Comfortably Numb - Sheila Kumar's Storehouse

Book review: A Burning by Megha Majumdar

This is more a brief take than review. A Burning by Megha Majumdar, Penguin Hamish Hamilton Books. A story soaked in sorrow, it tells of a young girl from the slums and more importantly, from `the` minority community, who, late one night, gives in to a moment of indiscretion via a Facebook comment, in the…

Book review: Hunted by the Sky by Tanaz Bhathena

Enter the Star Warrior A prophecy. A child with a scar. A villain slated to be killed by said child. Tanaz Bhathena’s Haunted by the sky, a YA fantasy fiction, shares these plot points with Rowling’s Potter series. There are other similarities too, but then the template of good versus evil, or even of a…

Book review: Wild Himalaya by Stephen Alter

Wild Himalaya by Stephen Alter. Aleph Books. Stephen Alter, our go-to Himalaya man, has delivered up a real treasure trove with this book. It is divided into eight sections dealing with virtually all aspects of the mighty mountain range: orogenesis (the process by which the Himalaya was formed through deformations in the earth`s crust), the…

Photo feature: A Yearning Look Back at Parks Visited in the Pre-Covid Age

This is a wistful post. A plaintive post. A post featuring parks, meadows, downs, fields, trekking routes I`d give anything to revisit, like RN.

Book review: The Last White Hunter by Donald Anderson with Joshua Mathew

The Last White Hunter, Reminiscences of a Colonial Shikari by Donald Anderson and Joshua Mathew, Indus Source Books. This was a book I was meant to read two years ago but stuff happened, and I couldn`t/didn’t. So, when I cracked it open just a few days ago, only to fall headlong into the story and…

Book review: Azadi by Arundhati Roy

This is more a brief take than a review. AZADI by Arundhati Roy. Penguin Books. This one`s a keeper. Roy touches on all the old familiar topics: Kashmir; communal rioting; lynchings including lynchings-by-TV; the manipulation of the populace for electoral gains; rape and other attacks on the weak, the marginalised, the ghettoised; the less than…

Book review: Around The World In 80 Trains

Around The World in 80 Trains by Monisha Rajesh. Bloomsbury Books. Straight off the bat, let me say it: This book is such a delightful, easy read. I read Rajesh`s debut Around India in 80 Trains some years ago, and quite enjoyed it but this one I positively relished. It combines strands of a love…

Book review: The Women who Forgot to Invent Facebook and Other Stories by Nisha Susan

Snark Attack In her debut collection of short stories, Nisha Susan oscillates between the savage and the gentle, but never lets go of her trademark sarcasm It`s that expectations thing. It can`t be easy to be Nisha Susan debuting her book of short stories. That’s because Susan, co-founder of The Ladies Finger and Grist Media,…

Book review: Beast by Krishna Udayasankar

Beast by Krishna Udayasankar. Penguin Ebury Books. I think I speak for all readers — and reviewers — when I state that the two basic tenets of a good book rests on the author’s ability to create/conjure up a story that will immediately catch their target audience`s attention, as well as the author`s capability to…

Guest Column: To Mask or Not to Mask, That Is NOT the Question

Let`s face it, masks R us, for now and the foreseeable future. A fresh slew of reports have come to the consensus that masks do a first-rate job of protecting us, as well as curbing the spread of Covid. This does not, of course, mean we can jettison the other safeguards like hand hygiene, physical…