Comfortably Numb

Sheila Kumar's Storehouse

Book review: Chandni Chowk The Mughal City of Old Delhi by Swapna Liddle

CHANDNI CHOWK, The Mughal City of Old Delhi by Swapna Liddle. Speaking Tiger Books, out in 2017. In all the years I lived and worked in Delhi, the old parts of the city always had me in thrall, even as much of the new city repelled me. Now I live far away from Delhi but…

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Book review: Digesting India by Zac O`Yeah

When food and literature mix….. Travel-writer Zac O`Yeah has travelled the length and breadth of India, stopping for double breakfasts,  a handful of lunches, many a bottle of stuff that ranges from grog to branded liquor at many a pub or what passes for a pub in the hinterlands, as well as several dinners, all…

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Book review: Cubbon Park by Roopa Pai

Cubbon Park The Green Heart of Bengaluru by Roopa Pai, Speaking Tiger Books. A neat, potted history of the 152-year-old park that is both geographically central to Bangalore and emotionally central to Bangaloreans. Pai eschews frills and furbelows to take up certain sections of the park`s history and lived-in present, the people and situations that…

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Book review: Villainy by Upamanyu Chatterjee

VILLAINY by Upamanyu Chatterjee. Speaking Tiger Books, 2022. What a cracker of a murder mystery, what a cracker of a book! Chatterjee is back with all his old snark, the snark we loved in `English, August` but have only caught fleeting glimpses of in the books that followed that sparkling debut novel of Chatterjee`s. This…

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Book review: My Father`s Garden by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar

And once in a rarish while, along comes a book, the contents of which are seamlessly compatible with its jacket pic. Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar`s MY FATHER`S GARDEN (Speaking Tiger Books) is one such book. The reader`s eye is caught and held first by the sumptuous illustration on the cover. And once they start to read…

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Book review: Perhaps Tomorrow by Pooranam Elayathamby with Richard Anderson

This stark tale,  told absolutely without the slightest frill to embellish it, is basically a tale of triumph, of navigating one`s way through all the odds stacked in one`s path and coming through,  banner held aloft. The `one` here is the co-narrator Pooranam Elayathamby alias Sandy. Born into a poor Sri Lankan Tamil household, any…

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