Sheila Kumar - Comfortably Numb

Comfortably Numb

Sheila Kumar's Storehouse

Book review: Turtle Dove by Divya Dubey

Turtle Dove, A collection of Bizarre tales by Divya Dubey, Readomania Publications It is indeed a rare soul who does not pick up a book that promises to explore bizarre matters between its pages. Turtle Dove, Divya Dubey`s slim but interesting offering, takes us on a walk alongside the undertow of life, lets us…

Book review: The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota

This is more a brief take than review. The Year Of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota. Picador India I used to pass the British High Commission building in New Delhi on my way to work, twice every day for three years, and see the long and winding queues, little clumps of stragglers sometimes squatting on…

Book review: The Glass Bead Curtain by Lakshmi Kannan

Feminine Grace Under Fire October 15, 2016 Written by Sheila Kumar Lakshmi Kannan’s debut novel in English charts the life of two remarkable women, Kalyani, a child bride, and Vishalakshi, a young widow in pre-Independence Madras. Both the women display admirable grace under pressure and at some point, the story becomes a celebration of woman power. Kannan deftly…

Feature: Meeting Padmavathi Rao

Living the dream Bengaluru-based Padmavathi Rao is turning in a series of sensitive performances. Sheila Kumar | Padmavati Rao is on a roll right now. Even as her acclaimed Kitchen Poems show is readying for repeat renditions, she garnered a fair amount of both interest and attention as the luminously tragic Nancy Biswas, wife to…

Feature: Diamonds in the south

The diamond jubilation of South India I am at this high-end wedding (is there really any other kind?) in a temple town near Kochi. It’s a sea of silks, classic Kanjeevarams interspersed with heavily embellished saris. Everyone’s family heirlooms seem to be out on display and this being gold country, the glare of the…

Book review: Ms Draupadi Kuru After the Pandavas by Trisha Das

Back to the future It is many centuries, indeed many epochs, after the Kurukshetra war. The Pandavas are in heaven, along with their mother Kunti, their wife Draupadi and their aunt Gandhari, as well as the warrior princess Amba. Life is expectedly a halcyon bubble, filled with milk and honey, apsaras , music and dancing. For…

Book review: In the Jungles of the Night, A Novel about Jim Corbett by Stephen Alter

First a sort of disclaimer: I grew up on a steady diet of Corbett’s tales of the man-eaters he had encountered and bested; and later on, I grew to really like Stephen Alter’s accounts of life of men and mountains. So this was a double delight for me: Stephen Alter in the voice of Jim…

Book review: The Course of Love by Alain de Botton

This is more a brief take than review. The Course of Love by Alain de Botton. Penguin Books Anything but a crash course in love, romance, marriage, all the wear and tear of life on relationships from the guru. It`s a slim volume (just 222 pages) which traces the meeting of Rabih Khan and Kirsten McLelland…

Book review: The Amazing Racist by Chhimi Tenduf-La

This is more a brief take than review. The Amazing Racist by Chhimi Tenduf-La Eddie Trusted, your average English teacher (ha! that gives you pause, right?) wants to marry the girl of his dreams, the voluptuous, flirtatious, manipulative Menaka. Eddie happens to be in Colombo and Menaka just happens to be the daughter of tough,…

Book review: Chain of Custody by Anita Nair

Inspector Gowda goes down sinister paths Four years after he was first introduced to us, Inspector Borei Gowda returns to the printed page and to the reader’s imagination in Anita Nair’s Chain of Custody. This is a fitter Gowda, who is drinking less and therefore more alert. However, he is still carrying the scars of…