Review: The Kenneth Anderson Omnibus: Volume 1: Tales from the Indian Jungle, Man-Eaters and Jungle Killers, The Call of the Man-Eater

The Kenneth Anderson Omnibus: Volume 1: Tales from the Indian Jungle, Man-Eaters and Jungle Killers, The Call of the Man-Eater by Kenneth Anderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hooter: A collection of shikari stories based in South and Central India primarily

Kenneth Anderson born in Hyderabad in the 1900s - an author and a hunter - shares a collection of stories of his brush with wildlife across the years in the jungles of South India. I got to know of the book from the fact that the IT concrete jungle of Bellandur was infamous for man eating tiger roaming the jungles of Bellandur in Kenneth's time.

The stories follow a similar pattern of him hunting the hunted and the cat and human games they play - but what adds color is the set up to each story is very different and also paints a unique color to life in India in those days from his perspective - a relatively privileged individual thanks to his colonial roots whilst living amongst the common villagers in far and out places in rural South India refering to terms and jargon which are slowly getting erased from our day to day lives. Whilst the protagonist animal usually never makes it past the book , the author does add vivid color and imagery to the wildlife in the book and does try to morally justify atleast to himself why he had to take on that particular "man-eater".


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Review: The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources

The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources by Javier Blas
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Hooter: An investigative journalism piece on how Commodity traders run the world economy

Most of the players are unheard of for the laymen and this book does a great job at bringing them to the fore and how they actually play an impact on the entire geopolitical set up purely based on economics and have been denting a lot of world sanctions and their impact but running around the rule book and helping regimes all over - filling in the gap as and when required. No doubt as market participants there is a positive to it with the wonderful example of oil prices during the worldwide lockdown as consumption went down by 30% overnight and people were paying to get oil of their hands. That said, there are some wonderful examplss over the years of the power these commodity traders have leveraged , but I felt that's what this book became - a collection of different anecdotes of different folks and there seemed to a repetitive strain to it which got monotonous for me after a while.

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