Review: The Extraordinary Life and Death of Sunanda Pushkar by Sunanda Mehta

Sunanda Pushkar on the book cover

Sunanda Pushkar had caught everyone’s attention way back when the IPL Kochi Tusker auction controversy was in the news and had dragged Shashi Tharoor as well into it. But beyond her good looks, her brash, outspoken personality, nobody really knew what she was like when not in front of the camera. The author has done a commendable job of tracing Pushkar’s roots and her formative years. Pushkar, surprisingly, was a shy child and not as untamed as she appeared on TV and on her Twitter. I do remember she has taken over the account of her husband Tharoor and had tweeted out personal messages between him and Mehr.

However, life’s knocks did harden Pushkar’s persona and reading about her countless relationships and affairs, it does make it clear that she wasn’t neither happy nor stable in her life. Her moving to Dubai and later to Canada (for a passport) bring forth the struggles to make it big, not just financially but even in the circles of power. But the author leaves no punches for the garrulous Tharoor who has vaxes indigestible words of English to create an impression of an honest, worthy human being. Tharoor’s been a player himself with multiple affairs behind the scenes even while being married, as it is apparent from reading this book.

The moot question, however, is whether Tharoor had any role to play in Pushkar’s death? And from the testimonies in this book and the narrative woven by the author, the answer is no. Tharoor was surely going behind Pushkar’s back to be in touch with Mehr, and had shady IPL dealings, but is not believed to be so cunning to be someone who could get someone killed, least his wife!

I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in knowing how high society works and how connections, more than anything else, are the most important ladder for financial mobility and to get a place amongst the power circles. Pushkar’s own fortune, made from Dubai real estate, is well documented in this book. What one does learn about Pushkar is that she was a person with a steely reserve and had gone through decades of struggles before she became famous or rather infamous after getting entangled with Tharoor. A gossipy, juicy read nonetheless, including how Pushkar had got a facial surgery done in Mumbai and had spread rumours of having met an accident to cover it up. As far as the court proceedings are concerned, Tharoor was given a clean chit but seems some after effects are still being felt.

[Below is a copy of an article about Pushkar’s facial surgery]

Article detailing the facial surgery of Pushkar in MumbaiDownload

Review: Missing Man by Barry Meier

Missing Man

Barry Meier has crafted a thriller in Missing Man, tracking the disappearance of Robert Levinson (Bob), a former FBI agent and who was later working as a contractor to CIA. Bob disappeared when he went to Kish Island from Dubai for a “side trip” to reach a nut head Dawud Salahuddin. The purpose of Bob’s visit was to get information from Dawud about Iraninan regime’s possible methods which may be resorted to in the future in case US imposed sanctions on Iran due to uranium enrichment. Dawud was constantly feeding him how Rafsanjani had spread his tentacles into financial crime and money laundering and had even invested in various projects in Canada. Barry’s narration doesn’t keep you on the edge of the seat, but is more like an undercurrent of suspense which links the whole plot together.

Bob was struggling financially to keep up with the expenses for his family as his childrent (seven of them) went from school to college to their jobs and finally married life. Bob had worked in FBI for multiple decades and had forged strong connections within the intelligene and law enforcement agencies. When he started working as a CIA contractor in the hopes of getting more excitement and possibly better remuneration, he was dishing out copious amounts of reports for his handler Anne Jablonski, who teaches yoga. The financial unit of the CIA wanted dirt on the political elite in Ian and Bob made a connection with Dawud via the journalist Ira.

This book however is also an eye opener that the FBI and CIA are after all two arms of the government, where bureaucracy and red tape have rusted the piston as with any other departments of the government. The details about how Bob used to struggle to get his contracts finalized on time, reaching out to different departments within CIA for additional budget, and even spending money from his own pocket with the hope that eventually the bills would be tabled for reimbursement. But it is also a story we all know too well: government’s shirking away from owning up when things go south. After Bob was reported missing, CIA refused to acknowledge that Bob had gone to Iran (Kish) at its behest. The intelligence agencies were trying (not sincerely enough though) to get information about Bob through other means: Russian oligarchs, Kurdish fighters, Iranian exiles. Then there were people who had contacted the Levinson family through the website setup by them to give them tips. Somebody even sent emails few times from a Gmail id “osman.muhamad@gmail.com” but initially the emails were marked as hoax by the agencies, a decision which came to haunt them later. [The recovery email associated with it is “nsa******@gmail.com”, where the “*” may represent any characters but probably could be 6 characters. However, presence of “nsa” at the beginning of the recovery email might indicate that the person behind both of these email ids is trying to mock the US authorities]

Nobody still knows the complete truth about Bob, though there was a military court order from Iran which was shared by an Iranian exile in Germany. As much as one would want to dig deeper into the mystery, the outline is that Bob was a victim of the worsening relations between Iran and US. He was probably detained as a collateral for bargaining in negotiations. None of it worked though it seems when in 2020 the Levinson family released a statement that they were contacted by the authorities in US to inform them that it was believed that Bob had died while in custody in Iran.

I would highly recommend this book to understand how the world of spies is not as glorious as depicted in movies, and how they too are not above the shenanigans of government inefficiencies and inter-agency rivalries. Then there’s media too which played along the CIA version that Bob wasn’t their agent in the hope that it would be safer for Bob that way in captivity. It would have been a dramatic victory if Bob had been located or even released, but that were not to be (yet).

Review: The Joys of Compounding by Gautam Baid

Joys of Compounding

Gautam Baid has an interesting personal story to tell. I saw some of his interviews online and read his interviews to make sense of his investing philosophy. He has, no doubt, a good understanding of finance and fundamental analysis for investing. He is also associated with Chapter.

However, I won’t spend much time glossing over his background. I read this book at the beginning of this year, and it probably takes the top position in the most boring books ever read by me. It is the same gibberish of ‘stay invested, let stocks compound’ rigmarole that is repeated ad nauseum in this book. After reading few chapters, I was wondering what was the even point of writing this book. Whatever Gautam wants to say could have been said in few tweets or a Twitter thread but nothing more than that. This book is so mind numbing that I actually felt like smashing my digital reading device. I kept waiting for that piece of investment wisdom that will come through in the next line, in the next paragraph, maybe on the next page, or definitely in the next chapter. It never came.

If you haven’t bought this book, and are considering reading it, then don’t even think about it. I would happily ship my digital reading device to your address and save you the agony of buying this book. For those who haven’t heard of this book, count your stars!

If I had a physical copy of this book, I would have burnt it. Happily.