Sheila Kumar - Comfortably Numb

Book review: H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

How To Tame Your Hawk H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald (Vintage Books) is an award-winning (the Samuel Johnson prize for nonfiction, the Costa Book of the Year prize) story of healing with a hawk. It is not a new release but it has long transcended the time barrier. It is the kind of…

Humour: That food frisson

That food frisson It’s been a long time coming. Starting out as a troubled eater, when the trestle table turned, it turned with a vengeance. Suddenly I woke up to food. I started to tuck in, I started to write about food and yes, I started to read and watch food stories. Just as it…

Feature: Gargoyles galore!

It’s the good old fear-and-fascination trope. The grotesque gargoyle has come a long way from its plumbing origins to startle people everywhere. These phantasmagorical creatures are something of an obsession with me. Wherever and whenever I come across them, I pull out my camera and get into action. I spend ages closely observing them, walking…

Book review: Asian Absences by Wolfgang Buscher

Some books have the reader hooked by the last line on the first page itself; others grow on the patient reader, gradually but rewardingly. Asian Absences falls between the two stools. The very first essay in this slim travelogue has to do with the journalist/writer/restless traveller Wolfgang Buscher traversing a corner of India, Rajasthan to…

Book review: Kalkatta by Kunal Basu

The city of Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta, is more than mere backdrop in Kunal Basu`s sixth work of fiction: it is a heaving, twisting, tortuous companion to the hero Jamshed Alam. In order to traverse his life, Jami has to first learn to traverse Kalkatta. The author presents the city in the most markedly…

Book review: Raakshas by Piyush Jha

On a knife’s edge There is a twist at the end of Raakshas — India’s No.1 Serial Killer, but you will find no spoilers here. As long as you don’t look for subtlety, the account of ‘India’s numero uno’ serial killer is a racy read. The main protagonists, a lady ACP, Maithili Prasad, and the…

Book review: Cobalt Blue by Sachin Kundalkar, Translated by Jerry Pinto

Cobalt Blue by Sachin Kundalkar, translated from the Marathi by Jerry Pinto (Penguin Books). This book was published in Marathi in 2006 and translated into English in 2013. The reader falls deep into the story almost at the start and then there`s no coming out till the tale has been told. It is a story…

Book review: Friends in Wild Places by Ruskin Bond

Let me begin the review of Ruskin Bond`s Friends in Wild Places (Speaking Tiger Books) by quoting a passage near the end. Below my cottage was a forest of oak and maple and Himalayan rhododendron. A narrow path twisted its way down through the trees, over an open ridge where red sorrel grew wild, and…

Feature: Dev Lahiri on Educational Reform

`Schools today are not about education, they are about certification` Highly intelligent. Quicksilver character. Maverick. Impassioned. Born educationist. All these words fit Devapriya Lahiri , former Headmaster of Lawrence School, Lovedale as well as Welhams Boys, Dehradun, to a T. It has been an eventful, even chequered career for the educationist who has recently written…

Book review: With a Little Help from my Friends by Dev Lahiri

The Headmaster`s Story Highly intelligent. Quicksilver character. Maverick. Quick study. Impassioned. Born educationist. All these words fit Devapriya Lahiri , former Headmaster of Lawrence School, Lovedale, as well as Welhams Boys, Dehradun, to a t. It`s been an eventful, even chequered career for the educationist who has recently written his memoir, called With A Little…