Sheila Kumar - Comfortably Numb

Comfortably Numb

Sheila Kumar's Storehouse

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…

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: 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…