Sheila Kumar - Comfortably Numb

Comfortably Numb

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Book review: Chinese Whiskers by Pallavi Aiyar

This is more a brief take than review. Chinese Whiskers (Harper Collins) is not a new book. Dated 2010, it follows Smoke and Mirrors, author Pallavi Aiyar`s excellent dispatches from China. Chinese Whiskers is a charming tale of two Beijing cats, the gorgeous Soyabean and his slightly scruffy companion Tofu, who go to live with…

Books: The Hindu`s Lit for Life Fest, 2014: Sidelights

The Hindu’s three-day Lit for Life Fest, 11-13 January 2014. I will confess: I went for Colin Thubron. The takeaways from Day One of the Lit for Life fest for me was Pablo Bartholomew’s deeply disturbing Bhopal Disaster slideshow offset by his ponderous, dispassionate commentary. Barkha Dutt talked of women in India getting pawed every day and…

Book excerpt: Smoke and Mirrors, an Experience of China by Pallavi Aiyar

The author is walking around the Potala with an interpreter from the Chinese ministry. A Danish journalist starts to ask the latter questions about Tibet. The woman is upset. The author tells her that in India, people often disagree with each other on a topic and that’s okay.“But in China, it’s different,“ says the…

Book review: The Wildings by Nilanjana Roy

This is the briefest of takes –raves, rather — than a review. Just finished reading one of the most charming books that have come my way this year. Nilanjana Roy’s The Wildings. It’s a fable, there’s a moral or two in there somewhere and it’s very polished prose but ultimately, its the irresistible charm that…

Book excerpts: Joseph Anton by Salman Rushdie

The Great Writer is an agent provocateur of the first water. And what an ego! The reader flinches at all he throws at Wife Number 2; winces as his relationship with Wife Number 1 sours; cringes at his derisive description of Wife Number Three as the Illusion. And yet, there are great big tranches of…

Book review: Leaving Home with Half a Fridge

Life after divorce Part primer, part memoir, this book takes readers down the post-breakup road. Memoirs are tricky to write. Beyond a certain point, your memories might just not be the stuff of interest, leave alone inspiration to readers. What you reveal, what you veil, what you gloss over, what you decide to delve deep…

Book review: Bhima Lone Warrior by MT Vasudevan Nair

This is more a brief take than review. With Bhima: Lone Warrior, Kerala’s own MTV gives us the Kurukshetra war and the events leading up to it, from the perspective of Kunti’s second son. The picture that emerges very convincingly debunks the hefty, bumbling giant of popular legend and imagination. Here you have an intelligent man who…

Book review : Across the Chicken Neck by Nandita Haksar

Across the Chicken Neck by human rights activist and lawyer Nandita Haksar is a travel book with a very substantial difference. Even as Haksar and her husband Sebastian Hongray drive across the Chicken Neck, that sliver of land that connects the Northeast to the rest of India, visiting Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, the Indo-Bhutan border, what Haksar…

Book review: Delhi by Heart by Raza Rumi

A somewhat incoherent heart I really don’t know what quite to make of this book. Ahmed Rumi, a development professional from Pakistan, has occasion to visit Delhi a few times and is totally enthralled by the familiar yet unfamiliar feel of the city. So he takes quite some trouble to get to know Delhi…

Book review: Punjabi Parmesan by Pallavi Aiyar

In Punjabi Parmesan, author Pallavi Aiyar trains her incisive gaze on the European Union. If her China book, Smoke and Mirrors, was at times an amused, indulgent look at the Middle Kingdom, here the EU is placed on a cold metal tray to be scanned by a dispassionate, measuring eye. The picture that emerges is not a grand one. This…