Pregnancy is a time when the mother-to-be is the centre of everybody’s attention. It is also the time when the father-to-be feels most unceremoniously dumped, as if his part in the matter was done with and it was now over to the wife. Rajat Mathur tries to reclaim his legitimate share in the celebration of his wife’s pregnancy with Dear Dad.

As he rightly observes— there are innumerable books for pregnant women but none at all for expectant fathers. In that sense this book beats a different path as it focuses on the man rather than the woman.

For Mathur writing it was a catharsis and a way of capturing the most momentous period of his life in words, detailing his swinging emotions— euphoria and sudden pangs of fear— throughout the nine months and a little after.

For him, the period was a revelation of sorts as his pre-conceived notions of pregnancy get dispelled one after another.

Written in a breezy style and interspersed with subtle humour Dear Dad is a personal account of Mathur’s experiences during the time and not a ‘how-to’ guide for men who find themselves in similar conditions, although the blurb might suggest so. It gives readers a delightful peek into the workings of a father’s mind.

Honest portrayal

Philosophy or romance? There is a lot of both and the reader will be hard-pressed to decide which of the two dominates in the book. Despite suffering the weight of too many issues cropping up throughout, Big Apple 2 Bites redeems itself somewhat with its honest portrayal of society as it is.

Anirudhdha SenSharma or Sen for short is a statistician temporarily in New York on work and readers are given a glimpse of the other side of outsourcing— loss of jobs for many Americans, the bitterness and frustration at losing their jobs to lesser paid Indians, corporate charades and manipulation to grab projects, relying on the subtle art of lying to save one’s skin etc.

Sen is also well-read and mouthing philosophy at the drop of a hat. Most of it goes flat on his not-so-well-read colleagues.

His life is dominated to a large extent by his infatuation for his soon-to-be married American colleague, Allison Palmer, and to a lesser extent to his commitment to the martial art, aikido. In the middle of all this comes 9/11 and for Sen and his Indian colleagues it’s time to pack up and go home.

Sen has a second bite of New York when he returns on another job three years later, more mature and sure of himself, but with his infatuation with Allison and his love for aikido intact.

Although Sen’s philosophising gets tedious in some places, it can be read for its fresh perspectives on almost everything from the very mundane to the most lofty.

College tale

Set in the backdrop of Ishtyaque Ansari’s alma mater, Government Medical College, Baroda, the books starts off with great promise but fails to deliver much at the end. As the sub-title of the book suggests, it is a loose collection of experiences, based in part on real life incidents.

Ajay, coming from humble surroundings, gets into medical college on merit. The whole book revolves around his experiences at the college and his hostel— his attraction for a pretty classmate, his bonding with his hostel mates, his embarrassment at his poverty, his struggle with his exams, some ragging— nothing spectacularly different from what any other student in Ajay’s place would experience.

His brief involvement with a goon is the lone experience that might stand out as something worth writing about. Even that fails to develop into anything bigger than a mere incident as it ends rather unexpectedly and quiet tamely.

On the other hand, the book makes up for what it lacks in punch with its gentle humour and simple narrative. Ishtyaque Ansari has an unpretentious way of writing that is appealing and that can get readers to hear him out till the end.