Sheila Kumar - Comfortably Numb

Travel: The Lantau Buddha

When big really is beautiful Lantau Island A trip to gaze at the Lantau Buddha You glimpse him from a fair distance away. It`s a hazy day and on high in the cable car coming up from the Ngong Ping 360 cable car station, the first sighting of the seated figure, majestic in its very…

Book review: Swimmer Among the Stars by Kanishk Tharoor

A wave of emotions An interesting debut from a promising new writer. Kanishk Tharoor`s intriguingly titled book is a slim volume consisting of a dozen short stories. These stories span continents, oceans, they go underwater at times, they swim among the stars at other times, and once, even descend into the hellish…

Book review: The Private Life of Mrs Sharma by Ratika Kapur

Storm in a teacup Once in a while, along comes a book written at the cusp of imagination and craft. This slim volume that released a few months ago, tells a compellingly ordinary story and tells it in style. The protagonist is a middle-aged housewife running to a little fat, going about her everyday life:…

Book excerpt: Idle Thoughts of An Idle Fellow by Jerome K Jerome

An excerpt: Women are terribly vain. So are children, particularly children. One of them, at this very moment, is hammering upon my legs. She wants to know what I think of her new shoes. Candidly, I don`t think much of them. They lack symmetry and curve, and possess an indescribable appearance of lumpiness (I believe…

Book review: Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift

Life in servitude It has to be said: this book has two immediate hooks. One is the gorgeous Modigliani nude sprawled on the cover, making for a sumptuous book jacket, one that instantly impels you to pick the book up. The other is the opening line, where it says “Once upon a time, before…

Book review: Alphabet Soup for Lovers by Anita Nair

As light as soufflé Anita Nair ventures back into feminine territory with a love story set in the hills. After venturing out to sea with the tale of a Somalian trader with a jewelled eye, as well as introducing us to the very interesting Inspector Gowda, Anita Nair goes back into what is essentially…

Feature: Charlie Chaplin, A Tribute

Make like the Tramp! One could do worse than adopt a Chaplinesque outlook to life. Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, better known as Charlie Chaplin, entertainer exemplaire, would be 127 years on April 16, 2016, if he still lived. But the character Chaplin created and the world took to its heart, the Tramp, continues to entertain,…

Book review: This Unquiet Land by Barkha Dutt

This Unquiet Land by Barkha Dutt (Aleph Books). The title line says `Stories from India’s fault lines,` and indeed this autobiography from arguably one of the country`s best TV news-journalists, is just that: a klieg light shone on the disquieting things we would rather not dwell too much upon. Dutt…

Book review: The Ever After of Ashwin Rao by Padma Viswanathan

Pain, at a remove A psychologist attempts to tackle the pain of loss through chronicling others` cope strategies. In Canada, almost two decades after the bombing of Air India Flight 182, the trial of the suspects have finally started. Ashwin Rao, a psychologist who trained in Canada, has come back, to attend the trials,…

Book review: Elephant Complex by John Gimlette

Elephant Complex by John Gimlette (Quercus Publishing). This book came out just a few months ago, in the winter of 2015, so I`m not too behind time with the review. However, even if I were, I`d still be writing about it because the book is such a rewarding read. This is travel writing that delves…