Recalcitrance still on shelf after nearly 2 yrs!

I was overjoyed to see this - Recalcitrance still on bookshelf of the most famous bookshop in Lucknow - Universal Booksellers ! This is heaven !

First Lucknow tweetup!! When Nawabs meet!

Around August 2009 I came onto twitter and after that there was no looking back! I have loved twitter in all this while and found it an awesome source of knowledge. What differentiates twitter from other social networking sites is that there is so little element of anonymity and in general people who are active on twitter are highly educated and discerning individuals, there may be exceptions but in general the active ones are the very serious ones.

I had been thinking of a tweetup in Lucknow which is actually a 'meetup' of people active on twitter. Now Lucknow, to be honest is really not one of those cites where social networking sites are used by a large part of the population no it is not that way at all. I was not able to convince many people to come to a tweetup and had almost given up but then came this guy Gaurav Srivastava a software engineer, he had kind of dug his heels in and so this first tweetup happened. He named this 'when Nawabs meet' so I instantly thought of the fitting venue for Nawabs and that could only be Falaknuma roof top restaurant in Hotel Clarks Awadh the best restaurant in all Uttar Pradesh at least to my thinking.

Finally we met on 30th Jan 2010 and the tweetup started at 1pm and was scheduled to last till 2 pm but actually finished at about 3:30 pm. It was a blast. Falaknuma made everyone happy and I do not think any other venue could quite have brought about the desired effect. It was attended by me twitter username anuragkumarlko; Gaurav Srivastava twitter id sangfroid; Surendra Gupta twitter id SurendraGLKO; Raza Hasnain Naqvi twitter id RazaLucknow and Ashish Chandra twitter id AshishChandra.It was also attended by Mr. Manish Chandra Pandey Principal Correspondent Hindustan Times Lucknow who very kindly agreed to join us along with his colleague Mr. Dheeraj Dhawan who photographed the tweetup.

We had some really awesome food which included two types of veg kebabs - Surendra Gupta just loved the Hariyali Kebabs; two types of veg biryani with raita and one special pulao. You must be wondering why I never talked about what we discussed well I did not because our talks would have powered a battle tank we talked so much and we talked such innovative ideas. I can never put all that down in words it was so fascinating, those people had awesome ideas.

Hope others will take up the baton from us and organise many more tweetups in Lucknow. We made history in a way and well we did our bit for Lucknow! That was my primary concern - Lucknow - as far as I can help it I will never allow Lucknow to lag behind.

Now enjoy the pics!

Reviews of my novel

You all know how reviews are generated by big publishing houses and who writes those reviews. I neither have the money nor the contacts to have those kind of reviews published and perhaps I should thank God for not blessing me with those means.

Here are links to reviews by highly discerning people of my novel. I may add here that I have never met these awesome people but eagerly look forward to meeting them soon. Their review speaks volumes about their good breeding, education, taste and aesthetic sense. Do take a bit of time to read their blogs too, I found them really interesting.

Review of Recalcitrance novel by Mr. Paul Mathers
Review of Recalcitrance novel by Mr. Sarthak Varma

Review of Recalcitrance novel by Ms. Mridula Dwivedi
Review of Recalcitrance novel by Mr. AH

Review of Recalcitrance novel by @@NeutralBeholder
Review of Recalcitrance novel by Ms. Sangeetha Kodithala

Review of Recalcitrance novel by Mr. Akhtar Husain



Excerpt from a review of my novel 'Recalcitrance' by Mr. Paul Mathers, himself an author and a poet ...
What happens to Lucknow in the story is really something I think everyone should know. Although the story goes as it goes and ends how it ends, there is hope at the end of it all I think. Narenderlal says earlier in the book at one point "Remember what Mahatmaji at the Ghat told us: the mother conceives a baby and thanks God for His blessing. She goes through enormous trouble during those nine months and then there is the horrible pain of childbirth but it brings forth a wonderful creation, an image of God Himself. On being shown the face of the infant the mother forgets all her pain and hugs the little creature to her bosom. Also sometimes the baby is still born but the mother does not say to God: do not give me anymore babies, but eagerly looks forward to another birth. Similarly, he had said that our country is going through a painful phase but this will end bringing in a new life. However, this struggle must be continued if any such thing is to happen."Those words have stuck with me so much in the past few weeks.

The building which witnessed outbreak of 'mutiny' of 1857

Though I was interested in the so called Mutiny of 1857 from the age of 8 when I heard stories about that event from people who were born in late nineteenth century. However books on 1857 were not easily available or I did not know about them. Also as a student I never had the money to buy a lot of books. When I dropped out of medical college I had a lot of time on my hands and started research on 1857. I got to know about Mandiyaon or as western historians call it Muriaon - that was the site for the original cantonment for the British in Lucknow. The present cantonment only came up after events of 1857. So one day I took a primitive film camera and went to Mandiyaon. I did not expect to see any buildings from 1857 still standing - and lo what happens I saw Polehampton bungalow the only surviving building from that cantonment site that was left standing by the 'mutineers' really ex soldiers of the Nawab's army and 'native' soldiers of the company's army. They had burnt down everything else if we are to believe contemporary British accounts. There was a well beside the Polehampton bungalow and there were also traces of a gateway and a bit of boundary wall so it appeared to me that the bungalow was surrounded by some sort of garden and had a wall all around it. Due to tremendous hurry I was not able to incorporate this building and events that occurred around it, in my novel but I want to in a subsequent edition. I have the only photographs of this building in this world. I wrote about this building and one Hindi newspaper published the article on front page.
About three years back I got a digital camera and took this colour photograph of the building. Sadly an year back the building was demolished and a school has come up in its place. So it was not just a building but the only tangible trace or relic of that brilliant episode - the start of the First War of Independance in Lucknow.

Now all that is left to commemorate that event is a sandstone and marble memorial dedicated to the British soldiers and erected by the British after things cooled down.

Where can u buy 'Recalcitrance' ?

I have received a number of queries from Lucknowites living abroad about availability of my novel. Well! As of now you can buy it either in bookshops in Lucknow or you can buy it online on

Ebay India or

Ebay International

If you live in Lucknow it is very likely that you have passed by this monument. It figures in my novel.

Follow me on twitter

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