Ordinary Man's Guide to Radicalism English 2018

I was expected to understand the meaning of the pen as a gift. "The ink of a pen is holier than the blood of a martyr." Not that I was taught to be a martyr or anything; but one was supposed to know the hadees and know what's more important.19 September 2008, the Batla House encounter. That one day forever changed the life of a young man from Inderwan Bairam in Bihar's Gopalganj district. An over-protected childhood, an ambitious migration to Delhi as a young boy for good school and university education, an undisciplined and shiftless adolescence – all of this history is flattened out into one tiny slice of Neyaz Farooquee's identity: Muslim. From Jamia Nagar. One who lived practically next door to the Terrorists who were killed in the encounter. A Potential Terrorist himself? How, after all, does a man prove he is (and not merely pretending to be) a Normal Human Being?Bold, intense and moving, this is a coming-of-age story – a tale of the fear and anger that leads to the finding of a purpose. Sardonic and wise beyond his years, Farooquee gouges out the unvarnished truth about identity and stereotypes, about life in a ghetto and the small and big disappointments that make up an ordinary life. A necessary book for our troubled times.