I travel and read.
“Newton” is a Bollywood movie in the most unlikely Bollywood terms. It portrays an India that urbane Indians have never seen. It questions the meaninglessness of democracy and then answers the quest for meaningful democracy through a single honest electorate officer who is fighting against a world that doesn’t see the point of selfless honesty.... Continue Reading →
I have always been in awe of this writer Khushwant Singh. When I was in school, I remember a notorious classmate bring Khushwant Singh’s autobiography “Truth, Love and a little Malice” and the entire class had a field day reading the parts where he describes his sex life explicitly. Train to Pakistan is different, it... Continue Reading →
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Or The Dungeon of Utmost Unhappiness? This heavy tome of a book ain’t gonna make you happy. But does that mean you should not read it? No, that means you should jump headlong into it. Get sucked by this dementor of a novel, And arise with a mind that knows... Continue Reading →
Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss? Book review of “The Inheritance of Loss” by Kiran Desai. When I first started reading “The Inheritance of Loss”, I was excited because I was holding a Booker baby here, but 20 pages into the book, and I was not so excited anymore. I went into a slump, I... Continue Reading →
Remember when you were a child, and you pestered your grandmother or aunt to tell you stories at night? And they would tell you stories that had been passed down from generations in the family, stories that would vary from mouth to mouth and end up as a fable customised by the storyteller. Oral stories... Continue Reading →
And a review on the brilliant “Laburnum for my head” by Temsula Ao The home page of sahitya-akademi.gov.in Sahitya Akademi Award, who? Indian youth today rants on Oscar winners, and Booker prizes. But ask them about their own country’s highest academic honor, and they fail miserably. Ask them about Indian Filmfare award, and the reaction would... Continue Reading →
How beautiful it is when you stumble upon a beautiful thing by serendipity? For me, it was a piece of poetry by Wilfred Owen, called Anthem for Doomed Youth. I found it when I picked up this book, Regeneration. Pat Barker won the Booker Prize for the third instalment in this trilogy, “The Ghost Road,”... Continue Reading →
“Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe” by Fannie Flagg. We need to read books that talk about togetherness, in the time of He Who Is Too Disgusting To Be Named. Books that have characters who used to laugh and love their neighbours. Books that bring fresh hope for a life that can be... Continue Reading →
“The hundred-year-old man who climbed out of the window and disappeared”. Wordy right? The immediate feeling I had when I picked up the book was that geriatrics would very well mumble something like that in general conversation. I became nostalgic and went back to a long lost rainy afternoon spent with my hundred-year-old grandma (umm,... Continue Reading →
A review of the book by Paul Kalanithi, "When breath becomes air"
