit TV shows, makes a resolution to start saying yes and emerging from her shell. She accepts invitations, she gives speeches, she's a headliner at the opening session of TED 2016 (live-streamed for the first time this year at cinemas - you can see it here). The book was a quick and breezy read. Although I found the tone a bit tedious, nevertheless I quite enjoyed the book. Her TED talk was engaging and fast-paced, but I thought she failed to land a single strong key message. 

I was particularly fascinated because I once sat next to Rhimes at TED. When I asked her what she did, she diffidently responded she was a writer. Pressed for details, she said she wrote for TV and for movies. When I asked which she liked better, she cracked me up with her response: "TV. In movies, the director can fire the writer; in TV, the writer can fire the director." I went on to ask her about the dynamics of writing as part of a team and she dipped her head and explained that since she created the show and did most of the writing, she wasn't really involved in that team dynamic.  As you can tell, I still hadn't figured out who she was. She was just a self-effacing unassuming fellow TEDster. So I don't think her description of her introvert period is at all exaggerated.

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