Sheila Kumar - Comfortably Numb

Comfortably Numb

Sheila Kumar's Storehouse

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…

Feature: Kurtoskalacs, the chimney sweet of Europe

Kurtoskalacs is no longer prepared regularly in homes across Europe. It has become a touristy treat now. Is it doughy cotton candy? Is it a slimmer version of cinnamon bread? Is it heaven in a few bites? Well yes, it is the last, and it`s called kürtőskalács. I saw it all over Budapest but…

Books: Q & A with Manreet Sodhi Someshwar

`My novel explores how a society riven by a seemingly-unending spiral of violence, needs to open up to the stories of its survivors and fold them into its national and social history.` Manreet Sodhi Someshwar`s The Radiance of a Thousand Suns revisits the atrocities faced by the Sikh community, both at the time of…

Book review: The Radiance of a Thousand Suns by Manreet Sodhi Someshwar

Poignant memories A young Sikh woman in NYC tries to deal with the inheritance of particularly painful memories When the winds of independence blew in 1947, it carried within it a monster gale that wreaked damage on Punjab and its people. Thirty-seven years later, those marauding wind storms visited Punjabis yet again, this time in…

Book review: Is There Still Sex in the City by Candace Bushnell

Chick-lit for older chicks? Here, relationships and ageing are more engaging than either sex or the city. With its standout title, Candace Bushnell`s memoir Is There Still Sex In The City? sets up some major expectations, of beautifully made-up, expensively dressed young women dealing with the trials and tribulations of love, sex and everything in…

Book review: Quichotte by Salman Rushdie

QUICHOTTE by Salman Rushdie. Penguin Books India. I never ever thought it`d come to this. That, after a complete and total infatuation with the works of S. Rushdie that has lasted many long years, I would actually find anything written by him tiresome. But the overly verbose Quichotte tired me out. Why, why, why should…

Book review: Animalia Indica, edited by Sumana Roy

ANIMALIA INDICA, The Finest Animal Stories in Indian Literature. Edited by Sumana Roy. Aleph Books. What a treat this book is! Opening with that absolute classic, Kipling`s Rikki- Tikki-Tavi, the imagery of which stays in the head well after the reader has finished the story, the book offers up a great melange of tales of…

Travel: Lennon Wall in Prague

All you need is love… The John Lennon Wall in Prague is a wall with a storied history In a city filled with stunningly beautiful monuments, a Gothic bridge of much atmospheric antiquity, a languid river, a sprawling Palace complex, the John Lennon Wall is a bit of an anomaly. But there is…

Book review: The Far Field by Madhuri Vijay

An unexpectedly nuanced look at Kashmir from down south Madhuri Vijay’s first novel is a beautifully nuanced tale in these times of no nuance. The author dunks us deep into the family scrum of the protagonist, 30-year-old Shalini, and we are hooked. Scrum it is, because beneath the 30-year-old woman’s laconic account of her…

Book review: Upon a Sleepless Isle by Andrew Fidel Fernando

Sweet and hot sambol As I ate a vegetable-stuffed roti sitting on the rock, an East Asian couple spotted me and became transfixed, in the way safari-goers might upon seeing rare wildlife. At first they viewed and photographed me from a safe distance, wary, perhaps, of sending me scurrying into the bushes. They then inched…